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Demon Island


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Terrors Martyr

 

Poor Sushi... :b

 

Demon Island was... ...uhh... ...eh. Some people acclaimed that it had a marvelous "movie" section. This section also was quite interactive, described very little of the plot, and had just as much action as the rest of the scenario- none (well, okay. It had some, because the player couldn't have had time to be so damned annoyed, in the beginning. But that still isn't much.) The plot of this scenario was awful, and town design was worse. I have no idea why this scenario was made, nor do I want to. If you are Bob Sushi, you will love this scenario. Everyone else? FLEE

 

AVERAGE 5

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Alcritas

 

Demons, Demons, and Demons — Oh my! To put it simply, that’s the plot of Demon Island by Ross Yancey (yancey at bmi dot net) — some island somewhere has been enslaved by Demons — go save it.

 

Quite honestly, I’m shocked that this scenario was created. On one hand, the author displays an excellent command of the scenario editor — the opening is fast and dramatic and there are many well executed special nodes — including one very impressive cinematic sequence, something I thought impossible within the BOE editor prior to witnessing it here. But on the other hand, the scenario suffers from a VERY fatal flaw.

 

Demons, Demons, and more Demons. There’s plenty of combat, problem is 95%+ of it involves nothing other than Demons (and the creatures they summon). Now, 95% of the combat being within a family of monsters might be survivable for one of three reasons — the first being a great diversity within the monster class. To cite a common example I’d point to Tatterdemalion — midway through the scenario you’ll fight many, many battles with the Avians, but it doesn’t become a problem because of the wide variety of Avians. To his credit, Yancey quickly introduces other varieties than the standard Hordling/Imp/Demon/Mung/Haakai assortment, but that’s only a little redemption. Without any custom graphics, fighting “Nightmare Imps” doesn’t come across as anything original. Big bad boss monsters — that look like Haakais, and function like tough Haakais isn’t much better. It just doesn’t do anything to relieve the monotony of the combat. The scenario might also hope to survive this flaw by making most of the combat unique and interesting, and it does do that in a few situations. The Dragons’ cave and the original encounter with the Nightmare Imps are both well thought out, and executed sequences. But there’s just not enough of these spread out through the scenario to solve the problem. Perhaps if there weren’t constant wandering groups of Demons, both in virtually every town as well as outdoors, or perhaps if there were far fewer set Demonic encounters, the few special encounters that do exist would be sufficient, but here they’re not. The final way the scenario could possible escape this flaw would be to greatly limit the overall amount of combat — 95% of only a few fights might be tolerable.

 

As alluded to earlier, however, the scenario doesn’t come anywhere close to this. To put it bluntly, less Americans died at Antietam than Demons perished by my party. But what makes this all SO much worse is that your foes aren’t pushovers. Repetitive combat is annoying to begin with, combat where you’re CONSTANTLY threatened with being wiped out grates on you that much faster. Your spellcasters better have a TON of spell points, as you’ll be casting Ravage Spirit an average of three or four times a minute while playing. Ten minutes into the scenario I was wishing for a hot key that would cast the spell without pulling up the priest menu, or anything similar. That desire never subsisted — until I quit the scenario.

 

Demon Island is designed for Very High level parties, and is rated PG.

 

My score: SUBSTANDARD 3.5

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  • 1 year later...

Alcritas

 

Demons, Demons, and Demons — Oh my! To put it simply, that’s the plot of Demon Island by Ross Yancey (yancey at bmi dot net) — some island somewhere has been enslaved by Demons — go save it.

 

Quite honestly, I’m shocked that this scenario was created. On one hand, the author displays an excellent command of the scenario editor — the opening is fast and dramatic and there are many well executed special nodes — including one very impressive cinematic sequence, something I thought impossible within the BOE editor prior to witnessing it here. But on the other hand, the scenario suffers from a VERY fatal flaw.

 

Demons, Demons, and more Demons. There’s plenty of combat, problem is 95%+ of it involves nothing other than Demons (and the creatures they summon). Now, 95% of the combat being within a family of monsters might be survivable for one of three reasons — the first being a great diversity within the monster class. To cite a common example I’d point to Tatterdemalion — midway through the scenario you’ll fight many, many battles with the Avians, but it doesn’t become a problem because of the wide variety of Avians. To his credit, Yancey quickly introduces other varieties than the standard Hordling/Imp/Demon/Mung/Haakai assortment, but that’s only a little redemption. Without any custom graphics, fighting “Nightmare Imps” doesn’t come across as anything original. Big bad boss monsters — that look like Haakais, and function like tough Haakais isn’t much better. It just doesn’t do anything to relieve the monotony of the combat. The scenario might also hope to survive this flaw by making most of the combat unique and interesting, and it does do that in a few situations. The Dragons’ cave and the original encounter with the Nightmare Imps are both well thought out, and executed sequences. But there’s just not enough of these spread out through the scenario to solve the problem. Perhaps if there weren’t constant wandering groups of Demons, both in virtually every town as well as outdoors, or perhaps if there were far fewer set Demonic encounters, the few special encounters that do exist would be sufficient, but here they’re not. The final way the scenario could possible escape this flaw would be to greatly limit the overall amount of combat — 95% of only a few fights might be tolerable.

 

As alluded to earlier, however, the scenario doesn’t come anywhere close to this. To put it bluntly, less Americans died at Antietam than Demons perished by my party. But what makes this all SO much worse is that your foes aren’t pushovers. Repetitive combat is annoying to begin with, combat where you’re CONSTANTLY threatened with being wiped out grates on you that much faster. Your spellcasters better have a TON of spell points, as you’ll be casting Ravage Spirit an average of three or four times a minute while playing. Ten minutes into the scenario I was wishing for a hot key that would cast the spell without pulling up the priest menu, or anything similar. That desire never subsisted — until I quit the scenario.

 

Demon Island is designed for Very High level parties, and is rated PG.

 

My score: SUBSTANDARD 3.5

 

As to the ton of spell points thing, ya, or you could go get some iron weapons in FS. ;)

 

I love Demon Island. I'm stuck trying to figure out how to get into the northern and southwestern caves, but being stuck is a good thing. If there's no challenge figuring stuff out there isn't much fun.

 

Knocking a scenario called Demon Island because it invovles fighting lots of demons is kinda silly. If you don't like fighting demons, or resent they sometimes threaten to eat your party is also kinda silly (being as polite as I can.) ;) But it's not like there's nothing to be done. Get iron weapons in FS, equip everyone with 1 or 2 of them (tank or casters) and go stomp on em. But for the 3 chest fight with Lord Hakaai, iron weapons will see you through everything. Lord has a perm Martyr's Shield so whacking on him isn't the best tactic. Bring your Priests up and Ravage it down.

 

Unfortunately I can't give a full review as I haven't figured out how to get past the statue blocking the SW cave, or through that red magical door in the cave to the North. Hunt hint please :)

 

As to designed for very high parties, as with FS it's doable in your 20s. More a high resists thing than level or hp matters. Get rings of fire resist n ruby charms, cloaks of magi and rings of resistance or onyx charms and you're good to go.

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