The final mission is absolutely terrible (spoilers)

[Sulik2]

I have to say Im uninstalling after encountering this mission. Just absolutely god awful game design that focuses on all the flaws of this game instead of its strengths. Where to start:

1) Requires 8 units with absolutely no gameplay relevent info to how the squads are going to be used. Don't have a bunch of AOE focused level 9 max equip bench people to put guarding the portal? Tough luck. Never leveled up a dedicated healer cause it was pointless in the main game? Tough luck you must have a healer in the vanguard to keep Kral alive.

2) Embraces overly long, tedious mission design. One of my big issues with the game is every map is too big and there so much enemy spawn missions take forever. Well get ready for the granddaddy of tedious mission design. You have to destroy five ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bloom towers? With multiple rounds of combat outside that are as long as normal missions????? With basically infinite enemy spawns? This is horrible. Make the outside one mission, move some enemies inside based on how you do and don't make a 3 damn hour mission.

3) Puzzle box gameplay. Good luck beating this mission first try. You have zero idea what you need going in, how the final boss will work and just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long you are in for. After failing a three hour mission try on this I'm done. I never want to try this mission again. Just too damn long.

4) No strategems. This is something that I found infuriating in this game. Your entire research system is focused around strategems. its a major component of the strategic layer of the game and over and over again they get disabled and you never get to use them. Including the final mission???? Why even bother with research for the entire game if you are barely going to be able to use them because of random events or just turning them off at the end.

This game is so close to being great. The presentation and core gameplay are so solid, but the encounter design is just terrible. Over and over again it sabotages a really solid game, the last mission being the epitome.

[Ulthwe.Eldrad.[GW]]

Looks like modern gamer cry: AAAAA GAME DOES NOT SHOW PRESS X TO WIN BUTTON. Final Mission is AWESOME. This is real Warhammer: fight against all odds with no idea against what you will fight. For me need in second squad was a huge surprise - i played the whole game with one squad and barely found +- experiensed soldiers (6 lvl purifier, 4 lvl justicar, 3 lvl apothecary and 3 lvl interceptor) for second squad. And this was cool. No stratagems? Use Kaldor Draigo abilities lol. Draigo is absolute monster (but not so monstrous as my shiny interseptor under POINTLESS HEALER BUFFS). And yes. Apothecary if pointless? What? Every class in this game has somewhat interesting (even Paladin which is good but takes same role that Justicar and so doesnt used) and take place in dquad compisition. Last Mission is soooooooo sweet and epic, this is warhammer concentrate - against hordes of enemy, againts all odds, BUT ONLY IN DEATH DOES DUTY ENDS.

[neonick777]

I want to highlight the some of the worst mechanics decisions the company took.

1) Why hide respec and make it hard to get? The last game I played with this mechanics was Dark Age of Camelot. That alone tells how arcane the lead designer's thinking was.

2) What is the point of Research if the two best ones are available from start (Gates and Quicksilver)? What were they thinking???

3) The Apothecary class is complete garbage on all normal short missions! (Compare it to the Specialist in XCOM which I think is a versatile and fun class.)

4) The Incinerator weapon is beyond crap.

5) Why put additional timers on the main campaign map to force people to progress the main story? (the hurry-up-mechanics) I really don't understand why some lead designers have an urge to f*#k with gamer's preferred play style. Let the bloom spread handle the time pressure and LET people play the way they like!

The biggest positive change from XCOM are the random weapon requisitions which IMHO is a brilliant and fun addition. If you get a good weapon, it's fun to adapt your squad/tactics accordingly.

[Metal Izanagi]

I agree with you, OP.

The final mission really felt like a letdown for me because:

1 - You spend most of the fight just running from Mortarion instead of fighting him because of the invincibility mechanic.

2 - Drago is supposed to be this major badass in the lore and literally every Imperium character you meet thinks highly of him, but...Mortarion can basically 2-shot him, and if you actually have Drago *fight* his lore nemesis that he kicked the crap out of once before, he gets a buff that makes him focus down Drago for pretty much a sure kill!

3 - Your second team is supposed to be performing a sacrificial last stand to keep the entire Death Guard from breaking into the chamber where you're fighting Mortarion, but instead of trying to wipe out your defense team nearly all of the Death Guard are content to just try running past your defenders!

4 - You have to go through a pretty substantial wave of Death Guard with the defense team every single time you break one of the roots. This is so tedious it almost feels like a joke, especially since most of the Death Guard don't care about fighting your defenders and will just run right past them to the point of letting themselves take reaction attacks if it means getting closer to the portal.

[Cunin]

The last mission is a bit of a drag, well, a huge one actually.
It is the same thing repeating a ton of times and screams time sink.

Separating it into two smaller and more focused missions would vastly improve the experience.

Also the whole second team thing does not make any sense nor contribute to the game at all.

[tst]

what are you talking about... finish the game on legend /grand master mode and still found it to easy ....

[Urix]

Originally posted by tst:

what are you talking about... finish the game on legend /grand master mode and still found it to easy ....

Even if true, difficulty has nothing to do with the spot-on issues raised by OP.

The problem with this type of games was never difficulty.

It always was FUN FACTOR - REPLAYABILITY - REASONABLE GRINDING - RESPECT THE PLAYER.

FUN FACTOR : You must enjoy the tactical combat, relish every mission. Ergo you just feel like playing the strategic layer with the missions interrupting the flow. This game suffers from this, as every mission is a time sink.

REPLAYABILITY : No one is going to replay this game in its current state. Unless you have nothing else to play/to do with your time.

REASONABLE GRINDING : Well, this right here fails spectacularly.

- Excessive time sinks due to map design/limited range.

- Soft locks on research : If RNGESUS dont spawn the right color seeds for you, get ready to FARM missions until your desired seed type spawns.

- RNGESUS dont wanna give you decent rewards? oh boy, more grinding with subpar damage. Lovely.

- ETC ETC ETC already described on multitude of posts.

RESPECT THE PLAYER : Disabling your hard earned research arbitrarily AND on the FINAL MISSION? Seriously?

- No intel whatsoever on Mission types/Bosses mechanics. So restarting each new mission is the RULE if you wanna tailor squads.

- I CANT EVEN SEE IF MY KNIGHTS HAVE AMMO LEFT AFTER THEY MOVE!!!! Do i reactivate him or not? Do i need to write it down after each move?? ♥♥♥♥♥ sake.

And sincerely a lot more. Just awful when you think that the genre has everything already fleshed out on the classics, you just need to copy and be done.

[Tano]

Draigo is just a legendary dead weight.

[Janthis]

A bit of a necro here but I have to agree with the OP. It's a shame because I think there's a solid strategy game here, but the final mission is just a continuation of the game trying to screw the player. As if I didn't have enough of random events crippling various parts of my forces throughout the game. It feels like they were so focused on trying to throw curveballs at the player, they forgot games are supposed to be fun.

[newfie_man709]

Originally posted by Sulik2:

I have to say Im uninstalling after encountering this mission. Just absolutely god awful game design that focuses on all the flaws of this game instead of its strengths. Where to start:

1) Requires 8 units with absolutely no gameplay relevent info to how the squads are going to be used. Don't have a bunch of AOE focused level 9 max equip bench people to put guarding the portal? Tough luck. Never leveled up a dedicated healer cause it was pointless in the main game? Tough luck you must have a healer in the vanguard to keep Kral alive.

2) Embraces overly long, tedious mission design. One of my big issues with the game is every map is too big and there so much enemy spawn missions take forever. Well get ready for the granddaddy of tedious mission design. You have to destroy five ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bloom towers? With multiple rounds of combat outside that are as long as normal missions????? With basically infinite enemy spawns? This is horrible. Make the outside one mission, move some enemies inside based on how you do and don't make a 3 damn hour mission.

3) Puzzle box gameplay. Good luck beating this mission first try. You have zero idea what you need going in, how the final boss will work and just how ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ long you are in for. After failing a three hour mission try on this I'm done. I never want to try this mission again. Just too damn long.

4) No strategems. This is something that I found infuriating in this game. Your entire research system is focused around strategems. its a major component of the strategic layer of the game and over and over again they get disabled and you never get to use them. Including the final mission???? Why even bother with research for the entire game if you are barely going to be able to use them because of random events or just turning them off at the end.

This game is so close to being great. The presentation and core gameplay are so solid, but the encounter design is just terrible. Over and over again it sabotages a really solid game, the last mission being the epitome.

I felt the same way. Unless you read up on the last fight you are in for a bad time, even then it's way to many enemies. I played legendary all the way thru and the final mission has me done in. I beat the rest of the game with ease without losing 1 unit which I did not know actually hurt me.

You make very valid points, I don't think they have to do much to tweak it but there needs to be something. One thing that I think would help is if Mortarion never gets immunity, then you can deal with him and then go around killing the Bloom roots and other enemies that spawn in.

I'm going thru again now and seeing with what I know if I can do it this time.

[CurvedSkilless]

I beat the final mission on my first try and it took me almost 3 hours!

The games does have some replayablity if you're an achievement hunter since you can't fight all the Reapers in a single playthrough. Or if you want to do some funny squad combinations.

But knowing the utter meat grinder of a final mission awaits me at the end, takes the wind out of my sails.

[Vathek1]

I agree with the OP that the final mission is tedious and drawn out far more than it should be. However, I don't agree that figuring out the boss' attack patterns (or even what you need to do) is particularly difficult.

The ironic thing is that the rearguard units are actually better off letting the enemies pass (especially regular Plague Marines, which aren't too tough). Otherwise, the vanguard will find themselves running low on WP since Morty doesn't have that many adds in his chamber.

[Metal Izanagi]

Originally posted by Vathek1:

I agree with the OP that the final mission is tedious and drawn out far more than it should be. However, I don't agree that figuring out the boss' attack patterns (or even what you need to do) is particularly difficult.

The ironic thing is that the rearguard units are actually better off letting the enemies pass (especially regular Plague Marines, which aren't too tough). Otherwise, the vanguard will find themselves running low on WP since Morty doesn't have that many adds in his chamber.

Pretty much this yeah. The rear guard should only really try to obstruct and kill the heavies. Regular Plague Marines are so squishy by that point in the game that you want them in the arena so you can beat them down for WP and extra AP to help your squad keep Draigo topped up on HP and free to move to the next root once you get it going.

The fact that attacking Mortarion with Draigo at all makes Draigo about 1000 times more likely to get trashed when it's Mortarion's turn again is such a strange choice imo. It would be fine if Draigo was at least somewhere in Mortarion's league and had a ton of HP, but for some reason despite being a legendary badass in the lore Draigo has less HP than most of your dudes will by that point in the game and can't gain extra AP, so he just gets in the way instead of being able to take on a heroic role in the final mission against his own nemesis.

[Akhyleus]

The roster is very important for last mission.

I had 2 interceptors (with crit chances/crit damages swords, concentration shard and double auto, crit booster, crit damage booster) + chaplain(with everything which coiuld give willpower to maintain the aura) and a Paladin keeping the gates. This way I could abuse the warp charges and wipe the waves in legendary. (Two sword swings in boosted mode trigger the auto AP so an Interceptor is able to deal 5 attacks + a TP strike and get back all its will points.

With vanguard is less punitive (and honestly I played without apothecary, but have stun bonus isn't that bad to make Morty crit resistance down) I played with 2 justicars, Interceptor (as rearguard) and a Psylancer Purgator because pyslancer distrub shoot is so pratical. and Draigo was only here to cut the roots.

[Janthis]

The fact that attacking Mortarion with Draigo at all makes Draigo about 1000 times more likely to get trashed when it's Mortarion's turn again is such a strange choice imo. It would be fine if Draigo was at least somewhere in Mortarion's league and had a ton of HP, but for some reason despite being a legendary badass in the lore Draigo has less HP than most of your dudes will by that point in the game and can't gain extra AP, so he just gets in the way instead of being able to take on a heroic role in the final mission against his own nemesis.

I mostly just used him to cut roots and occasionally use his healing ability while keeping away from the boss. It was silly indeed, he was weaker than my own lvl 9 guys.

[Ferrsai]

Originally posted by Urix:

Originally posted by tst:

what are you talking about... finish the game on legend /grand master mode and still found it to easy ....

Even if true, difficulty has nothing to do with the spot-on issues raised by OP.

The person can't even construct a sentence, probably not true.