As the Perisno mod that was otherwise playing smoothly (even in battle) unfortunately had a world map regular stuttering that finally had been getting on my nerves, i decided to look elswhere for a Warband mod to kill time until the new Prophecy of Pendor release coming in March.
My choice went to The Last Days , a big LOTR mod for both old M&B and Warband. A mod i didn't played more than a few minutes many years ago in which i had spent time visiting the Minas Thirit location, i don't remember why, probably i had something else taking my PC attention.
And wow what an excellent mod, i was expecting it to be just another mod with units, factions and world map replacing the default Warband ones but still playing the same gameplay flow but oh much wrong i was.
The Last Days has some unique system regarding ressource and ranks with all factions that change how the game is flowing.
Factions are belonging to the 2 sides of the LOTR lore (Good and Evil) without some random stuff leading into "let's make peace for months without reason" that happens sometime in other mods between factions of those 2 sides.
And after a (customisable) time , it depends on your level, the actual war between the 2 side will really start (they even made ingame cutscene for it that was a nice touch), each factions is getting a strength level , said strength is getting lowered or increased depending on battles being won or lost (or with actions from the player various quests results), allowing at some point major locations to be able to get besieged.
And player after gaining enough rank within a faction will then be able to be part of the war council (and so have their strategy ideas being heard instead of being disregarded, after all at the start you're just a nobody in the chain of command before you will be able to climb the hierarchy, you're not going to tell lords what to do).
Ranks and ressource points accumulation allow you to unlock some stuff in the factions you're working with, special items and etc...
It's a much more interesting mod than i thought at first.
Running for Gondor i've been helping where i could, questing around and jumping into some large battles when several lords where fighting the enemy.
At some point i ran with my +/- 45 troops (some had been nicely upgraded but none was at the high end status) into a Mordor War Party of +/-22 orcs. At first i thought it was going to be easy like in other battles in which i was outnumbering the orcs like that.
But oh boy i was wrong, after some minutes a Nazgul scream could be heard, repeating at some interval, when it happened the whole army (and my character too) were affected and were covering their ears while kneeling, not helping at when fighting.
Sadly it looks like said Nazgul have no physical presence in the mod out of that scream thingy :/
It was getting hard, but still i thought we could probably win the day as orcs were falling left and rights to my archers defended by a wall of infantry and the cavalry charges .
Until i spotted an unit that was towering over everyone, an Olog Hai (an armored troll).
Not only that big thing was incredibly resilient but his strikes were hard and had noticable area of effects sending troops flying (from a distance it was as if i was watching the opening scene of the LOTR movie with Sauron playing baseball with soldiers), the animations were very well done to make that beast a really convincing threat.
The thing managed to take out everyone in the end, fortunately i managed to retreat with the wounded and lots of losses without being captured, lesson learned : Mordor War Party -> Avoid until i get high end units
Author
Topic: Blurb on Games that probably don't deserve their own threads. (Read 328863 times)