This will be a long post, best to start with the main point I think. Should be stated but spoilers ahead.
Obsidian Mirror’s campaign missions lack quality compared to Heavenly Spear and feel either rushed or padded.
I want to be clear, this is distinct from the campaign’s writing and characters, which I feel is consistent. The voice acting for Ajax being so wildly different in direction from the original continues to vex me. The dialogue/writing spends more time telling me what people feel like rather than showing it and makes characters say things no reasonable human would ever string together in a sentence, but at this point these are my expectations for the writing. It’s campy at the best of times.
My main gripe is the actual gameplay of the missions themselves. Especially compared to the other recent expansion Heavenly Spear.
For transparency, all missions completed on Hard difficulty.
Because I believe it’s important to highlight the good with the bad
the good improvements first:
-
Better enemy variety. The campaign finds a good excuse to take us back to places we’ve been before and provides us with more than just mirror matchups against the new Pantheon. This is a good change imo.
-
Minimal missions that are “micro missions”. I don’t mind a micro mission but it should be a small or minimal number of missions. Immortal Pillars had 3 of its 9 missions which was far too many, Heavenly spear cut it down to 1-2/12, Obsidian mirror maintains that level of 1-2/12. This matches the original campaigns 3/32
The general overview of things that got worse:
-
Extremely repetitive mission designs. We have functionally four tower defense missions out of a 12 mission campaign, 2 of them are even on the exact same map.
-
out of 12 missions, 3 use the exact same map, and 2 others also utilize the same map.
-
Several scenarios end abruptly and feel lazy.
-
Only 5 missions where you get to age 4 (generously 6 if you count the first mission starting you in age 4). It’s fine to have a ramp up/onboarding series of missions, but I feel like this should be closer to Heavenly Spear spears 7. missions with a full tree available. It’s also worth comparing how soon this happens (mission 4 in Heavenly Spear, Mission 7 in Obsidian Mirror)
-
Pacing issues that feel like the developers wanted to hold the players head and force them to see each new mechanic several times rather than trust players to experiment. Additionally hampered by poor onboarding trust, especially when compared to heavenly spear.
Specific mission gripes:
Mission 1: Sibling Rivalry
Like most Age of Mythology campaigns, the first mission is clearly meant to help onboard the player to the faction. However I’d argue the Sibling Rivalry feels like it is both trying to hold your hand whilst also dumping a textbook on your head and then telling you to pass a pop quiz. It’s both doing too much hand holding, and yet not enough at the same time.
For example, it prevents you from controlling all your buildings at the start of the mission, and slowly unlocks them as the mission progresses, an obvious hand holding tactic. But likewise, it doesn’t provide the level of guidance that those buildings are coming online that Omens from fall of the Trident did, where Athena calmly, during lulls in the action, explains what those buildings do. Obsidian Mirror expects you to learn how to use those buildings while under constant attack but also expects you to survive the attacks without access to those buildings. It’s also trying to explain how the Aztec favor system works, and also how traps work all at the same time. If that weren’t a load to handle, it’s also the only onboarding mission to start at age 4, that means more things to learn, more things to cram in, more things to figure out, all in a fairly short mission.
worse, if you don’t come to grips with the mechanics fast enough, there’s no cavalry coming to save you like in omens and invasion, you just lose.
Now maybe the devs were like “show them all the cool stuff up front!” and I’m totally down for that as a choice to trust the player to handle “all the mechanics and the full tech trees right away”. Heavenly Spears “Invasion let players interact with their units, and then granted a small but not full economy, capped you at age 2, and gave you full access to your buildings once the mission started in ernest, practically perfect as far as pacing is concerned.
Make a note, this is also a “hold until the clock runs down” mission.
Mission 2: Good Enough to Eat
This mission is basically every mission 2 I’ve ever played. We learn eco, we age up, we destroy enemy bases. The biggest issue I have with this mission is just how much better it is with its pacing and that it reintroduces mechanics from the first mission. This should be the first mission. It’s doing what Mission 1 was doing, but with far better pacing.
Mission 3: Fumigate
This mission felt… weird. It starts off as a micro mission, then turns into a stealth minigame to teach you about both stealth and traps, and then briefly turns into a very limited “destroy the base” finish. For mission 3, I thought it was ok, and now having completed the campaign, I appreciate this mission for at least being unique for the first parts.
Mission 4: Washed up
Ok, we’re fighting not a mirror match, that’s a first for these DLCs, awesome! The mission then teaches me about stealth again. and also about traps again… and then I destroy the enemy town center and the mission just… ends. That’s it? The map is half the size of mission 2 and just feels… uninspiring? I’m a big fan of “build base destroy enemy base” missions, but I prefer them to have some length and exploration in them. We’re also still in age 3 as opposed to Heavenly spear where we’ve been unshackled and have access to age 4 at this point. From a story perspective this mission is fine, but I feel if the map was larger, with more to find or more enemies to fight, It wouldn’t feel weirdly short.
Mission 5: Pirate Schemes
Ok, we get navy, it’s a navy mission… Thats it, we’re fighting another 1v1 (thats the 3rd one of these) but this time we get boats, The map is once again small and cramped and while I appreciate objectives that create variation on the “build and destroy” the mission, again, feels like they just didn’t have the budget to build out cool and interesting maps. This feels extra bad on a navy centric mission where the “end goal” and your “starting position” and within a stones throw away from each other. The mission ends with a small micro section but I’d argue the mission actually ended 5 minutes before that when the navy beat the other navy. The mission also, again, doesn’t trust you to handle age 4 yet (despite it thrusting it upon you in mission 1). This actually feels like a mistake as Story banter actually makes a pass at the axolotl being cute and references the age 4 version that you don’t get to see.
Mission 6: Delivery Service
It’s a micro mission. I don’t mind a campaign having one. This one had some cool moments. moving on.
Mission 7: Hells Divided
It’s the obligatory underworld mission. On the plus side, it’s a base building one, which I don’t think we’ve had since “beneath the Surface” (which still didn’t let you build in the underworld, but did have basebuilding). It’s clearly a “capture and hold the hill", and I don’t think we’ve done one of those in Age of Mythology (the closest that comes to mind is “The Dwarven Forge” from Fall of the Trident). We get to go to age 4 (finally) but again, the mission ends abruptly with more than half the map unexplored. I had hoped that maybe after securing the center against hades we might get some japanese or chinese (notably some shinigami appear) and just … more mission?
Mission 8: Tenochtitlan
This mission is what caused me to want to write this whole thing out. Other things bugged me, but out of all the missions, this one was the pinnacle of all the issues I’d had rolled into one. First off, we’re once again capped at age 3… why. Why at mission 8 of a 12 mission campaign are we regressing. The campaign technically calls this “act 3” and maybe the thought was that in Fall of the Trident, entering a new act means we regress back down again, but Fall of the Trident had a very good reason to regress back down which was you changed pantheons. You effectively were relearning the game again so they gave you a little dip in the amount of information you had to take in at once. In obsidian mirror, we never leave the Aztec pantheon. There is no reason to regress unless it is critical for mission design which is absolutely not the case here. Not only do we lose access tech. for the third time we are introduced to traps and how they work. To top it off, the mission starts with an amazing premise: Take over outlying city states. In my mind, there are so many interesting ways you could design a mission like this, missions I know they know how to make. You can make a number of enemies who all have different conditions for submission, burn their farms, destroy their docks, sabotage caravans… maybe you get bonuses based on which faction you take out first… but no, it’s just a repeat of mission 4 except now with two enemies! a huge portion of the map goes unused again, and once again, the mission ends were I expect a part 2 to kick in.
Mission 9: We’re Surrounded
Ok, we’ve got another defense mission. Goal, run down the clock. We can’t build walls, so we have to make use of the terrain, house walls, and bloodbaths. It’s a small map but all of it is used, and if this mission were not in the context of the rest of the campaign, I probably wouldn’t mind it. Again we learn about traps.
Mission 10: Dominion
It’s another defense mission. So we’re at 3 now. This one does have a different win con though of “build wonder”. However notably it is on a slightly altered map of mission 8 (complete with the city states you crushed). The mission gives me some sub objectives to grab some relics but either due to my own incompetence or poor instructions (which say to take them to your wonder that you do not have yet and even bringing them to the area doesn’t seem to trigger anything) they don’t seem to work? The wonder is finished and the mission ends. Which brings me back to mission 8, why isn’t this part of the same mission? If you’re going to make mission 8 so boring that you don’t use half the map, just combine both of these, then you’d actually explore and utilize everything and it would feel like a full mission rather than 2 missions that are both… meh?
Mission 11: Endless Hunger
It’s a “stop the titan before it destroys you” mission. We’ve had several of these before which makes it less unique, especially because unlike the other “survive the titan” missions this one’s only objective is “kill the titan”. Not slow it down or get ahead of it, just “kill it”. Worse, the mission clearly uses the exact same map as Mission 9 just expanded slightly (or perhaps mission 9 was “shrunk”). It’s not a bad mission, it’s just uninspiring.
Mission 12: The Final Stand
It’s another defense mission. on the exact same map as mission 10 which was also a defense mission. The enemies are different, but otherwise it’s the same exact mission at least for the first 75%. There is then a transition to a brief “kill a titan” mid section followed by what feels like where the mission should have started. Which is city street fighting followed by a charge into the most absurd abuse of tier 4 god powers I think I’ve seen in a minute. It feels like the first part should have been a cutscene, the map expanded, and more enemies added to actually bring a climax for the ending.
In Conclusion
I think I was spoiled with just how well made (at least imo) Heavenly Spears maps and missions were, as well as the amount of voice acting and in mission dialogue (also noticeably diminished, especially after mission 3) Maybe I view heavenly spear more highly because immortal pillars also had its share of quality issues (too many micro missions, too short). But I felt fairly let down by Obsidian mirrors mission design. Missions felt like more time was spent building out the same pattern of exposed towers in a narrow path with some trees to hide in then actually making the missions themselves more engaging.