Anvil of Dawn- any good?

[KeighnMcDeath]

For years i thought the bad suicide ending was the only ending. I thought... kinda cool martyr ending.

 

[Nikanuur]

Hard to say.
On one hand, it's beautifully drawn, the fight is ok for its time, the progression is there, you visit strange places and see some imaginative things, and you get to think how and where to use items. That's great. From the technical side, the games feel professionally made in every inch.
On the other hand, I've always drifted away from the game pretty soon because the dungeons are always (?) designed as excessively large, semi empty-ish squares. It always felt like a drag to go through those, which is a shame because every other aspect of the game is rather lovely. People here say LoL is worse, but LoL's and EoB's (sibling blobbers, so to speak) dungeons are well-designed and composed. Anvil of Dawn's are, sadly, mostly on the opposite. Maybe it gets better later? I don't know, I've finished about 3-4 of these dungeons, spending around 10-15 hours of gameplay.

See one of the maps here

 

[V_K]

See one of the maps here

This is the map of Underground City which is more of an area that you pass through on the way to other, proper dungeons (see exits at all four corners). There is a couple of things to do there, but you're not supposed to "complete" it in one go. The gameworld is generally properly open, meaning there's some backtracking to do every now and then, so it plays a lot better when explored organically rather than trying to 100% every dungeon in one go. Other locations have different focuses - some are more combat-heavy, some more puzzles, which makes for some nice pacing IMO.

I found LoL's dungeons, on the contrary, to be boring, repetitive, on-rails slogs, so I'm not sure what you find so well-designed about them.

 

[Nikanuur]

See one of the maps here

This is the map of Underground City which is more of an area that you pass through on the way to other, proper dungeons (see exits at all four corners). There is a couple of things to do there, but you're not supposed to "complete" it in one go. The gameworld is generally properly open, meaning there's some backtracking to do every now and then, so it plays a lot better when explored organically rather than trying to 100% every dungeon in one go. Other locations have different focuses - some are more combat-heavy, some more puzzles, which makes for some nice pacing IMO.

I found LoL's dungeons, on the contrary, to be boring, repetitive, on-rails slogs, so I'm not sure what you find so well-designed about them.

A well designed dungeon gets progressively tougher until the player meets the boss, or the final exit, or the puzzle piece, etc., it's architectonically shaped and designed to reflect its nature (old caves, mad wizard's maze, old castle dungeons, etc/), its concept is clear, it's got inaccessible places player needs to get back to, specifically designed areas, and then some. LoL, EoBs, early Might and Magics, eben Wizardy VII with its wildly schematic approach to graphics, have most of this. AoD is an open world with some adventure elements, which is great; however, the player spends very little time "outside". Most of the playtime is done in dungeons. I went through 3-4 "dungeon worlds". Albeit very nice graphically-wise, it was trodding through excessively big, emptyish, architectonically unimaginative, everytime-square-shaped places with little to do beyond fighting, pressing plates, opening doors, occassional reading. I don't know if the whole game is like that - I repeat, I don't. Yet, after 3-4 dungeons I'd expect something more than this anyway. Come again. You find that less repetitive than LoL... Meh, ring free, whatever you say, man.

 

[Lemming42]

The only two dungeons that I'd describe as huge squares in a bad way are the Underground City (which I didn't mind because I was very taken in by the atmosphere and the story there) and the City of the Dead later in the game, which is like if TES Arena's Murkwood was completely shit.

The Undersea Maze is a square but it's all about navigating the perimeter and spotting openings to reach the inner layers, which I enjoyed. The Reeds Plain is a square but it's got a pretty cool mechanic, the idea is that the enemy has laid a trap for you in the reeds and you've got to turn the tables by using the reeds to isolate and ambush the enemy search parties.

I think the only dungeon in the whole game that I didn't really enjoy was the Iron Titan thanks to the fucking Swarm Maidens, who are just incredibly tedious to deal with. But even there, the central theme of having to shrink some idiot who's physically stuck in the middle of the corridor is entertaining enough that you can tolerate subpar dungeon design.

Oh, and the Anvil of Dawn itself, of course. Unbelievably shit dungeon, I have no idea what they were thinking, and it's the finale as well. Walking into invisible walls in a room where you can't see three feet in front of you.

 

[Nikanuur]

The only two dungeons that I'd describe as huge squares in a bad way are the Underground City (which I didn't mind because I was very taken in by the atmosphere and the story there) and the City of the Dead later in the game, which is like if TES Arena's Murkwood was completely shit.

The Undersea Maze is a square but it's all about navigating the perimeter and spotting openings to reach the inner layers, which I enjoyed. The Reeds Plain is a square but it's got a pretty cool mechanic, the idea is that the enemy has laid a trap for you in the reeds and you've got to turn the tables by using the reeds to isolate and ambush the enemy search parties.

I think the only dungeon in the whole game that I didn't really enjoy was the Iron Titan thanks to the fucking Swarm Maidens, who are just incredibly tedious to deal with. But even there, the central theme of having to shrink some idiot who's physically stuck in the middle of the corridor is entertaining enough that you can tolerate subpar dungeon design.

Oh, and the Anvil of Dawn itself, of course. Unbelievably shit dungeon, I have no idea what they were thinking, and it's the finale as well. Walking into invisible walls in a room where you can't see three feet in front of you.

I'd swear it was at least three or four out of what - seven worlds? But alright, I'll reinstall and look. If that's not correct, I'll publicly apologize

 

[V_K]

I'd swear it was at least three or four out of what - seven worlds?

Seventeen.

 

[Nyast]

Bought the game on GoG recently and decided to give it a try after reading this thread. I hadn't played back in the days but it's better late than never.

I'm about 10-15 hours in and slightly confused by the size of the game. Online reports say it's about 25 hours long ? I've now reached the sunken ship and completely the underground city earlier.

A lot of elements of the game feel simplistic or even frustrating. The lack of sleep (having to wait in realtime to regen) was a shock lol. Haven't seen other games do that, took a bit of time to get used to it to properly do resources management. Combat isn't all that interesting, and the level design is very maze-like, which I'm no fan of. Some of the levels are especially big and become a drag. The UI has some serious issues too (I often click on a spell instead of the weapon hand, due to some kind of offset in the cursor icon), no side-step movement, slow spell animations, etc.. I do see the appeal of the atmosphere, story, characters and items variety, but in my eyes it's nowhere near as good and polished as Lands of Lore, or even EoTB.

I'll have to replay Stonekeep one of these days, I don't remember much of it when I played it younger. I don't remember the consensus about which of the two (which released the same year iirc) was the best.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

At least no random enemies, they are all placed so this was definitely a crafted DC with no random shit unlike Dungeon Hack. I don't know if there was a website with all the spells logged with gestures. A good Anvil of Dawn shrine would be nice but I think that of every game.

 

[V_K]

Online reports say it's about 25 hours long ?

You can go through it in 20 hours if you know what you're doing, but a first playthrough will be probably closer to 35-40. Maybe even 50 if you insist on mapping every square - a lot of content is optional.

The lack of sleep (having to wait in realtime to regen) was a shock lol.

It's a staple of Dreamforge/Event Horizon games. I like it: it's inconvenient enough to prevent rest-spamming and encourage consumables use, but forgiving enough so that you have a fighting chance even if you've mismanaged your resources.

Some of the levels are especially big and become a drag

To be fair, I do remember Gryphon Keep outstaying its welcome a bit. But from the sunken ship on I was having an absolute blast.
The best thing about AoD's level design is that, as Lemming42 mentioned above, every dungeon does something different - some unique mechanic or an Adventure-like mini-quest - that keeps things interesting depite simplistic combat.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Wow $1.22 right now on GOG.
Looks pretty good... on the wish list.

 

[Nyast]

Dark Lantern was the best level for me so far. It is more compact and has a higher density of stuff than what I've seen in the other levels. Gryphon Keep was the hunt for keys, and mostly a tutorial level. It started to get repetitive towards the end but I didn't mind it. Underground city was maybe the worse so far for me: it is even bigger and even more repetitive, with more keys to find, and overall a very low density of things to do (but I did like the cave beneath it). Its redeeming feature was its open-ness, with the teleporters and the different exits going into the world map. I did that level (and explored the world map) before I entered the Dark Lantern. I loved the Dark Lantern, but after that you get into the Undersea Maze, which is another huge level that is dragging on. Overall my impression of the game is that it'd benefit from being more compact & dense. Hopefully the other areas will be more like the Dark Lantern and less like the Underground City & the Maze.

 

[Nyast]

Finished the game just now. It grew on me. The flaws I described previously are still there, but the level design gets much better in later areas. Special mention to the Iron giant, which had a ton of very nice puzzles ( and pretty creative, including one covering 3 floors.. you know what I'm talking about if you finished the game ). I also liked that the world map opened up, so you can just go explore and do areas in any order you want (more or less), which gives a sense of exploration and discovery that is usually lacking in this genre of games. On the downside, combat never improved and some areas really overstayed their welcome, making the game boring at times. Hunting for rocks in the final areas almost made me give up, and the final level had some obscure puzzles that I had to lookup online to figure out (the only time I used help in the game, but I wanted to wrap it up). Overall it's an excellent dungeon crawler, but it would have been so much better if combat and AI hadn't been a clickfest.