Carry On Adventuring!

Something weird happened last night. I finished a game and it didn't stop. 

I finally got to the end of Dungeon of Naheulbuek. I fought the final boss, Zangdar, and beat him on the second try, after I looked the fight up on the web and found there was a perfectly legit but totally dubious way to cheese it.

While I was reading up on how to avoid playing the game the way the developers intended, I couldn't help but notice a lot of complaints about the ending. For one thing, some people think the late-game fights are too easy. It's true they aren't as tough as some of the earlier ones, although I wouldn't complain about it. It's not like the game is especially challenging to begin with. Apart from that one super-annoying one I posted about, not that many battles took me more than a couple of tries on the default difficulty.

The real beef, though, was that the game ended far too abruptly. Supposedly it just sort of stopped with no real pay-off for all the hours it took to get there.

I wasn't too bothered although I was quite glad I'd spoiled that part of the surprise by reading about it ahead of time. That's also how I knew there was no loot to be had from the last battle other than a derisory half-dozen healing potions, as if to say "Here, fix yourselves up and bugger off." But I didn't care. I'd had my fun. I've been playing this game most days for months. 

I haven't kept a track of the hours I've spent on it but the average total playtime is supposed to be between thirty and forty-five hours, depending on whether you stick to the main plot or try to 100% the whole thing. I haven't remotely attempted to complete all the collections or get all the achievements but I'm sure I've played for well over thirty hours. I probably spent a dozen on that bridge fight alone.

However long it was, I definitely feel I got my money's worth. Or I would have, if I'd spent any, which of course I didn't. For all its many, obvious flaws, I'd rate Dungeon of Naheulbeuk as one of the more amusing comedy-adventures I've played - admittedly not a very high bar. It raised the occasional smile and rarely had me wanting to chuck a bread roll at the writers. 

Gameplay is solid. It held my attention throughout. If there was a sequel I'd be happy to play that too, which is just as well because it seems I've already started.

After the battle, when Zangdar had gasped out his inevitable, self-justifying, final words, I was expecting credits to roll. Instead, another wizard from earlier in the game ported in and the game just... carried on. 

First, there was a lot of dialog. I sat back and listened while my party bickered and bargained and went to and fro with various NPCs. It felt like it went on for about ten minutes. Maybe it did.

Eventually, the wizard translocated whole lot of them to an entirely new location, which turned out to be a graveyard at night. That's never a good sign. After warning them not to touch anything, he ran off through a convenient nearby door, leaving the party standing there in the dark, looking even more like they'd been left holding a ticking time-bomb than usual.

At this point I was feeling very confused. I'd timed my evening session in the expectation it would last barely longer than the fight itself and now here we were, apparently carrying on. I thought about going with it to see where things went next but somehow I didn't get the feeling this was a neat little coda the developers had added in response to all that criticism about the ending. It felt a lot more like the start of a brand new adventure.

It was late, so I stopped but as soon as I got back from taking Beryl for a walk this morning I fired the game up and started over from where I'd left off. Naturally, having been told not to touch anything, the first thing the Dwarf did, on noticing some gold pieces just lying around on the floor, was pick them up. And we were off.

An hour or so and several fights later we'd killed a bunch of undead (If you can kill something that's died already. Never been exactly clear how that works.) looted some nice upgrades, something that strongly implies further progression to come and somehow found ourselves in the middle of a feud between Vampires and Necromancers, a feud in which we're expected to take sides. It was one long, run-on action scene that looked like it would never end.

Enough! I saved, logged out and googled the name of the quest I was on, Ruins of Limis. That, it transpires, is also the title of the game's fist DLC. That's what I am now playing. 

No-one asked me if I wanted to. It just happened.

Clearly, the DLC must have been included in the package that Amazon Prime handed out for free last November. Except it wasn't or rather it wasn't mentioned. I didn't say anything about it in my post at the time and neither did any of the news sites that reported on it back then. 

So, maybe the DLC came to Prime later. It's been six months. There's a hand-out every week, pretty much. 

But you don't get those automatically. You have to claim them. And I didn't claim this one. I'd never even heard of it.

I guess I'm not complaining. No, I'm definitely not complaining. I would have liked to be told about it first, but never mind. 

As for the way the new adventure just carries on from the original, it does look as though it's set up to work that way. There's a whole bit explaining why you lose all your gold but keep your gear, for a start. I imagine, when it was first released, players would just have booted up their final auto-save and found themselves carrying on from the end of the final fight. 

In fact, it might even have been designed that way from the get-go. That would certainly explain the non-ending everyone complained about. Also why you might need more health potions even though the game seemed to be over.

It is a bit disconcerting, all the same. I'd been enjoying DoN quite a bit but I have been playing it for what feels like a long time now. I'd been having mixed feelings about it coming to an end. I thought I might miss it and I was wondering what I'd replace it with but I was also quite looking forward to getting stuck into something different for a change.

Now it seems I'm just going to be carrying on as I was. I have mixed feelings about that, too. What's more, there are two more DLCs  and I have no idea if either is also included in the Amazon version. If they are, I could playing this thing all year!

Or I could just stop. It's not an MMORPG. You can save any time you like, come back six months later and nothing will have changed. 

I don't have to go on playing just because I got suckered into it. I'm not some dumb adventurer who can be manipulated into doing something stupid by any smart-talking, hand-waving, beard-faced snake-oil salesman that happens along...

Oh, wait a minute...