[SPOILER] Episode 4 S4

Do you like? What are your reproaches? What are the strengths? It's your turn :

Didn't like the stupid platforming bit at the end. I wanted to look around behind me to see what was happening (apparently just a naff looking purple blob). I'd have preferred a more epic fight out, with clear glimpses of Kralk and Glint. Instead, I spent a fair amount of time falling off when the volatile magic failed to activate properly when I went through them, various out of bounds glitches or being too slow. Just took a great deal away from the flow of the instance.

Pretty much everything else in the episode was outstanding. It amazes me the gulf in quality between teams to see a short, unepic, low scope episode like Long Live the Lich versus a much longer, meatier episode like this one. It was like playing two totally different games in terms of quality.

Great work in this one - a lot of my faith was restored after the last release

The mists instance was a pure bug fest for my friend and I. Had the bug where you couldn't move at all until 2 minutes in, otherwise getting killed for being out of bounds, but it was still extremely impressive.

Called Blish sacrificing himself the moment he said he'd join us and called Taimi (progressively) dying at the end of Episode 1, so I was cursing a lot when we came to that part. I was literally yelling "NO OF COURSE THEY'D DO THAT FUCK YOU"

But this has got to be the strongest release potentially ever. Great instances, great character development and a really strong map. One that finally breaks the mold of feeling extremely unrewarding and empty. I'm not even sure the rewards from the events on the map are worth it, but the tons of chests and the sheer number of events that are always going on seem to strike that perfect balance. None of the bosses seem to be overly spongey. The Shatterer is tough because of multiple phases where people have to split up to kill the Riftstalkers, but it felt very managable even with our small group and nobody having any idea of what was happening. I could definitely see this one being worth doing daily, it even gives that huge Boss chest statue at the end and definitely feels cool to fight.

Downsides

Branded Awakened are absolute abominations. The branded debuff is a good idea, but annoying if it gets stacked up quickly from the near stupid amounts of branded constantly barraging you from everywhere. I 'm not sure if it was skill delay from the somewhat instable servers due to it being the release day, but fighting felt very sluggish. I think the enemies are a tad tankier than previously, it definitely felt like I wasn't tearing through enemies like in PoF, which felt just a little bit worse than it could have been.

The raid looks absolutely fantastic. I haven't beaten any bosses myself yet, but I had teapot's stream running on the side and I definitely fell in love with the environments and the general setting. Astonishing work on that, I could actually FEEL why it took them so many months to release this (which doesn't mean that waiting another 10 months is cool, but at least the hard work showed!).

Sun's Refuge:

LOVE IT! So many secrets to find, so many things to interact with (like those Sunspear puzzle tiles! I just can't find all of them..) and tons of collections to unlock and progress through. When I first entered it I asked my friend if she thought that we'd do events on the map and have NPCs join us on the map. Needless to say when we did the Vemyen jinn meta this is exactly what happened. Very cool system! We even get a bookshelf! A place destined for greatness and I really hope they do go to the full length of continuously expanding this system.

Collections:

To me it feels amazing to have a collectible in pretty much every corner of the map. I love exploration and getting to places where I might not be intended to go. On this map you will feel rewarded for everything. Any event will have a part of a collection for you, every rock may hide a coin behind it. Hell, they even added bounties on this map and the one I killed (the Pet Rock! Hilarious to actually see this one as an enemy!) didn't feel nearly as bad as the previous bounties.

This might be a huge downside for many, since you get essentially overwhelmed with things to do and not everybody likes collections, but I believe it is a wonderful way to get people to do everything on the map. After playing quite extensively it hasn't felt cheap doing all these partly quite obscure tasks yet. This is the quality that I love to see.

My faith is restored, but the teams that were on Sandswept and Kourna will still need to redeem themselves in the future for me to fully believe in the game again.

@Randulf.7614 said:Didn't like the stupid platforming bit at the end. I wanted to look around behind me to see what was happening (apparently just a naff looking purple blob). I'd have preferred a more epic fight out, with clear glimpses of Kralk and Glint. Instead, I spent a fair amount of time falling off when the volatile magic failed to activate properly when I went through them or being too slow. Just took a great deal away from the flow of the instance.

Pretty much everything else in the episode was outstanding. It amazes me the gulf in quality between teams to see a short, unepic, low scope episode like Long Live the Lich versus a much longer, meatier episode like this one. It was like playing two totally different games in terms of quality.

Great work in this one - a lot of my faith was restored after the last release

With the return of Caithe ... and I'm waiting for the return of Zojja! (Even though she has a different voice, I do not care).

I didn't dislike E3, but this one was easily much better, maybe my fav of the season? Idk, tough choice, but I love the branded. Speaking of, we got TONS of new kinds! At least 4 awakened types, djinn, 2 karka-esque beings - riftstalkers (what were they before branding?), and centaurs. Centaurs aren't killable enemies, but part of shatterer event. Oh, and right, shatterer has an epic variant! Did I miss any?

Team 1 has been consistently the best team in lw imo. Teams 2 and eso team 3 need to take notes : ^)

It was fun but not as fun as I had with episode 3. The map feels smaller and less complete as Kourna. I personally haven’t seen any reason to come back to the map after finishing the achievements and collections.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:The map feels smaller and less complete as Kourna.

Strange, as I feel the exact opposite.

I am reminded how incredibly boring and tedious repeatable hearts are. Please, ANet, make them one and done. But overall, good story.

@Witch of Doom.5739 said:I am reminded how incredibly boring and tedious repeatable hearts are. Please, ANet, make them one and done. But overall, good story.

No way, what they need to do is make hearts much more rewarding and let the vendors stay unlocked.

Nitpicks first:

1) Commander finally finds out where Aurene has been, and the dialogue is rather clipped. Its not " Aurene, Im glad to see you" or "Aurene, where have you been" or "Aurene, are you ok?". The commander goes with "get off the floor, Aurene."

2) When Aurene sees the premonitions of her future, Blish is the one who clarifies what she's seeing...why? How does he know this? Shouldn't this be a line for Aurene's Champion (Commander)?

3) The final story instance was rather buggy. The veteran that we were supposed to be defending Blish from never showed up, and for the longest time during the escape sequence, we couldnt move for fear of being out of bounds.

Positives:

1) Thus far, the map looks amazing!

2) There appears to be a wealth of new content that I am looking forward to getting down to now that Ive finished the Living Story.

3) Blish's sacrifice was predictable (I suspected from the moment he forbade Gorik to come, and knew it the moment he started having trouble with the sword). Despite that, the scene was beautifully written for maximum emotional impact (which would have been even better if it werent for bugs causing us to reset it :p). Having to listen to it as I jumped away to safety was hard. The follow-up with Taimi and Gorik hurt to watch, and really drove the impact home. Right before

4) Taimi blindsided me. We always knew it was a possibility, but over the length of the story, I had all but forgotten.

5) The Deadeye fight was fantastic. It was fun and not drawn out.

6) Snaff!

7) Braham's "redemption" arc.

Taimi will finish in a tin can ... :'(

@Ayrilana.1396 said:It was fun but not as fun as I had with episode 3. The map feels smaller and less complete as Kourna. I personally haven’t seen any reason to come back to the map after finishing the achievements and collections.

I don’t know how it would feel less complete other than maybe the giant dong in the middle of the map or the jarringly contrasting Orr, Maguma, Fungus zones.

Kralkatorik he seeks the largest amount of magic possible: we must not forget that they are there to eat all the magic until they are sated, and to fall asleep, they have no real awareness of good and evil, or of the less they do not care about their actions, all they see is that they are hungry, and that they will do everything to no longer have this state of consciousness, they also have this idea of ​​servitude also, because that otherwise you are a threat to his digestion!Kralkatorik tasted Balthazar, so he's looking for the others in the Mists, but he's also looking for Auren who's full of magic, but most of all: because he knows it's a real threat to HE! It is Aurène the threat for him, not the Commander! What's more, his magic is extremely weak compared to Aurène / Kralka, as said above, he has no interest, he does not care, because Kralkatorik is sure to win.

Reality is breaking even now, I think the Gods already know what's happening, it's only a matter of time before they appear, because Reality: it's EVERYWHERE, and not only in Tyria or in the Mists! And potentially, they know they're in danger, so they're going to have to logically act too, because before If Tyria was condemned, the Gods would not reach them, it would only be a destroyed planet to big regrets, but now, if the reality is about to collapse, they are affected too, them and their new home! So that they take by battle or not, in any case they will have to try everything for the whole so that the Reality is saved. I think we are going to have the 5 Gods face to face, with the substitute of Balthazar. Finally I hope, if not for me, it will mean that the scenario is just badly done ....

I hope Aurène will manage to speak ...