Siege of Avalon Chapter 3 Review

This chapter is the first of the optional chapters in the game. Chapters 3-5 are dedicated to each main class which is fighter, scout, and mage. Chapter 3 is the fighter centric one. Since I am playing as a fighter, it was required for me to play this chapter. Other classes though have the option of whether to play it or skip it. It is recommended to play every chapter anyway regardless of your class, as you will earn additional training points and useful gear. They also further flesh out the worldbuilding and story, which is all very well written and worth delving into.

CHAPTER 3 begins with receiving orders from General Roth to deliver a letter to his special operative Holden, who will then deliver it to the king. With the traitors among the ranks being revealed recently, and paranoia being spread about, Roth only trusts you to deliver this letter. To find Holden, you must trek through the deep forests outside of the keep and find the hidden fortress. This forest area is massive and there is no fast travel to get back to the keep quicker. If you thought that the caves were bad in chapter 2, oh boy. The amount of time spent running back and forth through endless screens of forests to talk to characters will really test your patience.

If you are playing a fighter in this chapter, then this is your chance to be promoted to a knight. There is a rather hidden quest that you can accept from the Ambassador who, if you remember, is in the 2nd level of the inner keep. If you talk to him, he will give you a quest to retrieve some artifacts in order to be granted the new rank. Although it is optional, this is a pretty important quest at least for role-playing purposes, if you're playing a fighter. If it wasn't for the guide I was reading, I probably wouldn't have found it.

The Unicorn Mikki can be found and saved from the Ahoul

While in the forest, this is also the first time you run into Elves. Elves in this universe are spiritual humanoids that live in the forest and care deeply about nature. Their beliefs are similar to that of the Sha'ahoul, the difference being in their methods of preserving nature. The Elves, while not all agree, have made an alliance with the humans and want to protect the forests and its wildlife from the Sha'ahoul. The Elves also worship and protect Mikki the unicorn. These sacred creatures represent the purity of nature. Within the forest you can find Mikki captured by Ahoul and about to be killed. Saving Mikki will earn you deep respect from the Elves and will lead to one of the Elves being able to join your party. Like Wyatt, he is a skilled archer and is very helpful to have around.

Once you reach Holden's fortress, he tells you that before he can send his scout to bring the letter to the king, you must clear the Ahoul in the northern region. These Ahoul can be quite tough. They have a few small camps scattered around that are full of these guys and unless you are a stealth focused character, you have to take them all out in one big ugly battle.

The problems with the combat system really show here. I've mentioned it previously but combat can be tricky since it's in real time and there is no active pause function. The problem is that the combat could be much more tactical and there is depth to it, but it's almost impossible to engage in its full potential because everything happens too fast and unless you have very quick reflexes, it is extremely difficult to manage any of your party members or to even switch spells while in the heat of battle. You can control your party members and use their different spells and abilities, but I found that I never was able to do that even if I wanted to because once combat begins, you're going to be too busy trying to keep yourself alive and trying to click on the enemies to kill them. Perhaps playing as the other classes is a bit different, but playing as a fighter, it's hard to do anything except hack away at enemies like you're playing Diablo, and hope for the best. Your other party members do at least have their own AI and can cast spells and fight enemies for you, but you just have to hope that they do their job and don't get killed. If your party members do die, then they are dead for good. Luckily they are mostly expendable, because you are given new party members to recruit each chapter, but it's still a good idea to hold on to them for as long as you can, because they do still help a lot as being either cannon fodder or to just cast healing spells on you.

The entrance to the tomb where a Shadow Warrior awaits you

As you're exploring the forest, you may also come across one of the Shadow Warriors. These guys are sort of mini bosses that drop some decent armor. Killing them is required for the knight quest as each one guards a chest which contains a shadow amulet. Once you return all three amulets to Lucien, you are promoted to knight. Other classes can't complete the knight quest of course, but they can still fight the Shadow Warriors for training points.

You may also come across a tribe of lizardmen. These guys live inside of a cave and have captured some soldiers inside of a cage. Aside from killing the lizardmen and freeing the prisoners, the lizardmen don't seem to have much purpose. You are told little about them and know nothing of their culture or reasoning for capturing the soldiers. Most likely to eat them, but perhaps they have some other unexplained reason. Well either way you murder all of the poor lizards and free the prisoners and move on, so we'll see if these lizardmen return in later chapters.

After entrusting the King's letter to the Holden's scout, Holden mentions there were riders seen heading north of the fortress. Exploring back that way, you find Baron Hartley and his men resting at the Ahoul camp which you just cleared out. The Baron has a request that you return him the Signet ring and crown from a long dead king. This request was also given to you from Lord Harold, so you have a choice on who to return it to. Roth suggests that we return the items to the Baron, so I might as well. Obtaining these items requires traveling back to the village and fighting a huge pack of Sha'ahoul, one of which is wearing the royal armor. This fight is really tough and it's definitely recommended that you save it for last because all of the training points you receive until then are absolutely necessary to win this fight. A little trick you can do that I found is if you are about to die or one of your party members is close to dying, you can run to the East side of the screen and load the other area. This will teleport you and your party with you and give you a chance to heal before going back in. Any enemies that you killed already, will stay dead, so you can use the trick to whittle down their numbers as much as you need before finishing them off. With that taken care of, you can head all the way back to the forest and to the Baron to return the ring and crown. Then run all the way back to the keep to talk to Roth and Page again. Page Entrowe informs you that there has been more Ahoul sited near the camp north of the fortress in the forest. Once you make your way all the way back up there, you must kill a huge group of Ahoul while they are fighting Baron Hartley and his men. This fight was tough and I lost all of my party members during the battle. Luckily, it seems that the Baron is invincible because they were hacking away at him for a while before I finally killed them all and he didn't die. Well, with the Ahoul dead and the Baron saved, that's the end of chapter 3.

EVALUATION: This was quite a lengthy and difficult chapter. Being that this is the fighter focused chapter, you can expect a lot of tough battles throughout. Going through these tough fights also further showed this game's problems with the combat system. Since it is real-time and there is no active pause function, managing your party members and spells during combat is near impossible. Most fights I just had to pump up my stats a bit and hope for the best. It is too bad really because the combat has potential to be more tactical like the infinity engine games or Dungeon Siege, but instead devolves to just a basic hack 'n slash. On top of that, the huge forest maps were quite irritating to run back and forth through. The details in the environments were very nice however I will add. Especially the rivers that run along through the marshes and the old makeshift wood bridges which look really nice and add to the atmosphere. There are also a few unique locations like the mausoleum that leads to the tomb and the tower in the middle of an island which leads to an interesting and rather confusing maze of teleporters. So exploring the forests wasn't all that bad, but it was exhausting by the end. Also, learning about the Elves and a bit of their history was interesting, hopefully the game delves deeper into Elves and their lore in the future.