A couple of specific room critiques:
(note - the reason I'm picking on these two rooms is that I really have little to say about most of the other rooms except "
they're great"
. I think these two rooms are problematic mainly because they don't keep up to the excellent standard).
L3 2N1E:
Click here to view the secret text
×Ok, so the room is solvable now - but it's also extremely easy. Basically, there's absolutely no thought required in this room, just the patience necessary to kill the one-thousand or so roaches necessary to beat it. The only tactic necessary is using the cell topology to your advantage - but by the time you get to this point, that's already second nature. If it were a stand-alone room, it would be a decent room; surrounded by better rooms based on the same principles, there's nothing new added by it. I'd say scrap it.
L3 2N:
Click here to view the secret text
×This one is a nice room, but it does have a major problem: checkpoint placement. There are two sub-problems here:
A - There are four orbs in the center area. Three of them are relatively harmless - if you hit them, you have a rather easy (to veterans of the first half of this level) task of clearing some roaches. The fourth causes all hell to break loose. The checkpoint is placed next to this orb, meaning that if you accidently step onto it with the sword in the wrong direction when you're not ready for it (as I did), you've overwritten your save in a very bad situation.
B - Once you do open that orb, there's a rather time-consuming task of coordinating yourself and the mimic around the room trying to get the roaches and goblins. Problem is, there are no accessible checkpoints at this point - I cleared all but one of the goblins and all but 6 of the queens before a misstep caused me to have to restart. An additonal checkpoint somewhere in the outer zone - preferrably in the upper right or bottom left corners (so you have to clear one side before you get there from the mimic potion) or, best yet, in both - would be very useful.
Hope this helps,
Eytan
[Edited by eytanz on 07-17-2003 at 11:30 AM]
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