| The Draining | |
| by Flamefiend | |
| Terror’s Martyr Review | |
The Draining by Chris “Flamefiend” Pelling has gotten a lot of attention lately for winning the medium contest. I decided to review it to make a fair assessment of the scenario (and I still feel that the town placement bug ripped me off, but whatever).
As I first walked into this scenario, I was told in 2 full dialog boxes a story about the troubles of Mossy Vale. I expected to never hear from these problems again, because as we all well know more than 50% of the time a plague or problem is drawn out, it is rarely ever heard of again. I was half right, half wrong. You see, a few things happen. The largest one is the Draining, an event that is triggered by a scenario events timer that makes a gasping noise and drains some magic. I thought this was pretty neat at first, though this is the kind of thing that almost immediately fades into the background. Still, after a certain amount of time, it begins dumbfounding the party. Not bad, but not great. I didn’t stick around to see what happened after, though I bet it’s something like losing your actual mage and priest levels. However, the famine itself could be described by taking a fertile farming area and using the spray tool to douce rubble and swamp onto the place. Not very effective, and it never last an impression beyond the first dialogue. The threat of goblins and pixies attacking? Well, it was brought about by the ruin of a city, and perhaps a scattered hut, though the effort put out by Flamefiend to cover the little people attacking was only decent. Still, the plot served a point in the beginning and in the middle.
There were a few things that annoyed me, however. That is an extremely annoying not-bug. MISERABLE town design (mostly Vahnatai). I can accept a bit of illogic in town design, and for the most part it never got past a minor hindrance, but then in other points it jumped out at me and began knawing viciously at my kneecaps like a drunken kobold. I think Flamefiend completely overabused the Vahnatai Terrain sets, as well as scattering wall sets, and overall Pabulum struck me as being a very ugly city. Port Marin never got much better, and wherever there happened to be Vahnatai terrain, the author found some way to mess it up. It’s usually minor, but here it serves as a significant harm to the scenario, IMHO.
There were also a few detours one could go on. Well, now that that is said, basically the entire scenario is a detour except for a secret passage in the mountains to the east, which, well... Didn’t really make me any more satisfied with the scenario itself. Still, Flamefiend does a, umm... decent job of making the quests seem of any relevance. However, it more than detracts from the scenario on multiple playthroughs. As for tactical and logic puzzles? Well, there are puzzles on how to get by monsters that can kill you via secret passages, and how to get by nodes that kill you via secret passages. That’s IT. Flamefiend has a disturbing trend of basing this entire scenario around the philosophy that it’s difficult to walk through every space around you. It was bland to say the least, and all it did was take up town space. Still, it’s better than nothing, but not by much.
Also, the ending... Horrible. The bad guy is so bad because he’s bad and that’s bad. I walk up to the big bad guy in his big bad black tower and he dies, well, at least evil stops the end, and you get a reward and blah blah blah. At this point, my experience in The Draining went from knawing at my kneecaps to sucking out my blood, boiling it, and basting me with it. Still, I will proceed to say that nodes flowed smoothly, and knowing how many of those head-bashing puzzles Flamefiend tosses in, he scores back a few points by changing those annoying I-type doors to sealed doors, or something like that.
Still, while puzzles are downright poor, the node usage is okay, and the world is made rather mediocrely, but not poorly. This scenario is bug-free, and if you can find the black tower, is a decent ride. I recommend you play it, though there is certainly nothing in this scenario that is revolutionary, and many things were lacking, though it’s a fun rifde through for the most part and I recommend you play this scenario, though it certainly shouldn’t be the best of Flamefiend’s works. It shows some promise, and after playing Arachnid Attack, he definitely is improving...
Score: 8
— Terror’s Martyr