Arcanum: Week 2
It's been a bit slow after reaching Caladon. I'd confused Caladon with Dernholm, and was surprised to see a sizeable city filled with yet more secrets. I may hate things about the engine and the inflexible quests, but man, if Arcanum is anything it's generous with its content.
I'm now maxed out, with several undistributed points set aside for when I feel a strong need to boost something. I've stopped putting points into crafting skills because I know that I can buy textbooks to cumulatively supplement the skill; the only thing I'll need to do that for is if I find that one of the base inventions that you only get through leveling a crafting skill will be necessary for something I consider to be indispensable. Since I have a decent rifle, pistol, and flamesplosion weapon from out of space and time, I'm not too worried.
I've started getting rid of junk, stashing it in known locations and selling it otherwise. This put me in a position of having to procure a shovel again after having carried it around for most of the game without any discernible use for it. Also in... the town that's in the same region as Caladon... Roseborough? There's a puzzle that reminds me that the Arcanum system of cardinal directions is seriously messed up. In the beginning of the game I assumed that up meant north, but I learned definitively, through sneaking past the mountains bordering the desert to the east, that up is really north EAST. This wouldn't be a big deal, but there's a X Marks the Spot puzzle in town that relies upon you picking up on this.
I think the next time I play I'm going to try out a magicked-up Elf, just to see what sort of trouble I can get into. I'm not too keen on the magic system making you pass out (I think it should just draw from hitpoints if you dig too deep) but I like that there's a consequence for using it. I have other gripes and compliments but I'm going to save them for when I'm playing the game more regularly. For now, most of my time has been spent with Age of Wonders.
Age of Wonders
As I hinted at in my last post, I beat a campaign path in Age of Wonders. I have to say I enjoy the game a lot, despite its hand-cramping mouse controls, the occasional showstopping bug (save often), and the at times unimaginative AI. This last bit has been a problem once in a while. I'll get to a point where I trap a fleeing enemy, and rather than run away or fight, the game just freezes. And right now, my Frostlings are allied with the Halflings, and the Halflings absolutely refuse to take out the remnants of an enemy force. The only way the scenario will resolve is if I declare war on my superior allies and take out those enemies myself, possibly getting murdered in the process.
But I do enjoy this game. I play it quite a bit, and I love that there are so many different factions to choose from. Its closest analog is Master of Magic, to which it owes a lot, but if you compare it with Heroes of Might and Magic: you know how each town is an alignment of sorts? Well, in AoW, there's just alignment. So mixed troops are not a big deal as long as the alignment is comparable, and this can be modified through faction relations. If you treat the Goblins nicely, even if you're a good-aligned faction you will wind up being able to ally with the goblins without much trouble, especially in the campaign mode, which carries over faction standings for the whole campaign ( a brilliant touch that I haven't seen in many other games, making each playthrough potentially wildly different depending on who you piss off). Additionally, each unit acts as an individual, not a stack, and it can gain experience and not need a leader to move (you basically get unlimited units, although some units may desert you due to their alignment differences, especially if they don't have a leader). Leaders, similar to HoMM4, are in the battle. I wasn't a big fan of this in HoMM4, but here it feels natural, and you can boost those heroes enough to where they're nearly a demigod in power, which can be pretty exciting when you're charging into a castle and kicking major ass (or irritating if you're up against them).
My history with this game goes back to the demo many years ago, which I played to death, so I was already prepared for the combat basics. The only thing I needed to learn was some of the quirks of the newer units, and what some of the scenario settings really mean. It's in the scenarios that you will get the widest variety of gameplay, because you can the difficulty level and behavior of the enemy AI individually, and you can set the game to let your main character be off the board. Normally, if you kill a faction's main leader, the entire faction crumbles and becomes independent neutrals. If your main character is off the board, you have to eliminate EVERYONE. This means that the cheap tactic of building up a strong main and charging in there doesn't work, and it forces you to be a lot smarter with your lines of control (with the obvious tradeoff of the game taking longer). There's also a turn-based / simultaneous toggle that lets you have fully turn-based games, or a simultaneous turns mode which means everyone rushes to do things first. The latter lets you get away with stealing things out from under an opponent's nose, but it can easily feel cheap, especially when up against an efficient computer.
One of my favorite features, assuming your main character is in the field, lets you pick starting stats for your main character. This lets you give them powers they would normally not develop, and lets you further customize them through their portrait and the spheres of magic they have available to them.
This is by no means a comprehensive review, since I could give a summary and maybe add a few more bits about the mechanics. But my fingers seemed to want to type all of this, so I'm only happy to oblige.
The lesson here is: if you're feeling depressed, go take a walk. Did me some good!
Log in to comment