Part 13: Adventure comes to end with SMAC party exploring past
more thoroughtly and helping to ensure long future for CRON...
While i WILL finish a game in this part at the complete end of post, i also make some interesting travels into past centuries of CRONian history (want to kill all Elemental Lords, meet with some cool historical personas from the past and explore 5-th era and 6-th era by a bit), along with some last bits of information regarding some in-game details.
-Let's begin a last part of our Let's Play!-
~~~
One more thing:
player can continue to play Might & Magic 2 even after end and final score - but this is more relevant for "challenge" fights, like 66 Devil Kings, Megadragon and so on. Maybe i will traverse a land from time to time myself after Game End, heh~~~
^^^ Santiago, Morgan and Yang level at the start of this part after good deal of training in Atlantium. Maybe they will be even more "leveled" afterwards, who knows.
~Actually, everyone in party been able to train for 4 more levels (!), but it is me not paying attention to amount of experience that my lads aquired by the end of promotional quests and by slaying hordes of end-tier crap. [
Magical development of "hybrid" classes ends with tier 3 spells, so they started to gain only HP and *some* SP without new spells for them pretty early]
Now time to pay more visits into
Time of Creation and complete personal missions of SMAC party to kill EVERY Elemental Lord
~
^^^ Assassination # 1: Lord of Change and Creator of Dragons named Acwalandar
[
Before battle, buffed everybody with magical trees giving 200 Might and 200 Speed for single combat encounter]. Well, well, one of the actual main "villains" of the story and creator of Megadragon. 2 000 HP, extreme magical resistance (1-6 level spells shrug off him) and high speed of 70 (so he will make my life miserable without buffs). Let see how it's goes...
Outcome: 1 000 damage with Breathe Cold and cleric been going down first, so no
Moon Ray or no
Raise Dead...
^^^ Without temporarily buffing my characters with
Skill Potions (+ 5 levels temporary) and
MaxHp Potions i just cannot damage Acwalander properly - while i deal crappy 35 damage he deals hundreds.
^^^ Now we able to deal around 500+ damage with Santiago doing crazy 20 attacks (!). Second round generally been extremly good for my party: 5 Water Elementals died immideately.
^^^ Slimy bitch goes down, but my party goes up! From
Gold Chest (one of few times where i got this kind of chests) actually got complete shit and only 17K gold. Meh.
[
Key combinations here are simple: Divine Intervention + Power Shield + high magical / force resistances allowing characters to have thousands of HP and dish out a ton while surviving all bullshit from enemies]
^^^ Assassination # 2: Lord of Storms and Conjurer of Divine named Shalwend
Interesting... Two times as less HP compared to previous Water Lord, but ability to Invoke Power. Almost intrigued how well it goes for us now...
^^^ Almost too easy.
Invoke Powers ability probably extremly dependent on difference between levels of user of ability and targets - and my characters are buffed to hell and back.
Acwalander is KING, but Shalwend is anything but KING, in short.
He also dropped
Bronze Chest, instead of
Gold Chest, heh. Got irrelevant item from it (
Compass) and 14K gold.
~
Killing two Elemental Lords allow my party to advance one more time in levels~
^^^ Assassination # 3: Lord of Flames and Creator of Demons named Pyrannaste
This one is pretty strong Lord, 1 500 HP with some good resistances and speed - and some nasty company to boot. Let's see...
^^^ Second hardest battle with Elemental Lord so far, partially due to total number of enemies against me. Another Bronze Chest - another pretty useless reward (
Lantern).
~~
Last battle with elemental Lord and i will explore 5-th century more for potential *interesting* stuff and easter eggs~~
^^^ Assassination # 4: Lord of Mountains and Endless Plains named Gralkor
Only encounter with Elemental Lord where player MUST defeat at least one more of 4 additional encounters guarding him in circle (
you cannot move diagonally).
^^^ Hardest battle due to
breathe acid ability both from Earth Elementals and Gralkor burning HP of even buffed party away pretty quickly.
At other hand, got
Gold Chest...
^^^ Bad luck again, even if G Chain Mail + 7 is not that bad. Also, even after resting for 8 times Elemental Plane of Earth been not allowing me to leave (arrggghh).
~~While exploring 6-th era from "hint" i been able to found in Castle Xabran noticed someone named as Spaz Twit. As far as i can remember he is in
A-1, near Tundara of future age.
^^^ Hehe, time for Spaz Twit to bow before me. Ahh, EZ battle with
White Knights (resistant to woman's melee attacks) and Spaz himself.
^^^ Phaser is pretty OK (gives + 5 Acuraccy and allows to cast Disintegration), other items are trash. Let's move into 5-th age...
~~~While exploring 5-th age very strangley...
I noticed nothing too unusual, personally. Maybe i been not exploring enough to notice big differences [some walls can contain "easter eggs" or some interesting information], but i'm not interested in exploring every corner in search for something *potentially* interesting. So after i done everything i want in game for most part (
not going to kill Superdragon right now, but maybe will try to cheeze later on with insane buffs) so let's move into...
SQUARE LAKE dungeon located in heart of
C-2 - fearsome residence of
SHELTEM and his small retinue of henchmens. This is hardest dungeon in the game with enemies of every level possible can be encountered here, but most encounters can be
bribed with high probablity of success. Structure of dungeon is... kind of lame, honestly: party will walk ino extremly long hallways only to find one combat encounter near the end of each hallways - and this is same for most dungeon. Is it cool dungeon to traverse? Yeah, it can give some nice vibes. Is it best dungeon in the Might & Magic 2? Nah, not even remotely : >
Anyway, time to decide fate of
CRON once and for all
~~~
^^^ The End is near... [
Player can enter this dungeon before saving King Kalohn, actually, but cannot get into control room].
^^^ Interesting thing to notice near entrance, heh.
^^^ Joke combat with horde of muggers and couple of brain eaters. Meh. To my surprise, got 100+ gems for everybody after this encounter.
^^^ Meh. But at least this is not something killing me in one-two blows.
^^^ Two next encounters are not worth even typing (but got good reward in gems) - but this one can be interesting due to Pyro Hydras.
^^^ After couple of
RIP's (
due to Ancient Dragons showing and just insta-killing me) i bribed my way to the top. It usually works pretty well with humanoid opponents.
~After couple more encounters party entered inner halls of this very *frustrating* dungeon (
battle against 200+ muggers is such a bullshit when you cannot spam A-Attack and you have backline), but this all seem to end...
^^^ Structure of Square Lake Dungeon for anybdoy interested. Two more lines are safe for most part...
^^^ Hardest challenge in game right here - much harder compared to even Megadragon. 66 (!!) 14-th level creatures (!!!) require party to being buffed to 255 level and have around 50 000 HP to even think about entering battle.
So i will easily accept this offer...
^^^ Next hall is mostly filled with messages preparing player for inevitable showdown with SHELTEM.
^^^ Time for our dance to end...
^^^ SHELTEM himself is a "joke" boss at this point with only 400 HP at his disposal. Earth Elemental is my top-priority to kill.
^^^ After quickly dispatching guardians of control room, i entered it and typed "WAFE" previosuly given to me by King Kalohn.
~~And here real-time puzzle begins... It been not as hard as in previous time due to sentence from important document in our own history (
with one changed name)
<
WE, THE PEOPLE OF TERRA, IN ORDER TO FORM A
MORE PERFECT UNION, ESTABLISH JUSTICE,
INSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITY,
PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE>
is being direct answer to said puzzle. You given word named "preamble" and also given short text with randomized letters, so player must find letters in text corresponding to said "preamble" and form new word.
~~Do not want to spoil my own puzzle variant (
completed it in 7~ minutes) and here we FUCKING GO
~~
^^^ HELL, YEAH. Saved a CRON from collapsing into extreme hear of local sun!
^^^ Also one more part of Let's Play where i got more experience, then all other parts combined : >
~~It's been a HUGE blast in middle part of game for me - early game is more or survival experience, while end-game is full of contrasts (either cheeze fest, or curb stomp battles against tons of crap). But early and late parts of game still provide extremly interesting expirience to really love Might & Magic 2 and i wanted to replay this slightly archaic games not for "pretty eyes" alone.
(
+) Encounter system, in-game equipment system and game world ARE strongest parts of Might & Magic 2. It also features much better quests and side-quests compated to Might & Magic 1, in all honesty. Generally gameplay of the Might & Magic 2 been captivating for me all the way until SHELTEM and final score.
(
-) In the same honesty, in-game economy is for most part is broken and player will notice this pretty quickly - fountains converting gold do not help situation that much. Still no real interactions with NPC's, except for Lord's quests selection screens.
[Subjective crap, but i dislike both final "dungeons" in both first Might & Magic games, but i'm pretty fine with final puzzle in Might & Magic 2. Also, Cuisinarts are slightly dumb way to level up extremly quickly and way easier compared to Elemental Lords or similar enemies by difficulty]
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/search/label/Might and Magic II
^^^ CRPGAddict probably played game *slightly* differently compared to me, but i respect his opinion on Might & Magic 2 too and can recommend his review and his content.
Cheers to everybody reading this and hope i provided good Let's Play 0/