GCI/Playtesting/The Hammer of Thursagan/Challenging

Preamble

Google Code-In 2010. This page shows the results of testing The Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.3 - campaign "The Hammer of Thursagan " on Challenging (Hard) difficulty. I followed the guidelines on this page for the analysis.

The following has been quoted from the page for reference purposes:

1. What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
2. How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3. How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
4. How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
5. What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
6. How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7. What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
8. Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
9. If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?

Scenario 1: At The East Gate

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 4. It was very easy but it’s normal for first scenario in the campaign.
3. Very clear objectives.
4. The dialog is short but good.
5. There were no challenges to meeting objectives of this scenario.
6. Fun: 6. It was very fun and easy.
7. No changes needed. The scenario is very good.
8. No events caused me to lose the game or reload the scenario.
9. I don’t know nothing about WML so I can’t give a comment. In the scenarios below I will miss this point.

Reclaiming The Past

This is only a cutscene with dialog. Here I found grammatical mistake reported in Bugs.

Scenario 2: Strange Allies

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 5. The alliance with the orcs was very helpful and the scenario was very easy.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Very good dialog.
5. No challenges to meeting objectives.
6. Fun: 6. As the previous one – very good.
7. No changes needed. Good scenario for leveling up your units.
8. No events caused me to lose the game or reload the scenario.

Scenario 3: Troll Bridge

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 5. Not so hard scenario. If you recall high level units and use them properly there would be no problems here.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Short but well written dialog.
5. No challenges to meeting objectives.
6. Fun: 6.
7. The dialog could be extended a little bit.
8. None.

Scenario 4: Invaders

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 7. The hardest scenario from the beginning of the campaign.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Good dialog.
5. The major challenges were the big number of enemy units. It was very hard to fight with orcs and bandits at once.
6. Fun: 5. Hard and not so fun scenario.
7. No changes.
8. Several restarts because of hero’s dying or changing game tactic.

Scenario 5: High Pass

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 6.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Good and well written dialog.
5. Fun: 7.
6. No changes. Another well made scenario.
7. I restarted once because of hero’s death.

Scenario 6: Mages and Drakes

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 5.
3. No problem with scenario objectives.
4. The dialog was fine.
5. The union with the mages made the scenario very easy. With their help and lots of high-leveled units I defeated the Drake leader with no problems.
6. Fun: 7.
7. Very nice scenario. No changes needed.
8. No events caused me to lose the game or reload the scenario.

Scenario 7: Fear

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 6. Not so hard scenario.
3. Clear objectives.
4. Very interesting and well-written dialog.
5. No challenges to meeting objectives. With correct tactic it was very easy to defeat the enemy leader.
6. Fun: 7. Another very interesting scenario. The burned villages were very impressive.
7. No changes needed.
8. No problems.

Scenario 8: Forbidden Forest

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 7. Very hard scenario.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. The dialog was well written, but not so interesting as previous one.
5. The major challenges were Fog of War and high-leveled enemy units. It was very hard to protect Aiglondur and Angarthing from three sides until they reach to the signpost. The terrain caused me additional troubles.
6. Fun: 7. Very fun and interesting scenario. It took me a lot of time to finish it.
7. Nothing to change, it’s very well made.
8. Restarted several times because of Aiglondur or Angarthing's death.

Scenario 9: The Siege of Kal Kartha

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 6. Not so easy scenario.
3. Clear objectives – kill them all!
4. Well written and interesting dialog. Here begins the culmination of the campaign.
5. No problems to meeting objectives. The union with the dwarves was very helpful. All enemies were focused to my ally and it wasn’t so hard to kill their unguarded leaders.
6. Fun: 6.
7. No changes needed.
8. None.

Scenario 10: The Court of Karrag

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 4. Very easy scenario.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Very good and interesting dialog. No mistakes.
5. No challenges to meeting objectives. This scenario is almost story only.
6. Fun: 7. Very fun scenario. It differs from the others.
7. No changes. Very good scenario.
8. No.

Scenario 11: The Underlevels

1. Campaign difficulty: Hard. Version: 1.9.3.
2. Scenario difficulty: 9. The hardest and the longest scenario in the campaign.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Very interesting, comprehensive and well-written dialog.
5. The major challenge was that the scenario was very long. I spent a lot of time playing it but finally I made it.
6. Fun: 9. It was very good scenario - the best in the campaign.
7. No changes needed – the scenario is just perfect. It’s something like campaign in the campaign.
8. There were many events that caused me to reload the game – wrong tactic, hero’s dying, loosing high-leveled units – but after hours of playing I succeeded.

Bugs

1. In the dialog in “Reclaiming The Past” I found a mistake. In the beginning, when the map is shown, the sentence begins with minuscule(audience) instead of capital letter(Audience).
2. Sometimes when I use mouse scroll, the map is moving left-right instead of up-down. When I minimize the game window and open it again the problem disappears.
3. Problem in fullscreen mode(1280x1024). The graphic was a little bit blurry.
4. When there is any dialog, I can’t click on Menu or somewhere else before the dialog disappears.

Summary

“The Hammer of Thursagan” is a very well-made campaign. It’s intermediate level, but I think novice players wouldn’t have problems with it. It has great variety of scenarios with different scenario objectives. It has good storyline and well written dialogs with no mistakes at all (only one grammatical mistake noted in Bugs). It has no major bugs or glitches - just small problems mentioned above.