R52 "Release" Review

Now that I have gone through almost the whole story part of the game, and experienced a few of the other systems of the game while doing so, I wanted to jot down some general observations about the state of the game. I am going to post those views now, but keep in mind, this was done with a character that was already at adventurer level 52, which made alot of things significantly easier in the early stages of playing through the story. I will reserve a run through on a second character that is fresh for release 53, so I can get an idea of what the newer player experience is...

Visuals:

• With the exception of a few things here or there, like the occasional missing element, or the lack of real substance to the character creation process, I am happy with the visuals in the game. Most scenes feel like they have a reason for existing, and less like a poorly separated clone of a master scene used for generic forests or some such. They aren't award winning, or ground breaking, but they are solid.

World building:

• The world as a whole, despite the multitude of loading screens one has to go through just to get from one region to another (something that players trying to follow the storyline will attest to), feels like most scenes have a reason to exist, and that the entities within have a purpose for being there, and this contributes greatly to the immersion.

Combat:

• Haven't engaged in PvP, so this is limited to PvE.
• Tried to give the card combat a chance, but it comes down to the number of keys one needs to press, and the number of fingers I have available. If you are using WASD, the number keys, the R key, other shortcuts for targeting, and the mouse, there simply aren't enough fingers for this old dog to use in trying to manage combos, much less stacking like glyphs to get bonuses to focus cost and glyph strength. I switched over to a static hot bar (finally), and noticed that you threw static bar users a bone in allowing the charging of attacks (something that was noticably missing when i was last able to play, almost a year ago). THANK YOU! It may not be as flexible, and may not benefit as much from the glyph stacking, but it is a much easier system to use, AND I get the added benefit of being able to see the animations and spell effects you devs worked so hard at implementing, and so was able to enjoy the game much more than I would have otherwise.
• TLDR: I still dislike card combat, mainly because I don't have Ghost in the Shell-like finger-splitting implants . The static combat bar allowed me to enjoy the game much more, especially given later changes to that part of the system.

Skills:

• Still building my skills, and it was fun to finally hit GM in something (Ranged ). Still not quite convinced that effectively being able to GM+ pretty much every skill is going to be a good thing, but we're still in an environment that isn't quite finished with the first leg of this journey, much less all 5.

Story:

• While I am loving the story and some of the darker aspects that are embedded within, there are some rough spots in terms of execution (
  Spoiler: Grannus' throne room comes to mind...

  This semi-scripted execution was clunky in the extreme, especially with the ?soandso? conversation items on the side. There needed to be something smoother in this instance, and the experience suffered greatly.
  ), and a myriad of typos in the conversation text that made the experience somewhat flatter than it could have been.

There is more, but I have to go for now... I will expand on this later when I get back

 

Story: continued

• PvP vs non-PvP options for continuing the storyline:
  • This is terribly executed. The first time it comes up, you are told that the place you need to go is made potentially much more dangerous because of the lack of the Oracle’s protection, and then offhandedly told about the existence of an alternate route. There is a huge opportunity for side quests here that is completely untapped and overlooked. This is one of the places where this game could not feel less like a spiritual successor to Ultima. In Ultima’s past, if there was a secret within the game that was directly related to the storyline, there was a way to find an answer about that secret. Whether you had to run around and ask a half dozen to a dozen NPC’s about something until the entire secret is revealed, or it is unearthed through research in libraries are private book collections of certain PCs, something of this magnitude could always be found out through interacting with the game. Leaving this to blue sparkly indicators on your Compass does everyone a disservice.
  • Note: if there is a way to find this in game, I was unable to find it, and will be the first one to apologize if this is totally off base.

 

Scene Balance:

I understand that there should be no set difficulty for the scenes, that way when you enter a new one, there should be some small element of surprise. However, there are some scenes that need a look, or you need to revamp your tier system. There are a couple of scenes I have gone to that stated a particular tier level, while having a totally different difficulty level than what I have come to expect. One of these is the Spectral Mountains scene.

I went in by mistake actually, because I had been searching for the foothills instead, and at first everything was in line with it's tier 3 designation, as the first encounter was with Timber Wolves, which are green to me, and usually easily handled. I dispatched these with ease, and moved deeper, finding bears, and then bandits, who were yellow to me. First thought was at how odd it was that there were not only yellow npcs, but how MANY there were. No big deal though, as it is still fairly easy to deal with them, just need to do some kiting and CC. I finally get to the bandit camp, and clear my path to the tents and remove nearby bandits so I can loot the chests, which only took a couple of minutes, mind you, so I decided to loot all of the dead bandits and then the chest. I go in and open the chest, and almost before I exit the tent, I hear HAH!, HAH!, HAH!, HAH!... as every one of the previously deceased bandits pops up. Still no problem, really... but I hadn't been out of combat very long and so had not recovered much of my health and focus. So now that I am done with this second batch, I exit combat and wait a few seconds and loot the bodies, and I am greeted seconds later to another "HAH!" chorus!

At this point, I probably could have managed to survive and get out of there, but I ran afoul of another game mechanic that was certainly not value-added... I was frantically trying to click the icon for my healing potion on my utility bar to get a boost, and because I was trying to click on it quick and move to another icon on the bar, it tried to drag my potion to another slot, and so I didn't drink it. I also noticed this behavior when I am using a combination of manually hitting number keys for attack skills while also trying to left click on my healing skills on the right end of the combat bar. I personally feel that there should be a way to lock the bar when I am not obviously trying to modify it. Perhaps a small lock icon that I can click on to enable/disable editing the utility bar?

This was only the first of a couple of times I died in what was supposed to be a tier 3 scene. The other was at the "House on the hill" spot just up the hill from the bandit camp. The stairs there were particularly impassable, requiring jumps to continue moving through them in several spots, making it all but impossible for a kiting archer to keep mobile enough to avoid getting wailed on by several thugs with oogly sticks.

So, once I became accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the scene, this became a fantastic humanoid mob farming spot, as the weapons were right at the verge of being useful for quick cash sales to npcs, or large pools of easy skill gain in carpentry and blacksmithing, as well as the scrap that comes with them.

That being said, I am loath to call for a revision of this, but it still must be said that this either needs to be designated a tier 4/5 area because of the repop frequency on the bandits, or you need to tone down their level and respawn rate.

This is but one of a handful of scenes that I have noticed that suffer from this. It is especially noticeable in the tier 5 scenes, where they can run the gamut from BARELY qualifying as a tier 5 scene (Eastreach gap coming to mind easily here) to potentially kicking your ass for ASSUMING it is ONLY a tier 5 (Vauban Pass... with its band of 4 or 5 large corpions right near the entrance pops out in this instance).

 

Story continuity:

I will beat this dead horse again... I have no problem with it. There is one place I have noticed this, particularly because I was in a rush to finish the other storylines prior to double xp expiring, and that is Solace Bridge in its battle aftermath incarnation, and the follow-on version.

In this scene, you have a few major landmarks, as well as some ... decorations... that create major discrepancies. Those are:

• The Guard House (?) inside the keep: There are three main problems here:
  • Johan and Charlotte: In the battle scene, this building is on the verge of being engulfed in flames, and has a skeleton on the first floor, and a living child (Charlotte) on the second floor. At this point, without even taking the follow-on version of the scene into account, there is only one massive continuity problem: Johan. The note under the skeleton's hand indicates by implication that the skeleton belongs to the man who penned the letter: Johan. The living, breathing child upstairs then creates the timeline problem, since she is the daughter of the man that apparently died years ago. Fix this by placing a dead guardsman there instead, please.
  • The guard captain (forget his name): The second problem reveals itself in the follow on scene. In the "Battle" Guard House, the skeleton is implied to be Johan. In this scene, again by implication from the letter lying under the skeleton's arm, the skeleton is not Johan, but his immediate superior! I don't really have a recommendation to solve this one, since the letters in the battle scene indicate that this second individual is in some location other than Solace Bridge, as Johan needs to write to him regarding the dangers the area poses to his family.
  • The fire: Compare the two compound buildings in both scenes. In the battle scene, one building, the tavern, is engulfed in flames. The other, the Inn or Guard post, is on fire, but not nearly in as sorry a state as the tavern, but with no one to put the fire out, it would be assumed that both buildings would be skeletal remains in the follow-on scene. Now we move forward to the follow-on scene that we get to see from this point forward. In this, the tavern is indeed burnt to the ground, with little left to even suggest what purpose it served. On the other hand, the Inn/Guard post is not only NOT burnt to the ground, but there isn't even a hint that it was ever alight. As a matter of fact, upon entering the building, it looks more like someone just left, lithely stepping over the long-decayed skeleton in front of the door on their way out!
• The Stone Circle of the Lunar Rift: Simply put, in the battle scene, this is all but demolished, with no active rift. In the follow-on scene, it is restored to its formerly pristine ancient self, with no reason as to why.
• The area North of the North Bridge: This area is ablaze almost completely across the northern end of the scene in the Battle version, and is barely touched mere hours/days later in the follow-on scene.
• The North Entrance Archway: Same continuity problem as the Guard House and the greenery... it is engulfed in flames in the battle scene, and untouched in the follow-on scene.

These are things about this scene that have bothered me since you guys have started calling the Love storyline complete AND polished. There is nothing polished about the above... while it does allow for the several side quests that some of these differences are part of, I know I speak for more than myself when I say the differences do little to give truth to your claim of the polish work done to this path.

 

Great review! Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks!

 

Books:

We need more variety here. DRASTICALLY more variety.

Also, placement of books: The lack of variety hits here in a couple of ways:

• Desire to examine and explore: When you go through a dozen rooms in a dungeon-type scene like the Epitath, and the same stack of three books is on every table (sometimes a couple of times over)... it kind of deadens the desire to spend the time to mouse over the books to see the titles. While the more diligent will be rewarded with the extremely scarce hint book (mainly because almost every single hint is in the form of a piece of paper), the rest give up ever examining them after the first or second bookcase they encounter.
• Believability: Going with the example of the Epitath again:
  • When I am exploring the wrecked remains of the darkest nest of alchemical and magical depravity and inhumanity, the last thing I would expect to find on every shelf, on every desk, and in every room, are MULTIPLE COPIES of treatises on the virtues!!!!

Please do something about making the investigation of books more interesting. Another hearkening to Ultimas' past, while there were plenty of fluff pieces on the shelves in Britannia, there were more than a few treatments on history, magic, lore and such. I'm not finding this here, and it saddens me.

 

Minor note: When speaking to npc merchants, it is really weird to have female npcs squawk out their gibberish vocals in male voices...

 

bug it please

 

Good - there have not been enough willing to fight the good fight. We need to drag that damn horse to an ankh to be resurrected... great feedback!