Expansion finished, my thoughts - ID: 1132
FORUM: Gossip - The rusty dagger tavern
This topic was started by SonnBoy99 on 30/04/2013, 17:59:42
I finished the expansion and it was a enjoyable experience. I just have a thought about the expansion.
While I understood my goal was to reunite the dragonlands and Tarnak, the task needed to accomplish this didn't seem to have much of a connection. The dragon ghost tells you to go find a symbol of good and evil, but after that I seem to be just wondering the different zones and doing tasks that NPCs asks of me but most of the time, I seem to be confused as to why I'm being asked do these things. The quests from the volcano and the planes don't just seem connected to me. I like killing the new mobs and some of the nice loot that was given in the expansion but it would be more cool if there was some story unfolding while we are doing these quests. I know the Bard's Tale style of gameplay might make telling a unfolding story harder than other formats but on some other Japanese RPGs, the combat is quite boring but you have this motivation to keep playing because you want to know what happens next. While heard I feel my motivation is to find the next area to see what nice loot it will give me :). It would be cool if we could be both somehow.
Quick question for you. I’ve been in the Dragon Grave, gotten the Armaggedon spell and the firestaff, but have ni5 encountered this ghost that you mentioned. I believe I need to in order to proceed north of Watertop. Do you remember where the dragon ghost is?
You will meet the ghost of Scythe the Mighty in the Dragon Grave. Map attached.
I understood my goal was to reunite the dragonlands and Tarnak, the task needed to accomplish this didn't seem to have much of a connection.
I know what you mean. The expansion didn't have the same sort of almost linear push towards the goal feel of the original. Of course, a big part of that is that you know the ultimate goal of the original almost throughout (defeat Maruziel) and get a pretty good idea of where that will happen early in the game (smelling sulphur south of Savage Crossing). In the expansion, you have no idea what's going on until pretty late in the game, and don't know the enemy until almost the final scene. In a way, that's better. (Although as I wrote elsewhere, I found the climactic scene to be very underwhelming.)
The other point is that the game isn't so much a maze with the monster in the middle as a fully realized world that can be explored, with side quests that help but aren't required, interesting things like the training area and alchemy that add to the world but aren't required to win, etc. A huge part of playing the game is the thrill of the unknown, exploring and learning the world, and then finally figuring out what's going on. Aside from the ending, I'd say the expansion is every bit as good as the original, maybe better.
I do hope that as he's tweaking, icetear will add a scene or two at the end explaining the ending, and maybe as you go along, killing the dragons, that each time you are "freeing" the dragons and that this is having some effect on the environment, i.e. destabilizing the rift or causing the ship to lose power.
Update: the ending of the expansion has been enhanced since I wrote this. It's worth playing (or finishing) the game again just to see it, if you haven't already.
Thanks for the map @Visstar... I found the dragon ghost after returning. The weird thing though is that I had walked onto all of those spaces sometime earlier (evidenced because the entire area was shown on my map) but I'm pretty sure he wasn't there before. I wonder if some other action triggers his appearance. Or maybe I'm just losing my mind... lol.
Anyway... thanks!!
