Week of 27 Aug 2023
“I will feast on your heart and bathe in your blood!”
Achievements Earned In:
Bingo bingo bingo! I was moving to my next Bingo game first thing this week, “starting” Orcs Must Die!, which was my Strategy daub. I love me a good tower defense, even a more action-oriented one like this is. I’ve already completed games like Iron Brigade and Sanctum 2, so this was easy enough to come to grips with. There’s only a handful of different mobs to deal with, and usually once you have a strategy down it works for every level. Once you finish collecting all the weapons and traps you can really nail down what works, and it’s not very tough once you figure out the strategy: Steel Weaver upgrades, Paladin guardians at choke points, Brimstone to burn mobs as they rush forward, Tar Traps to slow down quick mobs, Swing Maces on low ceilings (if possible), Archer guardians to back up the Paladins and handle flying enemies, and finally Spore Mushrooms to cause havoc and give the other defenses more time to take out the enemies. Essentially in that order. Once the Paladins can earn you extra coins (upgrade 1), regenerate (upgrade 2), and stun enemies (upgrade 3), they're just about able to handle everything on their own. As for your weapon, you should only need the Lightning Ring to help manage large rushes (especially on Nightmare) and the secondary attack really hurts the scarier ogres. In the early stages you’d need to use barricades to manage the routes, but by the end you don’t even need to worry about that. Rinse and repeat! The only thing that really gave me issues was getting 5-skulls on The Finale. To earn 5 skulls, you have to complete a level without the rift losing any points (which means without dying, since that costs you 5 points), within a (semi-strict) time limit, and on War Mage difficulty or higher. And that final level was so hectic and required a lot of activity to keep things from spiraling out of control. But, just throwing more and more Paladins and traps at the rushing hordes sooner or later works. After that I had to do the Nightmare playthrough, but compared to trying for 5 skulls it was pretty easy. And that’s that! Fun game, and the third one is on Xbox, too. I may have to get around to it at some time.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+11) | Completed
Nothing is more dangerous in my arsenal than the Finger Guns.
After playing one of the Bingo games I knew I’d enjoy, I decided to next work on one that definitely didn’t seem as fun: Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants. This is essentially just Pirate Economics Simulator 3, where you manage towns and the trade routes between them. You can establish convoys to facilitate trade between all the towns around the Caribbean, making profit and obtaining raw materials for the towns you have established yourself in. A lot of it is just waiting around for things to happen, and whew it’s boring. But so far not difficult? The little combat I’ve taken part in isn’t exactly super engaging, but I really don’t have to if I don’t want to due to being able to automate battles. I don’t know, I feel like my opinion may change by next entry, but for now I’m just chugging away on my island and hoping to get a good steady economy rolling.
Achievements unlocked: 17 (+16) | Completion: 28%
Highest ratio: 3.78
Legendary War Mage (Orcs Must Die!)
Lowest ratio: 1.01 (tie)
Dead Orc = Good Orc (Orcs Must Die!)
1st ARRR!chievement (Port Royale 3: Pirates and Merchants)
