Back on New Year’s Eve Keen and I stayed up late into the night playing Mice and Mystics. We were playing through chapter three and getting our fuzzy tails kicked. I think we restarted the whole chapter three separate times and retried the final room encounter several more. It was a really difficult chapter, that’s for sure.
One thing that I think we both agree on is the absolute NEED for a healer. We tried a few times not bringing Tilda with us but it just doesn’t work out. Another mouse with the first aid skill can cure one wound for two cheese but that takes way too long and ends up being way too expensive to be viable. By the time you heal up all your cheese is gone and you’ve wasted enough time to get a surge triggered and a spider crawling up your arse.
I’m not sure how the rest of the game is going to go but it feels somewhat daunting. The boss encounters are getting more difficult and right now we’re only using the normal encounter cards. There’s a whole set of red hard encounter cards that they don’t even tell you to use yet. I don’t know what else they can do to you unless there’s a hidden foot in the box that springs out and kicks you in the groin. Things are getting tougher and tougher but there seems to be no real way for the mice to get stronger. Sure you can “level up” but that just gets you a new ability card. You still have the same base amount of health to deal with. Aside from that you are only allowed to keep one non-starter search card per character so any chance of gearing up is gone. Actually… I wonder if that means one card of the cards you found that chapter. If that’s the case then that would help IMMENSELY.
I may be sounding a bit harsh but don’t get me wrong, I still love the game and so does Keen. I think another big problem is our luck. We must have offended the greater Dice Dieties in some way because we are getting thrashed in our rolls. Who knows what we can do to rectify this. Maybe ceremonially burn a copy of Yahtzee–I don’t know.
The final room of Chapter 3 is what gave us the most grief. You enter a room and there are 4 ranged elite rats throwing crap at you from across the room along with a ranged boss. Unfortunately we only have 2 ranged characters so it was ridiculously hard trying to rush the table and not get destroyed in the process. I’m not entirely sure how many times we had to retry the room, but it got to the point where Keen was losing it. Still, we managed it eventually but I’m not quite happy. “Checkpointing” or whatever you want to call it feels kind of cheap and devalues the win. Still, to what extent do you take a loss? If you lose in chapter 4 do you start over in the same room? The start of Chapter 4? The beginning of the ENTIRE campaign? I guess this is up to the players to decide and all that really matters is they have fun with the experience. Though I’ve often found I make games as unfun to play as possibl.
But hey! We did manage to defeat the large Cat boss, Brodie, for the first time and that was pretty awesome. Technically we have defeated him before but that was by drugging him. That doesn’t really feel as sporting.
So do you think the increased difficulty was more due to your current lack of experience with the game or was the “secret” to beating it more of a crapshoot?
I like difficult games, but only if the transition from losing to winning is dependent upon improving my strategy as opposed to rolling three 6’s in a row.
@Gankatron: We view difficulty the same way. In my opinion, unless we were doing something wrong, the last room of Chapter 3 is ridiculous if you go in without a huge stockpile of cheese for Maginos. Surviving against 5 Elite Rat Warriors all throwing daggers at you comes down to luck of the dice roll unless you brought along defensive abilities/armor. Even then, a dice roll determines a lot.