This week’s release introduced a completely new and unique kind of quest, along with J6 and ground-breaking rewards never seen before, along with a multitude of minor interface tweaks and changes. Read on for the full analysis.
About: The main release this week was a new quest, where the objective is to board a train and try to catch a thief on that train. You then travel through a series of trains, meeting groups of people with interactive “rumors” to share that change every time. You will also meet the occasional on-foot enemy, and when you finally reach the end of the train you see the mysterious culprit taking a rock-like substance from the engine. You are then instructed to go out on the roof, where the enemy went, and get to put on a nifty little suit for the journey. Thus begins the new and never-before-seen minigame, Chase on the Zephyrus, which I won’t go into detail about here. Once you beat J6 multiple times and reach the first train car again, you duel him one final time, when he is impossible to defeat. After beating the quest, you unlock ZEUS arm weapons, with the chance to do a combo attack, the first of its kind. You also unlock the ability to buy the ZEUS suit used in the quest for Nova Gems only. The interface tweaks of the past week or so were as follows: Ability to travel using the “Maps” button on the Info Screen, ability to change hometown back to Soluna City from the starship, ability to go back to the dropship, ability to add inventory slots for Nova Gems, and tweaks and changes to the new DPA head attack and ZEUS weapons.
My Opinion: Overall, this was actually a deceptively strong release. The extreme shortness of the release and seemingly lack of depth overall makes the update seem much weaker on the outside, but when you explore the various aspects of the release, you will find that it is actually very, very, very, very, very strong, starting with the quest itself. The quest really adds a whole new level to interactivity and exploration, as you have to travel through multiple train karts, sometimes even fighting some on-foot battles, to beat the quest. You can also talk to the people sitting at the stalls and find a laugh or two from those as well. The real meat of the quest, however, comes from the second half, when you go on the roof and literally shoot down your opponent, J6. The minigame, where you literally click to try and shoot J6 right in the chest, is a very fun and addicting challenge that creates the perfect balance between being too easy and too hard. This minigame was something MechQuest had never ever seen before, and AE did a fantastic job with it. Unfortunately, the final mini-game is unbeatable (as planned), and it was great to see a cutscene at the end, something that was mysteriously absent from the past many releases. The rewards really break new grounds with the combo attack, and while I haven’t gotten the opportunity to try it out first-hand, judging on the cold hard facts, I think it is an excellent strategical weapon, especially considering the mass amount of new mechs we were getting and the relative lack of normal standalone weapons. The uniform is a nice touch but is not even close to being worth 100 Nova Gems, and I’m not exactly sure why it was even put in there if only to make it seem like there is actually more in this release than there actually is. I also would have liked to see some more dialogue from the mayor, Roy Silver. We barely get to know anything about him, and I wanted to see some more interactivity there. Of course, the one huge downfall of this entire release was the smallness of it: You play through one semi-long but nothing huge quest and unlock some new arm weapons and a uniform. And that’s it. Sure, the quest was outstanding and the rewards were fantastic, but it’s still a very small update, one that I hope to see continued in next week’s release. The interface changes were all nice additions, especially the ability to return to the dropship and set Soluna City as our hometown.
Overall Grade of Update: 9.0/10. It’s unfortunate such a quality quest and quality reward could be overshadowed by pure lack of length and other minor interferences, but that’s what ultimately forced me to lower the grade by a point. Still, when the next part of this area comes out it should be interesting to watch.
Enjoy!
