Helms DeepIII Hells Gate, is the first of a kind.The walls are curved in front and I felt that a climax 3/4s the way thru, where you would have to fish or cut bait would be a change.The time before this comes about. You better be in high gear getting more knights..I named it Hells Gate because you are about to open up hell.They're going to tear the castle down and pork the king,roast him over a pit.If you think you're so hot ......whip this.And don't dare tell me about balance..Brains over brawn....is the issue.I didn't put alot of eye candy because I didn't see any in the movie...stark as a wet rock.Just about the time you think "this is easy",you better get hold of yourself.
Playability: 5/5!
Very good here, lots to think about, never a dull moment. I'm going to be generous and give you a 5. Well done!
Balance: 3/5
Definately one size fits all. Economic goals change but this doesn't make any difference, because you have to beat all the invasions anyway, to have a hope of completing the tasks. Its got to be a 3 as you made it clear that this is what it would be in the description.
Creativity: 4/5
Quite a bit of work has gone into scripting the map. The plagues, fires and invasions liven things up a bit. The goals are hard, but if you can survive the invasions, they are completeable.
Map Design: 3/5
I'm not one of these people who is very fussy about eye candy, as long as the map looks OK, it's fine. People overrate the usefulness of eye candy, but thats the way the world is going nowadays. Anywhose the map...
Fine, but a bit rough round the edges. Castle looks terrible ;) Defences aren't very strong, lots of weak points. Majority of map is fine though, not much bland terrain. Front castle defences could do with a major facelift though. Did you know you can put a section of wall on medium height next to max terrain, put steps down from the wall and units can climb onto the max height? This looks better than having stairs going up over max height and then down again. Proper use of crennelations would improve the castle in this area too.
Story/Instructions: 3/5
Short and sweet. Everything we need to know, but not everything we'd like to know. Expand here. Make something out of it. Why are these people attacking this fort? What do they want? Why do we need to achieve our goals? Why not just sit back, bark at some ministers and tell them to get the job done for us?
Very good map, improve the castle and the story and you'll be seeing more scores around 4 and 5. Perhaps make that gate in the river a bit more useful.
PS. Its not got very much to do with Helms Deep has it?