Here are the comments for the mission, since everyone else is posting them. Thank you to everyone who played the mission, I'm honored that it scored as high as it did. There will probably be a small 1.1 update soon so if you're planning on playing it for the first time you should probably wait a few days.
Quote:
"This is another stellar mission in a contest that has nothing but stellar missions. Divided into two missions, The Tomb of St. Tennor has Garrett in search of a hammer buried in a catacomb complex under a countryside cathedral that fell prey to the undead. The first mission takes place in the cathedral and has a very Sepulchre of the Sinistral vibe right off the bat. It's an overall pretty good mission with a whole lot of Haunts. It's dark and gloomy. You can even walk on the cathedral's roof, how great is that?
The second mission is where the meat of this submission is and it is hands down the best Bonehoard-type mission I've ever played. vegetables manages to make every main tomb interesting and every puzzle/riddle easy to understand. There is no hour-long guesswork or frustrating trial and error here. I especially liked Midas' tomb, which I thought had an excellent vibe and some pretty interesting designs, and the statues area was very very clever. This is a mission that will have you explore every area for loot and it just keeps going on and on and on.
I have nothing to criticize, really. Bottom line is: go play it now. This gets the highest score from me. The first mission somewhat pales in comparison to the second, but the overall package is close to being a masterpiece."
"Since this is two mission, the overall rating will be the medium of the two mission rating.
Mission 1: Beautiful, very classic, impressive, creepy at some points and interesting story telling. Brillant layout so it deserves (24/30).
Mission 2 : It breaks my heart to tell it, but what was made in the first mission has been destroyed in the second. The story was Garrett raiding tombs and who needs to find a way out. Sticking to this would have made a perfect campaign, plus the puzzles were perfect un very creative, (especialy the one with magic missiles) but it happens that the author did forget about story telling and has gone too far, doing too much like a cake with too much sugar. The LC and Maw parts were not necessary, the burrick tunnel would have been enough to find an exit such like sewers or even a thieves lair ; since the church above is haunted and there are a couple of dead thieves in the catacombs. But instead, this is an endless exploration and not even a single word about why does the undead invaded the surface, erasing what was setup since the beginning. So the rating falls to (20/30).
So a global rating of (22/30)."
"Feels like three missions rolled into one! (Even though there's only two...)
Its obvious where you got your inspirations from - not thats a bad thing; feels very fitting too considering the nature of the contest.
The catacombs is absolutely the star of the show here. ""The Bonehoard on steriods!"" was all I could think of during my time in it. The transition from the cathedral into the undead vaults is staggering.
I also adored the individual noble tombs. The 'hall of statues' leading into the final room of the Midas tomb was a predictable trap, but funnily enough I think that knowing something was going to happen with the statues made it all the more terrifying. That terror was not lost when trying to get back out. The puzzles in the Brennan tomb were also good fun to figure out.
Honestly there were so much attention to little details that I could be here for ages talking about them, but as it stands I'm already rambling. Thank you for this FM, and good luck in the contest!"
tombs anyone,this is for all you treasure hunters
"Gameplay was challenging without being frustrating. Ingenious puzzles. Midas was the most memorable and created the most suspense.
Atmosphere was good. Nothing jarred me out of the believably of the environment, until I went looking for the Easter Eggs, which I viewed as somewhat separate. Great use of original ambients and some new ones. However, there was an overuse of symmetry in the terrain.
The levels carried the story well enough, and the readables were short, which I appreciate. However, there wasn't much story beyond that.
Overall, great mission design with plenty of replay value."
Mission 2 is so damn good ! easter eggs / puzzles so many challenges. Great work
Very nice mission ! Very complexe and with a nice challenge ! Too much zombies !
Solid haunted cathedral/bonehoard/lost city mashup. It was a little rough around the edges, but not enough to hinder my enjoyment. The golden statues were creative, if somewhat predictable.
It's hard to rate this one. Both missions suffer from having too much big open space especially Pt.1. Pt.2 however is a brilliant mission with great exploration, and I really enjoyed the platforming challenges and the puzzles in the Brennan tomb.
Awesome, huge underground tomb section. Hard puzzles in the first level.
"The mission reminded me of Sepulchre of the Sinistral by Doaal much of the mission(s).
I experienced a drop in FPS in mission one in some outside areas.
I really like to construct things in thief, so the smelter part were very welcome.
Also the Brennan part of the Tomb is really well constructed, I like these kind of puzzles.
I played on Expert and found that the number of AI were sufficient in both missions.
Regarding the secret that stretches from mission one to the second; I'm afraid that some players will be put off, because the player is punished in the second mission for not discovering the secret in the first one. That is if he/she finds the secrets in the second that is.
I actually spend over 3 hours hunting high and low for the Mystery keys in mission 1, and I also found the lava pit with the dead thief that talks about not bringing enough explosives.
So I blew open the first set of doors only to find out that there were a second set of doors, and mines and fire arrows didn't cut it.
At this point I was almost done with the hole mission and had been at the Craymen to get the Hammer of St. Tennor and used the magic elevator to get back up and search more for the secret.
I realized that I couldn't get to the secret and I couldn't get back without a speed potion and that just annoyed me in a way that I decided to quit the game without getting out. (I only carried one speed potion from mission one.)
And then I replayed the missions and decided to speed play on Normal difficulty and save all the speed potions I found for the second mission.
I wanted to find the secrets, and I succeeded, and ended up making 15 explosive devices just to be safe.
And the infinitive crate was a nice touch, in Midas tomb I used it twice to get high up loot.
And I used the crates as they were ment to, (I guess) in the Alarus tomb to gain access to the part with the missing bridge and the lava river.
The first time I actually jumped from one pillar to the other and finally used a speed potion to be able to jump up to the point described above - that is taffin difficult.
The secret(s) is wonderful, but by punishing the player for not discovering a secret in mission one, is a bit too much for my taste.
You can look at it this way, as a fm constructor you've spend a certain amount of time creating secrets for people that play the mission. (People that are prepared to spend time on searching for secrets.)
Some people that play the mission may discover that there is a secret somewhere, and then spend a certain amount of time looking for it. (Hours!)
Only to discover that because the didn't do something/or did something in mission one, now prevents them in getting to that secret for which they have spend hours on searching for.
Finding the secrets in these missions were difficult enough if they had been independent from mission to mission.
But overall very Well done,
all though I generally dislike zombie/tomb mission with very few exceptions like; Sepulchre of the Sinistral and Flakebridge Monastery by Nielsen74 for TDM, and now this pair of missions too."
"Overall a very satisfying experience, both maps are impressive and very enjoyable. The gameplay is very captivating, the story is also very interesting. The ambients are absorbing. Overall a high quality production.
My score is 9 out 10"
This mission pack starts out with an excellent cathedral, then sends you on an adventure far beyond. I almost wish it didn't have to end.
Lots of great puzzles!
In my opinion, the best homage to "Thief" in the contest.
"Atmosphere - 7
The places the player visits are generally very similar in design to those known from original TG. That said, they are mostly constructed gracefully, especially the cathedral compound. The catacombs of the second mission are rather conventional, if you will, and the player is forced to follow the usual path of a tomb-raiding mission. Contrastingly, some individual tombs (Midas and Tennor specifically) were pretty original and intriguing in design. The missions used original graphics decently and the range of used sound effects was high.
Gameplay - 7
The game proceeded smoothly, without any unexpected trouble. I liked how the author forced the player to look for alternative paths to get inside many locations. The gameplay in the tombs I found a bit monotonous, save for the diversification provided at Tennor's and Brennan's (the puzzle was intriguing, but a bit too long in my opinion). I also liked that some extra locations and objectives were included (Sky Gem). Finally, the exit was remarkably difficult to find, I only managed to do it with a lot of logical thinking, a big help from the provided map, and lots of luck to notice the hole in the wall. I think some additional hints considering the location of the exit might have been in place.
Story - 5
Those were definitely not the most original fan-missions ever created. The world already looking quite familiar, storytelling department did not succeed in providing any uniqueness. The readables were exceptionally brief and thus did not feel authentic nor help making the story any deeper. On the other hand, I liked humorous bits here and there as well as some witty references in the second mission (Midas' golden army, Alarus etc.)"
"At first sight, I thought I would simply play a simple mission inside a Hammerite abbey... and then, explosion of incredibleness ! The first part of the mission was really good, with a nicely designed abbey and a good distribution of undead. I had the impression to play a Hammerite mission but with patrolling undead instead of guards, and this gave a good feeling of infiltration. A little keyhunt as well, and this mission was already a nice piece of pleasure.
And then came the second part of the mission : definitely worth to play and replay ! The different parts of the catacombs had a nice design and the stratification of the different floors was a nice idea. The noble tombs were absolutely wonders of creativity and originality : the creepy and impressive golden guards of Midas, the laserball puzzle of Brennan, the flooded catacombs of Wallace. Very impressive and polished.
The way to the tomb of St. Tennor was clearly entertaining and challenging, with a use of various traps I've never seen in other FMs, like the giant pushing hammers or the icy way above tons of zombies. To think this was only made with T1 material is more impressive again.
Now just comes the problem of the end, and linked to it, the weakness of the story : books are very short and barely entertaining in this mission, and they don't help getting the story, which looks almost non-existent. And that's too bad because such marvellous mission would definitely deserve more storytelling and lore : for example, why are there dead thieves in the catacombs ? Why has the hammer been stolen by craymen ? What happened to this abbey ? Who was St. Tennor ? It's really bad the author didn't take the time to think about all of this.
To finish, I regret the mission ends such as it ends : it proves to be too long. It was alreay long enough to reach St. Tennor's tomb. Discovering it has disappeared was still okay because it gave a little more supsense, but it shouldn't have been so long to find it then. Worst, it ends into the claws of craymen that come out of nowhere, without explanation nor apparent logic. And that's too bad again to spoil the pleasure of the mission by such incoherence.
As for the Lost City-like part, I'd say : nice design, but too much again : not only, it was unrelated to the main plot (the Hammer), thus turning up at the awkward moment, but it was also not very cool to pop up a mandatory objective like that, while the mission was already long enough like I said, and while it was not logical to reach such place in such mission, with no story background. Such place would have been great in another mission, but not in this one, and not after so many tests passed.
So to conclude : this mission is doubtless excellent and is clearly worth to play. It is very original and entertaining, and its design is absolutely well-made. But it should have ended earlier, for I think the author was a bit too greedy at the end and wanted to add more T1 universes inside, and I think it was unnecessary. Another FM in this contest decided to use diverse T1 universes one after another but it looked good because it was its reason to be. Here, we must reach the Tomb of St. Tennor, so let's just stick to it, get the freaking hammer and leave the place through a little burrick tunnel. This won't prevent the mission from remaining a great mission !"
Atmosphere could be 10/10 if not the empty spaces on the very beginning of the mission. 1st mission could've been made a little bit easier. 2nd mission is a masterpiece.
Review: (
https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthre...=1#post2414899)
Two mission pack. The first was rather ordinary with some clumsy architecture but still good game play, route solving, and key hunting. The second, starting in the tombs, led down to a bonehoard like area only more complicated, a craybeast area, and a nice lost city area. Lots of tricky little puzzles and good graphics. Swinging hammers, an ice platform maze, and a statu-lined maze where you are killed if you make a wrong turn. Possible to solve by guesswork. Last, a very nice lost city area. No overarching story to speak of. Ghosted both parts. This mission was more tedious to play than some others.
This two part mission is a great journey! I thought I searched very thoroughly, but still there was quite a lot of loot that I didn't find. Definitely going to play this again!
"Two missions in one, from a haunted monastery to an underground tomb-complex… and more. Both FMs feature good visuals, somewhere on the detail level slightly above OMs, just more of it. It is like taking the scale of a mission and blowing it up by 50%: the haunted cathedral is towering, the cloister is enormous, and the underground tombs are vast, inky black pits. This means there is more to do, but also that there is a lot of empty space. You spend a lot of time moving around, and in most cases, AI are fairly easy to avoid in the large spaces.
Of the two missions, the first is more linear, but uses its locales effectively to let you get into places in interesting ways (even if, typically, there are not many ways forward). It is essentially a keyhunt, but masks this with some fairly good sub-objectives. The second FM, in comparison, is very much like the Bonehoard, with alternate routes and hidden spaces galore. It does not have the sheer variety of the Bonehoard map, but it has a series of self-contained tombs, each with its own peculiarity of design and challenge. The mission also has content beyond the scope of tomb-raiding; three distinct environments, one of which is quite excellent, and two which are kinda empty. All in all, an adventure, and one with substantial replay value!"
"Another mission that I am really unsuited to review; I find Return To The Cathedral dull and irritating. Part 1 excellently captures the good aspects of that OM, while stripping out the most awful parts like playing fetch for Brother Murus. In this way, it is preferable. Part 2 is just an excellent Bonehoard mission, in the strain of FMs like Sepulchre of The Sinistral...
Some might fault this mission for having a secret and almost completely impossible to divine way in to The Alarus Extension. I cannot fault the author for putting this in. If you don't know about it, it doesn't detract anything from the flow or quality of the experience at all, unless you are a completionist who hears about it afterwards."