I am proud to say I have mastered this hold.
This is another great hold by Dischorran, which initially seems to just be a collection of random puzzles. After I solved the first few easy ones, though, the theme of the hold became abundantly clear - simple looking rooms with one goal that looks impossible at first, but then isn't, if you think about it carefully.
Some rooms, like Steppe
1E,
2S1W and
2N3E can be done with just a bit of fumbling, and the first-time player is likely to find and solve those kinds of rooms first. But there are some puzzles which are essentially impossible to solve without a well-thought-out plan, like Steppe
3N1E,
3N and
2S2W. Rooms of that kind far outnumber the first kind.
If, for some reason, you're a DROD superstar and can manage to beat all 36 devious puzzles, the secret rooms are a serious examination of how well you know the mechanics at hand in the required rooms - if you stumbled on the solution the first time, you'd better shape up and really figure out the room for the second approach. However, don't despair - the rooms are still solvable by us mere mortals.
If there was one thing I had to criticize about the hold, and cite as a reason I didn't give the hold a perfect score, it is that since there is such a wide variety of tasks to accomplish, it is inevitable that at least one is going to annoy you, even if you think you can do it. My least favorite rooms in this hold are
Steppe 3E and its corresponding secret room, and
Steppe 1S1E. This is because I think in these rooms, it's far more difficult to see what will happen ahead of time, and the main difficulty in the room is just figuring out what tactics to use, and what steps will not cause you to fail the room. I felt like these rooms depended required trial and error of a more frustrating and less indicative kind than rooms like
Steppe 3N2E or
1N2E, where I managed to at least gain some experience from repeated tries and got closer and closer to winning with each new try.
So, overall, I think this hold is wonderful, and I think it's a shame that not many people have played it yet. Sure, not everybody is going to be able to conquer this hold, but I hope some people can at least go see the beauty these puzzles have, even if some of them are pretty tough. I had a great time playing this hold (even if I complained a bit) and I'm sure many other people have and will too. This is, at heart, a hold that embodies the DROD spirit of solving puzzles.
Good job, Dischorran!
____________________________
Quick links to my stuff (in case you forgot where it was):
Click here to view the secret text
[Last edited by Chaco at 04-15-2012 03:37 AM]
