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| Author |
File Description |
| herod |
Posted on 03/05/00 @ 12:00 AM
| File Details |
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| Version: |
Age of Kings 1.0 |
None Provided |
| Author | Comments & Reviews ( All | Comments Only | Reviews Only ) |
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| rwilde |
Posted on 09/24/05 @ 05:40 PM
An ancient mountaintop fortress in southeast Israel on the southwest shore of the Dead Sea. In A.D. 73, after a two-year siege, members of the Zealot Jewish movement committed mass suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.
Playability: 1
It would seem from the name that this scenario might be about the Roman Siege of Masada in 73 A.D. After a few moments I realized it was. I've played a scenario like this for AoE before, but this one is sadly a lot worse. The expression "fish in a barrel" sums this level up perfectly. You control a huge group of powerful units like trebuchets, cannon and archer, and you simply smash down their towers and then kill them. There was no mass suicide.
Balance: 1
Oh dear, this one really lacks any balance. The siege lasted for two years - so why should you be able to destroy them in 5 minutes? Anyway, it's just a matter of grabbing some siege units, any will do, and clumsily tasking them in the general direction of the enemy. Once the masses of bombard towers are gone, it's just a heartless murder - I broke a hole in the wall and let the archers finish them off. The enemy units are mainly militia, so there's no real threat here.
Creativity: 1
This historical event is portayed fairly poorly, with no creative elements in the level.
Map Design: 1
The map is a uniform dirt terrain, 'Dirt 1' I think. By uniform I also mean there are no elevations. Actually, there are some elevations, but mainly underneath the cliffs, which makes almost every cliff section look terrible. The Jews have huge numbers of bombard towers, which were not invented at the time.
Story/Instructions: 1
None at all - without prior research or knowledge you are in the dark, so it seems somehow appropriate that you are in the Dark Age.
Overall: 1.0
Perhaps the first time I have even given a score this low, the level simply offered nothing for me to award points to, and I've played too many scenarios by now to enjoy a defenceless siege.[Edited on 09/30/05 @ 01:43 AM]
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| rakovsky |
Posted on 10/05/20 @ 02:06 AM
It was fully playable. It worked fine on AOE2:The Conquerors with no glitches.
Balance: 3
The balance was good if you just wanted a very easy match. Historically the battle at Masada was extremely lopsided like that, and the main challenge for the Romans was building a siege ramp well enough, so a very easy balance is understandable. But there was basically no challenge either in the scenario.
Creativity: 3
It was creative to make a Masada scenario with various walls and groups of units, and the central enemy base was surrounded almost totally by cliffs like the real Masada. Still, the general concept was pretty simple, so it wasn't as if the scenario had major creativity.
Map Design: 3
One of the downsides for creativity was lack of eye candy in the map. It did have rivers, and it's true that the real Masada was in the desert, and the map did have cliffs, but generally this map was too plain.
Story/Instructions: 3
The mission was straightforward enough and the history is well known enough that it did not need directions, because you just had to wipe out the enemy player and it made sense in the historical background. Still, the designer didn't put in any story or instructions or hints, at all, and some would have been nice, so this was one of the weakest areas.
Additional Comments:
I beat it easily on Hard mode. I agree with the other commentator here that this scenario was like shooting fish in a barrel.
I't's hard for me to decide whether to give 2s or 3s for many of these categories. What I really liked was how simple and playable it was because I have played scenarios that seemed pretty creative and had good design features yet also had some complicated aspect or something that made those other missions unwinnable, which makes it frustrating. For instance, I just played "Masada 73 AD", and I only succeeded in clearing a path through the woods in the southeast near the spring in that map at about 2 hours into that scenario.
So by comparison, it was nice how easy and playable this "Massada" scenario is. So it's hard for me to give 2s for a scenario that was so playable and actually didn't need some things like Instructions or Hints to work fine. |
 
HGDL v0.8.2 |
| Rating |
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| 2.2 | | Breakdown |
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| Playability | 3.0 | | Balance | 2.0 | | Creativity | 2.0 | | Map Design | 2.0 | | Story/Instructions | 2.0 |
| Statistics |
| Downloads: | 1,283 |
| Favorites: [] | 0 |
| Size: | 11.12 KB |
| Added: | 03/05/00 |
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