(VC) So, Ulf's Farmstead

I can't do this anymore. It has worn down on me mentally. I have been at this stupid mission for 5 hours and in this time have seen the darkest pits of hell in how massively flawed the design is.

So, you show up. Army is too big, apparently- they limit you artificially. This is the first step in a slew of absolute horsecrap, as the enemy will have both more and stronger soldiers than you.

That's another flaw. The enemy isn't scaled to the player at all. It doesn't matter if I have a top-quality weapon and armor worth 4k silver, I will personally be smashed into the ground the single second I come into contact with an enemy. They aren't scaled because there is no scaling to be had- they are superior to anything a player could possibly be without several in-game years of grinding.

"You have been hit for 136 damage" is a phrase I have come to see all too often.

I was also screwed over massively. The game's awkward permadeath system means that you are forced into having no autosave- so what happens when I, an hour in, finally finished the battle, only to be ambushed by another army of bandits 3X my size, and then getting killed in the next mission? Welp, no autosave as most people are used to, so now I'm set back, and have taken 4-5 times longer than my initial attempts to complete the same mission.

The unskippable cutscenes are the frosting on the shitcake so to speak. Every single time, repeatedly for 5 hours, I have been forced to sit through them again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again into perpetuity, just the camera affixed on a character, a textbox, and bad pacing.

I've essentially been brought down to a stupid strategy. Because my army doesn't listen to anything I say, wherein I'll tell them to defend a position and they'll remain in the vague vicinity thereof, I'll tell them to build a shieldwall and hold the line only for them to, two by two, charge into the foray and get slaughtered, the only reliable thing I have is myself- and so I jump on a roof and, with my balanced war spear, repeatedly stab the gathered Vikings below me until I finally get through them all. My army's entire existence is just to wither them down a bit before they come my way so I don't have to spend twice the time weakening them.

This strategy is flawed, however- a single hit does all of my health and then some. The stupid javelin-throwers have more accuracy than Rhodok Sharpshooters and do five times the damage, seemingly regardless of whether my shield is defending or not. So, while dancing with javelins, I have to also make sure not to edge too close to the end of the roof, lest I get sucked through some great vacuum to the ground and slaughtered before I can even touch the ground. While paying attention to these both, I also have to manage the specific pokes of my spear to hit exactly where it needs to be, lest it just ram into a shield and completely miss any given openings of the time.

Long story short, this mission was designed by an asshole. It is one of the most flawed and broken missions I've ever had the displeasure of attempting across every game that I have played, and I wish that was an exaggeration. While the rest of Viking Conquest seems fine and promising, this one specific instance has negatively impacted my mental health and, after so much absolute horseshit, I don't know when I'll be able to pick it up and try again.

Mount and Blade is famous for its grind, but no amount of grinding, upgrades, and high-level mercenaries seems able to make this mission remotely fair.

Submitted July 24, 2018 at 04:09AM by Milkhemet_Melekh https://ift.tt/2LhMYhL