The highs are high, the lows are low

I started this run by saying that it doesn't look like Secret World Legends will be getting any more updates. I'll end it by saying what a damn shame that is.

I've got some fairly harsh criticisms to make of the game in this post, but before I get into that I will say that overall I've enjoyed this run a lot. As I said a few days ago, the action-ish combat has grown on me and as I continue to gear up I've got a few more options regarding my build. It's still relatively simplistic, but it's good enough.

Good enough for this game, because the real strengths of SWL remain what they've always been: superb atmosphere, great writing and best in the genre voice acting. All of this is very much present in the Scorched Desert, making it easily my favorite zone since Kingsmouth.

It's very well laid out – where there are impassable rockfaces they feel like a natural part of the terrain and there's a lot of open space in between, offering up some fantastic views. Locations like the Hotel Wahid are very well done (so much so that sometimes it feels like the missions should have made more use of them) and the tombs and other ancient chambers are equally impressive.

Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Scorched Desert is that I went out of my way to run just about every mission I could find, because I didn't want to hurry through this zone. I wanted to see all of it, and with the sole exception of two trips back into lower level dungeons I've spent this entire 24 hours here.

By the time I returned to Hell Beneath and The Darkness War I had a substantial level advantage and pretty much brute forced my way through them. Mostly for sightseeing, though I've picked up some decent usable gear along the way.

The overall story arc in Scorched Desert is a bit unwieldy. Once I got to the end of the zone, and having completed just about all of the main/side missions, there was still a ton of story to go. I believe some of this was added post-launch, during the original update cycle of TSW, and that probably explains why it feels a bit top heavy.

It's good stuff though, with some real stand-out moments along the way. There are a few sequences where, rather like I've discussed before in Star Trek Online, the gameplay isn't altogether up to the demands put on it by the story, but to be fair SWL does a much better job than STO of making these sequences somewhat intuitive to play through, even if it can veer into point 'n' click adventure game logic. Also, if I'm going to be hit with Tomb Raider style jumping puzzles I'd like to have Tomb Raider style jumping controls, and as I've said before SWL doesn't have that. Similarly, in a few of the stealth missions the spotting distance of enemies is rather inconsistent.

There is also one mission that is out and out bugged. I could only complete a stage of The City Before by following a baroque workaround that I found on Reddit, and from the dates of those posts it was clear that this has been a known issue since 2017 when SWL (re)launched. Since it's part of the main story, and you can't proceed without completing it, it's abysmal that this has never been fixed.

Then there's Last Train to Cairo.

I get the feeling that this won't be the last time I talk about this mission. It is for the most part one of the best sequences I've ever experienced in any MMO. The map is imaginative and cleverly laid out; the incidental details in the enviroment are excellent and evocative of the location; the whole feel of it is just amazing. The word 'cinematic' is overused when referring to games but Last Train to Cairo really does capture that action movie experience and it does it almost entirely through gameplay rather than cutscenes. It's brilliant.

For the most part. LTtC gets an instant place on my list of most memorable MMO missions, but with one big caveat – the final boss fight at the end of the mission is absolutely awful. He spams AoEs and knockdowns and some kind of insta-cast stun that so far as I can tell exists mainly to say fuck you to anyone with short range attacks; and if you die (and you will) then it's a long run back to restart the fight. Oh, and he also has absurdly high health. He doesn't need to, and it's not like he becomes any more interesting of an opponent as the fight progresses because he doesn't. He just has a huge health bar because fuck you. It's a weird decision to end such a fun sequence with such a grindy final enounter.

Sigh. The rest of it is really good though.

As a game Secret World Legends has its flaws, but as an experience it's right up there with the best in the genre. I'm glad I came back to it this time around, and it won't be the last time I do so.