ECHOES: RENEGADE JUDGING
Bain-Ihrno
This is a great scenario.
It has an engrossing plot, good fights, and is loads of fun. What's bad? well I suppose the ending was a disappointment...and the Immortal character looked pretty cheesy, graphically. Overall, excellent, and I actually look forward to the next Echoes scenario.
Rating: 8.6
Ephesos
It's a TM scenario, with standard TM material. By this I mean a plot that the player isn't really supposed to understand, which tends to revolve around "go kill stuff or the world will end", and "guess what, you were a powerless pawn the whole time". It also means broken items. Thankfully, it also means amazing scripting, very impressive towns and outdoors, and decent characters. And I'm happy to say that the combat was less painful than I'd expected, given Canopy. Overall, excellent, and that's the most important attribute of TM's work.
Rating: 8.4
Lazarus
E:R is a TM scenario, with the great scripting and often confusing plot that come with the territory. The combat is better than any other BoA scenario I’ve played, featuring well-balanced monsters with previously unseen abilities. The frequent boss battles range from the best I’ve seen to mildly infuriating, but all provide interesting tactical challenges, and often take place in equally interesting settings.
But all that is almost a given for TM, this of course is where I knock off 3 points for an incomprehensible plot. Or is it……. Well I actually liked E:R’s plot. It builds off of MA, which is a good start, and it nicely picks up where its predecessor left off. It suffers from too many names syndrome at times, as it seems that every major NPC has 15 different personas. Also the story is told in the first-person, but I was disappointed to see that this had a minimal effect on the story. Things do start to get a bit confusing by the end, but it never gets near to Canopy bad (aka, can’t understand a single line.) Enough negatives, the plot is good, especially if you make an effort to understand it.
A good scenario, BoA’s best in my opinion.
Rating: 9.0
Thuryl
Echoes: Renegade: Combat was consistent in difficulty and required a fair range of tactics, but felt a little too random; some of the later bosses could wipe out the party in a single round if they happened to use the right combination of attacks. Item and spell rewards weren't manifestly excessive, which was a pleasant surprise for a TM scenario. The plot holds together well enough at first glance, which is good enough for the scenario's purposes. Unfortunately this was probably the buggiest of the four scenarios I judged. Outdoor encounters sometimes reappeared when they weren't supposed to. Nature Lore behaves weirdly (checking a single PC's skill instead of the whole party); this was apparently an intentional decision on the designer's part, but it's a dubious one at best and should have at least been mentioned in the documentation, since it's a departure from BoA's explicit recommendations on how to distribute NL. The final boss fight was good in terms of tactics and challenge, but had a serious bug which forced several reloads. I'd probably raise my score significantly if the bugs were fixed. As it is, though, it's an 8.1.
Rating: 8.1
Tyranicus
Fun combat and nice intrigue.
Rating: 8.5
This is a great scenario.
It has an engrossing plot, good fights, and is loads of fun. What's bad? well I suppose the ending was a disappointment...and the Immortal character looked pretty cheesy, graphically. Overall, excellent, and I actually look forward to the next Echoes scenario.
Rating: 8.6
Ephesos
It's a TM scenario, with standard TM material. By this I mean a plot that the player isn't really supposed to understand, which tends to revolve around "go kill stuff or the world will end", and "guess what, you were a powerless pawn the whole time". It also means broken items. Thankfully, it also means amazing scripting, very impressive towns and outdoors, and decent characters. And I'm happy to say that the combat was less painful than I'd expected, given Canopy. Overall, excellent, and that's the most important attribute of TM's work.
Rating: 8.4
Lazarus
E:R is a TM scenario, with the great scripting and often confusing plot that come with the territory. The combat is better than any other BoA scenario I’ve played, featuring well-balanced monsters with previously unseen abilities. The frequent boss battles range from the best I’ve seen to mildly infuriating, but all provide interesting tactical challenges, and often take place in equally interesting settings.
But all that is almost a given for TM, this of course is where I knock off 3 points for an incomprehensible plot. Or is it……. Well I actually liked E:R’s plot. It builds off of MA, which is a good start, and it nicely picks up where its predecessor left off. It suffers from too many names syndrome at times, as it seems that every major NPC has 15 different personas. Also the story is told in the first-person, but I was disappointed to see that this had a minimal effect on the story. Things do start to get a bit confusing by the end, but it never gets near to Canopy bad (aka, can’t understand a single line.) Enough negatives, the plot is good, especially if you make an effort to understand it.
A good scenario, BoA’s best in my opinion.
Rating: 9.0
Thuryl
Echoes: Renegade: Combat was consistent in difficulty and required a fair range of tactics, but felt a little too random; some of the later bosses could wipe out the party in a single round if they happened to use the right combination of attacks. Item and spell rewards weren't manifestly excessive, which was a pleasant surprise for a TM scenario. The plot holds together well enough at first glance, which is good enough for the scenario's purposes. Unfortunately this was probably the buggiest of the four scenarios I judged. Outdoor encounters sometimes reappeared when they weren't supposed to. Nature Lore behaves weirdly (checking a single PC's skill instead of the whole party); this was apparently an intentional decision on the designer's part, but it's a dubious one at best and should have at least been mentioned in the documentation, since it's a departure from BoA's explicit recommendations on how to distribute NL. The final boss fight was good in terms of tactics and challenge, but had a serious bug which forced several reloads. I'd probably raise my score significantly if the bugs were fixed. As it is, though, it's an 8.1.
Rating: 8.1
Tyranicus
Fun combat and nice intrigue.
Rating: 8.5
WINNER OF BEST LARGE
SCENARIO