| A Valetian Mystery | |
| by Simmic | |
| Drizzt’s Review | |
A Valetian Mystery, the second scenario released by Simmic, is a decent effort to create a mysterious atmosphere inside a very small scenario. While the mood is well-realized and an intriguing background story is effectively told, technical bugs and inconsistencies in the plot mar the player’s overall experience.
The strongest point of the scenario is the setting in which it takes place. Someone has been murdered inside a library called the Valetian, and you’ve been sent in to figure out who and why. The library itself is nicely done, 4 towns worth of bookshelves, but filled with a variety of different folks and creatures to talk with, books to read and spells to learn. Sometimes the rooms feel a bit cluttered, but overall Simmic did a good job here.
The plot offers the player two choices: simply find the murderer or figure out why, which qualifies as Winning the scenario, with a nod to Redemption. This is where the scenario suffers a bit. The introduction to the murder is well written, but then the party is left with NO clue as to how to proceed. You are left to roam the entire library until you click on/search the correct piece of terrain, but there is no reason or hint to help you find it.
Finally with a clue discovered, you head back to your guide. You’re told to wait, and there is a bad bug here. If you leave the town, the town timer runs out and nothing ever happens. This problem is mentioned in the walkthrough on the author’s site (but not in the game files), but I spent 10 Blades days waiting for a message that would never come. Frustrating, and it should be fixed.
If you’re lucky enough to wait and not leave the town, your guide eventually directs you to someone else, but an unfortunate fate befalls them before you get there. Your guide then conveniently remembers a secret door they hadn’t searched (and you also couldn’t find before, if you had looked there. It might have been very well hidden, so this isn’t _too_ unreasonable). You head off and kill the assassin, and the scenario ends, without much of an explanation.
The Winning branch of the scenario offers a few more towns and a bit more of an explanation, but also more problems. You have to intervene in a curious battle between warring tribes of centaurs, and as a reward you get a key of sorts to another secret door. However, if you had looked at this place where the key is used (and, like before, there are no clues indicating its location), there is NO message if you don’t have the key. The key is used in such a way as to guarantee you would have noticed something there. Because of this, I wandered around for a while, not wanting to check someplace I already had looked at. Also, it’s a bit of a stretch that a reward from a totally unrelated, and distant, place just happens to be the key you need to win the scenario.
The following dungeons were well done, and I especially liked how the custom star graphic was used, but the Winning conclusion was still a bit confusing. Sometimes my allies got attacked and I wasn’t sure why.
Not a bad scenario overall though. It is very short and contains little fighting, but as long as you’re not expecting epic battles, A Valetian Mystery doesn’t disappoint here. What is does suffer from, though, are some plot inconsistencies, bugs, and a general lack of direction. I give it a rating of 6.5.
— Drizzt