DiGiT |
Posted on 03/26/03 @ 12:00 AM
Deluge of LotR campaigns! I'm trying to playmaybe review all of them, and this is the best major battle for Helm's Deep I have seen. But, there were some serious problems.
Playabtility: This was a kind of weird point. It was great fun, with a HUGE (lag) battle that kept you going. But, you can't win! The enemy keeps respawing and you apparently have to fight through the respawners, about 15 castles, bombard towers, and get past a wall of houses and palisades to get to the orc 'king'! Maybe you weren't supposed to win, it was fun even though. Another problem was that the front wall just crashed down automatically, which should have been activated by losses, etc. not time. Because of the fun, this is a 4.
Balance: Well, as I said, you just can't win. I'm not sure if this was an error or just un-playtested, but the trebuchets by the castle kept respawning every time I killed them. This was extremely annoying and kept many of my units there, endlessly firing. The whole scenario seemed like it wasn't playtested, so I'll give this a 3.
Creativity: Although the cliffs as walls you could stand on was creative and useful, overall this scenario did not have that much creativity. There were some heroes (Theodoric the Goth, etc.) but I couldn't decide whether they were the main characters or not. Also, what's the difference between Rohan and Humans? Aren't they the same? It also would have been better to have more varied units instead of arbalest after arbalest. The three castles in the back didn't make sense, either. But, since there were some parts which were creative, I'd say this deserves a 3.
Map Design: This was definitely the strong point of the campaign. The whole Helm's Deep castle was awesome, and a major defensive advantage. It would have been a lot of fun if the front hadn't collapsed so fast. The only problem was the one terrain. Basically the whole map was Dirt1, except for a little desert in the southeast. Improve that, and you've got a 5! Oh well, it's just a 4.
Story/Instructions: Sorry, but this was pretty awful. It's nice to have a bitmap, fun to have history, useful to have hints (and scouts). But this didn't even have instructions! Basically the only words in the entire scenario were 'The front is gone, fall back!' and 'The orcs have gotten into the keep'. I couldn't even figure out the whole winninglosing thing 'till I looked at the triggers. And although the front fell and all, it didn't reall follow the story. In the bookmovie, the riders of rohan show up, they don't kill the orc king. This is a definite 1.
Overall, this was the best actual Helm's Deep BATTLE I played, but the worst in storyline and objectives. Those cancel each other out, so it's just an average scenario, so it's just a 3. |