Kyksie

Hi everyone, and welcome to Kyksie's Dojo, where all the cool kids come to learn the latest martial arts moves and hang out. Except that we won't be hanging out, we'll be reviewing the latest offerings from Architect Entertainment! And it's not a "dojo", it's more like "the lobby of City Hall". Actually that's exactly what it is. Dojos cost money. Anyway, I'll be using this space to post reviews of arcs that don't have their own thread, like those mentioned on the Architect channel on Discord. Feel free to send a message to me on Discord as @Kyksie, although I generally check that only every two or three days. I'll happily review any arc that has some semblance of a story. I don't review farms or "Challenge" arcs. If it's a 'farm with a story' I'll review it solely on the merits of the story.

It didn't work before???

Coming off the monorail from her shift as night watchperson, Kyksie arrives in King's Row to find it trashed. After a quick stop at Major Flanders, she stops by the police station to touch base. Her usual contact Joe Frietag isn't there; instead, Pep Becktrees is in charge. His eyes wide, he stares into the distance with a manic grin. "KYKSIE!!! Those Nazi maniacs came out of nowhere!" Becktrees has a Starbucks Grande in one hand and a Drenched Donuts double glazed in the other. "We're spread thin up here, go into the sewers and take them out!!!" Slogging through the sewers kicking Nazis, Kyksie is overjoyed to run into the Vigilant Patriots, a group of true, proud Americans ready to fight and die for their country. Their leader, Bastion, uses the power of his mind to root out those opposed to Making America Great, just like NewsAnon says! There's Victory Maiden, defender of the homeland, and Grail, who uses his personal connection with Jesus to clobber anyone lacking said connection. Squealing with joy, Kyksie kicks the remaining Nazis so hard they land in the next sewer over. When she returns, Becktrees has finished his second Starbucks and is eagerly plowing into a third. "Kyksie!! We can't find Joe! I'm sure he's okay but maybe he isn't!! Go look for him, okay????" He's practically vibrating at this point. Kyksie heads out and rescues Freitag, but his suit isn't dusted with powdered sugar, so she suspects something is up. Back at the PPD, she talks with the hyper-caffienated Becktrees, and together they topple a plan to reinstate the Might for Right Act and force all supers to register for traffic detail or something. I won't go into detail because I don't want to spoil the storyline too much, although my reviews generally have about as much to do with an arc's actual plot as Fox News does with reality. Leviathan: Finale is another masterfully written arc, with a great story, lots of detail, and no time wasters. Other than a few spelling errors, my only gripe is that the EB bosses are a bit hard considering that you're reduced to level 35. Still, the player is warned in the description, and the EBs went down easily with the proper use of Inspirations. This is one of the many instances where City of Heroes teaches valuable life lessons; in this case, the lesson is that any problem can be made manageable by eating a handful of pills. Other than that, this is a great finale to an excellent series... except for Becktrees' vacant eyes and manic grin, which will haunt your nightmares for all eternity.

(this review is for the updated version) 1) Anderson Millard, an old acquaintance of Kyksie's from her sidekick days, invites her over to his apartment to smoke a joint. Halfway through, he tells her that 'something shady' is going down in Independence Port; shady even by Independence Port standards, which usually involve guns, Superdyne, and hundreds of pounds of mutant octopus sushi. Kyksie heads to a nearby warehouse and runs straight into a pasta eating contest, and is instantly gunned down by several hundred Mafiosi. Awakening in the hospital, Kyksie discovers that she had accidentally left team size set to eight from her last mission, Sister Psyche's Topless Beach Volleyball. After turning it back down to one, she re-enters the warehouse, rescues Anderson, and discovers that the Family are doing some things that might not be quite legal. 2) After another doobie, Kyksie and Anderson head down to an old safe house to recover some correspondence. Upon returning, they find that they hadn't put the joint out and it burned his apartment down. 3) The Family are in league with the Fifth Column, so she and Anderson head onto a cargo ship to arrest EVERYONE! Because they're NAZIS! 4) We go kick some Arachnoses, who are all eating Twinkies and watching Spongebob. 5) At last, Anderson has a revelation: the Family, with help from the NAZIS! and Arachnos, are smuggling in marijuana from the Rogue Isles, most likely to boost sales at Family-owned Major Flander's Fried Chicken franchises. The two bust into a warehouse and defeat "Tipsy" Malone. Afterwards, Anderson and Kyksie become roommates, setting the stage for a late-season buddy-cop sitcom. SHE'S a peppy, spunky, high-kicking martial arts ex-hero who sometimes forgets to wear panties! HE'S a grizzled ex-cop who's too old for this shit! They fight crime! They get high! They can never remember whose turn it is to wash the dishes! They're... KICKY AND GRUFF!!! Coming this fall, ONLY on FOX!!! New Friends, Old Enemies tells a good story; there's lots of clues and mob chatter, and Anderson's 'grizzled old cop' dialog is done well. My only real gripe is the third mission, where you have to arrest EVERYONE! Because they're NAZIS! On the huge cargo ship map, this took me ten minutes on my first run, then over half an hour the second time I did it because two NAZIS! were hiding behind a cargo crate smoking a bone. IMHO, the 'defeat all enemies' objective should only be used if the plot requires it and the map is small. Not or, and. There's also a few minor spelling errors, and it tells you what your character thinks at times (yeah, yeah, ocelots). Still, if you have time to kill, this is an arc worth playing.

This is a fun one. The player receives a Kyksie and Friends Alert! informing them that Li Tieh Kuai has stolen the city's earrings, so after some kicking, you unmask a vast globe-spanning conspiracy involving militias, the New World Order, mad scientists, catgirls, and Ayn Rand, who was probably a catgirl herself. There's loads of dialog and tons and tons of jokes covering dozens of past and present conspiracies. The author has a broad knowledge of conspiracy theories, suggesting they live in a remote cabin in Montana prepping for the apocalypse, or maybe just played lots of INWO and Deus Ex. My only gripe is the spelling and grammar errors... there's rather a lot.

Running a bit low on cash once more, Kyksie drifts back to the Rogue Isles and hooks up with an old 'acquaintance', an ex-Outcast named Bedrock. After a few beers, Bedrock lets her in on a plan to corner the underground tampon racket in Paragon. Hiding in the back of a delivery truck, Kyksie infiltrates the Cotton Pony plant in King's Row, hacks the delivery computer, then proceeds to... ...sigh. I was going to spin a whole tale about how Kyksie sets up her illegal sales and distribution network but is stopped by Mynx and Luminary, but I kinda ran out of inspiration halfway. In truth, the player talks with Bedrock about expanding the Outcasts presence in the Rogue Isles, then tries to muscle in on the Family's Superdyne ring, but gets betrayed, so we kick that guy a few times and things are back to normal. Outcast in the Isles is an extremely generic arc. There's nothing bad about it; no bad writing, no defeat alls, no catboys in their underwear, but there's nothing at all remarkable about it either. Like, if you were in a supermarket shopping for AE arcs to play, Outcast in the Isles would be in a plain generic wrapper labeled "Architect Mission #39130".

Has potential, needs polish. I'll post a full review when it's done.

Did you autocomplete while in Atlas? In low level zones, ambushes will not appear, to prevent griefing.

Pretty good. The player is told by Wonder Woman Heraclea that baddies are invading Themiscyra New Colchis, go help out. The island is inhabited by a tribe of big, strong warrior women with bulging muscles... in fact, they're so strong and muscle-y that they can complete several of the objectives without the player's help. Then you track down and defeat the big baddie with the aid of some lesbian yodelers. A nice fun adventure.

I'm 100% confident that they're not scammers, in the sense that they really did spend the money on what they said they did, and not hookers and blow. However, I'm also 98% confident that they will not deliver unless they bite the bullet, do another Kickstarter for ~250K, and spend the money on full time coders.

Missions are saved locally as a text file, maybe cut 'n' paste?

Wait whaaaaaat? I'm sure this isn't true.

Not a bad idea, but 99.9% of people won't use it. I mean, I played on Live from launch until close, and only at one point did one of my characters have 2 billion, and that was only because it was on my bucket list.

Looking for something closer to home, Kyksie recently took a job as night watchperson at M.C. Louis Investments, at their Talos Island office. To pass the long nights, she practices katas, nibbles the occasional cannabis edible, and most of all, listens to NewsAnon, hosted by Tucker Hannity. "Those Rogue Isles liberals! Coming in here and taking our jobs, going on welfare, cutting in line at El Super Mexicano! Where would we be be without the Blasters, Tanks and Scrappers who patrol our streets tirelessly, keeping those libs locked up! And lets all thank our Defenders and Controllers too, they're all great! Except Warshades. Darn alien lobsters..." Kyksie nibbles her brownie and grins, turning up the podcast. Where would we be without Hannity and Newsanon to keep us informed? Near the end of her shift, Detective Frietag calls, informing her that their contact "Comrade" is willing to talk. 1) After a quick stop at Major Flanders, Kyksie heads for (wait for it) a warehouse, meets up with Hollow Point, then rmeets up with Comrade. The mobs are a custom group, with bios and varied powers, with names like "Shickljaeger" and "Kegelbreaker". We rescue Comrade, but then a massive ambush of Kegels show up and kill him. After completing the arc, I tried again with a top level Spider and he was still killed; I tried yet again with a tank, and was able to keep Comrade alive by spamming taunts... but then he was killed in dialog. Those damn liberals! 2) Comrade had been looking into Doc Buzzsaw, so after catching the latest Newsanon broadcast, Kyksie and Hollow Point infiltrate her lab, hack some computers, and kick the Doc in the box a few times. Hmmm, she's been working with Crey? 3) Into a Crey base, where Kyksie finds evidence suggesting that they might possibly be doing things that aren't quite legal. 4) Kyksie goes into an office and plants a bug or something, and also eats all the leftover City of Gyros in the fridge. Kicking people burns calories. 5) The bug picks up a conversation between an unknown party and... Tucker Hannity!! Overjoyed at the chance to meet her hero, Kyksie dashes into the office, and runs into Hollow Point once again. After a hasty explanation, they head through a hole in the floor into the sewers, kick more badguys and rescue Hannity. "You're my idol!" Kyksie squeals. "OMG I never miss a NewsAnon. You guys are awesome!" "Thanks," Tucker smiles. "I loved you on the Incredible Man Power Hour! I even saw that episode where..." his eyes briefly travel downward. "Uh..." Kyksie shifts uncomfortably, "yeeeeah. Let's... uh... head out." Hollow Point managed to sneak away, and the mysterious Leviathan is still out there, but the day has been saved, for now at least. Just like absolutely every other arc by this author, Leviathan is a top notch arc, with great writing, compelling characters tons of clues, custom mobs, and no time wasters. At this point, I'd like to make a request. Much as I enjoy reviewing all the great arcs being put out by the talented AE writers here, there's been a serious shortage of terrible arcs the past few months. Lavishing praise just isn't as much fun as heaping sarcasm on some slob's arc where every third word is misspelled and the contact is clearly the author's ego-stroke. All you terrible, terrible AE authors-you know who you are- waddle back to the keyboard and start churning out crap for me to dump on. RATING:

Played it a month ago, and it sucked. Shooting was blah, the weapons all felt the same. Skill points and perks felt meaningless. The story was incredibly blah, "oh look there's a huge corporation over there and they're really bad, but you can side with them if you really want to."

Have you considered simply removing the Hami buds? They serve no purpose.

I've come to accept that Deity cannot be beaten under normal circumstances. There are some obscure rules setting that let you win, but in the general case it's impossible.

Hmmmm, test of the paladins sounds vaguely familiar, I may have played that.

OMG, I used to love FRUA back in the day and made a dozen terrible, terrible adventures for it. This was back before the internet exploded, so mercifully I didn't inflict them on anyone. I found the site you mentioned half a dozen years ago and have used it as an example of 'why are they still around'. Which were the ones you made? I may have played them.

"Roll call!" Mistress Felicia Morrigan stood behind the podium on the main hall of the League of Extraordinary Yiffers base. Barely contained by the purple silk bustier, her breasts hung almost to touch the dark brazilwood podium before her. The only known catgirl vampire, Felicia possessed an aura of unearthly beauty that mesmerizes everyone around her, just like her bio said. White-furred hands resting softly on the dark wood, she gazed across the wide, sun-dappled hall. "Here!" exclaimed Dolly, leaning against one of the white marble pillars that ran in twin rows down the room. Having recently transitioned from ram to ewe, xhe was now beginning the process of transitioning from sheep to dolphin. Flippers sprouted amidst tufts of fluffy wool, a blowhole in the middle of xer back. "Me too!" squealed Lady Shi'a'la Ravenhair, a six-breasted succubus ocelot. Reclining seductively beneath a potted palm tree, her spotted legs poked out from a Japanese schoolgirl uniform. She, too, was surrounded by an aura of unearthly beauty which mesmerized everyone nearby, resulting in a lot of whiplash when Felicia was around. "Here!" sighed Frida Basset, curled up in the shade of another tree. "Yiff!" squealed Simbetta, running in tight circles near the artificial brook. "Yiffyiffyiff!" The remaining animals sounded off in chorus. "Wonderful," Felicia sighed, sliding a perfectly manicured claw along the sides of the lectern. "As you all know, today is a big day for the League! Dolly has recently finished xer FBSA training, and will be taking the exam to become the Bureau's first Cetaceovine agent!" "Yiff! Yiff!" Simbetta was jumping in place out of sheer excitement, while Lady Ravenhair leaned over to Doll and began stroking xer wool... ******************************** FBSA Licensing Exam gives your character(s) a chance to become a full fledged FBSA agent. Hosted by Back Alley Brawler, it has two quick defeat missions, a "written exam", then an AV fight. I was able to solo the AV, so it's not too hard. There's no story, but it's not supposed to; it's a blank canvas for your yiffing group to yiff yiffingly.

I did the first one, and it was a nice fun romp. The player meets Gaussian and saves some Rikti; then, you fly into West Libertailia, but they could only afford a bargain airline that runs out of peanuts. Then you whack some Council (from a custom group) then join up with the Scooby-Doo gang to unmask Old Man Johnson as a ghost. Finally the gang invites you onto their boat to smoke a doobie, but some Sky Raiders try to bogart your stash. Something like that. This is a quick, fun adventure with good writing and no time wasters. It does tell you what your character thinks and feels in quite a few places, which tends to put off the ultra serious role players, but those people won't be playing this arc anyway, they're in Pocket D roleplaying a six-breasted vampire ocelot.

Given that alt accounts are allowed, you effectively have infinite architect slots.

I wasn't trying to be snarky. The author had a very deep knowledge of CoH lore, which strongly suggests that he had played on the Live server, which means he is not an actual child. So, looking at the many grammar errors and the (in my opinion) childlike style of writing, made it seem likely that the author was Very Special. Rest assured, when I'm being sarcastic, people know it. People in the next forum over know it.

"Make whatever character you want, as long as she's a thousand year old demon sorceress vampire succubus."

This arc is the final chapter in an 18-arc epic saga, wherein the "Pachiderm" traps the badguys in a "Mobius Strip", but that attracts the attention of the "Dagon" and the "Pale Queen", and there's a big and burly knight named Anguin, and... there's a lot of stuff, is the takeaway here. It's like the time when you were fourteen and got foisted on your great aunt for the afternoon, and after filling you full of Chex Mix and cheerwine, she sat you down in front of the tube with her to watch her 'stories', which you couldn't understand because you didn't know the eighteen years of backstory, like how Becca used to be married to Chester but he cheated on her with Lurleen but she was really one of Janice's alternate personalities, who was secretly married to Brad, who was really an alternate personality of Sergio but also he... well, you get the idea. It's like starting a book at the last chapter. Anyway, the player arrives in ruined Faultline (with a cute injoke), meets up with Agvine (who is big and burly) and here we run into the arcs biggest problem... Objective Overload. In the first mission, the player meets with Mr. Burly, then meets another guy, then clicks a glowie, then clicks another glowie, then clobbers a guy, then clicks three glowies, then rescues another guy, then rescues another guy, then defeats an EB, then rescues another guy. That's enough objectives for an entire arc in the first mission. Each objective does not appear until the previous one is complete, and this takes place on a wide open map, which means the player is going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. Also the map has patrols, and more patrols spawn when some objective are complete, and many have mez powers. The four other missions don't have quite as many objectives, but there's still a lot. So, after meeting up with about a dozen people and taking them to the Cryptic Lounge for a socially distant toga party, Anguen decides we need to meet the Watcher on High. The player ventures into a Rikti base and and reverses the power leads on their generator, which causes them to join you. Then off to Frostfire's Frozen Wonderland to take down Cruella de Vil or something, then into the "office with a slight air quality problem" map to send people to hell. This map has three tough EBs who spawn one after another, which can be a problem since the player is reduced to level 35. My 35 Blaster got completely obliterated; I tried it again with Spider-Kitty, a fully tricked out Crab Spider who eats AVs for breakfast, and still had to eat a handful of insps to win. Yes, that's right, I slogged through the first four missions TWICE to write this review. This should give you some idea of the lengths I go to provide quality AE reviews for my readers, and should not be taken to mean that I spend sixteen hours a day in front of the computer playing CoX and swilling Night Train, honest. Finally, after Angueuin dies of cholesterol poisoning, we meet the Watcher on High, who is really Statesman smoking a joint, which has expanded his consciousness to encompass the universe or something. This is a hard arc to rate. The writing is extremely high quality, and there's a LOT of it, with plenty of clues and details. There are quite a few custom groups, with varied powers and costumes, and all have bios. However, the Objective Overload makes it a poor choice for someone looking for a quick mission before dinner, and the difficulty makes it hard for soloists. In summary, this arc is suited for teams who appreciate a deep story and have a lot of time to spare, most likely members of an RP supergroup. But then, those people have no doubt already made up their minds to play this arc, thus making this review completely redundant.