SPOILERS AHEAD FOR RAGECRAFT 2: INSOMNIA

Hi everyone, I'm Fangride!

A bit about me, for those who don't know me. I'm a 19-year old student living in the US, who plays, creates in, and reviews things in Minecraft during my spare time. I'm a huge fan of Complete the Monument maps, originally popularized by Vechs in his Super Hostile series. I both create them and play them, and often will write reviews of maps I play!

I've been playing Ragecraft 2: Insomnia for the past few days, and began writing reviews in a blog-style as feedback for Heliceo, and decided to post them here as well!

Here is Heliceo's map page, if you'd like to play this map for yourself: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1796682-ctm-ragecraft-series-by-heliceo-new-map-insomnia-released/

Now onto the review!

03/01/14 - Starting Area / Little Empire

3 Wool / 1 Block of Emerald / 0 Deaths


The spawn is amazing. It's vast, it's exciting, it's challenging, and it's incredibly varied. The loot and item distribution are very solid, if a bit overly strong for a spawn area, and mobs seem generally well placed and well designed, albeit hard. The Wool itself needs some love though, as I didn't know it was there, until I had to check a video to work out where it was. Some location markers would go a long way to helping lead players to that wool, as the path itself is a bit too tucked away.

The aesthetics were very strong in the area though, and the mechanics were fun to toy around with, especially as I worked my way through each crypt, neutralizing spawners and gathering loot. Special props for the gorgeous outside section, with the ceiling especially being gorgeous, alongside those haunting cobweb trees.

The Fire Resist mechanics was a bit of an artificial difficulty, but it was fairly well designed. The Pathing on this was much better than the wool, and clearly showed where a player needed to go, through open space alone.

9/10 on the Spawn Area!

The Monument is gorgeous, and large, with lots of good space for a player to make use of. Items there are useful, the Monument is functional, and the Hub room is great for travel. Loved the aesthetics in general, though again, pathing needs improvement. Due to daylight, I actually walked right past the way forward multiple times before finally falling into it.

That area was actually very disappointing. It didn't do much, the paths felt very very strange, and the mobs didn't really add anything to it. Felt very spammy, with too many mobs moving in too many directions, but I just rushed to the end after snagging a bit of loot.

Little Empire was really disappointing though. While pretty, it felt too large, and not in a good way like the Starting Area. It just repeated the same elements over and over - Spiders and overly strong Dwarves - in spammy patterns, and the orange wool was horribly placed. It was just randomly thrown in some house with little effort, it felt like, compared to the more exciting and well designed Magenta. Overall though, I really hated dealing with this area, as I felt it didn't do enough unique, and just caused a lot of spam and a lot of overly strong mobs. It was hard to move, and while all the loot was valuable, the mobs guarding them, as mentioned, felt lazy. The Magenta Wool castle was pretty cool, though majorly spammy, but as mentioned, Orange just felt terrible. A random house with no pathing or direction at all.

4/10 on that one.

After taking a break, I'm prepared to head in to the next two areas of I1!

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04/01/13 - Intersection 01 / Death Row

4 Wool / 2 Emerald Blocks / 0 Deaths

This area was a blast. It wasn't too difficult - with a much better curve than Little Empire - and the mobs were well placed and balanced. The markers to show spawners helped a lot, and helped keep the area fun and balanced when combined with the number of mobs. I happened across the wool side first, mind you, and haven't fully explored the other two paths, but felt the balance was very good.

I happen to love vertical areas, so the wool section was a ton of fun, though I disliked the hide-and-go-seek aspect of the wool itself, the mobs - aside from the creepers - felt really good in the area overall.

The aesthetics were good enough, but felt a bit weaker than others. I build a lot of interior areas, as I'm kinda obsessed with them, and I was impressed with what I experienced though, as your inside architecture is generally solid, and holds a lot of good "Form" to it, in that it looks usable by living beings. The cells were well designed, though spawner count inside them seemed a bit high. The intersection bit of it was very cool, though I didn't fully explore the other two branches, and served as a good mid-point of the prison.

I also liked the mechanics of the pre-wool area, with the instant damages raining down. They weren't too high of damage, and did a lot to help make that bit more threatening.

I still think the Creepers in the area were hugely unneeded though. They didn't cause as much threat as annoyance, and didn't fit in thematically at all.

Loot distribution was very good, though with all the books given out, the lack of Anvils was a bit annoying. Otherwise, really solid!

9/10!

Gonna spend some time organizing my inventory, and so on, before heading in to Brimstone River some time soon.

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05/01/14 - Brimstone River / Brimstone Labs / Sewers / Intersection 2

6 Wool / 3 Emerald Blocks / 0 Deaths

I admit, I didn't really like Brimstone River. It was very mob-spammy, as most spawners threw 3+ of the flame mob at you, which got really annoying, really quickly. The mechanic of the Fire potions was okay, but had definitely been seen before, with splash potion stacks being fairly common now. The duration was also so short, it didn't feel super impactful.

Thematically though, the area was fantastic.The burning, raging fire was so encapsulated by the majority of the mobs, and everything was dangerous and very immune to fire. The area itself was very pretty, with a great tree design again. Gameplay wasn't anything hugely unique, and again, pathing to the wool itself could be a bit more improved. So much light and space is given to the inner rooms that finding the wool in the ground behind the Blaze mountains seemed a very odd and out-of-the-way spot to place it. Luckily, getting it wasn't too hard with the 3rd Emerald Item combined with the 2nd Emerald Item, and the health leech bonus... I assume. Not actually certain if it was working or not!

6/10

I noticed on the teleporters there was a Brimhaven Labs, so I went hunting and found it pretty quickly. Assumed it was wool-less until I got down there, and was pleased to see Lime was down there!

So I entered, and had the most fun I've had in the map so far.

This area felt masterful to me. Theme was great, the build itself was a stellar interior area, with potions flying and mobs rushing around corners. Creepers felt incredibly misplaced here, as a battleable mob, instead of the behind the wall things, and I really hated that you used them so heavily here, as again, they added nothing to the area. The Witches were easily fightable too, even if they had poison, which of course these didn't. Loot was very valuable, and was happily given out. I'm practically stocked for potions for half the map now, with what was given!

But mechanics-wise, it was a blast. The massive sprawl of the "office space" was a huge blast to play through, battling off mobs inside, and shooting down blazes on the outside. The wool was excellently placed and well telegraphed as it were. Loot, again, was well placed. Mobs were a tad stale, having dealt with the same mobs in the prior area, but they were much more fun inside the complex than they were on precarious overhangs, and let me appreciate their mechanics a lot more.

The base block being end stone was a bit weird on the eyes, but I relaxed into it, and loved the general visual direction, with all the tanks, and hanging spaces, and glassy structures.

Easily my favorite area so far!

10/10

Finally, I actually stumbled across the sewers earlier, during my loot sweep, but as I saw you mentioned it led to I2 I waited.

Honestly, wasn't too in to it. Mobs were largely just annoyances, and not many people really handle major water areas too well. They served their function though, and had good loot, and very nice visuals for sewers. It's given me some thoughts on aesthetic choices for improving my own sewer design in Septum Immoriel that I've been wanting to improve for awhile, so I have to thank you for that!

Gameplay wasn't really much to talk about, and finally getting out into I2 was welcome, from the strangeness of the Sewers, with the Squidmobs. It did what it needed, and rewards were okay for what was offered. Not too hard either, and good visual design overall.

6/10

I'm currently in the midst of settling into Intersection 2, moving some stuff there for my general use. I like the villagers and the coal pockets, though the fact there's mobs down by the two further villagers is a tad annoying. Good visuals, though not as stand-outy as I1, but I'm happy to head in to these areas!

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06+07/01/14

12 Wool / 6 Emerald Blocks / 0 Deaths

Right, so, first up I did Ninja Academy. Really not much to say about this area, to be totally honest. Gameplay mechanic wasn't really that exciting, and the builds were actually pretty dull as well. With the Winged Boots and the Reptillian Axe, when combined with a Speed Potion, I was almost stupidly fast going through that area. I wittily "repaired" the -12% Movement Speed helm with another Diamond Helm to keep the enchants but drop the attributes, so I practically flew through the area. Wool took a bit too long to find, but it was fun to jump around.

7/10

Next up! Reptillian Fortress!

Gonna be honest, also not much to say... I sorta spedrun this area, with little regard to most of it...

Lots of mobs though, perhaps a bit too much with current zombie AI. It became super annoying to have one wall blow up and instantly 50 zombies swarm in on you. Creepers were well used here for once though, as they fit the theme very well and added both crowd control and tense moments. The Aesthetics of the castle and landscape itself were excellent, but the plain walls were a bit dull to look at. The side quest was a nice choice for this area, and the mob design was pretty good, though it'd be nice if all the Reptiles were Skeletons instead of Zombies, just to help with the poor Zombie AI right now.

Loot was decent, but a lot of repetitiveness from previous areas. Not a lot for me to snag in here, plus as mentioned, I ran like heck.

7/10

Moving on to the Hunting Grounds...

I legitimately hated pretty much everything about this area. The gameplay mechanic seemed clever at first, but just turned into utter annoyance. The whole thing was a rather annoying treasure hunt rather than a proper run-and-gun-fun style. The needless mechanic+wolf hunting combined with an extremely annoying item hunt + the upper area being so out of the way really made me despise the mechanics not even 15 minutes in. I spent most of the time running wildly around, hoping to stumble across something useful, rather than fighting or settling down, and things got incredibly tiresome really quickly. I actually went to the Crumbling Abyss before finishing this area, but I'll discuss that later.

Another issue I had with the area was the massive mob spam when combined with really boring aesthetics. From the ground, everything was just incredibly boring, unlike how things seemed from that overhang at the start. It was all the same, with just a billion mobs everywhere, annoying me greatly all the while. There's a line between "Exploration", and "Stumbling across blindly", and this area skipped past it happily, and hung itself.

2/10

The Crumbling Abyss was a tad more fun. The tense mechanic - ignoring the still obnoxious hunger thing - of the crumbling Silverfish floor was incredibly fun, and was perfectly fueled to my already super-speedy run of the previous section. I put on all my speed-boosting gear/potions, and just went wild. Aesthetics weren't really much to note - I expected a more mine-themed area, but the gameplay was fun enough for what it was.

5/10

It helped then, after those two areas being such massive letdowns, that Trinity Caves was both fantastically designed, and incredibly tense and fun. It promoted a loot and shoot style, with me running wildly, tensely grabbing at chests and snatching whatever I could find whilst avoiding explosions. The area was large, but not too large, and paths were well laid out for finding rare loot and eventually the wool.

The mechanics were fairly simple - use creepers and ghasts to 'splode the place - and it worked well with the sand-trapped landscape! Loot was excellent, and left me well prepared for I3, and the towering pillars and leafy environment was pretty and warm, and stood out massively from previous areas in a great way. Loved the end with the setup for a quest too.

8/10

I actually was in such a speedrunner's mindset, I hadn't even realized I'd found I3, and ran straight into the Sunken Colony. Oops.

Area was gorgeous though, and was a great underwater area... for a time. I've grown very tired of search-and-find areas, because overlighting one little spot too much will render the visual cues for the levers moot. I spent a solid hour hunting that last bloody lever, before stumbling across it in one of the earlier spots I found. Despised that bit. Other than that, gameplay was fairly good, though the charged creepers got very annoying, by virtue of the water pouring in. As I was in full, very heavily enchanted Diamond Gear at this point, no mobs really posed any threat, but the water was just annoying in general.

Overall a very good water area that suffered massively from the seek-and-find mechanic, but had incredible mob variance and great loot.

8/10

I'm currently sitting at I3, ready to take a break before hitting up the last areas!