Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (ATO) by Lawnor

Cycle 2 does an amazing job of expressing it’s themes through gameplay. It goes all in on “show don’t tell”. This is great game writing. However, it’s themes are hopelessness, powerlessness, and being overwhelmed. That doesn’t lend itself to a “fun” game experience. Once I was deep in the cycle I got in to it though, so it’s not bad, just tough.

Right at the start of the cycle (with my choices, at least. I assume this holds true for everyone?) the game took all my toys away and punished me hard. It made it very clear I could not hold my own and the final boss was going to just murder me effortlessly any time he turned up. In C1 the boss turned up 3-5 times before the final battle, so I’m left with a feeling like this bully can turn up at any point and kick my teeth in and steal my lunch money. It’s great for stressing the theme, but left me stressed and demoralised. I’m writing this while I’m in the start of C3 and I’m putting off playing for fear the game is about to do something similar and any choice I make now will be the wrong one. It took me 65ish days of the 80 day campaign to recover from that initial battle.

I’m moaning, but once I got my teeth in to C2 I did enjoy the ride. I misread some rules though, which did make it easier. C2 introduces the Ascendency rule. When ascendency is in play all C1 items are less effective unless they are ascended. Its worded in an ambiguous way in the book. It says to only apply ascendency when we’re told to, then introduces it half way through a fight. I thought it ended when the fight did, and would get turned back on and off during future fights. I was half way through the campaign before I found out I was cheating accidentally. and once it’s on, it’s on forever.

The Chimera was an interesting opponent. I avoided fighting it at first because it has a lot of extra rules and I thought it would be very hard. A level 1 chimera basically sits there and lets you kill it. As you fight higher level versions it gains more abilities, coats you in its slime, and that slowly burns you to death across a battle. It mechanically sells the idea of the classic Blob movie. It starts off small and weak, but grows and grows, until it swallows Manhatten and the army are powerless against it.

Cyclonus was more in line with what we’d seen before, but posed extra challenges. He has cages strapped to him with people in. Sometimes damaging him will kill someone in a cage and cost you Humanity. What humanity does and how it will interact with the game is not explained. it’s a threat looming over you the whole campaign. How far are you willing to push your humanity? What will the consequences be? Cyclonus also increases your Rage against your will, giving an alternate type of damage to the battle.

The Burdon is the Adversary that replaces the Hermesian Persuer, once you finally beat it. The Burdon plays out like clockwork pinball. You don’t really want to fight it. You start at the bottom of a cliff (left side of the board) and have to get to the top (The right side). Every time the Burden attacks it stands to the right and does knockback and you bounce off lots of terrain. Fall off the bottom and you die. Make it to the top and you escape. He is way too hard to fight in C2, but he’ll be back in C3.

C2 was tough and intimidating, but enjoyable. I do think they could do with dialling back the difficulty a smidge. I’ve had a little contact with them and seen some of their chats with the community. They seem to be of the opinion that losing a cycle and starting again is normal, to be expected, and not a problem. It feels like they expect people to lose even if they’re making good choices. They seem to have balanced the game around this viewpoint.  I don’t think they fully appreciate how long it takes normal people to play this game around having a job and a family etc.  I’ve been playing this game for 6ish months and I’m 2 cycles out of 5 in. If I buckle down I might finish the game late next year. If a game takes 2 years to play through it should not be normal and expected for people to wipe and start again from the beginning unless things have gone very wrong, and yet they don’t want anyone creating a reset point. If you wipe you either start C1 from the beginning, or you restart the current cycle with random ticks on the choice matrix and default crew and item loadout. No thanks.

I do enjoy the game, but I think I’m going to look for ways to take the edge off the challenge. I think I’m going to lower the difficulty of all the voyage phase tests by 1. Some people apply the Persuers “Toying” ability (-1 attack dice, -1 damage to each attack) to all Primordials. I’m not going to do that yet, but it’s a consideration. I want to experience the content and go play other things. I don’t want to wipe 18 months in to 2 years of game, and either reset or quit.

I tried my hand at the Mnestis Theatre (It’s like the X-Men’s Danger Room). The earlier level fights are manageable, but it quickly ramps up to silliness. The Mnestis theatre is not meant to be beaten casually. you’re meant to spend a few days bashing your head against each monster, trying to work out the perfect combo of gear, titans, tactics, and luck required to win. It is not meant for people with limited time who want to make progress. You should definitely do what’s required to unlock the Skyseer as soon as possible, but otherwise maybe skip this, unless you’re a glutton for punishment. I’m thinking that every 5 timeline days I’ll allow myself the rewards of the next level of the Mnestis tree.

For anyone curious about such things, Across C2 and the Mnestis theatre I was involved in 32 battles, and spent 4-5 hours working through Onwards Odyssey C2 after the campaign. That makes this about 85-101 hours of play, give or take.

The C1 map is more or less square, but the C2 map is a lot taller than it is wide. Plan your table space around this. I’m told C3 is 3 maps, each smaller than what we’ve previously seen.