User:Misterhaan/HUAR

Ancestral Spirit - Prologue

type: Story author: Damnagoras captain: Ape Rahim

summary: The adventure title says prologue and that’s mostly all this is. It seems to be focused on giving you some background before you get into what is probably meant to be an adventure series.

story: It’s very Grox-focused and not very detailed or original. It could have benefit from some more inspect text in the city to explain what the statues are, etc. Talk-to objective text was split in the middle of a sentence with ... a couple times — I prefer to re-work the sentences so that doesn’t need to happen.

spelling/grammar: Just a couple errors: [i]wich[/i], and [i]erease[/i].

creations: The Mysterious Kernavoris’ robes looked a little odd. I liked the Dera Guards’ outfits. The buildings in the city looked great! The vehicles I didn’t see very closely but they looked good from a distance at least.

environment: The city environment was well designed — I liked the statues on pedestals and the way the lamps lined the roadway. The war scenes didn’t seem to have much action — just some vehicles wandering around slowly while troops stood around. The destroyed city had normal-looking roads except with some cracks, and no buildings. I would have thought the roads would have been more damaged since the buildings were completely decimated.

captain competence: Any captain can complete this adventure.

puzzles: Most acts have you walk through a nearby portal and then talk to a character, so you should always know what to do.

overall: average

Sportuga!

type: none (quest) author: TarsTarkas captain: Ape Rahim

summary: A showcase of a bunch of great-looking pirate-themed creations suited to captains who are ready for a fight and happen to like pirates.

story: There isn’t all that much going on here, but there are plenty of chatty pirates about! Many characters have inspect text and chatter text, and they speak in a piratey dialect. One of them is even somewhat French! The name “Sportuga” sounds like it’s meant to be a combination of “Spore” and “Tortuga” which is an actual Caribbean island featured in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.

spelling/grammar: Mostly pirate grammar is used, which I’m less an expert on but it all seemed reasonable to me. I didn’t find any errors in the rest.

creations: Most of the creations (creatures, buildings, water vehicles) look great, though they don’t always fit in all that well with the others. Pretty much what you’d expect from creations entered in a contest.

environment: Nicely shaped islands and well designed pirate town, tribal village, and other areas. Riding Moby Ted to the island past a bunch of pirate ships was a cool way to showcase a lot of high-quality ships, sea monsters, and mermaids. Once I got to the island I wasn't sure which way to go and ended up dropping in on the headhunter village from the back.

captain competence: There's some combat near the end which would probably be a problem for a captain without a captain-level weapon.

puzzles: No hidden objectives, and there are often arrows showing you the way to your next objective.

overall: above average

SOTP - Winter's Breath

type: Story author: JonathonD94 captain: Ape Rahim

summary: An enjoyable adventure for a captain who’s prepared to fight and is also interested in a good story.

story: You start out determined to take down some troublesome but not too bright beasts and end up unraveling a secret plan. The story is executed well and there’s extra non-objective text you can read if you want more of it. The characters make good use of chatter text. Much of it is written as dialogue with your captain saying some things (even some of the non-objective inspect text), which I usually find ackward since that’s not what I would say or not how I would say it. I prefer writing in a style where what my captain has said can be assumed.

spelling/grammar: Since the O and T of SOTP (in the title) stand for “of” and “the,” I would have put them in lower case. I found a small number of errors when you consider how much I read: [i]wine[/i]/[i]whine[/i], [i]simple[/i]/[i]simply[/i], [i]crops[/i]/[i]corps[/i], [i]yourself[/i]/[i]you[/i], [i]warrents[/i], [i]through[/i]/[i]thorough[/i], and [i]was[/i]/[i]were[/i].

creations: I really liked the buildings, especially the tent and solar panels. All the creatures had excellent outfitting, though the Jex’ lightning strikers were larger than I prefer.

environment: Nice use of dirt clearings around fires to make it look like the snow had melted back. It took me a while to find the arrow in act I pointing to the communications equipment. It was odd to see a raised roof over some storage crates since I wouldn’t think that would help much against blowing snow. The camera didn't fit in the dropship very well, but it made sense for it to be somewhat small.

captain competence: A lot of combat is necessary. You can try to avoid it but you’ll enjoy it a lot better with captain attacks, and probably a ranged one. There are powerups but not in great numbers and no grenades either. You often have allies you can depend on to do much of the fighting for you, but there’s one battle against a formidable enemy that I barely got through even with my level 5 warrior captain. There’s a credits and information character who recommends some captain abilities, but that’s a little late since I already started playing.

puzzles: There were at least two hidden objectives that I stumbled upon by just following what the objective text had told me to do. Sometimes the next objective is a ways away and the path to it isn’t abundantly clear (so I at times wondered if I was still going the right way) but I never actually got lost so it was actually nice.

overall: good