Scenario Review: Liberty 2 - Civil Disobedience

[JL42]

What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?

v. 1.16.10
Fugitive / Challenging

How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

3

How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Mostly clear; similar to the other scenarios I would recommend explaining the mace icon in some way.

How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

The enemy commentary ("try not my patience") and the peasant here were a high point. The writing for Baldras and Harper is terrible.

What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

The biggest dangers are the enemy's charging units and the leader. Seemed like a well-balanced fight overall; fairly easy.

How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

6 if you don't read the dialogue.

What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

Fix/revert the writing, and add some kind of notice about the mace.

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About the Overall Campaign:

The maps in this campaign are generally solid and well-done. I like the revisions to the last few scenarios; these are big changes but they seem like an improvement over the old maps. Challenging, interesting, and well-balanced.

But, ugh ... the writing! The "dialect" here feels horribly off and inconsistent. The characters sound like some kind of city-slicker's sarcastic, mocking fantasy of rural people. (A lot of it actually sounds to me more like caricatured Urban Black English, rather than rural speech patterns; but it's false and inconsistent regardless.) Makes it very hard to develop sympathy and identity for the heroes because they come across as goofy caricatures. It's really difficult to write dialect without these problems so I would suggest just not doing it.

In addition, Baldras now comes across mostly as a sad-sack, with no real integrity, ingenuity, agency, or legitimate grievance. It just reeks of the attitude that these people, the actual heroes, are inept and dumb. Also, I understand wanting to make the ending more optimistic, but this also really weakens and eviscerates the story. There are still some high points, like the Monty Python references, but I seem to remember liking this one much better in the past, with the story being its high point. Now it just feels like a bad joke making fun of rural folks; completely ruins the enjoyment.

The "points of interest" throughout the various scenarios are a good addition, but it would be better if they were flagged somehow. Either with a graphical label ("Harper's Spare Bag") or through dialogue ("I left my bag in the northwest; if I can make it up there to pick it up then I'll be able to throw more rocks!") These work well as tactical objectives – deciding if it's worth leaving the battle to go after them – but it was kind of annoying to have to struggle to figure out what they actually do and who needs to go there. Eventually I just looked at the walkthrough for that information, but to avoid pointless hassles it should be clarified in the game itself.

Overall I'd give this campaign 3 out of 5 stars; it would be a lot higher if it weren't for the painful writing. The maps themselves are generally good.