I think this week marks the first time I have quit a working game earlier than intended since my unsuccessful playthrough of Heroines Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok in early 2015. During the mission I ran into 3 separate issues which culminated in quitting the game and not going back.
To start with: We somehow automatically failed the sidequest from the previous expedition. We were asked to collect musical instruments and had no less than 14 instruments in our inventory and the collector leaves in disappointment. Not a great start, a relatively minor issue, but one that sets the tone for the episode.
Then, during this expedition we encounter our first celestial shrine. Unlike most shrine effects, the celestial shrine doesn’t create a hazard, instead it create impassable terrain. As an added bonus it also seems to cover a much larger area than most shrines. This is a trap, one that can’t help but get most players the first time they encounter it. It is simply much more dangerous than most other shrines and the most likely to render an expedition incompletable. A more experienced play of Curious Expeditions would know to avoid looting such shrines unless the path to the finish is clear. This kind of trap is not great to spring on a player in the last expedition of a run, personally, I would try to ensure this was exposed earlier when it isn’t going to completely destroy a character’s chances.
Finally, having realised the hopeless situation I resolved to use the Hot Air Balloon to escape and rescue what little treasure I had. Now when you are doing this, you get the rather selfish option to kick companions out of the party to increase space available in the balloon. Given I was on the last expedition I decided to completely empty my party. Unkind? Definitely. Encouraged by the game? Indisputedly. What the game doesn’t warn you is that you need at least 1 companion to actually use the hot air balloon. Dismissing every companion renders you unable to escape.
This was the final straw. Keep in mind, the interface to dismiss members of my party is explicitly tied to the hot air balloon. Why does it let me dismiss everyone from this interface if I need one companion to escape? Why doesn’t the interface tell me I need at least 1 companion to use the balloon before I set it up? This is either a bug, or both a terrible interface and a trap. Regardless it was the final straw for me and robbed me of even the consolation of at least returning from the sixth expedition. An incredibly bad experience that soured me on ever returning to the game.
The last week’s releases were:
Saturday and Thursday: Torment: Tides of Ranmenera
Sunday: Curious Ranpedition
Monday, Wednesday, Friday: The Ransistance: War of the Chosen
Tuesday: Heat Signature Hot Tips / Ranneko’s Tuesday Tips
The videos
Torment: Tides of Ranmenera
YouTube Link
The resonance chamber we literally crashed into at the start of the game has been repaired off screen and now has been activated. All of the castoffs have been pulled into the labyrinth along with our companions. Let’s see what we can find out.
Curious Ranpedition
YouTube Link
As I said in the main post. I am done with this game, I was having fun right up to the point where I realised it had screwed me other three times over the course of a single expedition.
Ransistance: War of the Chosen
YouTube Link
With the death of the Assassin we now have access to her weapons. A super awesome shotgun and a katana that never ever misses. The idea is to boost a ranger to the same power tier as one of the new hero soldiers added in the expansion. It certainly seems to work, if anything, when combined with the new training system this can make a ranger even more powerful.
Heat Signature Hot Tips / Ranneko’s Tuesday Tips
YouTube Link
The lack of shared cooldowns, combined with the ability to freely pause the game, enables the most awesome and silliest of strategies in Heat Signature. I like to think of it as a sack full of wrenches. If you have 3 wrenches you can charge into any group of unarmoured, unshielded guards and take them apart before they can possibly react. You melee charge 3 of them and then throw 2 wrenches at any guards still standing. Concussions delivered at unbelievable speed.