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File: 67-th Grayman adventures.drh (7.2 KB)
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My first RPG-hold, hopefully enjoyable. It's not very easy, but not really hard either. Well, enjoy...

CuriousShyRabbit
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This is a linear hold in which the player does not really get to make choices about Grayman's path. If the player makes the wrong decision guesses wrong about what's in the next room, he has to start over. Some of the individual rooms have mini-puzzles in them. Others just have free stuff.

Dischorran
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admin wrote:
It's not very easy, but not really hard either.

Indeed, it's far easier to define this hold in terms of what it's not than what it is. It's not carefully put together; text is rushed, puzzles don't always work cleanly, and scripting is irregular. It's not complex, nor does it even present large-scale problems beyond which of the five enemies in a room to kill before the others, especially since killing all enemies is enforced. It's not especially fun.

There are the seeds of interesting puzzles in here, largely based on the ordered killing of monsters within a tightly limited health supply. Too bad they're not developed.

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skell
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Can't say anything that wasn't said already - pretty easy and straightforward. Linearity of this hold is its weakest side. And overused hot-tiles - but that's just my personal feeling. I just don't like the way hot tiles work - pretty irritating. But despite what I just said, Hot-tiles are pretty well used here .

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eytanz
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This hold contains a linear series of puzzles, most of which have one solution, or a small set of very similar solutions with very similar outcomes. This makes it a lot more straightforward than, say, the second half of the original hold.

While I think the puzzles in this hold are sometimes a bit crude - but so were the first user holds for DROD - I don't want to dismiss the genre of "linear, straightforward puzzles". I think it may well appeal to people who don't like big, complex holds where your decisions may have unforseeable consequences.


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[Last edited by eytanz at 09-28-2008 02:12 AM]

Blondbeard
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I liked the hold. It was easy, and I had fun playing it. Plus it ought to have some optimization value. Seven for fun, three brains.

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[Last edited by Blondbeard at 09-26-2008 12:58 PM]

Terry
Level: Delver

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I actually thought this was pretty cool - it was satisfying to work out the right order to tackle rooms and hot tiles, even if it wasn't particularly taxing. I found I had to use quick loading and saving quite a bit though - for a game that forces a linear path through, there were a few too many cases where you could get stuck a few rooms after you'd made a mistake, which means reloading and trying again. A nice way to solve that would be just to ensure that you don't separate the "puzzle decisions" from the obstacles - if they're in the same room, at least you can retry if you have the wrong approach.

For me the big weak point was the writing - it seemed a bit rushed and heavy handed. Mightn't be a bad idea to use a lighter touch in future?

All that said, though, it was a pretty enjoyable hold that definitely had its moments - hope to see more like it!

zwetschenwasser
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This is probably going to sound stupid, but is there a special page for downloading RPG holds, since the DROD page apparently doesn't have them?

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AtkinsSJ
Level: Master Delver

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zwetschenwasser wrote:
This is probably going to sound stupid, but is there a special page for downloading RPG holds, since the DROD page apparently doesn't have them?

Well, at the moment there are few enough holds level-sets that you can just download the hold from the first post where it is attached. This goes for all holds, in fact.

I'd guess that a proper level-sets page is in planning.

AtkinsSJ
Level: Master Delver

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Registered: 12-23-2005
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OK, I think this might now be broken. I can't drop the trapdoor in Deep Underground: The Entrance. Neither can I defeat all the monsters in the room below.

Of course, I could be just really bad at this game, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong.

eytanz
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AtkinsSJ wrote:
OK, I think this might now be broken. I can't drop the trapdoor in Deep Underground: The Entrance. Neither can I defeat all the monsters in the room below.

Of course, I could be just really bad at this game, but I'm pretty sure there's something wrong.

The hold was not affected by the patch. Dropping the trapdoor was never possible, nor was it ever meant to be possible.

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AtkinsSJ
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Bah, I just worked out how to do it. I feel very stupid.

Tim
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Samuel wrote:
i give it 6 for fun and 3 for brains.

Wait. You are asking hints in every room and you still think it's 3 for brains?

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Banjooie
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This is frankly probably as close to single-room puzzles as DROD RPG gets. It's a very good way to teach someone how DROD RPG works; it starts with 'get this room right', and ends around 'you have to get the rooms in order right'. Since the main hold ends up being 'get the hold right', it's a pretty good leadup, I'd say.

Tahnan
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So I played through this hold, or perhaps re-played, since I was surprised to see that I had scores for it as if I'd played it before. (Yay, terrible memory!) At any rate, I came here to rate the hold...and discovered that I'd rated it before. More interestingly, I was about to give it a higher rating than I had before.

What changed my mind? I think it's that I discovered how terrible I am at RPG. The complaints above, i.e. that it's so linear, that every monster has to be killed, and so forth, are absolutely accurate. But after struggling through level after level of other RPG holds, where I would discover that I'd used a key in the wrong place an hour earlier, I've come to appreciate the fact that this is so straightforward. Sure, you may have to restore once you see that you took a potion too soon--but you realize that quickly, which is kind of a relief.

Is this terribly hard? No, not really. But it's also a much, much gentler introduction to the way RPG works than nearly anything else I've seen, and I appreciate that about it.

Sillyman
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I just played through this hold as a quick refresher on how to play DROD RPG after being gone for so long. I must say, it is quite a well-made easy hold. You're challenged, but never really frustrated, thanks to the separation of the puzzles.

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west.logan
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The bad:
Too often I found myself restarting the level or the entire game altogether. It was impossible to predict what was in the next room and whether I should use potions before going over hot tiles and into the next room, or whether I should save potions for when I came back after crossing hot tiles. Once I entered the other room, it was impossible to restart the previous room without loading a save file. I think I found that the most frustrating: having to restart simply because I didn't know what was ahead.


The good:
I enjoyed the little bit of story, the rooms seemed well-thought out, and the hot tiles/health were placed so one could often conserve health while on the hot tiles before using the potion. It was entertaining, fairly straight-forward as to what had to be done next, and the puzzles weren't frustrating. All in all, I very much enjoyed the entertainment and I'm glad the hold was made (hopefully there will be more in the future). All of the powerups were nice and gave the feeling that one was growing steadily stronger. Thank you very much!

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TFMurphy
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west.logan wrote:
The bad:
Too often I found myself restarting the level or the entire game altogether. It was impossible to predict what was in the next room and whether I should use potions before going over hot tiles and into the next room, or whether I should save potions for when I came back after crossing hot tiles. Once I entered the other room, it was impossible to restart the previous room without loading a save file. I think I found that the most frustrating: having to restart simply because I didn't know what was ahead.

You're going to find this more and more common as you play RPG holds, simply because this is how the genre is designed: multi-room puzzles are the norm. Sometimes it's lenient and there are many different routes, but knowing what's ahead before you see it will always offer more advantages than not, and solving earlier parts of a hold more optimally will almost always make later parts much easier.

It sounds more like you haven't come to grip with the save system yet. Since rooms are no longer a self-contained unit of a hold, you are at liberty to create your own saves at any time. More specifically, you have a Quick Save and Quick Load key easily available: the F5 key will create a Quick Save for the current hold, and the F9 key will load the current hold's Quick Save file.

If you use the Quick Save before making exploratory decisions, it's fast and easy to simply Quick Load after you've investigated a few rooms ahead and then wish to make a more informed choice: this is pretty much analogous to restarting a room in DROD, providing you get into the habit of manually using Quick Save when you just want to try something.

This doesn't eliminate restarts, of course, because you'll often see better decisions you could've made or places where previously used resources would've been more useful. For that, you want to create more permanent saves so that you don't lose a lot of work when you go back further than your Quick Save. (But with harder holds, sometimes you may have to redo entire levels to better prepare yourself, so keep that in mind too.)

I'd also suggest you read the DROD RPG - Basic Optimizing thread. Whilst it mostly covers how to maximise your score, it does also cover some of the strategies with regards to how Attack and Defense help you, and includes an Excel spreadsheet further down that helps a lot in making decisions on what Power and Shield Gems you should go for.

west.logan
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Thank you very much, that was helpful. And yes, I haven't exactly come to terms with using the mouse/saving. My tendency is to keep my fingers on the keyboard.

The Excel file is especially helpful, thanks for pointing that out!

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west.logan
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Like Tahnan, I've replayed this hold.
Unlike Tahnan, I remembered I had previously played it.
Like Tahnan, I enjoyed it the second time because I've learned how bad I am at RPG. I'm nervously proceeding through Tendry's Tale for the fourth or fifth time and this time I think I might be able to get past level 7 at last. Cautiously leaving behind health and enemies that are stronger than me to come back and get their guarded treasure later.

So I appreciated the linearity of the hold: something I could beat without having to backtrack multiple rooms or even levels and that required planning out a room.

It's also the easiest hold to date and this game needs more of those

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Dischorran
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west.logan wrote:
It's also the easiest hold to date and this game needs more of those

Wait, when did we lose RPG Test? That was a comfortably easy hold.

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kieranmillar
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I feel like a lot of early reviews in this thread have missed the point of this hold, which is that it is simply hot tile puzzles. The hold itself is linear and short, sure, but you wouldn't really want anything else when the main gameplay is timing when to pick up health potions so you can kill all of the enemies without having all of your health burn away as you travel between them.

The hold was good fun and is something different to all of the others out there. Like Paycheck, it's a hold full of small puzzles primarily themed around a particular mechanic exclusive to DROD RPG.