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Author |
File Description |
Westroman |
Posted on 06/01/06 @ 05:50 AM (updated 06/21/06)
File Details |
Difficulty: |
Hard |
The War of the Ring has begun: Sauron is massing orcs in Mordor, from hence they march west through the Black Gate and past Minas Morgul. They make for Osgiliath, former capital city of Gondor, to cross the river Anduin and continue toward the fortress of Minas Tirith. Faramir, son of Denethor and captain of Gondor, hurries to strengthen the defenses of Osgiliath.
You assume the role of Faramir and take up the burden of protecting Osgiliath, Minas Tirith and Frodo. If you change the settings or play a multi-player game you can alternatively assume the Role of Minas Tirith - also quite interesting.
Although this scenario is based on the book of Lord of the Rings, I have allowed myself to make considerable changes regarding the story line as well as the setting and terrain.
At the beginning a handful of events occur at the same time, demanding good concentration and tactical skills- |
Author | Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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Blunt Axe |
Posted on 06/02/06 @ 09:51 PM
Yay! First reveiw!:)
Oh boy! Yet another LOTR game. This scenario reminds me of the ones I used to make when I was 7. Two sides, each with a million troops, and the aim of the game is to kill as many people as possible. This scenario (which, in my eyes should have been a single scenario campaign.) is simply put, impossible to beat.
Playability: 2.5
This is a build and destroy type of map. Not much thought to put into it. I give it a 2.5 because it's fun for the first few minutes until you see that you simply cannot win without cheating. After that it gets very confusing. Your units are spread across the map, even though it does not mention that in the instructions. Also, because it is not in campaign style, you are simply the Romans. It's very hard to tell who's who.
Balance: 1.1
As I said before, this scenario is impossible to beat. The enemy armies consist of centurions , heavy catapults, ballistas and heliopi, slingers, archers, camel riders, and all of the elephants, with all of the upgrades. It's fairly realistic to the movies, in that there are thousands of orcs, but these orcs don't die very easily. You only have a squabble of legions, compys and some other troops. I call this a "squabble" even though there are more than 75 troops under your command. You have many allies, though one of them doesn't do anything, and the others get in your way. A big problem is that you are brown, not the usual blue. I like it when people do this, but one of your allies is green, and they have exactly the same troops you have.
Creativity: 1.3
Because this is a LOTR map, there is almost no creativity here. Everybody knows the story, but if you didn't, you wouldn't get much of it from here. Nothing really stood out to my eye, except for the thousands of troops I was facing. There is nothing that makes this one of a kind. In fact, it lacks the uniqueness that many other campaigns have.
Map Design: 1.6
Eye candie was alomost non-existent. The little there was wasn't really eye catching. The cities were to packed. Shallows were perfectly straight. Water wasn't mixed well. It wasn't a very good map. It could have been worse, but it could have been, much, much better.
Story/Instructions: 3
Instructions were fairly good. The objectives were written well. The hints were fair. The siege of Osgiliath was explained well. There were only 2 problems. One, the bitmap was very poor, and it didn't help much either. Two, the insturctions didn't tell me how many troops I had, where the were, and which unit was Faramir.
Additional Comments:
As you can see, this is not a very good scenario. The hardest thing is that it's impossible. And I'm not saying that it's impossible because I'm a bad player. Given the resources you have, or could gather, you could not make a big enough army to win. A bad map design and little creativity make this already bad scenario even worse. Definatly not recommended.[Edited on 06/03/06 @ 09:44 AM]
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c4master |
Posted on 06/27/06 @ 06:00 PM
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS A REVIEW FOR THE UPDATED VERSION!
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Playability: 3.5
I got interested in this scenario because I saw Blunt's review and then recognized that the author did some changes which haven't been commented yet. So I downloaded and I immediately was cheered up by the nice story/instruction section. Although creativita isn't the very best in this scenario the author seemed to have done a lot of work on the update. I started to play and indeed - I was excited by those things happening at the same time. Anyway, the scenario must be a lot easier than before because I had a good time crushing those Orks right away. ;) The only two things missing to make it a bit more fun is one hand some more interesting winning condition and on the other hand a bit more overall creativity and originality.
Nevertheless I do like scenarios where enemies are pooring in from any direction and you still have a chance to defend the important points and then rebuild your forces to fight them back again.
Balance: 4
I found this scenario being balanced quite well. At first the simple mass of enemies made it impossible to fight them back right away. So I used my forces to crush the most viliant enemy units like stone throwers, ballista and amored elephants and meanwhile build up my little camp. Using a combination of legions and helepolis I managed to slowly gain controll over the western part. Once I had established a good defense it was easy to build up some more units to go off east and hunt some orks. :)
- Ships can be usefull, too.
- there is quite a big army awaiting you but I didn't need them
Creativity: 2
Unfortunately creativity was rather low. A scenario based on LotR is not that creative and re-playing the battle of Osgiliath is not a big surprise. The map didn't hold much secrets, the victory condition were pretty simple - blowing away all enemy forces is not the best idea, I think. Overall the other players didn't behave very realistic and I suppose the author did not use customized AI/PER files. The blue player didn't even help me. Maybe putting in some more players would have been nice and also those reinforcement could have been done by some diplomacy/tribute act.
Map Design: 2.5
The map looked like a random map except the cities. They were in fact not bad, but still there is much to improve at this part. Then the forests were ok, but also a bit boring. Maybe the author should use some more elevations, cliffs, stones and grass patches. The world you are passing by just looks like some map of it and not really like you're in it. The water was ok although the shores were not very good. Remembering my first attempts in map design I have to admit that you are much better than I used to be. ;)
Story/Instructions: 3.5
The story was written very well, almost no spelling or grammar errors. It is fun to read and you get that you are fighting an important battle. Objectives were all clear and the hints were usefull though I didn't need them. I would add some more hints on tactics maybe but it's ok. The bitmap gives you only very basic idea and the directions are not the same as in the game. I did this once and got bad scores for that so I am quite sensitive for this point now.
Additional Comments:
download recommendation: Yes. It is worth a download if you like big battles and if you like operating from a nearly hopeless situation. Well, in fact it is not that hard because in my play Osgiliath did never completely fall. There were still some original buildings standing there at the end.
Comment to the author:
I don't know your first version of this but this one is quite well. Next time you design a scenario or campaign you should try to be more inventious and maybe try to look at some good maps from Ingo, Andrea, Firelegion (tropper), Richard and so on. |
HGDL v0.8.2 |
Rating |
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2.5 | Breakdown |
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Playability | 3.0 | Balance | 2.6 | Creativity | 1.6 | Map Design | 2.1 | Story/Instructions | 3.3 |
Statistics |
Downloads: | 466 |
Favorites: [] | 0 |
Size: | 183.97 KB |
Added: | 06/01/06 |
Updated: | 06/21/06 |
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