#i like how little combat there was in the entire archon quest so far

[gravityeffect2]

Thoughts on Andromeda

So I beat ME:A, 100% everything (with the exception of a couple minor ‘scan this’ quests, which I’ll get to). I just feel the need to jot this down and organize my feelings on the game.

First, I enjoyed it. I had fun, really, and enjoyed the feeling of exploration and adventure. The combat was smooth, crafting was nice, the graphics for the different worlds were just beautiful, the music and voice acting were decent (except Tann and few minor characters). The characters were interesting and likeable...mostly. Ok here’s where I gotta heel turn a bit.

Spoilers ahead.

The story and characters just felt a bit...bland. Let’s start with the Archon. What’s his goal? What’s his motivation? Well, he’s interested in the remnant. Why? Cause controlling meridian will make it easier to control everything else? The kett already control almost everything. Did he want to use that power to become kett overlord? Do the kett have an overlord? As far as we know he just wanted power cause he’s the bad guy and that’s what bad guys do. How original. Other than him being head of the bad guys, we have no personal reason to hate him.

Let’s look at Saren. How do we feel about him? Well he kills Shep’s mentor, and does it in a really underhanded, backstabby way, so right away we kind of hate him. Plus no one believes Shep when they say he’s gone rogue, so it’s now our personal mission to prove it. Saren also messes with an ancient, powerful, little-understood technology - prothean stuff. But as we learn why, we come to understand his motivations for betraying the council, making him an almost sympathetic character. We learn next to nothing about the Archon and his motivations. The only thing that got me a little personally invested was when he kidnaps Ryder’s twin (who’s barely in the game so he’s basically a stranger but I put a lot of thought into his character design sooo...). Like why not have the Archon be the one who kills Alec? That would give us a great personal stake in bringing down the kett. Maybe he wants the remtech to break away from the kett and start his own cult. I just feel like they could have made a really complex, compelling villain and they just...didn’t. At all. Also I hate his design: big Disney eyes, itty bitty mouth, giant forehead ring...just...stahp.

And I feel like a lot of characters are like that. They’re just...eh. They’re nice. They’re ok. The only squadmates I found interesting were Peebee and Drack. Peebee cause she was actually LIVELY and expressive and sarcastic and fun, and Drack because he’s the only other guy who’s personality isn’t just ‘chill and nice.’ I just didn’t feel an attachment to my ship and crew like I did in ME1. Like seeing the Normandy destroyed and then rebuilt - I honestly felt pretty emotional when they revealed the SR-2. I feel like if the same thing happened to the Tempest I wouldn’t really care.

Now the bulk of the game: go to new planet. Reset vault. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. It was really fun the first time. Seeing the tragedy of the first failed outposts on Eos, discovering how the monoliths and vault worked. Running like hell from the smoke, making a new outpost and seeing a little cutscene of ships flying towards it, finally humanity has a home! Getting a big reaction on the Nexus. What an adventure! Let’s do it 5 more times except the only person who will acknowledge you this time is one reporter. And I guess cryo pod points. Yay. After Eos everything kind of became a blur and it just didn’t feel like much was at stake. I felt like doing quests and raising viability had very little in-game impact (whereas in, say, ME2, you BETTER do those loyalty missions, upgrade your ship, and prioritize timing, or people WILL die).

One last thing...glitches. Everyone’s talking about face animations and such, and yeah they look pretty bad as I was playing Witcher 3 right before Andromeda and man those character animations are SOLID. That didn’t really bug me as much as MY CHARACTER JUST NOT APPEARING IN SOME CUTSCENES. You know movie night, how it ends with your character in the middle of the couch, surrounded by your crew? Mine ended with Jaal with his arm around a fucking GHOST in the middle of the couch. So that glitch happened a few times. Also had some combat glitches that made me have to reset multiple times. My favorite was in the final wave of kett on meridian, I beat the last guy, then a loading screen pops up, which loads...the title screen. I hit resume and it resumes at the beginning of the last kett wave. So I had to fight them all again. Quality gameplay. A bunch of quests were glitched for me too. All the crafting ones (crafted everything, none of it counted), one where I have to finish by talking to one guy, which I did, but the quest didn’t count it and now when I try to talk to him nothing happens, and since these glitches are keeping me from ticking off all the sidequest boxes, I left a couple of the tedious ‘scan these bodies’ ‘find these datapads’ type quests unfinished. If I can’t get true 100% what’s the point?

So yeah...I don’t regret playing it, I’m just disappointed by how it could have been so much more. In ME1 I found playing Shepard really empowering (something I find really lacking in the Ryder character), the story motivated me to move forward chasing Saren, the mysteries about the protheans, geth and reapers made me want to know more, and rewarded that curiosity with real answers. Basically this game just made me want to play the original trilogy over again, which I definitely will.

Feel free to add your own comments or correct any points I made! It’s entirely possible I missed some things.

[3parts]

77 hours down in ME:A since... Friday? I think. I’ve been playing a lot, school holidays landed at exactly the right time.

Impressions under the cut.

I’ve got 100% on Veold and Eos, and finished the first visit to Havarl, and landed on Kadara for the first time last night. Only completed Liam’s loyalty mission. Slept with Liam and Peebee with no further interest in either, haven’t decided between Vetra and Jaal for my main squeeze. I still really want to kiss Drack, but in lieu I would like an extra party slot so I can take Vetra, Jaal and Drack with me everywhere because they are the BEST.

The game is...

Quite buggy. I notice this mostly in conversations. While facial animations can be awful, they’re not too frequent. More often I get shit like the camera cutting off half of Sara’s face because it was set at male PC height; conversations repeating, especially quest convos that don’t acknowledge the quest is done and sometimes that the PC and NPC are in a totally different area; subtitles coming up for conversations out of earshot and overriding the subtitles for a convo happening right next to me. I’ve had one instance of zooming into a conversation only for the NPC to not say anything and no buttons coming up for me, and no way to exit, leaving me having to force close the game, and as I recall a few people had that problem in DA:I. Also, I’m learning that while the game encourages exploring, you had better not explore an area important to a quest before you get that quest because the fucking game won’t notice and you’ll get it all kinds of confused.

Environmental design can be... pretty bad. I like open world games. I do. I know a lot of people want smaller worlds with better stories, but I think that if the team thought they had the ability to write good, tight stories, that’s where their focus would already be. They don’t (as we can see), so we get something they do feel they’re good at. Except... sometimes, they’re really not. Kett bases that you open up to find a single crate inside are not good design. They’re not good for fighting, and they’re not good for usi8ng the space to tell a story, unless that story is that kett are stupid and wasteful. Lots of random crates scattered around might be fine for cover, but they tell me nothing about the world you’re trying to immerse me in. Give me a reason for the crates. The rooms with beds and table and chairs are interesting, I can learn from that. But a base full of kett that give them no living quarters? Explain to me why it’s there. Give me a data pad about this being a heavily guarded storage facility because the Cardinal’s second favourite set of robes are there and they’re too sacred for the angara to get their hands on. Tell me what the big circular poundy platforms are for and a reason for me to blow them up. COME ON. Add in lots of floating items, like entire rocky spires standing on nothing, and I think they could have used a bit more time to go over everything. 

The kett are becoming more interesting enemies, I’m liking this story arc, but I am still waiting to see if they can maintain it ad pull it off. I like the idea of competing factions, and the idea that our Archon is breaking the rules. I want to learn more about their history and operations in other parts of Andromeda.

I’m currently nursing a theory that by switching on the Vaults, we’re making the Scourge worse, and this is going to have major consequences later. I’m wondering if the kett are trying to find a way to shut it down to reduce the Scourge, or if they receive some benefit from it. I presume the Archon wants to find Remnant DNA to play with, but little evidence of Kett/Scourge interactions so far.

Also, the Scourge is a shitty name for it. Also shitty: the Vortex, the Nexus, some others that I can’t remember because I just woke up. They’re boring. They’re unmemorable. They feel like the first idea you had, you kept. Do better.

Also, the planets are boring. Ice planet, desert planet, jungle planet (also doubling as perpetual-darkness planet) All we’re missing is the underwater planet for the full set, and that SUCKS. This is BORING. You get to play with alien fucking worlds and this is the best you can do? At least make the sand blue or something, come on. And copy-pasting animals from one VASTLY different world and environment to another? Bad, bad look. Why are the animals on Eos also on Voeld? How did they get there? How did they adapt? Why can’t I rescan them to learn about the interesting adaptations that made them able to survive across so many environments, because right now? This is boring. 

I don’t like the lack of quick-save, and I hate not being able to save on main missions, especially as auto-saves don’t seem to happen all that often.

I have a lot of complaints, obviously, but I am enjoying it. I like the Nomad, I like that the capital of Voeld, the world of Australian-accented Angara, is called Estraaja - that made me laugh out loud. I like my team. Special shout out to Vetra and Cora, my favouritest ladies in Mass Effect, up there with Tali and Kasumi. Cora was described to me as Miranda 2.0 and HOW DARE YOU. Cora needs a very long hug and to be adopted officially into the Ryder family because she is my big sister now. I like that I have no idea where this thing with Scott is going (I told him the truth about their dad and Habitat 7 and OOPS). I like just rolling across the world, fighting everything that I see and accidentally starting new quests that tell me more about the world and the people in it. I like a lot of the rando NPCs I’ve met. Even if the quest is just a ‘Kill X’ or ‘Fetch #’, I don’t mind because the reasoning why gives me new information. I like the angara, they’re very cool people and I want the other five thousand pages of their law books now, please. I really liked Vivienne’s VA as the Moshae, she has great range. Jaal is adorable and I love him too, and I want to know so much more about Vetra, and flirting with her leaves me swooning every time. Flirting with Suvi is also WONDERFUL, Ryder’s lines are GREAT. I know there have been IRL issues with the VA and I get if people avoid playing female Ryder for it, but her voice is great and has really got me into the character. I like pretty much everyone on the Tempest bar Peebee, who annoys the shit out of me (which may be the intent. Not a critique of her writing, I know people like that IRL and they annoy me too), and having to choose between Gil and Kallo BROKE MY HEART. Please don’t do that again, game.

I’m playing Engineer with all tech abilities (overload, incinerate, the remnant drone) and some points thrown in combat to reduce weapon weight and add survivability and holsters. I don’t like being limited to three active abilities at all. I would rather have three offensive and three defensive, at least. I’m probably going to shove some points into tactical cloak and start switching between tech for all offence and infiltrator for more defensive styles, because MAN, stuff like the Architects really fuck me up, and I never get to enjoy fights with enemies like fiends because they seem to auto-target me (even if I haven’t attacked and my squadmates have) and I spend the entire fight just running in circles while my squad does the damage. Fuck biotics. Why play mage when you can play rogue?

Oh, and the UI is really bad. Navigating menus is ridiculous, and the R&D interface is so bad. No way to compare what you’re putting points or crafting unless you already have it equipped, so have fun writing down or memorising the stats of each weapon while you try to figure out what’s best. And then they don’t tell you that there’s another tier after the first five, so you get to do it again!

I’m having fun, though rereading everything it seems to be in spite of myself. Oh well. Time to put in another few hours before I have to go get groceries.

[archonreviews]

The Archon’s Review of King Arthur: A Roleplaying Wargame

King Arthur: A Rolplaying Wargame is a grand strategy game designed by NeocoreGames and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a dark time in Britannia. The king, Uther Pendragon, has died, leaving no apparent heir. In the wake of this power vacuum, all the petty kings of the realm have taken up arms against their neighbors in a bid for power and land. Then, Merlin appears with the sword, Excalibur, lodged in a stone in the abbey at Glastonbury. He says his piece, and then Arthur appears out of nowhere to do his thing. Except, when Arthur extricates the sword from the stone, magic returns to Britannia, Merlin disappears, and the Sidhe, the ancient fae, assert themselves, carving out a territory in the Bedegraine forest, just south of Hadrain’s Wall. Britannia is now on the brink of grandiose conflict, and you, as Arthur, the Once and Future King, must decide its fate.

I picked up KAaRPWG mostly on a whim, but I must say that, for the most part, it paid off.There is a lot to like here; although my expectations were not all that high, I was pleasantly surprised.

Let’s start with the lore. If you’re a purist when it comes to Arthurian legends, you may be a bit disappointed. KAaRPWG melds Arthurian legends with a healthy does of Celtic and Irish mythology. You’ve got the sword in the stone (Excalibur in this version, not Caliburn), the Green Knight, all the Knights of the Round Table, the Holy Grail, etc. You’ve also got the Sidhe, the distinction between Seelie and Unseelie fae, the Old Faith of the druids, and a belief in magic, all of which is inspired by old Celtic and Irish myths. The two mythoi actually blend quite well; this is probably the result of a singular aesthetic acting as a very effective backdrop for both sets of myths. There’s a sense here of a blending of time and space, wherein armored knights on horseback seem natural next to the mystical and strange Sidhe. References to the ancient Roman colonies that used to be on Britannia help complete the blend, creating a sense of a far distant past brought temporally forward to scrunch it up against the medieval knights and kingdoms of Britannia. But the Roman stuff works because the ancient, “Old Faith” aesthetic helps place us there temporally. Basically, what I’m trying, and probably failing to say, is that each element of the aesthetic and lore helps hold the others up so that when blended, they fit together perfectly.

^(The Once and Future King, just before everything goes downhill)^

The overworld map is very pretty, although a bit monotone. As we are in Britannia, we can expect mostly forests and grass lands, with rolling hills and a mountain here and there. I had a similar complaint about Eador. Genesis, but this game breaks up the monotony with a quartet of seasons, which pass one by one each turn. I really like the seasons system, and not merely because it adds snow during winter. See, each season actually does something. It’s not just cosmetic, and it’s details like this that really makes me appreciate a game. Dominions 4 and Endless Legend do something similar, but it’s not quite as strategic as it is in this. The year begins in Spring, which is when random quests and disasters appear on the campaign map, which you can then react to by sending your armies to deal with them. During Summer, armies are able to move much farther on the campaign map. The game says that Autumn is when your food comes in, but I don’t think that’s actually the case. Winter does a number of things. First, Winter forces all armies on the overworld to stop and set up camp. No armies can move during Winter. Second, Winter is when your taxes come in, and this is also when your food comes in, possibly because of a bug. Lastly, Winter is when you can interact with your stronghold(s), building new districts, researching new improvements for your kingdom, and managing your economy via the Chancellory, where you enact new laws, set decrees, and trade food for gold and vice versa. Then Spring rolls back around and new random quests appear. The seasons system is a really great way of marrying form and function, and I think it’s pretty neato.

Now, this is a strategy game, and strategy games tend to have playable battles where you can exercise that big ol’ brain of yours. And the combat in this game, well... it’s basically Total War. NOW THIS SENTENCE RIGHT HERE IS FOR ANY LAWYERS THAT HAPPEN TO BE READING; DO NOT TAKE THIS PARAGRAPH OR THIS REVIEW AND USE IT AS A MEANS FOR LITIGATION. I WILL BE VERY CROSS WITH YOU IF I HAPPEN TO FIND OUT THAT ANYONE WAS SUCCESSFULLY SUED BECAUSE OF WHAT I JUST WROTE HERE. LAWYERS, DO NOT USE OR MENTION THIS REVIEW. Right, now that that’s over with; yeah, the gameplay is basically magical Medieval:Total War. You take battalions of troops, march them around the field of battle, and use strategy and tactics to win. Hero characters, such as the Knights of the Round Table, have magical abilities you can call upon to turn the tide of battle, which is a neat addition. Also, individual units don’t have morale, unlike in a Total War game; instead, each side has a morale bar that increases or decreases depending on which side controls victory locations. These locations are things like monuments, stone circles, villages, keeps, ect. Another departure from Total War that I like is that once you’ve won a battle, the enemy army goes away entirely, even if you won via morale rather than extermination. This makes it so that you needn’t chase enemies down across the map after each battle like roaches in a kitchen

^(The first battle in the game. My troops are the ones in armor. Winning!)^

In between battles are quests. As mentioned, some are random, appearing during the spring season. The important ones, however, are related to the plot of the game. These are things like finding and hiring on a Knight of the Round Table, or determining whether the Old Faith or Christianity gains more power, or finding special artifacts. All quests, random and plot-relevant, are carried out via text-based decision trees. Some choices use one or more of a hero’s stats. In these cases, the text will be green if it’s a certain success, blue if the outcome is uncertain, or red if it’s a certain failure. This incentivizes you to have a variety of heroes on hand. It’s a bit of a problem if you need a mageknight and all you have are fightknights. The outcome of quests has various effects, such as gaining you artifacts, changing your morality, giving you more troops, or provoking a battle.

^(One of the early quests. Sir Kay here did a bang-up job of it.)^

I alluded to a morality system in the above paragraph, and this game has not a binary moral choice system, but a quaternary moral choice system. See, in the wake of Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone, magic returns to Britannia, leading to a resurgence of what they call the “Old Faith”, which is worship of the Tuatha de Danaan, the old Irish deities. This causes friction between the believers in this Old Faith, and the followers of the still-new Christianity. Interesting sidenote: In the game, the Welsh are followers of the Old Faith, while the Saxons are the Christian invaders. But in real life, the Welsh had already been Christianized by Saint Joseph of Arimathea and the Irish by Saint Patrick, while the Saxons were so incredibly pagan that Charlemagne felt the need to deliver them the Cross via the sword. In addition to the religious conflict, there’s a virtue axis, each end of which is labeled “Rightful” and “Tyrant”. The game makes a point of stating that Rightful isn’t necessarily good and Tyrant isn’t necessarily evil, and that the axis is meant to measure your commitment to the ideals of chivalry. Although, in practice, benevolent acts increase your Rightful gauge, while malevolent acts do the opposite. Going toward one combination of religion and virtue is advised, as you get new spells, bonuses, and unit choices for doing so, and I also imagine it affects what ending you get.

^(The morality chart. Fun fact, the terms the game uses for Rightful-Old Faith and Tyrant-Old Faith are Seelie and Unseelie respectively. This means that from a religious standpoint, there’s actually three sides you can choose from, Christian, Seelie, and Unseelie. I guess Christianity doesn’t care whether you’re a moral person...?)^

Now, the things I talked about are all very effective and fun, and I like them a lot. But here comes the problems are there are a few. First off, the game is hilariously unstable, especially the further you are into it. The most common bug I found was the game giving me a “Runtime error” during loading screens and crashing to desktop. Sometimes the game even just cuts out after the loading screen, but just after I unpause the game to start a battle, dumping me straight to the desktop. I even encountered a really weird bug where, when I reloaded a save, there was snow on the ground even though it was autumn, and after I hit the “next turn” button, I was prevented from opening the menu to save or quit, and I couldn’t end the turn again. I was stuck in perpetual winter. I mean, I know the Starks were all like “Winter is coming” but I didn’t think it’d stay forever. In fact, these glitches came up so often that I actually did make a print screen and paste it into paint; you remember, the thing I said I wasn’t gonna do in my Fallout 2 review.

^(Fun fact: when I inserted this image, it kept flickering for a second or two before it settled. Hopefully it’s not cursed.)^

Also, the AI isn’t particularly engaging. With a little bit of strategy and good judgement, it’s possible to win a battle with a force half as powerful as your enemy’s. This isn’t to say that the battles aren’t fun or that there isn’t any risk involved, but just that the AI isn’t as amazing as one might desire out of their grand strategy experience.

The game is really bad at telling you how to get plot quests to appear. You get hand-held through the first set of plot quests; the first book, as the game calls it. But then, things just sort of happen. And eventually, you start coming up on quests from books three and four just because... enough time has passed? That would be my guess anyway. Eventually, I did figure out how to get the quests to appear, but it didn’t feel like a natural story progression. A few pro-tips in the plot quest department: First, conquering territory gets the quests from book two to appear. I’d suggest trying to take the Mercias (There are two, East Mercia and West Mercia), and any small kingdoms you may have left. Second, do not conquer Wales or the Saxons; they’re quest-important. Lastly, around turn 150, something really important happens, so get the quest “The Vision” finished up by then.

One last thing that really bugged me. There’s no way to tell what your income is until winter time, so you have to make absolutely sure that everything in your economy is squared away by then or else you might find yourself up a creek.

ለማገባደድ, despite the bugs, I would absolutely recommend King Arthur: A Roleplaying Wargame to anyone who’s into fantasy, Arthurian legend, grand strategy, or swords and sorcery type stories. It’s got a lot to like, and a lot of really neat ideas and aesthetics. I am probably totally going to keep playing it, at least to the regular campaign’s conclusion. Now, this being a game taking place in the early Middle Ages, there are instances of arranged marriages, with you deciding which maidens marry which knights. There is something to be said about how doing so improves the knights’ abilities, basically turning them into stat boosting objects, but this is justified somewhat in that the attributes that boost stats are personality traits, and it would make sense for a person to be influenced by a person they spend a lot of time with. What is perhaps more disturbing when one gets into fridge logic, is that these maidens can be bartered to certain groups on the map, such as rebels or mercenary groups. The game wants you to believe that you’re arranging marriages between the rebel leaders and your maidens, but because doing so makes use of the same interface as bartering artifacts or gold, it really presents the unfortunate implication that you may be selling these women into slavery. Is that what’s really going on? Prrrobably not, but once the whole “slavery” possibility occurred to me, it wouldn’t be shaken. Really, the sexism problems this game has are the same ones that plague any game that takes place in Medieval times, and the same ones that plagued Medieval times (the time period, not the restaurant). Although, it is weird that each of the female heroes have an ability that gives them a stat boost in return for being prohibited from riding horses... Yeah, I thought that was weird.

^(One of the Sihde, on the right, compared to a group of puny mortals on the left. Like, dang. Why haven’t those guys taken over Britannia on their own?)^