Continued grinding things out wiith our human Cap/Champ combo. Finished a big brigand finale (despite it being a Fellowship quest) through an effective combination of (a) reading a guide that noted a shortcut past some bad groups of bad guys, (b) following someone else in (inadvertently) who cleared a lot of the riff-raff, and (c) using the Map to exit after finishing off the head bad guy.
Then ended up in another climactic brigand mission, this one an annoying combination of story-driven railroading (“Can’t act now — have to wait for NPCs to emote) and the opposite of our berserker Ranger from the other night — a very slow-moving lady who, once rescued, insisted on snail-pacing her way through various caverns of bad guys, just in time for them to wake up (“Lady, listen, I’ll bloody carry you, okay?”).
When we picked up again last night, we were starting a new duo to see how it went — a pair of Elvish Hunters. Got through the 1-5 content with no problem, and were making decent progress with the 6-10. Hunters are fun — if nothing else, they let you be lazy and draw the bad guys to you, often with entertaining results. And they’re not quite as squishy as blasters are, either, which was my initial impression.
I’m enjoying the elvish content, even if is relentlessly depressing (these guys could teach Marvin the Robot a lesson or two about wistful moroseness). And, of course, it occurs to me that I found the Shire bits of LotR to be the least interesting in the books, too, so maybe that’s a clue I should pick up.
We have a couple more days on the trial accounts, and I’m not sure we’re hooked enough to go for it. I find the story-driven missions to be pretty keen, though that isn’t grabbing Margie the same way at all. We’re probably spending more time kvetching over things than waxing enthusiastic over them. I’m enjoying it more than Margie, but it’s not yet grabbing us by the noses and making us want to play it full-time.
We’ll see.
Honestly? You should try out the Shire. It’s pretty cool. 🙂
Just… yeah. Maybe don’t do the postman missions unless you really want to explore the place IN DEPTH and begin to loathe your nosy kin a little bit.
Also: Come on — all of the CoV stuff has set pieces where the villains and ‘name’ heroes talk for awhile. Hell, you can’t even see yourself on the screen when that happens.
At least with LotRO, I can use the time to buff the group, recite a scroll or two, and get ready.
That’s true, viz being able to take non-combat actions (“Hmmmm, while the Witch King goes on about how we’re all DOOOOOMED, I’ll just nibble on some aurex jerky …”). In some ways the CoX cut-scenes are less intrusive because, well, they’re cut-scenes, so you’re not wasting time trying to click on the bad guy to shoot him whilst he expounds. 🙂
I also understand that the story driving requires a lot more of that than a more free-form game would.
What….he was monologing? ;P
We had that last wednesday in WoW. First time I has ever seen a baddie Monolog in the game…and of course much quoting of The Incredibles over Teamspeak occured while he talked.
Actually, most of the “monologing” I’ve seen has been “dialoging.” (“Let’s just stand over here eating aurox jerky while Dwalin bandies insults with Ivar the Bloody.”)