IncendiaryDevice
Self-Ejected
- Joined
- Nov 3, 2014
- Messages
- 7,407
I gave it my best shot, I really did, but there are so many aspects which are user-unfriendly it's physically unbearable. If you enjoy the emotions of frustration and anger every time you play for half an hour, then sure, it will meet your agenda, but if you have any sense of wanting a satisfying gaming session then you might as well find something else to play.
What were the straws that broke the camel's back?
In order of importance:
1) Only being able to save at the inn.
What a fucking misery that is. It completely disjoints gameplay and quickly becomes a task akin to working a factory-line as you repeat the same thing over and over and over again, for no other reason than you want to just save your frigging progress. For the first 5 hours of gameplay it's ok, you're not far from the Inn and travelling back helps you get your bearings, but once you start going out a bit farther, to the far corners of the second map then it just becomes a huge joke, rolling the random luck dice for enemies on the way out and then back again, never knowing if your going to be able to save your progress or if you're going to have to do it all over again, never really knowing why you're putting up with that kind of system in the first place. Found a portal? Wanna try it out? Oh fuck, all the way back to the inn you go, then back to the portal, there goes another 5 minutes of my life.
It might have been 'cool' in 1986, you know, when beggars can't be choosers, and some people might have developed stockholm syndrome from some autistic desire to persevere at all costs with such a system, but, for me, and likely most sane people, it's quite the most retarded design I've ever encountered in a game and goes a long way to reminding me why I didn't bother with these games when they were first released, my original instincts were indeed 100% correct.
2) Random Random Random Random and more and more meaningless Random
The encounters are all random, the loot is all random and the only thing that resembles anything approaching something like an actual game rather than a meaningless number-grinder is the maps themselves. You have all your fun drawing the maps as you reveal them and every now and then encountering something that isn't a random fight or generic shop. Nothing is ever cleared and every step could produce anything from a pointless and rewardless (other than xp) trash fight all the way to an impossible TPK fight. Fuck it, why not just spend all your time walking round the first map until you're level 100, does it even matter? Is the 'plot' even worth unravelling? Who knows, 3 maps in and there's fuck-all plot to keep me even vaguely interested in looking for new maps.
Finally one combat encounter provides you with a loot item that is actually interesting, something that makes the past 2 hours of mindless map-drawing somehow worthwhile, something that increases your AC by one. Enthralled by the excitement one then forgets that the item isn't even yours until you manage to get it back to the inn... which, of course, for that one specific encounter among hundreds there's that TPK party on your way back to the inn... and retracing your steps to retry just gives different enemies and different loot. What a huge waste of time. What a huge waste of soul.
Oh yeah, and loot vanishes the second you move out a square without remembering to click S for search, cos having loot automatically show upon defeating the enemy is just sooo casual, you have to give the player the opportunity to miss loot every now and then from sheer 1% natural human frailty.
3) No feedback whatsoever
Press A to attack. Press S to shoot. Press c, 1, 4, a to use you're one attack spell. Repeat until you or they are dead. Will you make it? Who the fuck knows, you either miss or hit... completely randomly. And for random damage. At enemies for whom you have no idea what their hit-points are. Never knowing either your or their hit-chance or their hit-range. No tactics, no thought, just pull the lever of the one-armed-bandit until either all your swords clunk into a row or until you run out of dimes.
Press c, 1, 2 to increase your team's accuracy... to an unknown improvement point... then watch as you perceive zero alteration in the accuracy of your team members. Watch every party member miss one turn only to have every party member hit the next turn, without ever knowing the percentiles that are providing you with this 'hilarious' gameplay.
4) It's just said some words but they've flicked past in a flash of... 6 points of... Zenon did 3... you come across a... puff of smoke
What little feedback there is, that of knowing what hit point numbers are being removed (as long as you or the enemy wasn't killed), zooms by in a flash of text so quick that a blowfly wouldn't be able to keep up with it.
And its not just the combat text, all the text in the game is just a nano-second flash of text at the bottom your screen. In order to read a one-sentence phrase on a statue you have to click on the statue 5 times just to catch a few words each time until you've gradually pieced together all the flashes into one coherent whole. Who knows what crucial and non-crucial text has been flying past me throughout the game. But then again, by this point, who the fuck cares.
5) Darkness
Now, I don't mind the concept of darkness. Its a cool concept which was forewarned in the manual. There will be sections of some maps which will require you to navigate them in complete darkness. Cool, I'll look forward to that at some highly advanced point in the game when the challenges need to be raised to figure out some intricate puzzle with a high reward factor.
Oops, nope. It stuffs darkness at you right from the start, whether its a part of anything interesting or not. Just sprayed about almost randomly for no other reason than to slow your progress down to a crawl. Large empty rooms that serve no purpose and have zero reward and fuck all puzzle element, just a big room of darkness, cos it's so much fun looking at a black screen for 10 minutes. I mean, christ, even text adventures have more to look at/imagine while playing.
I could go on, but if I go on any further with even more points then people will misunderstand the relevance-factor of each point, I'll be lectured on my un-hardcoreness because I don't like avalanches that disappear if you simply leave and re-enter an area, and that replying to this kind of point somehow negates the relevance of the more important points previously stressed.
But apparently M&M 3 is the one where they implemented a save anywhere feature and, since save at the inn counts for about 80% of the tedious misery of this game (from which most other points tendril out from), there's a good chance that I might actually grow to like the other game quirks.
So is it true, is M&M 3 the one where this series turns into a 'proper game'? With a save anywhere feature and everything?
What were the straws that broke the camel's back?
In order of importance:
1) Only being able to save at the inn.
What a fucking misery that is. It completely disjoints gameplay and quickly becomes a task akin to working a factory-line as you repeat the same thing over and over and over again, for no other reason than you want to just save your frigging progress. For the first 5 hours of gameplay it's ok, you're not far from the Inn and travelling back helps you get your bearings, but once you start going out a bit farther, to the far corners of the second map then it just becomes a huge joke, rolling the random luck dice for enemies on the way out and then back again, never knowing if your going to be able to save your progress or if you're going to have to do it all over again, never really knowing why you're putting up with that kind of system in the first place. Found a portal? Wanna try it out? Oh fuck, all the way back to the inn you go, then back to the portal, there goes another 5 minutes of my life.
It might have been 'cool' in 1986, you know, when beggars can't be choosers, and some people might have developed stockholm syndrome from some autistic desire to persevere at all costs with such a system, but, for me, and likely most sane people, it's quite the most retarded design I've ever encountered in a game and goes a long way to reminding me why I didn't bother with these games when they were first released, my original instincts were indeed 100% correct.
2) Random Random Random Random and more and more meaningless Random
The encounters are all random, the loot is all random and the only thing that resembles anything approaching something like an actual game rather than a meaningless number-grinder is the maps themselves. You have all your fun drawing the maps as you reveal them and every now and then encountering something that isn't a random fight or generic shop. Nothing is ever cleared and every step could produce anything from a pointless and rewardless (other than xp) trash fight all the way to an impossible TPK fight. Fuck it, why not just spend all your time walking round the first map until you're level 100, does it even matter? Is the 'plot' even worth unravelling? Who knows, 3 maps in and there's fuck-all plot to keep me even vaguely interested in looking for new maps.
Finally one combat encounter provides you with a loot item that is actually interesting, something that makes the past 2 hours of mindless map-drawing somehow worthwhile, something that increases your AC by one. Enthralled by the excitement one then forgets that the item isn't even yours until you manage to get it back to the inn... which, of course, for that one specific encounter among hundreds there's that TPK party on your way back to the inn... and retracing your steps to retry just gives different enemies and different loot. What a huge waste of time. What a huge waste of soul.
Oh yeah, and loot vanishes the second you move out a square without remembering to click S for search, cos having loot automatically show upon defeating the enemy is just sooo casual, you have to give the player the opportunity to miss loot every now and then from sheer 1% natural human frailty.
3) No feedback whatsoever
Press A to attack. Press S to shoot. Press c, 1, 4, a to use you're one attack spell. Repeat until you or they are dead. Will you make it? Who the fuck knows, you either miss or hit... completely randomly. And for random damage. At enemies for whom you have no idea what their hit-points are. Never knowing either your or their hit-chance or their hit-range. No tactics, no thought, just pull the lever of the one-armed-bandit until either all your swords clunk into a row or until you run out of dimes.
Press c, 1, 2 to increase your team's accuracy... to an unknown improvement point... then watch as you perceive zero alteration in the accuracy of your team members. Watch every party member miss one turn only to have every party member hit the next turn, without ever knowing the percentiles that are providing you with this 'hilarious' gameplay.
4) It's just said some words but they've flicked past in a flash of... 6 points of... Zenon did 3... you come across a... puff of smoke
What little feedback there is, that of knowing what hit point numbers are being removed (as long as you or the enemy wasn't killed), zooms by in a flash of text so quick that a blowfly wouldn't be able to keep up with it.
And its not just the combat text, all the text in the game is just a nano-second flash of text at the bottom your screen. In order to read a one-sentence phrase on a statue you have to click on the statue 5 times just to catch a few words each time until you've gradually pieced together all the flashes into one coherent whole. Who knows what crucial and non-crucial text has been flying past me throughout the game. But then again, by this point, who the fuck cares.
5) Darkness
Now, I don't mind the concept of darkness. Its a cool concept which was forewarned in the manual. There will be sections of some maps which will require you to navigate them in complete darkness. Cool, I'll look forward to that at some highly advanced point in the game when the challenges need to be raised to figure out some intricate puzzle with a high reward factor.
Oops, nope. It stuffs darkness at you right from the start, whether its a part of anything interesting or not. Just sprayed about almost randomly for no other reason than to slow your progress down to a crawl. Large empty rooms that serve no purpose and have zero reward and fuck all puzzle element, just a big room of darkness, cos it's so much fun looking at a black screen for 10 minutes. I mean, christ, even text adventures have more to look at/imagine while playing.
I could go on, but if I go on any further with even more points then people will misunderstand the relevance-factor of each point, I'll be lectured on my un-hardcoreness because I don't like avalanches that disappear if you simply leave and re-enter an area, and that replying to this kind of point somehow negates the relevance of the more important points previously stressed.
But apparently M&M 3 is the one where they implemented a save anywhere feature and, since save at the inn counts for about 80% of the tedious misery of this game (from which most other points tendril out from), there's a good chance that I might actually grow to like the other game quirks.
So is it true, is M&M 3 the one where this series turns into a 'proper game'? With a save anywhere feature and everything?
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