jagang55, get the mana pool first, then the upper lighthouse, the lower one, the lower pirate ship and the higher pirate ship. Be lucky and keep enough mana for a Terror spell always. You have to "learn" where to kill the smugglers, because if they die too close to your gems Terror won't get the second parrot and the auto-targeting of the towers will ignore it also. A good idea is to turn a Smuggler into a chicken just before he dies, works like a charm.
I just beat the last boss. What you have to keep in mind: If the Barbarian Queen needed some terror, what you need for the Pirate Ship are four meteor strikes when it starts throwing 3xsmoke bombs. That and some finesse with the ninjas. For a while I thought experience was not well balanced, but playing ten times the last two battles deals with that problem.
1. Hidden levels appear after you get glowing scores on all surrounding levels. It is not one concrete glowing score that will unlock the hidden level.
2. Once you are far enough to have "Pure gem mastery" (level 37) it's a good idea to reset your points and max it up, along with Initial mana, Mana replenish, Lower mana costs and Mana per kill. The game stops being a challenge at that point, basically (well, at least if you don't send all waves at you at the same time).
3. I got the final boss at level 78, you can probably do better than that. Get your mana to 9000-10000 to be able to banish him at least once and pray for enough high level purple gems (I did with one lvl6 and one lvl 7) to get rid of most of his 120 armor level in the first round, so all your fire-power will wipe him out in the second. If all is lost, throw high level gem bombs at him.
Well, by the end of level 3 (easy mode, 1 continue) I thought the game is not bad... then on level 4 I got stuck at the smashing crane and never got to find out if I was supposed to wait for the crane to smash the door or what. Needs 1) a story 2) coherent save points (lvl 3 if you get killed during the middle boss you start just where you were, which is nice, but if you get killed just after the him you go back to last save point, ¿wat?) 3) clearer indications of what to do in certain situations. Apart from that, the bugs didn't bug me too much, after closing every other program I was running (before that I had a lot of laaaaaaaag and scarf guy would keep shoting one minute after I stopped pressing the button). 3/5 for the effort and the pictures.
So I have a lot of thoughts on this very nice game.
1) What happens when you reach 1500 km/h? You see a frying pan and finally meet your destiny?
2) On the other hand, speeds could be specified in GeV, since you do look like a proton inside LHC.
3) For anyone trying to get to 1000 on hard: first adjust mouse sensitivity until you feel you can do any of the nasty turns with a small movement of your right hand(in my case, had to change this every 100-200 km/h). Second: pray with your left hand. Every 100 km/h are about 25 seconds, so this is the time you need to stay alive.
4) I gave it a 4/5 because I have a thing with concept-games, whether good or bad I feel they are not "complete" if there is no story/script behind.
5/5, Serpent Blade was a wonderful treat, if only to try it once on Malana Mire. The game is awesome, difficulty perfectly set, challenges are sometimes hard but don't get frustrating. As suggested by somebody else, mastering weapons could give different benefits. Why would I want the Ladder Spear to do more damage? I would rather have it be more durable! Also, mastering a group of weapons could give access to a new one of the same group.
On the critical side: this is the first game I play in which ending has worse drawing than the game itself.
The game is simple which is good to start with, then exploring it can lead to a very amusing playing, and if you like it it's playable for a long time.
I hate that the game doesn't show statistics when you don't complete the race on time. Did I destroy 50 objects? Did I get 100 skid? Who knows!? Maybe statistics should be available DURING the race, otherwise you are totally blind. 5 times I finished with 1950 skid (give or take) before getting the challenge. Absurd.
The game is great and the second badge was a must. Since I didn't lose the saved game, I only had to complete whatever coins/cards I never got. To come back and get them was nice and not annoying at all. 5/5
Great game, really. Some issues: 1) Laaaag. I play on a PIV 3.0 GHz, its an old computer, all right, but works fine most of the time, and works fine just after loading the game, but then it gets worse as you keep playing, there must be some code slowing it down. 2) Forge quests are ordered so that you get the Deadwood Staff before any of the two previous ones... weird; and 3) I think crafting was great, but you could get a lot more out of it. I collected iron and the other stones for a long time and by the end I realized I didn't know what I wanted it for (for selling? I had 24k and rising and never gave it a second thought about spending it on teleporting).
Came on! Where are the lasers? And the super-shield? I sure deserve a medal and three or four upgrades for my last game! (194 seconds... I'll get it some day!) 5/5
I was not getting credit for killing the Vessel King, until I realized I was probably not killing it (I just got all the trophys and the bestiary still tells me I have to kill 4 more to unlock it) My trick: max piercing + critical, that way the little guys don't stop all my firepower and I can hit the main guy. Worked perfectly the first time I tried.
Also, to get the platinum chain, do as arafelis says (try not to level up) and, by the end, when the fumes appear, kill them from as far away as possible or their self-destruct will hit you.
Very fun game.
Write a game that has absolutely no gameplay, poses no challenge and has an ending that says "there are more important things in a game that the upgrade system"... and yet everybody seems to love the stupidity of it like it was meant to be serious. The morale? Never put your faith in gamers, they are too busy beating levels.
Dinasaur ending is vey nice addition, and the game is very fun to play. Controls are not easy and sometimes the guy keeps moving for two or three seconds after you stop pressing the keys... ??
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Thanks for the 4/5! And the 100km/h per 25 seconds isn't quite right... cuz they acceleration slows as you get closer to 1500 :)