Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

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Crendgrim
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Crendgrim »

And you should stop your childish behavior right now and stop insulting others, just because you do not agree with their opinion.
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AxalaraFlame
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by AxalaraFlame »

Crend, you are always my nemesis. :lol2: Anyway, I edited it.
Besides, I do not simply "disagree".

Have fun guys.
IoN
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by IoN »

Under the Burning Suns and The Rise of Wesnoth are definitely my two favorite campaigns; love the storylines and characterizations in both, and they both have fun gameplay in very different ways.

I have mixed feelings on Northern Rebirth; I can empathize with both who hate it for being overly-grand in scale and those who really like how different it is.

I cannot stand Eastern Invasion. That campaign just feels so disjointed and unpolished, and the storyline is executed poorly. The South Guard is what Eastern Invasion should have looked like.
golemsci
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by golemsci »

I've been having great fun playing through the campaigns these last few months.

Favourite campaign:
Heir to the Throne. The mix of units you get is really cool, the difficulty was just right, you get to try out a good range of challenges and strategies.

Worst campaign:
I went back and finished Legend of Wesmere this week. Some of the elvish units look awesome, but I didn't like having so many battles depend on unreliable allies, too many fights against Saurians, excessively big battles.

Favourite scenario:
Descent into Darkness when you have to infiltrate a town to reach a house. I loved the change of style, felt like a ninja sneaking round the defenses.

Least favourite scenario:
The last scenario of Hammer of Thursagan. After an entertaining and open campaign, it was very frustrating to be marching through narrow tunnels for over two hours.
Rya
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Rya »

Are you guys still interesting in feedback on the mainline campaigns? I have played quite some recently, so I guess I could give some feedback on it...

My main concern with most campaigns are the following:
1. Boring map design. Often it's just lots of free fields and you put forests and mountains around and distribute some villages. There is no love to the small details. Some campaigns however have really amazing design and are looking very good (Southern Guard and Dead Water for example).
2. Too "HUGE". Controlling more than 12 units at once makes the scenario feel slow and boring and let's me lose overview as well. Some campaigns are really way too extreme. Some campaigns are really fun early on but get too extreme in the end.
Heir to the Throne
The map design is very boring in this one and it also suffers the "too huge" aspect on several maps. It seems to contain a strong part of the story and the story is also fine in it, but I never could get myself to finish it, even on easy it's just too massive with the hundreds of level 2 units both me and the enemy have in some scenarios. I really want to play through the campaign fully for the story, but the design stops me. Wish it would be reworked completely.
A Tale Of Two Brothers
Short, balanced and fun. I liked it. And easy is actually "easy" and not "hard" (unlike HttT, which is hard on easy).
The South Guard
One of my favorite campaigns. Very beautifully designed maps with surprises and all that stuff. It's also easy and good to get into. No scenario is too massive.
The Eastern Invasion
Map design is nice, but I have mixed feelings about the campaign. Some maps seem to be incredibly hard while others are pretty doable. Sometimes I lose a scenario without having done something that I could have predicted before wrongly.
Liberty
Good average campaign if you ask me.
Descent into Darkness
Mixed feelings about this one too. It's kinda on the level of eastern invasion. Some scenarios are just stupid, others are really good. And the ending was incredibly disappointing. I think it could have been executed better, even if the overall message wasn't changed.
The Hammer of Thursagan
Kinda boring map design, but there is worse. The last scenario is HORRIBLE. I couldn't convince myself to finish it, even though I could have easily done so with my manpower.
An Orcish Incursion
Found the map designed fairly boring... it seems more than a wesnoth tech demo rather than a campaign. I finished it, though, so it was fun enough anyway.
Legend of Wesmere
Also suffers boring map design. Haven't really played far into it as I was waiting for the devs to fix the multiplayer campaign functionalities for it.
Delfador's Memoirs
I liked it because it had a lot of versatility. There are some bugs with your heroes resetting to a previous level (for example if you level up Kalenz he will lose his bonus HP later on again). I had wished for a more epic ending, though.
Dead Water
Beautiful map design, however the first scenario is horrible. It is REALLY hard, even when selecting "very easy" as difficulty. Honestly, I had to cheat myself through that scenario, afterwards the game was fine and fun, though! Currently still playing it.
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
TheGreatRings
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by TheGreatRings »

IoN wrote:I have mixed feelings on Northern Rebirth; I can empathize with both who hate it for being overly-grand in scale and those who really like how different it is.
The grand scale is part of what I like about it. Its nice to command an army for a change, rather than the small bands usually available in mainline.
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Krake
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Krake »

On a general note there are two kinds of scenarios I don't like: Cave crawling since it takes a long time and requires patience yet little tactics or strategy (simply about managing your troops at the numerous bottlenecks) and secondly scenarios where you are out of control for example having an ai-ally doing stupid stuff all the time and wrecking your strategy. The first kind is by far the most common of these and it seems to be very hard to make good cave scenarios. Clearly for fun gameplay one needs room for tactical maneuvers which is sort of undermined by the main principle of caves. Therefor any bad cave scenario (most cave scenarios are imo bad) would compete for worst scenario.

Like many people said before me NR may be the worst campaign much because of the (even relatively speaking tedious) cave scenarios.

As for favorites I would have to say Dead Water as on the top 3 at least much because of the many different (although sometimes frustrating) challenges, yet the number 1 imo is DiD. This is due to the good scenarios (maybe not the best ones but still good) but may haps mostly because of the story. Malin is a nice character. He has flaws like any human, he is naive, impulsive and proud but he has nicer traits as well such as loyalty and wits. I also like the portrait of the culture he lives in with such fear of the undead that it clouds the judgement of nearly everyone Malin encounters. Then there is the moral issue: is Malin in his rights or is his acs evil? No matter what one might think of this it adds depth to the story and finally he dies (I mean really not merely turns into a lich) which is a sort of sad ending which is something very rare among the wesnothian campaigns, both UMC and mainline.

Judging favorite scenario is hard since I think scenarios are very much context dependent and therefor hard to rank independently of their campaigns. So again on a general note I would say I like the kind where you will need unusual and forceful strategies to succeed and preferably flavored with a nice quirk that can be used tactically (an example of such quirks would be the breaking ice in "Beginning of the Revenge" in DiD).
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Crow_T
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Crow_T »

I've played some fun cave scenarions in UMCs, they were pretty wide open for the most part though- I like caves as an environment, but agree that bottlenecks can be a bit annoying.

Besides hacking scenario files, I wonder if there will ever be a time when players can guide the ai a bit, as in give them a focus and/or preferred recruits for some real teamwork.

I have a love/hate with AOI, it's really fun but ends so abruptly, I feel it could be at least 2X longer. Things are just getting heated up when it ends! Maybe someday I will attempt to expand it a bit :hmm:
Zalminen
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Zalminen »

The Great Rings wrote:
IoN wrote:I have mixed feelings on Northern Rebirth; I can empathize with both who hate it for being overly-grand in scale and those who really like how different it is.
The grand scale is part of what I like about it. Its nice to command an army for a change, rather than the small bands usually available in mainline.
I agree. The sheer epicness of the battles makes Northern Rebirth memorable and I'd easily classify it as one of the best campaigns.
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by revansurik »

Favourite campaigns:
The Rise of Wesnoth: Nice story, fun to play; also, I particularly enjoyed fighting across an island that is about to be conquered, fighting invading armies and travelling all around it.
Under the Burning Suns: fun, different, full of pickable items; but what I liked the most about it was the way it gave wings to my imagination, with all its secrets and mysteries.
Northern Rebirth: Like so many others, I lenjoyed the large scale battles, and especially the fact that I got to play with an Ancient Lich and a Great Mage at once :twisted: However, it spoiled some other campaigns a bit for me; I couldn't help but imagine how the allegedly mighty armies of the likes of Konrad and Kalenz would be crushed like bugs in battles such as those of Eastern Flank and Showdown :-P

Worst campaign:
The Hammer of Thursagan: Didn't like it, just... didn't like it. It just makes me go from west to east killing enemy leaders, some scenarios are far too easy, even in the medium difficulty, and there's always that annoying Underlevels scenario, which I took more than a 100 turns to finish when I first played it.
Eastern Invasion: The story is a bit too forced, I think: so Gweddry is faced with a huge army and simply flees north? No wonder that Great Mage in the king's room calls him a coward. Maybe it would have made more sense if he had withdrawn to Weldyn and been comission by Konrad II to go north and find that library in the middle of Lake Vrug. Besides, with Gweddry gone north, who is fighting the eastern hordes, and who has warned the king about their attack? Also, maybe adding a female heroine would have made the story a little bit more interesting. :-P

Favourite scenarios:
Clearwater Port, in TRoW; I just loved defending the city, got to advance lots of units; not counting that staying and fighting instead of fleeing in the ships felt great. :-D
Infested Caves, in NR: I love fighting against enemies that are also fightin each other, it feels so chaotic and brutal. :twisted:
Xenophobia, in EI: liked it for the same reason of Infested Caves, even though it was practically a humanxdwarf, orcxelf fight.

Least favourite scenario:
The Underlevels in THoT, for aforesaid reasons; Evacuation in EI, for the way it forces me to spend all my hard-won gold recalling units, and punishing me with their deaths if I do differently; those two scenarios in LoW in which we get to fight saurians at their own turn. Seriously, fighting saurians is friggin' annoying already, but fighting them in a sandy/swampy terrain is just disheartening. :augh:
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If you enjoyed A Song of Fire, War of the Jewel, Aria of the Dragon-Slayer and Soldier of Wesnoth, you may like my new project: Star of Chaos, a science-fiction mystery/adventure intended to be a trilogy
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by emdot »

I am not original in my choice of best campaigns:

TRoW just a notch above UtBS.

UtBS loses because of low replayability. In many scenarios you have just one optimum path and when you deviate from it too much you will have problems in this and/or next scenarios.

Both campaigns have superb maps, dialogs, art.

Least favourite campaign:

EI - just don't like it.

Best scenario: never can decide which one prefer: Clearwater Port (TRoW) or Out of the Frying Pan (UtBS)

Worst scenario: final battle in HttT. Anti-clima(c)tic, way below quality of other major battles in BfW.

I don't understand critique of final scenario in DiD. This is one of the best scenarios in BfW. It shows depressing fate of main protagonist, how his sacrifice was meaningless and all his dreams are only dust. What other authors would provide with tons of pompous exchanges in bubbles or hundreds of pages of low-quality fantasy here is shown in one beautiful setting.
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Elfarion
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Elfarion »

I really enjoyed playing SotBE - for some weird reason I find Orcs awesome to play. LoW is also great. For a new player who has finished the easy campaigns and wants to dive deeper into wesnoth strategy it's just perfect. On higher difficulties it's still challenging. And I like the story of two friends diverging from each other. Though I wonder how on Irdya you could possibly get your hands on a Lich's eyes. Did Crelanu cut them out right after the Lich had finished the ritual and his corpse was'nt rotten yet? UtbS has a great story and some interesting changes about the gameplay. On the other hand it was kinda sad to play my way all through this cool world of Wesnoth and then being confronted with its ruin :cry:

Worst campaign is imo NR. I'm sorry, I just don't like it. The story is cool. But the battles are way too large-scaled considering that this is actually an uprooting of slaves. Also the romance between Tallin and the Princess just pops out of nowhere. There is no dialogue leading to it - nothing. Just the few lines in Eastern Flank when she sends her Marshall away and announces to stay with Tallin and he blushes. Makes me think that this is no actual love but rather some psycological issue because Tallin freed her from the Orcs. So now she thinks, she's somehow committed to him and mistakes that feeling for love.

I can't decide on a best or worst scenario. But I agree that HttT deserves a better ending.
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naomi
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by naomi »

South Guard was awesome. The storyline was decent, and while most of the scenarios were pretty standard, I liked the large number of high-level loyal units you ended up with if you bothered to protect/level your loyal peasants.

HttT or South Guard are probably the first scenarios most players play, which is why I think it's so fantastic that the art for both of them is so gorgeous. I really didn't like HttT as a campaign, though. The Scepter of Fire scenario, with the randomized underground map, was a lot of fun, but the campaign overall doesn't get anywhere near the top of my list. Gameplay was okay, but I had issues not attempting to walk Konrad off a cliff, and if you want to walk your stereotypical generally frustrating main character off a cliff, you'll probably grind your teeth to dust by the end of the 23 scenarios.

Dead Water is fantastic. I love playing Mermen (yes, even the silly Spearman mermen), and it was great to get an ENTIRE CAMPAIGN centered totally around mermen.
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by Elfarion »

naomi wrote:South Guard was awesome. The storyline was decent
Which branch did you chose? Have you tried both? When I played it the first time (it was the first campaign I ever played, because the tutorial suggested it), I took the elven branch because it was easier. But later I decided to investigate the bandit's branch and found it more satisfying. It's way more epic.
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naomi
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Re: Best and Worst MAINLINE campaigns and scenarios

Post by naomi »

Elfarion wrote:
naomi wrote:South Guard was awesome. The storyline was decent
Which branch did you chose? Have you tried both? When I played it the first time (it was the first campaign I ever played, because the tutorial suggested it), I took the elven branch because it was easier. But later I decided to investigate the bandit's branch and found it more satisfying. It's way more epic.
I preferred the thief branch too, even though it was a pain in the butt trying to beat the scenario right after Choice In the Fog. The elvish final battle isn't even a proper battle, but at least Sir Gerrick survived.

My poor Sir Gerrick :cry:
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