Okay… I have decided to write something about what I thought about TCB. First of all: Excellent, excellent story. It had depth, and this is the first DROD story which actually had me laughing. However the puzzles weren’t really my cup of tea. I would rate the puzzles of TCB a seven for overall enjoyment. I will here try to give feedback on why I felt like this. I will often speak in absolute terms, but I state up here that all I say is my personal opinions, which obviously (from other feedback I have read) isn’t very representative.
×The City:
Most of these puzzles where rather boring. It was quite annoying to repeatedly bump into citizens and hope that they would move. It was quite trivial and not very fun to block their path to get them to run after each other in a loop. These puzzles would get a five for fun rating from me.
The Naming Office:
An okay room. My enjoyment of this room was however mostly due to story reasons. I guess what I have against a room like this is that the rules gets a bit too complicated with lots of slayers. My opportunity to see exactly what will happen if I do a certain action is a bit limited.
Quest for Knowledge:
Not very fun, but necessary rooms. In general I would have preferred it if these rooms where even more minimalistic. One roach would have been enough in both 1E and 2E to get the point across. 3E and 4E are a bit repetitive. In 4E I would definitely have preferred just two roaches. Apart from that there where some rather good introductory rooms which I would have loved if I where new to DROD. I don’t know… Simple rooms of marching in and kill of some roaches doesn’t really give me an adrenaline pump anymore
I like the tricky rooms. The puzzles I did like was the maze puzzles (6E, 7E and the secret room). I never seem to grow tired at puzzles like this. Overall I would give these puzzles a 6 for enjoyment.
The Uncturage:
Here comes the first good puzzles
You have to think, and as I’ve previously stated I like monster manipulation, and there aren’t too many (unnecessary many) monsters anywhere. I like all the rooms here. An overall enjoyment of 8 (even a strong 8).
Deep Uncturage:
I like most of the puzzles here. They are clever, new, and not unnecessarily monster heavy. 3E is a favourite, as it’s quite aesthetically pleasing and fun. And I loved the secret room. There where two rooms I didn’t like very much. 1E has about twice as many roaches as I would like, and 1S 2E feels too repetitive and unvaried.
Under the Library:
All the puzzles where okay. I guess they where a bit too easy for my taste. The briars simply didn’t do that much of a difference. I would rate almost all of the rooms a 7, they where enjoyable. But there where three great rooms as well. 1N 1W, and the secret rooms. These rooms forced me to think, and they weren’t tedious in any way.
Interlude: Negotiations:
I don’t know what to say about these rooms, except that they where boring when I played them. That is because I didn’t understand how Fedungos worked until quite recently. I would have preferred if there where short tutorials with the new elements. Perhaps some scrolls saying how the new elements worked. All in all I think most of the rooms would have been fun if there had been such a scroll, so the problem here mostly is my own stupidity. However I can say this at least: I would never appreciate a room like 1N 1E. It’s tedious. Too many monsters, too little space.
Homeward Ascent:
All in all these where good rooms, but way to repetitive to feel as fun as they could have done. An overall fun rating of 7.
2N could have been a lot more friendly with a fewer mirrors. It’s not a bad lesson, but please spread it out over more rooms, with a little theme variation.
3N 1E was overdone, if you could manipulate the queen one way the rest is trivial and repetitive. Two times could have been okay, but three times was just too much.
3N 1W: Again the room is too repetitive. The lesson is sound, the room is great, but the repetition makes it less fun than it ought to be. All the lessons in the room is however necessary, but they could have been spread out over perhaps two rooms to lessen the feeling of repetition.
4N: Nice room, but it would have been even better without the left part of the room. I don’t like repetition
4N 1W: This room was good, but would have been better with half as many doors to open.
4N 1E: Really nice puzzle
No repetition here.
5N: Repetitions AND wubbas! This room felt tedious, but was quite okay anyway.
Midway Outpost:
Well… these rooms where also too repetitive for my taste. Most of them where based around good ideas, but overdone. All in all this level gets a rating of 7.
Entrance: What is the point with six adders? I would have preferred one, or two.
1W: What is the point of letting the adder grow to size forty? I don’t think that “the longer the adder, the more fun” applies here
2W: My only complaint here is that one serpent would have been enough. The room was fun, though.
1N 2W: Way too many roach queens, way to tedious to walk the mimic around. The thing is that my eyes can’t look at two places simultaneously, which is a problem in this room. Backspace was my truest friend here
1N 1W: Really nice room! Could have been even better, though. The adder ought to have been just two squares long when the room started.
1N: The best room on the level. A hold full of rooms like this would get a strong 9 for fun rating.
1N 1E: An okay room, I guess. I still hadn’t understood Fegundos when I played it, though.
2N 2W: Nice room, but overdone. A forth of the enemies would have been enough.
2N 1W: Nice room, but overdone. All those queens weren’t strictly necessary. They didn’t make anything the room trick for me anyway. All those orbs weren’t necessary either.
2N: This room I liked.
The secret room I didn’t like. I know you guys don’t like the use of the word random, but that is what it felt like when walking through the maze.
Echo Chasms:
I know I am repeating myself, but once again the problem is repetition. Why should I like to do the exact same room twice or four times within the one room? The overall rating is a weak 7.
1S: I would have gotten the idea with slightly less trapdoors. No thought, just boring repetition. The dodging of the eyes was nice, however.
1S 1W, 2S 1W: As stated above: Why should I like to do the same room twice? If you can kill one serpent it’s trivial to kill more of them.
1S 1E: This is a room I would define as mindless hack and slash. Not what I’m after when I play DROD.
2W: Aha! A really nice room. Not too hard, but a bit tricky, and some nice dialogue.
1W: Wraithwings getting stuck at the bottom of the room was just plain boring. It’s really trivial to go down there and kill them, but it consumes my time.
1E: This room I found quite okay. A nice hack and slash room where the monsters comes to you
2E: Meh! Repeating the same thing over and over makes it less funny for each time.
1N 2W: Nice room, It looks so cool, and represents a nice idea.
1N 1W: Meh! This room was tedious, and quite trivial. A (IMO) bad hack and slash room.
1N: Fun, but too many monsters. The point would have gotten across even with a forth of the monsters.
1N 1E: A rather nice room. Nothing really special.
1N 2E: Nice idea, but overdone. Two serpents less would have made the room so much better.
Castle Dugan:
Rather nice rooms.
King Dugan's New Dungeon:
These rooms where challenging, and fun. You had to be effective. The only room I would like to criticise is 1N 1E. Quite trivial, and I don’t see the point with the room. These rooms gets a rating of 8 from me.
River Dugan:
Well… I don’t like mindless hack and slash, so the first four rooms clearly weren’t for me. I also hated to not be able to move diagonal around corners here. Repetition is a lead word for most of the rooms. Trivial tediousness. The only rooms I liked were 4S 2E, and 4S 5E. 4S 5E made me think, and that’s always a bonus
I liked two of the secrets, and utterly, utterly hated the Fedungo/Briar room It took me over 2000 moves to complete, and many, many restarts
. All in all I would rate the level as a weak 6.
Holding Vats:
Overall rating of seven. I’ll try to list the rooms after how much I liked them:
3S 2W: This was my favourite. One of those tricky rooms which are quite manageable when you know how to do them. A bit monster heavy though. I don’t see the point of the three lower roach queens. This room I would rate as a 9.
2S 1W: A bit tricky, and a fun room to try to optimize. You don’t have to clear all the tar, which is nice.
1S 1W: A tricky optimization room forcing me to think.
2W: This is a very clever maze. A bit tedious, but I liked it anyway. The grid of eye sights reminded me of alarm lasers from movies
1S 3W: A nice introduction for how to use adders. Maybe one blob of Tar stuff to many though…
2S 3W: A nice idea, although a bit overdone. I would have removed one of the adders.
1W: Rather nice room requiring you to be effective.
2S: Not very funny.
3W: Okay, but overdone. One of the rooms with lots of repetition.
1S: I’m not a fan of clearing Tar-stuff. Rather trivial, but boring.
1S 2W: This room felt tedious. It’s hard to solve by anything else then trial and error, and I felt it was tiresome to hack myself forward. This room would get a 5 for rating from me (which means I would not choose to play through a whole hold with rooms like this).
Archival Catacombs:
Mostly I liked these rooms, so the overall rating lands on an 8. They were clever, and either required effectiveness or figuring something out. There where hoverer some rooms I didn’t like very much.
3S 1W: This room requires lots of work which I know how to do, but which is anyway quite hard to do. I find this boring and tedious.
2S 1W: This room contained too much of mindless hack and slash for my tastes.
2S: This room wasn’t very challenging, but required some effort to clear anyway. You could have showed the point of the room with a fifth of the monsters.
Torture Chambers:
Here I have no complaints, so I will be listing the rooms I particularly liked. My overall rating here is a strong 8.
First of all: The secret room was brilliant. Actually I realize that most of the rooms were brilliant. The rotating mimics puzzles (1W, 2W and 1S 1W) might have been slightly overdone, though.
Oremite Breeding Grounds:
My favourite level. Clever, and deserving of a 9 for overall rating. Every room required me to think, and I particularly liked 1S and 1N 1E. No rooms were overdone, but there was one room which I didn’t really like. 2N. That is because I never really understood the logic behind how brained seeps move.
Rasarus Archipelago:
Clearing Tar stuff, and hack and slash. Obviously not my favourite level. My overall rating is a 6, and I will list the rooms that I actually did like.
1E: A clever use of decoys forcing me to think.
2W: Here I had to be effective. That can be nice sometimes
And the secret room was nice. Unfortunatly that’s about it. 1N 1E and 1N 2W was okay because they were quite easy and quick to clear.
Pirate Hideout:
I love speed potions! There were, however rooms that I didn’t love. And in some rooms the speed potions didn’t work as good (mainly the monster manipulation rooms). The overall rating here is a strong 8.
Entrance. Very nice to try some hack and slash with a speed potion. I felt invincible!
1N 1E: As I said above monster manipulation feels a bit pointless, since you have to wait for the stupid monster anyway.
1N: Nice! I had to be effective.
1N 1W: Really nice! Quite tricky, and requiring me to be effective.
2N 1E: Not nice at all. Another room I would label as mindless hack and slash.
2N: Rather nice. A hack and slash where the monsters comes to me. Less work that way
2N 1W: Really nice room. I just had to stay in the middle and be smart.
3N 1E: Hot Plates AND a Speed Potion. That I liked.
3N: Really nice. Another one of those “I feel invincible!” rooms. I can’t promise I will like this room equally much if I replay the hold a year from now, though
3N 1W: A nice room, although monster manipulation and speed potions isn’t really friends, as I see it.
4N 1W: Wow! This room required effectiveness. I loved it.
4N: This room was hard. It gave me the feeling of a boss room, and I liked that.
Interlude: A Goblin's Eye View:
A good introduction to Aumlichts. My only complaint is that 2N was a bit tedious. An overall rating of 7. Here I finally begun to understand Fegundos a little.
Forgotten Ruins:
Many of the rooms were clever, and required some thinking. I like this. I would just like to give a little criticism on a room which could have been great, but wasn’t. 2N 2W had such potential, but I hate the way the arrow trick was sneaked into the middle of the room. It was so hard to spot. I also think there were way too many monsters. The queens just made the room tedious.
All in all it was great fun to dodge the Aumlicht beams. I give this level an overall rating of 8.
Frozen Depths:
There was two good rooms here. 2N, which was very good, and 1N 1W. The rest of the rooms just left me feeling frustrated, since I had no control, and couldn’t really get a grip on the logic of the soldiers movement patterns. This one I can’t rate higher than a 5. Bonus points for the story elements though
Rocky Hollow:
I like the big giants. For all the puzzles except the secret rooms I have the same comment. Rather nice, but a bit too messy. A bit too tedious to do what you wanted, even though you knew exactly what it was. The secret rooms where great! My overall rating for this level is a 7.
Abyssian Fortress:
One thing I hate about this level is that it’s really hard to see exactly what is required. In some rooms I played safe, and tediously just so that I wouldn’t have to redo 500 moves later on. 2N 1W is an excellent example. I guided tar column after tar column to the right place. Safe, easy, time consuming and boring. 1S 1E is another. The room idea isn’t bad, but it just isn’t fun to clear all that tar stuff. Overall I would give this level an overall rating of five, and that is because of the good rooms that were there.
2S 1W was extremely boring, since I had to redo it so many times due to a lack of well placed checkpoints. It was tedious to begin with, but rather okay. However I grew very, very tired of this room.
2S: Nope. Sorry. Clearing away nine mothers isn’t my definition of fun. Especially not when I don’t have a sword. The mimic was hard to manipulate, and the Gel part had me dying lots of times. This puzzle would have been alright with a well placed check point, though. A checkpoint between the Gel mothers.
2S 1E: Trivial and tedious. It takes work to herd the mud across the pit.
1S: another example of too much repetition for my taste.
1E: This room I liked, although it could have been made a bit quicker to complete. The way the babies had to go was too long, and the masses of mud were to massive
1W: A nice idea, but terribly overdone. It just felt like a lot of dull work to get the idea I had to work.
1N: Blech! This is a real showstopper room for me. This is a room that can make me want to quit a hold. However this was TCB, so I didn’t quit
As I have previously stated I seldom like clearing tar stuff, and that is when there isn’t any mothers.
2N: Such a clever room that it is entirely forgivable that it is a bit tedious
2N 1E: This room was quite okay
Also: I liked the secret room
Upper Lowest:
Nope. Not my cup of tea. My strategy mostly was to try and try and hope that it would work. 1S 1W was particularly nasty, since I had no idea what I should do to solve the room. I just went around in the middle, hoping that it would work. My overall rating for this level is a 6.
Lowest Proper:
Rather tedious, quite much of what I would call randomness, but quite fun anyway. Maybe the fact that I was so close to finish TCB spiced it up a bit. I actually give this last bit a rating of 7. Every room was alright and manageable with a little luck, and I had a little luck
However I might add that this last level didn’t feel entirely like DROD.
/dy
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