| The Election | |
| by Nick Jones | |
| BainIhrno’s Review | |
Don’t ask me why, but when I read some reviews of this scenario (using a pre-fab party), I thought there’s a chance of your real party being deleted by playing this scenario. I thought that you would enter with your real party, but there was some node work that made it so you’d be playing Vandell no matter what party you entered with. (Perhaps a feature for a later version of Blades – of course, a new version won’t come :p)
So I hesitated to download it, but one day, for whatever reason, I decided to download it. The pre-fab party was nothing like I feared. It was just a .SAV file that came with the scenario (it didn’t work unfortunately.) So I just cheated and played with my real party, and then later tried to guess the combination for Vandell (as Nick Jones left no instructions.)
Well, this is an interesting little scenario. You are in a town, and there’s an election (duh!). Everyone wants to vote for an Exile-hating Mayor, and you have to stop them, and make them change their votes. You have to delay the election by running as a candidate yourself. You can finish the scenario by changing everyone’s vote to Mayor Vogel, or win by making everyone vote for you. Some Nash voters can change their vote to you, some Nash voters will only change to Vogel, some won’t change at all, and most Vogel voters will change to you. (I’m not sure whom Priest Cardus votes for.)
There’s not a whole lot of combat, so if you are a combat kind of player, this scenario may not be for you. Personally, I like some combat, but playing a scenario with little to no combat can be nice once in a while. I thought the story (about how you have to change your votes) is very well told and well done. Everyone has reasons for which person they are going to vote for, and every candidate has his own motives. The dialogue is very well done as well.
Technical innovations? Sure. This scenario introduces the Day/Night cycle for the first time. The transition was rather awkward, but hey, there’s no better way to do it in BoE. The way Nick programmed the final voting was also a great plus. That was definitely great programming.
Election has its problems as well. Unlike others, I haven’t found any bugs in this scenario. As I mentioned before, the .SAV file wouldn’t work for me, so I had to guess. Second, the combat that was offered in this scenario was painfully difficult. The cave rat was okay, but the assassins kept killing me, and I had to keep using the editor to make my character more powerful. Those are only major flaws that I can think of.
Overall, Election is a great scenario. It was very fun to play, and had a great plot. I usually play it after many traditional BoE scenarios to take a break from them. It’s not something I play THAT often though, so it’s not exactly one of my favorites. You may feel differently, though. I highly recommend that you download this and try it out. You can see how much there is in one city!
My Score – 8.3