Synopsis: "I have reached what I believe to be the village of Jardi after my travels through the catacombs. I hope to find refuge here, or at least warn this village about the demons that may soon strike them as well."
- NaGaruuk
Discuss!
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
Nali Chronicles' issues with text scaling are unfortunately still a thing, also books randomly killed me at one point.
After how small the starting village was, this is the first proper "town" in Nali Chronicles. While most of the architecture is relatively simple, it's convincing and works as a cool-down after the first combat map. The less generic Nali structures like the Fort, Church and Stables all look better in particular, although the Nali houses at least have some unique features inside, as well as details like the elders house being a little elevated. The custom music also adds a lot to the peaceful feel of the map, and there's also a second track once you leave the village, although that part isn't long enough for it be heard much here.
Outside the short ending part there's no combat here and you just explore, interact with Nali and get some supplies and new spells. There's a decent amount of NPC conversations, and the story important ones also set up your goal for a decent amount of the set, as you're directed to the Moonspire. Looking around also provides some foreshadowing as the fortress introduces the bomb that shows up much later, as well as conversations revealing some other things that turn out to be important much later. A couple of conversations suggest reactions that might be dynamic depending on how much you explored the previous map, but I'm guessing the conversations are always the same. This is also where you get the Alchemy item, but since you get tons of potions anyway there's not much incentive to learn how to use it.
In this early part a town-dungeon RPG-like structure for the pack seems to be suggested, but, past the first quarter or so it becomes a more standard Unreal progression with mostly "dungeons," with safe areas here and there, I'm not sure whether that's an intentional shift, or if more was intended but didn't get finished (given things like the Sky Island section that wasn't completed and was likely more town-like).
Since spell leveling is seemingly based on damage to "living" creatures and nothing else, if you ignored immersion I think you could technically massacre most of the village and get a bunch of XP with no consequences later; seems like friendly creatures shouldn't have given XP.
Nali Chronicles has always been one of my favourite campaigns. I love the RPG feel of this map, not many (if any) maps have you just exploring a peaceful town. The music too is well worth a mention as for me it really sucks you into the atmosphere. I remember a few maps in NC where there were some very odd song choices but this one used the new tracks perfectly. There is also a good sense of foreshadowing for what is to come / places you will visit.
I really like Eater's details like the fort under construction with the harpoon launcher and the bomb however I do find the way he maps quite odd at times. For example, the terrain only appears to be altered in the height so the lake ends up with strange zig-zag squared edges as he hasn't vertex edited the terrain in the horizontal plane. The same also goes for the terrain edges where the rock formations start. Apart from the odd build choices though the map still has a lot of charm to it.
Jardi Village, the third playable map of Nali Chronicles (if you don't count the tutorial), is another map were NC truly shines. NC puts a lot of emphasis on the characters, story and the writing and this map is a perfect example of that. There are no enemies in this map except for some critters near the end, but with new spells you get they are no problem, instead this map is all about exploring the village, talking to NPCs and reading messages to immerse you into the story. NC has plenty of levels like this one so this level doesn't feel out of place at all, this campaign does a very good job at having a section of levels with lots of action and then throw a map like this one that calms you down, so you can take a breath and relax before entering the next map where the action begins again.
Level geometry is decent, brushes are well done for the most part, but there's nothing really impressive, but what's there gets the job done. However the terrain doesn't look pretty (the fact that the textures don't have alignment doesn't help the situation), but I don't blame the mappers, terrain wasn't something that people knew how to do correctly until much later. Texture choice and alignment is also decent, however this is something that could have been improved, because of this the map looks very bland, textures aren't used in a clever way and the environments lack detail when it comes to textures. Lighting is again, decent, while the level does follow some of the more important rules, like having light sources or using different colors for different places, the lighting is very bland, the majority of the map uses ambient lighting which means that the majority of the map looks very uniform, which is a big shame. Overall this level has that old school look of custom Unreal maps, with the default textures, the simple geometry, the clumsy terrain, the bland lighting and the overuse of Unreal decorations, and all NC maps do the same thing.
Sound is a mix bag, the sounds in the map are ok for the most part, however there are not that many sounds used in the level and unfortunately there are no Dynamic Ambient Sounds, so the map is overall empty when it comes to sounds. HOWEVER, the music is amazing, this is the first map of the campaign that uses the new songs from NC and they leave a very good first impression, this map uses two songs and both of them are new, both of them are called "Golden Sunbeams", but one is the ambient section while the other is the action section. The first song is what you will hear for the majority of the map and it's an amazing song that does a great job at making you feel like you are in a safe place, but the feeling isn't a happy one but rather a bittersweet one since the village that you are in suffered a lot thanks to the Skaarj. The second song is probably my favorite song from NC, it's a song that gives you that feeling that you are taking the first steps to a wonderful journey, the song is like an invitation for a new adventure, however one big complain is that the song is used in a very brief section of the level, and unfortunately this song never reappears again in this campaign.
Gameplay is all about exploring and talking to NPCs, so there's not that much to talk about, however this map rewards exploration since you can find extra pickups, spells and mana zones. Another big factor in this map (which is a recurrent factor of all NC maps) is the focus on the story and characters, the level is full of NPCs to talk to and books you can read. The story of NC is very well written with lots of attention to detail and lots of foreshadowing, the object inside the fortress is one big detail that will come to play in the future. Definitely the best thing about this map is the way the story was handled (and the music of course).
Issues I found :
- The map has no difficulty or Coop filtering, but since NC has no coop support and the campaign can only be played in Medium difficulty, this isn't that big of a deal.
- The map begins playing the first song, however there's a music event that starts the same song after you enter the village, this makes no sense.
- You can kill NaliCows to get XP for the spells, killing the Nali don't give you XP but that soft-blocks the map, NC doesn't have a safety net in case players start killing the Nali.
- ExplodingWalls and ExplosionChains have collision.
- The map uses a NCSkyPoint, which is an actor used to tell the game if the player is in an open area so they can use spells that can only be used when the sky is visible, but you still don't have any spells that require the sky, so this actor is useless.
- If you touch one of the potteries you can potentially die because the decoration goes out of bounds, I don't know exactly why this happens.
- The monk statues inside and outside the church should have been static.
- Many of the tree decorations are floating, also some decoration that aren't suppose to have collision, have collision.
- There's a mana zone for the holy book, but you can't use it since you cannot get XP for that book until much later.
- The moon in the skybox looks very ugly, this could have been fixed by using a circular black brush behind the moon.
- One of the flames inside the fortress is almost out of bounds.
- When you talk to an NPC that's patrolling, they never go back to their original state after finishing the conversation.
- There should be a trigger in the bottomless pits to make sure players die when they fall into them.
- If you move very slowly or crawl when moving on the tree branch that collapses at the end of the map, you could drop down alongside the branch to the bottom of the pit and if you survive by staying on the branch, you are soft-blocked.
- One of the messages/log entries is out of bounds.
I basically agree with the prevailing sentiment: a very good map that does something rare in our scene by being an RPG-style town - heavy on story and completely peaceful (until you leave town). I can think of only One Day - Noon as an example of a map that attempted this kind of thing prior to Nali Chronicles, but of course Jardi Village is more accomplished thanks to the custom gametype for NPC conversations etc. And yeah, the new music is very nice The story is good but then it really ought to be given how much of it there is.
This is the kind of level that gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling.
Nali: Magic or Telekinesis
Waffnuffly wrote:
It's tarydium-doped smoothies. Drunk by the player, I mean. The player is tripping balls. The whole game actually takes place in a large city and the player thinks he's on an alien world.
The story is good but then it really ought to be given how much of it there is.