COMMENTS BY LAZARUS
Echoes: Renegade

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

Embers of Rebellion

It's hard to improve on DoK (at least in the way of visual presentation) but Ephesos has certainly topped himself here. The scenario looks great; it lacks a distinctive town like the Sanctuary or the Emerald Mountain, but is all around the best looking in my opinion (the bridge is just awesome.)
Oh, and this time the plot is good too! Well it could be improved a bit (Who the hell is this villain? I don't remember him ever really explaining why he wants to destroy everybody) but there was no goodwill mission so I can't complain too much :P . It was a bit short as well, though it does make for a fast paced scenario.

Rating: 7.9
 
Magus of Cattalon

My feelins on MoC are similar to those on BWC. The two scenarios play similarly, open world to explore and plenty of sidequests. The plot suffers for it; you have the beginning "Mages killing children" plot, the end "Bust through the giant's portal" plot, and a lot of stuff in between that isn't related to either of them. Indeed the two plots don't seem to have any purpose other than to first take you to the portal, give you a break to explore Cattalon, and then take you back to the portal.
Despite the strange progression of the story (or more like the screeching halts that the two stories hit when you travel through time) it still didn't bother me too much. Eventually I just sat back and enjoyed the time travel and dungeon crawling, and had a good time doing it.

Rating: 8.1

A Perfect Forest

I liked APF, and think that it is still one of the better scenarios out there. The plot moves quickly and is well told, as is to be expected from a designer like *i. Unfortunately the final dungeon was not only a fairly annoying puzzle, it also seemed distant from the plot up to this point. It left me with a sour taste when I left the scenario.
But the last dungeon doesn't negate the good things in APF. It had several good cutscenes and interesting encounters. The outdoors, while quite bland in the way of terrain, has plenty of sidequests and areas to explore. As I mentioned earlier, the story is well told and kept me interested up until the final dungeon. Good scenario.

Rating: 7.4