Gaming Round-Up: Mods, Demos, and Ashes

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Feels like we’re about due for another post on odds and ends of my recent gaming not covered by other posts.

Breaking the fourth wall in the Section 13 demo.RTS mods

Finishing all those Age of Empires campaigns a few weeks back didn’t entirely quell my RTS lust, and I ended up turning to the modding community for more options.

Firstly, I did end up trying that Swedish campaign for AoE3. For fan-made, it was pretty decent, but still well below the quality of professional content, and I quickly remembered why AoE3 is my least favourite installment of the franchise, so I didn’t make it that far before losing interest.

Next, I was looking for some good PvE custom maps for Warcraft III: Reforged. The problem with that is that most of them are RPG campaigns or MOBA-like modes or otherwise radically different from the baseline Warcraft III experience, and I just… like… wanted to play more Warcraft III. A lot of mods aren’t compatible with Reforged, either, and I can’t go back to the old graphics at this point.

I did find one interesting option, though: Advanced Melee AI (AMAI) updates the skirmish AI to behave more like a real person, with more diverse strategies.

The Advanced Melee AI puts me in my place in Warcraft III: Reforged.It may succeed in its goal of replicating ladder players a little too well. I got tower rushed my first game. On the plus side, it did make for a fun comeback as I eventually broke free of the choking siege.

The AI is also programmed to periodically trash-talk you, which is… something. It hasn’t thrown any racial slurs or threats of sexual violence at me, though, so we haven’t quite perfectly replicated a real gamer yet.

I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect solution to skirmishes quickly getting stale, but it definitely added some variety, and I got a good few hours of fun out of it. I’m not ruling out playing more in future, either. Still wish I could have found some proper custom campaign-style missions using the original factions, though.

A Warcraft III version of StarCraft II co-op missions is probably too much to hope for, but it doesn’t stop a man from dreaming.

Steam demos

I’ve tried out a few more Steam demos lately. Most were swiftly uninstalled and forgotten, but a few stood out.

I actually quite liked Section 13 aside from the fact it’s a roguelike. After running the first mission at least three times without beating it, I just lost patience, but I did like the art style and the humour a lot, and the combat was mostly enjoyable. I find the roguelike and soulslike trends have ruined a lot of what would otherwise been great games.

One that did make it onto my wishlist is Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Gameplay-wise it’s sort of like a low budget Skyrim, which isn’t my favourite thing, but the story was actually pretty intriguing. It’s allegedly based on Arthurian mythology, but aside from using some familiar names it’s pretty much its own thing.  The music and voice-acting were top notch, too, and I really liked the twisted visual aesthetic.

I probably wouldn’t pay full price for it, but it’s definitely something I might pick up on sale one day. I am curious to see where this story goes.

Ashes: Red Rains

I haven’t been playing physical card games as much these days, partly due to a certain degree of burnout and partly due to my ever-worsening mental health leaving me with little energy to, but I did stumble across a new (to me) game I wanted to try.

A promotional image of some cards from Ashes Reborn Red Rains: The Corpse of Viros.Ashes — later rebranded as Ashes Reborn and now rebranding again as Ashes Ascendancy — was originally envisioned as a competitive card game but has since added robust solo/co-op support with the Red Rains expansion line and the upcoming Ascendancy expansions. Intrigued, I picked up The Corpse of Viros, a de facto starter set for the Red Rains line.

I’ve only played one game so far, so I’m still making up my mind, but my early impression is mostly positive with a few quibbles.

The onboarding experience could have been better. The layout of the rulebook wasn’t always intuitive, and the starter deck they give you didn’t feel like it had reliable tools for dealing with all the boss’s mechanics.

The card art isn’t bad, but it isn’t amazing, either. I also would have liked some more context on the lore. There’s basically nothing on the setting, the characters you’re playing, or the boss you’re fighting. I don’t expect much story in a card game — I actually find the amount of story in something like Arkham Horror LCG a bit tiresome — but give me something.

On the other hand, I like how the resource mechanic is based on rolling a dice pool every round, which makes you adapt your strategy on the fly a bit, and the way they implemented escalating boss phases was really cool. In general it feels a bit more dynamic and less predictable than I’m used to solo card games being.

I don’t think I’m going to go all-in on this one like I did with Lord of the Rings LCG (I might have considered it if I was still at the peak of my card game obsession), but I’ll probably pick up a couple more expansions.

Two ARPGs Enter, One Leaves

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I’ve been really craving a good Diablo clone lately, but there haven’t been any new releases that have really interested me. Therefore I decided to give some older ones another try. I reinstalled Titan Quest and Path of Exile and started new characters in both to see which, if any, would stick.

Some NPCs in Titan Quest.Titan Quest didn’t last long. I love the idea of Diablo Meets Mythology, but the game is just too dated. I kind of want to go back and give it a bit more time… but realistically I don’t think I will.

Right now I’m about about fifteen hours into my new run at Path of Exile, and it’s been scratching my ARPG itch, but I wouldn’t say I’ve been fully converted to a fan. I can only reiterate what I said in the past: Despite what its fans like to tell you, it’s actually a very easy game that mostly gets its “challenge” from poor UI design and a pathological aversion to basic quality of life features.

I started out playing a templar, but melee turns out to feel awful in that game (seriously, why is he swinging so slowly?!?), so I quickly went back to playing a witch like I did the first time around. Going for a basic necromancer build; I was in the mood for a minion swarm.

I decided to play on “Ruthless” mode. Given my main complaints about the game were a lack of difficulty and the pain of inventory management, a mode that increases difficulty by drastically decreasing loot drops seemed like the ticket, and it definitely has improved my experience significantly.

My new witch in Path of Exile.There are still some downsides. I like limiting gear drops as a way to add challenge to the game and make rewards feel more meaningful, but the incredible rarity of skill gem drops feels more like a nerf to fun.

On that note, I’m still not convinced that the game’s build system is really all that. The skill web looks overwhelming at first glance, but it’s not hard to figure out you just take the nodes that buff the stuff you’re using. I’d actually argue having so many nodes cuts down on meaningful choice because you never really run out of ways to buff your core stuff, leaving no space to take luxury nodes. I’d like that area of effect buff, but I still have about twenty more minion nodes I need to take to keep my zombies alive.

If I’m to try to be fair, I guess it comes down to what you want an RPG to be. If you see RPGs as a math problem to be solved, then yes, Path of Exile is as deep as they come. There’s never ending ways to tweak your numbers to min/max your performance.

But if you see RPGs as, y’know, role-playing games that are about living out cool character fantasies, then I’d say PoE’s customization options are middling at best. Builds mostly just seem to come down to picking a nuke, choosing the passives that buff it, and spamming one button until the cows come home. There’s not the variety of gameplay or aesthetic customization you see in games like Diablo III or Wolcen.

Fighting a mini-boss in Path of Exile.I also need to say that even Ruthless mode still isn’t that hard. A few of the boss fights have gotten a little hairy, but even then I mostly beat them without a single death, and even if I do die, they don’t heal to full health. Compared to how much Belial mauled me on my first run through Diablo III, this seems pretty forgiving.

To be fair, I do get the feeling running a minion witch build is playing on easy mode a bit, but even accounting for that, I don’t see how any honest assessment of this game could describe it as especially challenging.

Which is fine. I wasn’t necessarily looking for a nail-biting challenge. It just makes it hard to take the game seriously when its community has spent so many years heaping sneering scorn at how supposedly brainless Diablo III is, when in reality PoE even on Ruthless is at most maybe equal in challenge to vanilla D3 on normal mode.

I’ve never had a community negatively impact my opinion of a game as much as PoE’s does. Lost Ark comes close, as does First Descendant — for the love of the gods, guys, just watch some porn like normal people.

My new witch in Path of Exile.Anyway, I’m not really sure if I’m going to stick with PoE or not. It’s fun enough, and I do like the art, music, and ambiance, but the minimalistic story is starting to feel more unfinished than intriguing, and the gameplay is very repetitive, even by the standards of this genre.