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File: NeverForth.hold (52 KB)
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Before he gets the chance to head out for the NeverForth Feggelin Ulympocs Beethro gets kidnapped by a man called Lord Crestin. Beethro must then fight his way through Crestin Place, Karvin Alley, Par Quay Parkway, the Dune O' Harm to finally reach his home before heading out to the Ulympocs once more.

jbluestein
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 12-23-2005
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A new hold from Garlonuss! I was looking forward to playing this, and I was pretty pleased with the result. I enjoyed playing Garlonuss's Gallery way back when, and I'm glad to see that this hold is a pretty good one as well.

Four levels, slightly themed (although the puzzles themselves vary pretty strongly throughout the theme). All of the puzzles are pretty good, with a few standouts.

Many of the rooms are some variant of horde management -- not too hard, but a greater emphasis on smiting than on problem-solving. That's not necessarily a bad thing, although it's not my favorite type of hold.

I rated this hold a 7 for fun and 5.5 brains of difficulty. It's really more like a 7.5 for me, but I rounded down and not up for the following reasons:

1) Clever lighting tricks in some rooms that actually made it pretty hard to see what you were doing.

2) Checkpoint starvation -- I think all rooms have at least one checkpoint now, but there are quite a few rooms that would have seriously benefited from a few extra. They're free...use them!

3) As said before, horde rooms aren't my favorite.

Still and all, a good effort and one I enjoyed, so I hope lots of folks play it!

Josh

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"Rings and knots of joy and grief, all interlaced and locking." --William Buck

techant
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Registered: 06-08-2004
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Maybe its just me but I am still stuck in the entrance. I have tried a number of approaches but must be missing the right one.



By the way I posted here because the entrance room would not come up in hints.

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mxvladi
Level: Smitemaster
Rank Points: 2505
Registered: 02-11-2008
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techant wrote:
By the way I posted here because the entrance room would not come up in hints.

Well, actually it *did* come up, but it seems minimap is totally messed up. I posted about it in "site" board, hopefully someone can come and fix it... EDIT: Schik fixed it.

anyway, I made a topic for entrance here.

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[Last edited by mxvladi at 03-23-2010 03:17 AM]

Tahnan
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 2460
Registered: 11-14-2005
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And, mastered. I can't say it's a perfect hold (I had to turn off alpha-blending at some point, for example, and the checkpoints were sometimes haphazard at best), but it's certainly enjoyable, and worth the time it takes to play it.

noma
Level: Smitemaster

Rank Points: 1594
Registered: 11-22-2006
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I am also not a fan of horde puzzles. And this hold, with its many horde rooms and drought on checkpoints, would not have been a hold I'd be quick to play. However, based on the above reviews, I decided to give it a shot (with alpha blending off.) And surprisingly, with just a few exceptions--most notably, Crestin Palace 1N, 2W--I really really enjoyed solving most of these puzzles. Yes, there were hordes, and yes, the hold would really benefit from more and better placed checkpoints, but still, for the most part, it was a lot of fun. That said, I didn't want to go back and optimize many of these rooms. And yet, oddly enough, I still somehow ended up in the number one spot--for now, that is. So if you're like me and generally shy away from horde holds, give this one a try. You might be surprised.
Fun: 7 (would have been an 8 with more checkpoints)
Difficulty: 4.5

martz
Level: Smiter
Rank Points: 416
Registered: 08-19-2005
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I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. It's aesthetically pleasing - clearly a lot of work has gone into the design and layout although I did end up turning alpha blending off (I'm not really keen on hidden elements in games as I personally don't think they make a good puzzle).

The puzzles on the most part were good - there were a few tedious rooms and there were a few rooms which I seemed to solve in an unintended way but there wasn't anything I got really stuck on and I generally had fun playing through this.

Difficulty: 5.5
Fun: 8

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