bwross
Level: Smiter
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I'll concur that the ending text was disappointing.

enzi666
Level: Master Delver

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I had a great time with GatEB. The only bad thing I could say about it is that it's too short/easy and some love/hate elements like tar and the tar mother were completely absent.

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Jints
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[Last edited by Jints at 11-17-2014 09:09 PM]

Boris Carl Orff
Level: Goblin

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I'm also a less experienced player and I am finding the game very enjoyable, though difficult. What I really don't like about this game is the help page... as it suggests that one should play Advanced Concepts to learn about game mechanics etc. Great. Now I'm getting addicted to that! As well of course as my KDD, JtRH & TCB discounted 'holds' which are also keeping me from playing my original purchase of GatEB.

Edit: Having now sampled & played different versions/holds I personally would have liked to have seen more written (scrolls/tips/hints etc.) other than what's in the tutorial. I prefer the scrolls' text rather than transcripts of the spoken word as I can go back to them repeatedly - as in KDD. Just my opinion.

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[Last edited by Boris Carl Orff at 04-17-2012 11:39 PM]

mrimer
Level: Legendary Smitemaster

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RoboBob3000 wrote: Ending Text...

Yes, this was purely an oversight. I'm sorry about that. Fixed for 4.0.2.

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[Last edited by mrimer at 04-26-2012 02:56 AM]

increpare
Level: Delver

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The only other drod game I played to any extent was TCB (which I made good progress in, but didn't finish), but my feelings are like this :

There were a lot of pretty fluffy rooms - it's possible for something to be elementary/accessible and still interesting/non-trivial (maybe even hard ) , but that wasn't the case for a number of rooms (I think I experienced this the most in the castle area that had rooms around the inside with lots of arrow-related stuff).

The room that introduced people to cracks I had a bad experience with (looking for cracks can be a bit of an eyestrain - it felt a bit punishing rather than interesting).

The plot was one of the things that I really liked about TCB, and something that I didn't like about GatEB. The plot didn't make much sense in gateb - it seemed like a very light dressing.
1 - so I have to find these four heroes. This felt a bit rote/mechanical to me.
2 - then when I go to the next area I have to find them again, with no convincing motivation. This caused me to despair a little.

(I'll note that in both of these cases I accidentally forgot to rescue one of the heroes, and had to go back and visit each of the dungeons until I found them).

The ending made no sense to me.

I hold the DROD games to really high standards (standards that they've set themselves ) - higher than maybe any other game series. So, take these comments in that context.

While GatEB is by normal standards a pretty good game, I'm still recommending TCB to people, regardless of skill level.

Keiya
Level: Delver
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If I'd played TCB before JTRH I wouldn't be here. It's the *worst* place to introduce people, both mechanically and story-wise.

And yeah, the ending is awkward, almost certainly due to a hasty reskin.



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Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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I'll defend the ending, inexplicably.

Jatopian
Level: Smitemaster
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Why are there Four Sand Keys? I get that we needed a reason to visit the Akandian levels, and I liked all of the rooms in which one gets keys, but it just screams lazy MacGuffin. I was more or less down with the story up to that point.

The bonus meta-puzzle... I'm just glad I like to hit checkpoints and save victory demos. I feel bad for those who don't.

Aurora having no lines the first time she appeared was a little saddening. When she did finally speak, her line was alright, but it was just one line... additionally, while the voice actor playing her was alright, she just didn't have a voice that seemed compatible with an Aurora Bladeseeker, if you understand what I mean. She sounded almost like a child.

The end of the spider cave bored me. I preferred Snuddick Frolem.

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[Last edited by Jatopian at 05-28-2012 07:49 AM : + Aurora stuff]

Hyeron
Level: Delver

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$0.02 from someone who's 2/3 through KDD and finished GatEB - again

On to the gripes then, as I think I said everything that felt right in that other thread.

I said I loved and hated the

Another minor gripe is having to go through four dungeons several times in a row. Not a bad thing per se: it allows the player to give up on a puzzle temporarily and not be limited to other rooms of the same dungeon. But it felt rather poorly introduced - at least as far as the Akandian part is concerned. It's your average RPG cliché, it's almost expected, so it's not entirely bad. But it just felt like "wait, we need a reason to place 4 more dungeons, let's slap a 'four keys' thing on it and be done with it".

The ending is also a bit of a letdown. While

And that's about it. GatEB has been an immensely enjoyable romp as a whole. It may be a bit on the easy side, but that's all good. I feel much better prepared for whatever other holds have in store, and playing a game that's heavily focused on puzzles doesn't bother me in the least, so it's all for the best (heck, why would I be here otherwise). So far so good.

Oh. And very, very minor. But


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[Last edited by mrimer at 05-28-2012 08:02 PM]

Jacob
Level: Smitemaster
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Hyeron wrote:

Click here to view the secret text

×Worse still, the ending sequence - unless I'm badly mistaken - talks about someone in Rasarus and not in Tueno. The zone is clearly called "Tuenan Coast", so I always assumed Englos Keep was a Tuenan outpost... You can imagine how long it took to check every nook and cranny in Rasarus... for nothing. On the other hand, stating "someone in Tueno" would probably have made it a bit too obvious.

Thanks for the feedback. But, what are you referring to when you say "ending sequence" (do you mean the end-game, postmastery rooms, end message on completion...)?

We should probably check that out if it does indeed say "in Rasarus" though I can't think where that could be..

Englos Keep is definitely in Tueno (Englos is a Tuenan town and the player reaches it directly from the Tuenan Coast without going on a boat).

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Hyeron
Level: Delver

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Ah, you are right. I must have read that wrong the first time around. My own fault if I had to run around like a rat. Apologies.

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Keiya
Level: Delver
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I don't understand people saying they had to run around for ages to find

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Mouse
Level: Master Delver

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The thing I haven't liked so far is that when you first get team mates in "Whittled River Valley" there is no explanation on *how* to interact with them.
Then I worked out you could click on them.
Later on you're told you can use TAB - I wish that was mentioned earlier. Doing "Whittled River Valley" 4 North without that knowledge was annoying.

TFMurphy
Level: Smitemaster
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Mouse wrote:
The thing I haven't liked so far is that when you first get team mates in "Whittled River Valley" there is no explanation on *how* to interact with them.

Um, at the end of the initial conversation with Gulric Dawnmace in Whittled River Valley:1N, it states "[Press TAB or click on a squad mate to command them]".

You can't solve that initial room without seeing that conversation. So the only possible way to miss that instruction is to cancel the tutorial conversation by pressing Space, or leaving the room quickly after triggering it. Now, while I'd admit this isn't a completely ideal or clear way of making sure the player knows how to interact with squad mates, it's certainly not "no explanation at all".

Mouse
Level: Master Delver

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TFMurphy wrote:

Mouse wrote:
The thing I haven't liked so far is that when you first get team mates in "Whittled River Valley" there is no explanation on *how* to interact with them.

Um, at the end of the initial conversation with Gulric Dawnmace in Whittled River Valley:1N, it states "[Press TAB or click on a squad mate to command them]".

You can't solve that initial room without seeing that conversation. So the only possible way to miss that instruction is to cancel the tutorial conversation by pressing Space, or leaving the room quickly after triggering it. Now, while I'd admit this isn't a completely ideal or clear way of making sure the player knows how to interact with squad mates, it's certainly not "no explanation at all".

You know - I never saw that conversation. I must have gone in the room & out again straight away.

Reminder to self: never play DROD with a 3 year old near the keyboard - you miss important stuff.

bwross
Level: Smiter
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TFMurphy wrote:
Um, at the end of the initial conversation with Gulric Dawnmace in Whittled River Valley:1N, it states "[Press TAB or click on a squad mate to command them]".

You can't solve that initial room without seeing that conversation. So the only possible way to miss that instruction is to cancel the tutorial conversation by pressing Space, or leaving the room quickly after triggering it.

There is a third possibility... that message is displayed from (3,28), which puts the box down at the bottom of the screen, well away from the dialogue boxes. It could have just been missed.

Radiant
Level: Moderator

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I've just finished the game (yes, I actually bought a new computer so that I could run GATEB). The game is nice overall, but I feel I agree with the comments above - storywise, the characters are too flat and the ending is unsatisfying; gamewise, the large empty areas don't really add anything and the game is too short. Unlike TCB and JTRH, this game had me go "wait, that's all?" at the end.

$.02

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Mouse
Level: Master Delver

Rank Points: 246
Registered: 04-21-2005
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Resurrecting an old thread now that I *think* I've mastered GatEB.

Things I don't like:
- The whole traipsing around to work out where to find the master wall. Very annoying.
- When I went secret hunting the usual method of restoring to near where I wanted to go to then going from there didn't work for one or two secrets. Or to put that another way: some secret room aren't accessible when you first think "Hey there might be a secret room over there"

- After all that mucking about to find the master wall the area on the other side was quite small. I was left thinking "That was a lot of messing around for not much"

Overall though, I liked GatEB - it was fun.

navithmastero
Level: Smitemaster

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Mouse wrote:
- After all that mucking about to find the master wall the area on the other side was quite small. I was left thinking "That was a lot of messing around for not much"

The master wall?



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