Rate the second episode!

[Skaara Dreadlocks 10]

Did you select some units (F1-F10) before you issued the command?

I tried that too, it was still greyed and faded out.

[lugiahua 26]

So... It was very nice experience, I must say.

- island is extinct. No civilians at all (well, there are some bodies...), only we, them, and animals watching all this war insanity around. Pity, avoiding civilian losses (or not) could be some nice tactical choises factor, also civilians en masse could play some role in the plot, partisans should be somehow dependent on locals support/sympathy;

This...and I wonder why they took out female civilians from A2??

It seems that no female ever exist on islands in ArmAverse. (Arma1 and Arma3)

[Darkhorse 1-6 16]

I tried that too, it was still greyed and faded out.

Press backspace. Team, choose (not set) team white, and then you can give individual commands. However it's a pain in the ass to use in a firefight.

[Polygon 11]

Overall, the 2nd episode was solid. Shit happens, though. :D

THE BAD:

- lacking logic to a degree. For ex.: night ops without having NVGs; weird hideout selection at an abandoned factory, too many light sources at night (enemy has to be blind to not suspect);

- small/big plot-/event- twists feld forced sometimes. They were there only to keep Kerry swearing all the time.

- occassionally unnnatural dialog between characters.

- speeding up the game doesn't affect conversations. This fucks up whole game-flow.

I'D LIKE:

- more mearningful side missons with clear goals and possible gains outlined by Kerry himself or someone else;

- diplomacy feature - to convince Miller or anybody else high-rank to allocate more resources for X and Y;

- better selection of hideouts;

- less monotony - like philosophical quotes at the beginning of almost every mission;

- more detailed characters;

- secrets. For instance - Kerry finds a note at the hideout about Miller or someone important, it changes player's perspective and such.

- a glance inside into enemy situation.

[lugiahua 26]

BTW, I forgot to mention this, but somehow I lost my subtitles from conversation since third mission or so.

my subtitle was disabled throughout whole game, even in editor and MP, yet the option says that it's enabled. Has this any to do with the SP campaign?

[ataribaby 54]

Check if you not select Stream Friendly UI to enable in options. It was my case and it removes radio subtitles.

[ceeeb 147]

5/10

Good

• Good voice acting.
  
• Some missions don't go as originally planned, seems less linear.
  
• The first two and the last mission were good fun.
  
• Patrol sub-missions make patrolling far more interesting than in Survive.
  

Could be better

• Why is CSAT working with AAF? Why did they both attack NATO? What is NATO doing? No one seems interested enough about the situation to even bother talking about it!
  
• Not very many missions. Patrol sub-missions aren't great fun.
  
• Implausible guerilla hideouts. Everyone is too relaxed, too well illuminated and far too exposed.
  
• Enemy AI has no apparent communication. It would be much better if they became alert and called in reinforcements when attacked! The cistern mission is terrible in this regard - the player attacks a base that is surrounded by enemy APCs, and none of them do anything!
  
• Continuity problems - I gave the fuel tanker to Miller's man and in the very next mission it says there would be fewer CSAT troops around if only we had tried to kill the CSAT officer using the fuel tanker.
  
• Equipment storage at the hideout is inadequate and/or not reliably persistent. There are many weapon storage crates at the hideout that do not persistently store gear too.
  
• Prior to starting a mission, player is sometimes given a default gear loadout for the mission, and the opportunity to change equipment if they desire. However, the verbal briefings do not provide enough information about the execution of the mission to know what type of equipment I may need (eg, explosives, silenced weapons). Nothing like going out on a mission with a MG while the rest of the squad has silenced weapons.
  
• Attacking Stratis at night mission without any NV seems completely stupid. This mission would make far more sense if it were in the Survive campaign!
  
• Patrol and it's sub-missions are all done alone. There is no way any army (guerilla or otherwise) sends out one single man to do those missions! They don't even send you out, you just overhear others talking about it and wander out of the base!
  
• Again, no civilians in sight.
  
• No characters.
  
• No apparent consequences of mission and submission performance.
  
• No apparent consequences of losing men. As a guerilla force on a small island, losing soldiers should be devastating.
  

Edited February 1, 2014 by ceeeb

[Polygon 11]

More points I'd like to raise:

• you can freely open fire at base, nobody reacts when you make noise
  
• AI sits on an ammo box and player can still access its inventory (logic?)
  
• Am I the only one who feels briefings sound overdramatized?
  
• Nobody raises questions / anything or - perhaps was ordered not to talk about serious stuff with Kerry around as he's the only one of US?
  

More realistic interaction and responsiveness added into gameworld would be great and appreciated.

Attention to little details is what made GTA 5 very enjoyable to me, personally.

[keeks 12]

\

[*]Continuity problems - I gave the fuel tanker to Miller's man and in the very next mission it says there would be fewer CSAT troops around if only we had tried to kill the CSAT officer using the fuel tanker.

I had this problem too.

Overall I gave the mission 7/10. The campaign in this game has had me hooked a lot more than other Arma campaigns. I dropped the score on this episode a little though because of AI problems in some missions (the ambush springs to mind straight away). Sometimes getting the AI to do simple things can be extremely difficult, and being in command can sometimes reveal this. Just some improvements in AI responsiveness would be great.

Patrol missions solo did seem a bit weird, especially considering just how easy it would be to give you a squad and car to assist and speed it up a bit (I was glad for the extra content they offered, but it dragged out a bit long doing it solo and seemed quite unrealistic for a single person to be taking out entire patrols of trained soldiers).

Having said all that I think the pros outweigh the cons for this one, and I'm still looking forward to the third episode.

[Rydygier 1302]

to give you a squad and car to assist and speed it up a bit

Car is given in some way every mission - there is always one available near mission's starting point. Regarding to AI problems, giving also a team IMO would not speed up anything, but on the contrary - will slow down due to necessity of babysitting AIs all the time (that's my personal experience anyway). The only pro would be additional cargo space for loot.

[Jona33 51]

Impressive I'd say overall. I found some of it absolutely horrible, one of the reasons it took me so long to finish was I kept on just quitting in fury (usually at the AI). E.g. the AI seem very reluctant to use AT launchers.

On the other hand I actually really liked the freedom being in command gave me.

For example

In the cistern mission I elected to try and help out Miller. Unfortunately I'm crap at driving so I crashed the truck into a rock. I had an AT launcher from earlier that I'd taken and one of my team mates had an RPG 42 left. I elected for us to to run onto a ridgeline overlooking the road and then let rip manually, and that was a success. For me, that really helped me enjoy it.

Despite the frustrations, even in the last mission there was a lot of satisfaction. I got thoroughly irritated with the last mission but the second I finished I couldn't help grinning a little.

Overall I'd say 7/10. Plenty of issues but overall it was good I think.

[NeuroFunker 11]

I gave it a 7. Somehow less intriguing, less interresting then the first episode. I had absolute no passion, doing side mission, even they are just optional. It didn't felt so dangerous, being under pressure in enemies territory. The only mission, where such feeling came back, was return to stratis one. Imo this was my most fav mission from whole episode 2. Yes overall it's more sandbox'ish, more difficult, but somehow less interresting. Even playing with mods like jsrs, blastcore, bCombat, did not enhance it for me, while i've completed first episode without any mods, and enjoyed it pretty much. I know, people like arma because it's a sandbox, but playing linear first episode, felt personally more interresting the sandboxed second episode.

Side missions, maybe i did miss something, but why we are send to do them, alone? like assaulting roadblocks. Why couldn't we get few soldiers for that task? The only side mission, to go solo, was finding and killing snipers duo, on a factory. I believe even enjoyed playing that one, looking for them in full of mines area.

Was imo quite stupid in last mission, to send my rebel team (5 people) against CSAT special forces, in the village with arty. Yes, we found out there are csat special forces after destroying the arty first, even told our HQ about it, but we were send to eliminate csat special forces, in reality, Miller should have known, we have not a single chance there, and would tell us to retreat. Just destroying arty, quick hit and run, would do the job. My rebel team, should have had no chances, facing best trained csat forces, whith such low amount of people, but we have managed to defeat them. Felt more like, my team were the elitest trained forces on earth, facing stupid low skilled rebels csat.

Even it's a game, knowing NATO/US, they would just bomb the shit out of island, whithin all civilians, rebels, before even geting close to the island. That was quite stupid invade the island, just with choppers, where AAF had jets, which are quite supperior in the air. The excuse could be, cause the game had no jets, so nato didn't use any. BI could keep the last mission for third episode, where probably the jets for bluefore and opfor should occure.

Let see what third episode shows, im sure it will have large scale battles, lots of action. I hope it will be fun and interresting, and yet not easy.

Edited February 11, 2014 by NeuroFunker

[drebin052 323]

I'll give it a 6.

The good:

- Excellent ambience and music for most of the missions

- The nice plot twists towards the end

Miller's deception and "betrayal"; always knew he was a shifty-looking character from the start

- Squad command. Hated not being able to control the your squad in Survive since they always ended up getting stuck or the squad leader would get himself or the other members killed by not taking cover every time. Being able to issue commands this time around was a definite improvement and made missions a hell of a lot easier. I didn't lose a single team member in any of the missions thanks to this.

- Offensive missions like Breaking Even, hands down my favourite mission in the entire campaign. Hopefully Win has more missions in this style (or at least the same idea of a full scale assault).

And the bad:

- Bingo Fuel. This mission isn't hard at all. It's just that it is so monotonous to go through. Please don't ever implement dull missions like this ever again.

- Side missions; what exactly is the point of them? I tried scouting right after the second mission finished and didn't bother doing another one for the rest of the campaign.

So you go all the way to this wrecked Marid and clear the area of CSAT. You take all the gear you need (provided you have a Carryall or steal one from a CSAT bearer) and then bring it back to base on foot or in some dodgy hatchback that's held together with super glue with a shiny new Titan and a few missiles in the back. But the catch is, you went through all this work for nothing when you could've just taken one from a dead AAF or CSAT AT specialist during a primary mission.

The side missions should actually impact on how main missions play; like getting the medkits from Oreokastro would mean that all FIA medics now get medkits instead of their standard loadout of 20 FAKs, or stealing Titans from the weapons cache would mean all AT specialists get Titans instead of RPGs. Even clearing out those checkpoints should mean you encounter less resistance in the main missions since CSAT/AAF are less willing to patrol in those areas due to loss of personnel and morale; a fitting mechanic since you're a guerrilla after all.

- The inconsistent armoury crates. Just like in Survive, I always leave my gear in one the parked vehicles before going to a briefing. You're essentially taking a gamble with the crates every time; either it saves your gun or it doesn't and it disappears forever.

Same thing goes for other kinds of gear. Is it really that hard to keep record of what glasses, vest, backpack or helmet you're wearing as well as the guns you're using and not replace them with a green bandanna that'll provide me as much protection as a paper hat...?

And the ugly:

- So...did a virus or something kill off all of Altis' female and male civilian population? Because that would explain why there are all these piles of luggage outside of these perfectly empty houses! Oh, I get it now. CSAT and AAF are trying to contain a viral outbreak on Altis, and to do that they destroyed all of the furniture from the houses and killed off the infected ones to contain the outbreak! That would also explain the presence of all these empty research facilities and F.O.Bs as well! IT ALL FITS TOGETHER NOW!

...but seriously, the emptiness of the island is very jarring to the immersion. It could be explained away in some of the villages (Oreokastro) or on Stratis since they are clearly stated to be abandoned long ago, but for the larger towns (Kore, Syrta or Negades) it doesn't make sense at all. Arma 2 had plenty of civilians running around (and even driving!) in Chernarus during the main missions, so why can't this be done for Altis as well?

- The implausible "hub" locations. Yes, CSAT and AAF can't possibly spot this highly visible factory complex that's illuminated by more chemlites than a lighting store every night, has a firing range where Kerry can unload more lead than a John Woo film and not attract any attention from the sound at all, and has an infinite supply of guerrilla fighters who can magically materialise out of thin air no matter how many they lose in combat. COIN strategy in 2035 must revolve around patrolling and fortifying easily avoidable locations and not the most obvious locations for a guerrilla hideout.

Overall, most of Adapt's main missions were pretty well designed with the exception of a few questionable ones and a misleading optional mechanic. It's raised my anticipation for Win though, so fingers crossed that the last episode will be even better than the first two.

[lugiahua 26]

Yes, lack of civilian is also my chief complain. In ArmA2 there were several missions that you have to drive/fly around and question civilian about enemy movement. Some mission involve with choices that could win favor from pro-west resistance fighters.

Also as you pointed out, where were all the females went? :cool: In Arma2 there were all sorts of civilians: male, female, elders, teenagers, now we have only adult male with little variations like Arma1...

Maybe in Armaverse, only male live on an island?

[tvamvarg 0]

Giving it an 8. Playing on a seriously underpowered pc, but had lots and lots of fun still. The plot logic weaknesses aren't worse than in your standard Hollywood war movie, so that's fair for a game like this I'd say.

I can understand that having no previous training in commanding squads would present an issue, maybe BIS should provide some instructions to players to avoid frustration there. I've done this for some time and I think my AI comrades behaved pretty well all along actually. Will do a re-run using Articulate, which I completely forgot about this time around, silly me!

[lugiahua 26]

Is Articulate a mod of some kind?

I am quite interesting on people who gave only one point, can you guys explain the reason for only one point?

[tvamvarg 0]

Is Articulate a mod of some kind?

Sorry, yes: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=22940

[2nd ranger 282]

I am quite interesting on people who gave only one point, can you guys explain the reason for only one point?

Probably just to troll. If someone can't find at least one thing they liked about the campaign, then maybe they shouldn't play the next episode because it's obviously not for them. Even if you hated all the missions, you can still appreciate something about the voice acting, atmosphere, music... So 1 isn't an honest score. Neither is 10 for that matter.

[lugiahua 26]

I realized that you can break down the vote...

"Arma3campainsucks" with 0 posts

Wow, someone created an account just to vote down the score?

[ceeeb 147]

It's also interesting that none of the people who gave it a 1/10 have posted a comment to explain why they gave it that score

[turin turambar 0]

I finished the campaign, at last!

I gave it a 8/10, and could have done a 9/10 if the scouts missions idea had a better execution (affecting later missions and not only for taking loot, salving all the equipment, having someone going with you).

But in general, it gave me what I wanted after Survive. A longer campaign, with the same quality, but more missions, more complex ones, harder, and with more player agency. The twist at the end is interesting, and there are some fine missions in the campaign. The only other flaw is that, again, it's all infantry missions. Come on, I want vehicles! Tank missions, ifv, armored jeeps! choppers, planes! I find a pity the game has so many toys but later the game designer use so few in their own campaign. I hope in the third campaign they are present, as it make sense, with NATO forces entering in scene.

[xx_fr0st-w0lf_xx 10]

I'm not finished yet, but I probably would not give it over a six. This doesn't feel like an arma game. In arma 3 (especially scouting missions) kerry runs around vacation island lone wolf blowing things up and kill dozens of people while in arma2 you were a just recon squad trying to prevent the cold war from escalating. Yes A2 campaign was riddled with bugs, but I felt an immersion that is non existent in the majority of arma 3 campaign (or arma 3 in general for that matter)

This is only my personal opinion.

[paecmaker 23]

So I just finished it and here are my points.

The beginning is great and steps up difficulty already(however the start of "survive" was more badass) I love that you get more freedom and I didnt have that many problems with the AI, it was just one time when they didnt want to go out from "combat" stance. Sadly while the game offers slight choices now and then you never really feel they change anything. I for example moved the fuel truck to the base but didnt hear a word from miller. I didnt really like the side missions and felt they ruined the atmosphere a bit(going one man army feels a bit off in Arma) and frankly they werent so fun so I later screwed them and just went on with the story.

I feel that the story looses a bit momentum in the middle which is reinforced by the thing that nothing you do actually makes any difference in the other missions(atleast from what I noticed).

However in the end the story picks up again and the end is just amazing(you really love cliffhangers BI?).

All in all, a good campaign so I gave it an 8 as most missions entertained me.