Feedback for an After-Action Report for Eador

[FarAway Sooner]

So, I'm working on an After-Action Report for Eador: Master of the Broken World, and I thought I'd ping the folks here since you'd be primary target audience for such a write-up.

What sets the game apart from so many other fantasy titles over the last 5-10 years is the depth of the game.  The game is deep, in a way that no other game in the genre has been in a long time (with the possible exception of the Dominions MP game play).

In my AAR, I'm trying to outline all the strategic trade-off decisions that have to be evaluated each step along the way, as it's the open-endedness of the game and the strategic tension that arises from those play-offs that's at the heart of the enjoyment for me.  The problem is, it's making the actual progress of the game in my write-up very slow.

There are different ways to resolve this from a writing style (less depth across the board, only do a write-up for the first 10 or 20 turns, only drill down on a few of the most interesting trade-off decisions, etc.) but all come at a cost.  So I thought I'd throw it out to the audience here to see what might be the most interesting?

Thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated!

[Huw the Poo]

I want to read this.  I've literally just started playing the game this weekend; still doing tutorial stuff but really enjoying it.

only drill down on a few of the most interesting trade-off decisions

This is what I'd do.  Why not condense every 10 turns or so into a couple of sentences, except for the occasion when something exceptional occurs?  You could even begin each paragraph with a subheading like:

Turns 30-40

If you think that's taking things too far in the opposite direction, spice it up with the occasional screenshot and maybe talk a bit about something you like or find interesting about the game, or how some mechanic made a certain turn more interesting in this game than it would have been in a comparable 4X.

[FarAway Sooner]

That's not bad advice.  Part of the challenge for me is that I find SO MUCH interesting!  And part of the challenge is that the stuff that's interesting is interesting for kind of complicated reasons.

I'm not sure whether to err on the side of breadth or depth there, but since the real issue is the depth of the trade-off decisions, I guess that's the side that I err on?

[Huw the Poo]

Sounds like you like this game. :D

First and foremost you should write as much as you feel comfortable writing, but if you worry about your audience, you could maybe format blocks of text according to priority.  So have the summaries in a normal typeface but italicise the in-depth bits, for example.

[airboy]

The game received poor reviews overall (see gamerankings.com) primarily due to a buggy release.

Have the problems been corrected?

[Huw the Poo]

I haven't done a huge amount yet but I haven't encountered so much as a graphical glitch.  You can currently get it for very little on groupees.com

[JasonPratt]

I've heard it's been patched out the wazoo and now well worth the money.

[FarAway Sooner]

The game received poor reviews overall (see gamerankings.com) primarily due to a buggy release.

Have the problems been corrected?

Yes, the problems have been corrected.  There are still a few reported bugs out there, but I've not experienced any of them in the last 6-8 weeks of game play.

Basically, the game was just released 2-3 months too early.  Combine that with the extremely passionate fanbase from Genesis, and it's a recipe for poor word-of-mouth and unflattering reviews.  Snowbird has done their best to repair the damage and the game's shaped up quite nicely, but first impressions are hard to undo.

[airboy]

The game received poor reviews overall (see gamerankings.com) primarily due to a buggy release.

Have the problems been corrected?

Yes, the problems have been corrected.  There are still a few reported bugs out there, but I've not experienced any of them in the last 6-8 weeks of game play.

Basically, the game was just released 2-3 months too early.  Combine that with the extremely passionate fanbase from Genesis, and it's a recipe for poor word-of-mouth and unflattering reviews.  Snowbird has done their best to repair the damage and the game's shaped up quite nicely, but first impressions are hard to undo.

Appreciate the information.  I have stayed away based on the original reviews and the poor feedback on www.gog.com  But gog does not allow one to sort reviews by date of review - so it is hard to figure out what the current status of the game is.

[Martok]

FWIW, SpaceSector did a recent review -- where they deliberately waited until the game had been patched up.  While they gave it a decent overall score (7.5), they still found it lacking in quite a few areas. 

[Greybriar]

Metacritic gave it 7.3.

[PanzersEast]

The game is patched up with no show stopping issues.  I believe the game is worth around $5.00, however just be warned that it is a dressed up Genesis and the strategic options are few (graphics are nice).  This is the type of game you may get one or two play throughs with and it becomes repetitive later on.  Just my opinion however.


PE

[FarAway Sooner]

Hmmm...  I appreciate the perspective, PanzersEast, but there is at least some subset of players that finds the games much deeper than that.  Genesis is the same way.

Doesn't mean that you're wrong.  Each person has their own tastes.  I've invested 60+ hours into MotBW after investing 40+ hours into pretty much the same game in Genesis and I'm nowhere near bored yet!

The SpaceSector review does a decent job of covering the good and the bad parts of the game.  As a long-time player of the HoMM and Age of Wonder games and a recent enthusiast of the King's Bounty series, I find this a deeper, groggier version. 

If you like puzzling out deep strategy, I think it's the best fantasy TBS title in a long time.  There's no "one best path" approach to winning a given shard, which provides me a lot of replay value after 2 dozen or more shards (13 in Genesis and now 11 in MotBW).

But maybe I ought to just write the dang After-Action Review?  Of course, to do that, I have to find time to play the dang game!   :D

[Bison]

I really enjoy genesis and actually like the 2d graphics.  The added abilities are really intriguing in masters.  It's on my list of eventual games to get.

[Sparhawk]

So, it's been a couple of months since I fired Eador up. I was quite pleased at the support cleaning up the bugs since release when I last played. Sometime since then they've done something to the interface. The bar is nearly out of view at the bottom of my screen.