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Cave of No Return


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Cave of No Return

Mac/Windows

 

Author: Eldiran

Rating:

Difficulty:

Version:

 

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Composite Score: 3.3/5.0

 

Best: 0.00% (0/21)

Good: 38.10% (8/21)

Average: 57.14% (12/21)

Substandard: 4.76% (1/21)

Poor: 0.00% (0/21)

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Keywords:

Edited by SylaeBot
Automated Sybot edit; worker IPB::csrThread/vanadium
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From TM on the CSR:

 

Too long of a dungeon, not enough humor/suspense to properly define either, and not enough balls to persue one with the pomp that a scenario like this needs. It could be either a Farmhands! or a RoR-BoA but better by a great deal, but it ends up being neither by trying to hit both and failing. Worth the playthrough, and I'll try to expound on myself later. Still... Eh, I wanted a bit more. But this is coming from the itch for an early masterpiece more than the desire for decent, early works, and it's definitely worth the play.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From an unknown reviewer on the CSR:

 

This is a straight dungeon crawl, and works fairly well. There's cool stuff to explore, and later on there's continued revelations of what has come before. The writing is solid and occasionally amusing or clever. The coding gives some interest to exploration, even if there is too heavy a reliance on activate hidden creature calls. Several of the levels have plenty of detail.

 

The combat is quite tough for a first-level party without regular use of the load-saved-game spell. However, it is consistently tough, so scaling difficulty works. Having to sit through cut scenes before battles, though, did provide an incentive not to reload.

 

The main problem is returning to town. This is a linear dungeon, with some levels taking many twists and turns, so it can take minutes to make your weaving way home though a few screens to rest, or many screens to visit the home town and its services. There should have been ways to shortcut most of this return trip.

 

[rating]GOOD[/rating]

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From Morgan on the CSR:

 

Frighteningly overrated.

 

I think many of the raters here are falling into the trap of rating this scenario highly when there is very little to compare it to - when scenario designing really kicks in, we will see scenarios that are far more worthy of scores of 7 or above.

 

As it is, we have a scenario with little to no plot, with unnecessarily large outdoors, with attempts at basic humour. Maybe if I played it again, I'd see what was so special that has made everyone rate it up so high.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From The Creator on the CSR:

 

There's no real plot - not one worth mentioning, anyway. It's more a collection of fun stuff - fights, jokes, and the odd puzzle - rolled into one main dungeon. Nothing very ambitious, but it is fun. Good first scenario.

 

[rating]GOOD[/rating]

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From Linthar on the CSR:

 

Of the three third party scenarios out there I found this one the least fun. I won't comment on the combat difficulty, because I entered it with a party that went through ROR and as such my priest had level 4 repel spirit which combined with the primary opponents being undead made it very easy.

 

Its an average scenario in most ways, but the humor just didn't fit me well, and all it did was detract from the scenario for me. The plot also didn't come out favorably in my mind, probbally because it was very much based in the humor.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From shy guy on the CSR:

 

Cave of No Return? I was able to come and go as I pleased, so perhaps this cave needs a new name. How 'bout Just Another Old Cave Full Of Undead?

 

Actually, this is not a bad scenario. The first half is comprised of very bland stuff as you head over to the cave. Attempts at humor usually fall flat, though I did get a chuckle or two. Nodework was fairly good. Cut scenes were used well, if not overused a bit. (But they're so fun to design!)

 

The problem with this dungeon crawl is it's a pain to exit the cave and head back to town to stock up and such. Either create a couple short cuts back to town, or cut the player off completely. The alternative is just poor game design.

 

So play it. It's kind of fun. Let's just hope some real scenarios will come out soon.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From S M Adventurer on the CSR:

 

This scenario was quite humorous. Those undead that were insulting each other at the beginning of the cave was so funny. Also, those ghouls playing chess, very comical.

I had a pretty good time playing it.

 

My Rating: [rating]GOOD[/rating]

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From Wizcozski on the CSR:

 

Couple of quick + and - things:

 

- dialogue language goes back and forth from decent to unsophisticated...kind of annoying

+ nicely done on the outisde layout and the town layout

- WAY too long dialogues when you're talking to someone in town, could be shorter easily

+ great lay out of the cave

+ loved the descriptions of the undead, especially with the demon arising from the body

+ short cut scenes worked to your advantage (work on the language a little bit)

+ great architectural symmetry of the cave

+ cool puzzle with the graves

- extremely anti-climatic ending, as TGM already said the lich's EVIL PLAN OMG LOL was pathetic

 

All in all, it was pretty fun. I agree with a lot of what's already been said -- it's a good start.

 

[rating]GOOD[/rating]

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From Imban on the CSR:

 

It's only called that because, with all the backtracking you'd have to do, you eventually just realize it's easier to not return...

 

Treasure balance perhaps too low.

 

The sort of scenario that's nice now, but will be boring and mediocre in a while.

 

Most of the scenario's action taking place on the spiraling and linear second floor of the Cave of No Return is really painful, though. More painful than I had remembered, so here are some negative points.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From Lazarus on the CSR:

 

Pretty good scenario. The designer clearly intended this to be a humorous scenario, and in several places he succeeded. But in some spots he almost couldn't decide between humor and seriousness. This really stood out to me with the villain. The villain (a lich) is obviously supposed to be a joke, but it just didn't do it for me. His plan wasn't silly enough to make me laugh but not serious enough to even bother paying attention too; I thought that a truly inept villain that is constantly tripping over his own feet would be more effective, or maybe a villain with a very odd motivation. Instead the only thing that was remotely funny about the lich was that he was an exaggeration of the standard "super villain" who has some far out scheme for taking over the world.

 

I still thought it was fairly enjoyable, with some good moments like the arguing soul crystal and the forgetful sorcerer Balu.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From tanstaafl on the CSR:

 

For a quick scenario I found it enjoyable. The humour wasn't really to my taste, i.e. undead name calling 'fartface', and the irreverent soul crystal, though did smile is a few places.

 

Puzzle was good. IMO easy to guess how to find the answer, without any fiddly painful bits.

 

I felt it needed to be longer to serve its name.

 

[rating]AVERAGE[/rating]

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From an unknown reviewer on the CSR:

 

What's wrong with dungeons? Cave of No Return is a nice little scenario. It's got humor, puzzles, some fair combat. In many ways I like it more than all those "epic" scenarios people like to make. It seems like all it takes to make a scenario "epic" these days is to have all the goodguys die horribly (Frostbite/Lord Putidus/A Perfect Forest/Mad Ambition) or to have large rooms full of hacked up bodies (generally the goodguys). Cave of No Return is a quick little scenario, but it has some good rewards, sidequests, and fairly high replay value.

 

[rating]GOOD[/rating]

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