The Tain

Spells and hi res collections are a myth project tool goldmine. Levels looks great. Lvl 4 is easily my favorite and a great coop level. Final level is just punishing on legendary.

username: Kingthrall date of review: 11/5/2015

very refreshing to see new units in the game, and theres a lot of interesting and exciting potential here.

However, and I do take into consideration its a Beta

1. The first level is boring as, seriously need more involvement going on especially in the northern area of the map, feels super bland.

2. units tend to forget to attack properly their animation is slightly buggy, also the soulless unit is extremly overpowered with is very accurate attacks.

3. Unit names like Wolf, in with the sprite of an alligator need to be fixed.

4. There is no defeat script in the 2nd level, that said playing this with 4 other players was offputting and I didnt feel like going futher after the 2nd level.

TLTR; full of potential yet full of annoying bugs currently

So I have not played this as much as you, and don't really know what you were after. I am in desperate need of more great coops, though not interested in much else. I am more inclined to the small force tactical nature of myth 2, where units are weak, but have the abilities to dodge and explode groups of enemy, rather then the large hitpoints of mazz or the bigger squad based maps with lots of units that depends more on troop formation and placement rather then individual combat. So my thoughts will be heavily influenced by coop gameplay rather than story or patience or eye candy. There is a lot of good stuff here to be sure, but I will mostly comment on the bad stuff for now, hope it doesn't sound too negative. If these maps were not so great, I would not be near as harsh, but these maps deserve top notch gameplay. To me, that would require a complete rehaul of the inventory systems and attacks, as well as lots more scripting. I was under the impression you were not interested in that, so I was hoping to wait until long after you released it, and see if I could then make a more coop friendly version. Without your help though I don't really see that happening in the near future. If I was judging from another angle, I could easily say this is one of the best (if not the best) myth plugins I have ever seen, with units, spells and maps that blow anything else ever made out of the water. In that regard, it is fantastic. But you probably know that... so onto the bad:

Remembrance is not a good name, perfect storm was a little better. No one calls it this, instead it is called "Soulys Plug."

All the meshes and units look good for the most part. Perhaps some slight adjustments to some of the animations to make it smoother when controlling. A lot of the units are real twitchy, which gives me a headache and are not pleasing to look at. Because there are no unit sounds, it feels unpolished and bland. The lobby interface is absolutely terrible. Which sucks because the menu looks good. Hints look extremely rushed, with short bad sentences and shortened words like FG, which may not mean much to some people. Tons of typos everywhere.

The units seem terribly unbalanced, with an extreme learning curve (not in a good way). This makes it very hard to get a coop game with a descent amount of people, but still get a unit who is fun to use, or have something to use it on. It does not seem polished enough for me to determine what is a bug or what is intentional, I cant just give a list of obvious game breaking bugs, mostly because I cant get far enough into any of the levels. There are so many things for me to attempt to list all things that bug me, but I will try to go over some of my thoughts...

Telum: Worst unit, weak looking attack and insanely lame spam t click. A little scripting could make their claws come out when near an enemy without having to using inventory. The slingshots are boring mort rounds that just disappear into the ground. They could be an awesome colored marble that has interesting ricochet physics (like normal slingshots!). They could even have some random magic effects... skys the limit. Their claws are no fun because they destroy body parts instantly, which makes the battles look terrible. Even with the claws, they are terrible with melee, seeming randomly bad and always taking big casualties. It looks like they are just standing there being beat, though there is lightning behind enemy? hard to tell. At least they don't twitch when in claws, but they stand so still I think I am lagging.

Impetus: Bad head and body shakes, really weak and boring. Good for one or two critical engagements, the rest of the time they are just another thing to move back. The pathfinders are much better, but still clunky and hard to use. Spread some of the wealth, give them some awesome spells, including teleports, and heals or something useful. It doesn't have to break the game to have fun units.

Druid: No idea, terrible inventory. Always out of manna. Birds often just sit still with no way to control. If afk for 10 mins, can easily own fg, so best strategy is just to sit and wait for manna. Spells look good but the texts are too long for me to read using control bar inventory, and there seems to be no reason to use any of them, since none are heal (despite the title: roots) and they just waste manna. The normal inventory convention is to list the primary attack first, then the T click. You have it the opposite way, which makes it very confusing with the nondescript strings. I realize the text length limitation is a bug from magma, but its still nice if the mapmaker understands the limitations of the engine. Unless there is some reason not to make it understandable. Manna aside, each spell is good, but each also has some minor tweak or glitch that makes it unwieldy or a teamkiller. Together they form a confusing mess, which I could probably figure out if I did not have to wait an eternity for manna.

Mage: Better then druid, but still a confusing unit. It takes so much microing of inventory to not waste manna with the wrong attacks. The glass shards are kind of annoying for how much damage they give, and are really a teamkiller. The ice spikes are better, but still seem glitchy and underpowered/overpowered. If more then a few ice spikes, they then lose their damage, if only one, they destroy everything. They should do another round of damage when they break. A new player will have no chance of figuring all this out, and will not be able to kill the trow.

Bear: Boring tanks... desperately needs a trampling charge. Why make something so cool and then make it boring? I understand trampling is difficult. But its an ice bear, man.

Avatara: Extremely overpowered... clunky inventory with lots of team killing glitches. Other then that he is pretty fun. Can always allow one over the top unit.

Thundering Sounds: Cmap is a little bright in spots, other then that it looks good. Please don't make stuff that is painful to look at (Revan). I have no idea what is going on, random enemy coming from random directions as I watch my units acting really stupid. I couldn't see any reason to do anything, the commands I gave just made the units act worse. The trow would just stand still, lots of enemy just standing still all over. Not touching any units, I survived for over 12 minutes. Funner then spamming t and still losing. I am not a big fan of the baby blue gates, looks strange. 1/10, because cmap is ok. Time to go play some m2.

Sacred Grounds: Great cmap. Crocodiles act terribly stupid, plus are hard to kill, just wasting time and manna since cant even see them in the water when they die. They get stuck on each other leading to a strange glitch right out of the gate. The spider units silk looks and sounds pretty bad. Good idea, but not good. I would think they might be better as some kind of seversect, or mazz web type attack to block a path or something. Some things about the spider look strange, their spiderman color scheme is unnatural and they could use a tint or something to soften them up to not look as cartoonish. And they do not move like spiders, more like rabbits. The sequences look ok, but more for a charge or attack then for just movement. Or call them something different. The spiders don't seem to hurt or attack you, but annoy and act stupid. And there seems to be not a lot of other enemies, and the fg seem to just stand still and let you kill them, or the FG gets pussed, healed up to full, and murders everyone. With no way to heal or recharge manna, I could not get very far. I would love this level to have a good solid ingame narration and good gameplay, because its such a good looking map. Soulless attack way before you can see them, with no fun way to dodge or fight. 1/10, despite the cmap, because I couldn't get far enough to enjoy it.

Shi Why does the fg say "we need to find another road into the city", then stand and stare at the front gate? It seemed terribly easy to sneak past, I just ran around killing everyone with pathfinders, no clue if I was winning or losing or going the right way. Then with just the slightest of attention my troops just stood there and killed everything. No need for strategy or managing anything. I trust the spells are cool, but other then kill myself with them I have no idea what inventory does what. I then proceed to lock myself in, ending the game in a terrible way. The mission objectives have a mispelling, destroy. However, this does get better. With at least a hint of strategy further into the level and another great cmap, I would give this level as is a 5/10, better then most maps. With teleporting units and a good stealth section, this could be my favorite map. I hope the end fade is not pink. More scorpions! but not in packs... think giant minibosses...

Izen Camera pan is very choppy online. First 20 minutes is very boring, especially with the overpowered ice spikes. The bottom of the bridges is the perfect height to fight on, but the damn camera restriction to the south is really annoying, also to the north. The towers controls you click on need to have a description, preferably one that tells you what it controls. And if they break, would be nice to be able to repair them, since you have to abandon them to avoid the trow flanks, its a shame to never be able to use them as obstacles. Part of the fun should be losing ground to the enemy, then retaking the ramps with fierce bear trample charges. The statues are standing right in the path, being obnoxious. Also, lots of fence posts right in the path. After 20 minutes, it gets a lot better, if you are willing to spam T bombs and just use mages to kill everything. You need a good grasp of the mages and what dmg does what to who, which is apparently random and unintuitive, not good for coops, which is a pity cause it is no fun solo. 5/10. The dragons need more AI or something, more of a presence, which would no doubt give the mesh a higher score, but with a few tweaks here and there, this map could easily be a 7/10. I can only imagine it with a good unit set and like 10 players. Then I would probably die from playing it too much. 3 dragons! shame. To the chop shop!

Final The most playable obviously, and best balanced, but this map really shows the difficulty of controlling lots of units, even in coop. If you just send your units out to fight (like if someone goes afk), it looks like a great battle and is fun, but your units soon die because they are weak and a waste of heals. So the strategy is to keep everyone back and out of combat, while the insane tank takes all the damage. This works, but have to retreat back and lose the spread attacks of the enemy, which makes it a lot less fun. Nobody knows how to use the spells, so its just a comedy of errors as the heroes do way more team damage then the enemy. The end needs more ingame narration, if there is one time to take control and show whats happening like a movie, its at the end of the campaign right before the big explosion. 5/10, even winning feels like losing

So onto suggestions... obviously just one other way it could be done, all theory

Fix the twitches. Find some more sounds. Go over hints and narrations to polish Adjust all units inventories and balance

If it were up to me, the unit types would be condensed into a tighter squad. Though it may sound like it, I am not advocating a more myth2 like gameplay, or a reduction in magic spells or playable units. I just would like to see the units easier to use, so that you can pack more action into these great maps.

The base core: slings and the impetus. Together these 2 units can take down anything the game throws at them (or at least hold their own). But only by working together. Simple but powerful. Good for AI units as well. They would be balanced to have 6 slings and 6 impetus versus a normal size wave. Rhinos, fg and dragons would be extremely hard to kill without heavy losses. These units will be the easy, familiar, and effective units on every map, but they will be slowly fazed out toward end of campaign. They should be quite fast and mobile, able to adjust to each side of the battle easily, almost ghostlike.

The slings would have multipower shots, each doing a specific dmg type. The claws could be controlled by script, so inventory would be special slingshot balls, and tclick could be used to power it up, add repetitions or something. Each ball would be against a specific enemy, so you would have light balls and heavy balls. The light small balls would go further and be versus souls, having to bounce them off terrain to get distance. The heavier water balls vrs trow, and fire stun the trolls. The balls don't really kill heavy enemy, but stun them so the impetus can finish. The impetus are not as harmed by special damage. Only their claws really hurt the undead guys, without impetus they cant really fight a large pack of them. No more fire pouch unless as detonator only. So the inventory goes: inv0= med range multipurpose bouncy ball (unlimited), inv1 = Claws (increased speed), inv2= Long range light vrs souls , inv3= Short range heavy fire vrs troll, inv4= Short range heavy ice vrs trow. Maybe a few others, but all with limited ammo 20-100. The impetus would have a short range teleport ability and the pathfinder run, as well as some extra random spells from the other units, like heal, regen, and some more powerful one or few time use spells. So inventory 1 = Run, inv2 = Teleport, inv3 = random healing spells or regens, and inv4 = a few moderate (huge) radius dmg explosion, like whirlwind or magic bombs. These would be the only units to level up, being granted random spell ammo and heals for kills

So the first level is just getting to know these 2 unit types. Basically you get 1 or 2 squads and patrol the tops, while AI crush what goes down the pipe. If enemy takes high ground too long, you lose. More a tutorial, that teaches a few things. Lots of melee fights (and lots of heals). It the end is a small victory! cutscene that introduces the druids powers, then is interrupted by the enemy trow guy. If you defeat this level with vets, you get a 2nd druid for level two, making it easier.

The druid joins you in the second level. A lot more enemy troops are added, and spiders do not attack you, but spin web traps to restrict your movements. The druids spells will have to be dumbed down, fg gets roots, and lose lightning. His manna will be almost removed. His birds will have to be scripted, and be much more a part of his movements. He will not be good against the zombie hordes, or large groups. His spells will enable you to win versus the fg. But the imp and slings will do a lot of horde fighting. Any druid spells that can be used vrs hordes will be restricted with ammo. Each FG will need to have its own heavily scripted battle, with different tactics, perhaps blessings that give druid ammo or unlock abilities so they are not jammed down the throat, but part of the story. The spider queen will also have to make more appearances, perhaps in the intro or after 2nd giant fight. So the druids inventory would be more like inv1 = Slow druid, with a melee attack and crow. He could defend himself, but cant really walk good without crows. His second inventory would be other small radius spells, each with a slight powerup for the different strategies used to kill the fgs. The druid should not really even get kills, besides from his AI birds. If you beat this level with vets, you get early control of fg in next level, and not have to sneak as much.

The third level needs more scripting on the intro and the sneak past part. It should be very difficult but necessary to navigate all impetus through in coop. No more pathfinders, just reg impetus (from above). Probably have to add observers and make more of a minigame out of it... or maybe just some tweaks. This level would introduce the mages, who are mostly good versus ogres and the trow. Their inventory would also have to be dumbed down, no more auto attacks, heals or regen (those are for imp). i0 could be the glass shards, i1 the ice spikes (for ogres and rhino), and i2 would be the water spell (for trow). The ice spikes would not hurt the zombies, just slow them down. You should need a large group of coopers to be able to just fight the horde. I am not sure how it works now. The avatar should not come until you are in the last part of the level, to insure a good boss fight.

The fourth level just needs the new unit sets and the small tweaks listed above. This would help, each unit type would have to focus on its own enemy type, the imp/slings to get the undead, and mages getting the rhinos and trow. No more mages just killing everything because they don't have as much large radius attack and cant hurt zombies much. The bears will need to be less tank, or less healable, with trample...

The last level needs AI troops, at least for single player or small coop. And the outro may need work.

Great new units. Cool spells. Insanely hard. Some of the maps have some clipping issues but if they are fixed this conversion could go down as one of the best ever.