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Albion and Dark Sun questions

Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
Well, you managed to do, what is considered the hardest part of the game and is usually played as the last thing before going to the finale, with 3.5 party members. That's quite impressive there, normally people go in there with a high levelled party and it still gives them a run for their money.

Though your choices are quite weird. Why didn't you bother to pick up Mellthas and Sira again? That's pretty much the first thing I do after they leave. That Rainer leaves is something to be grateful of, actually, he is by far the weakest party member in the game.

Spoiler is about something on Maini.
Did you manage to prevent the assassination plot on Maini?

I guess I know that now, but there weren't any warning flags about it being much harder than the other stuff, initially you are sent there in a peaceful way. That's why I mentioned being lulled into complacency by the game, because once the game took 3 of my companions away, it didn't get much harder before the Kamulos base, so I didn't really feel compelled to grab Sira and Mellthas ASAP. Rainer was actually useful to me because while he IS weak and skillless, i outfitted him with nice tanky gear before and he was part of my frontline that kept the backline mage artillery safe. Without him and Sira's freezing crowd control, it was rough.

Yeah, I think I did pretty much everything on Maini. Stopped the plot, made peace between the races, cleared out the loot-heavy kritah dungeon, even found the treasure from the treasure map. That's probably what helped me complete the Kenget dungeon, the 3 guys I had left over from before (Tom, Drirr and Khunag) were all really well outfitted and trained.
 

lorn

Educated
Joined
Sep 25, 2014
Messages
45
Well, what do you expect? The game can hardly put a warning sign "Those guys don't negotiate and they'll crush your soul" up. :D
I think a lot of people got burned this way, the kamulos mission appears to be the easier one and most people go there first, but I've never heard of someone going without mellthas and sira.

I think mellthas can wear the same tanky gear as Rainer and he is obviously much more useful overall. The game doesn't leave you with a lot of decisions in terms of party composition anyway. Tom and Rainer/Harriet are fixed, Sira and Mellthas are effectively fixed, as you can only have both or none und with none you can only have a 5-man party max. That leaves you with choosing 2 from Siobhan, Drirr and Khunag. Since Drirr is a cool dude, who was with you from the beginning and Khunag sports all those damage spells, most of the time Siobhan falls by the wayside.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
What is it with some older games where the devs reward people for playing through their game with gratuitous ass-rape? I started doing the final Toronto part and holy fuck, it's meant for masochists. There is a fight sequence with 100+ enemies coming in waves, each of which has ridiculous amount of hitpoints.

Fortunately that one can be skipped depending on your choices, but still, wow.

Even when I fought those service robots in smaller groups, they take forever to take down. I would start Sira and Khugan on them with Frost Avalanche and Thunderstorm respectively, and once the animations started, would leave to get snacks or drinks, come back 3 minutes later and the animation round would still be going on. Not a good moment for turn-based combat.

Then, all the weird color puzzles or find the tiny low-key image on a mile long wall puzzles. Or run around a huge level trying to figure out how one thing on one end affects another thing on the other.

And finally, for the coup-De-tat: the charming fight against 6 Ned AI copies where the devs finally decided to compensate for Sira's freezing spells being OP the entire game by making them completely ineffective in the toughest fight in the game. But hey it's not like you need any crowd control againt 6 dudes two-shotting anyone in my party.

:rage:


So, as I don't see any way to get through on my current run past those assholes, I am going to load a pre-Toronto save and go grind some to buy everyone tank-like gear and level that Goddess Wrath spell on the tiny off-chance they haven't nerfed it in that fight too. Well played, Albion.
 
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
5,103
Alright ladies and gentlemen, I just finished Albion. :yeah:


God, hardest RPG I've played in a while, maybe ever. The puzzles get to be pretty hard (although not always in a good way) in the 2nd half, the combat can be really hard because of scarcity of potions/sleep/gold/etc, obtaining gold is hard, finding stuff to grind is hard, and so on.

I don't like to look up stuff online and try to avoid that whenever possible, but with this game, I had to do it quite a few times. For the final part
on Toronto, I had to reload an earlier save not once but twice. :) The first time, I went without Joe, and ran into that welcoming party with 100+ service robots, so shortly before losing my sanity, I looked this up online and reloaded to get Joe ASAP. Then, as I mentioned earlier, the 2nd run failed against the 6 Ned AI bodies who were resistant to my main crowd control. Reloaded, went to grind around the world, bought some better defensive gear and some other stuff, and leveled up the Goddess's Wrath spell on the priestess hoping it would work on the AIs. Came back, did the Toronto level again, and guess what, that spell doesn't work against them either, nor does blindness storm. They just don't like CC as it apparently interferes with their gangbang of your helpless party. I did have another trick up my sleeve though this time, as I purchased a bunch of thunderstorm scrolls for everyone back in town. So I set everyone to use the scrolls plus Khugan to cast it as a spell. Using Sira to freeze the two Ned 1s helped a little too, limiting the mayhem to the other 4 Ned 2s. Also I switched my tankiest gear from Tom to Khugan who was doing the most damage with AOE spells. Finally, I followed that up with Tom and Joe firing off the pistols and bullets they got off security earlier in the level. That combo along with a healthy dose of RNG after a few reloads finally managed to finish those bastards off.

Imagine my surprise then when after killing them, I see an entire army of their buddies running for my throat. At first I thought it was a joke, then I almost threw the computer out the window, then I saved and tried different things. Tried to run by them to the door, didnt work. Then ran into a corner behind the elevator shaft and took them on one by one as they went around it, giving me enough time to use potions to rez fallen people and save in between. After about 10 more fights, finally worked my way to the door, couldnt believe I made it.

Then of course the little heart attack when I saw 20 security people waiting for me, before I realized you can talk them out of fighting. And another one when I realized the AI final boss doesnt take damage from weapons and one shot 2 people on my party with his laser. Was about to throw the computer out the window again when Tom threw his seed.

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game now. It does have a ton of content, very beautiful art, an original story and setting and starts off with interesting dungeons and puzzles. But at some point it feels like the game goes from enjoyable gameplay to punishing the player. I dunno if its the JRPG influence thing and they expect you to grind everyone to level 50 before tackling the latter parts, but the turn based combat grinds to a crawl against tons of high health enemies and you are stuck there watching the same animations thousands of times over and over. Spells go from OP to ineffective at key points, further screwing the player. And the puzzles go from enjoyable reasonably challenging stuff in early/mid game that you can solve by exploring the surroundings in the flow of the game to stuff you can only solve by pouring over every inch of dungeon walls searching for tiny pixel pictures or trial and erroring your way for hours through obfuscated logic.

Another example of this punishing approach is the cellar under the Equipmentmakers guild in Umajo. That first floor is HUMANGOUS in size for no gameplay reason whatsoever. All it is is a bunch of hallways connecting a few rooms, and yet the hallways are so long you have to walk for a good 10 minutes across the damn thing. I didn't tackle the tasks there in the right way either, so I had to walk across it a bunch of times. Or the whole
desert prison thing. A 2 hour trek for what? So you can let a killer lose on innocent people and then don';t even get to bring it to any satisfying conclusion other than watch peasants slaughter her in the streets? Just weird stuff.

Don't get me wrong though, there is a lot to like about Albion as well. I really liked the first several dungeons, e.g. the one under Arjano, and the Kritah one on Maini. The combat system has some depth to it, and the setting and story really stand out from the fantasy hordes. Glad I played through it.
 

lorn

Educated
Joined
Sep 25, 2014
Messages
45
I do agree here, as much as I love this game, it gets significantly weaker, after you return from the Toronto. I have the feeling, they didn't quite finish those parts or they didn't really know how to continue the story from there. The rich storylines and character interactions are gone and replaced with a quest "Go get a and b, then do c". Each step involves a massive dungeon with lots of long fights to pat out the playtime. Have fun for the next 20-30 hours.
The epitome of this is really the final part, you either have to go through tons of lethal traps and robots or you pick up Joe, which means, you have to spend hours levelling him up, before he stops being utterly useless apart from disabling the traps.

Maybe someone, who played Amberstar or Ambermoon can tell, whether the endgame in those games was similary weak?
 

Minttunator

Arcane
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Alright ladies and gentlemen, I just finished Albion.

I have to agree that the first part of the game (Nakiridaani) was indeed the strongest - which is no surprise, I guess, as that's also the area that was accessible in the demo (this was back when games still had demos). :P

Congratulations on finishing the game! :salute:
 

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