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The Certified Serpent Lantern Review


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Originally I posted this in the main CO forums but I'm not sure how much cross over there is so I'm reposting it here.

 

Last night, I completed the Serpent Lantern with Agent Sawyer my level 14, then 15 munitions character. It took me roughly 3 days as I rarely play more than 20-30 minutes at a time and I died ... a lot. Now the later part of this I'm alright with since I did the entire story solo, we'll come back to that first part.

 

The story was solid, although I would have liked to have seen more gravitas in the beginning especially considering the video using in game graphics that just went up. No pun laden mission descriptions, you actually wanted to read the storyline which is a major change for the game. I'm hoping this is also true with Vibora Bay but have only just started that arc with a different character.

 

Game play wise I would have liked to have seen a greater diversity of missions. Possibly some research missions or reconnaissance as it is there should be something to break up those three base raid missions. Although in themselves I did enjoy them. The climax was good, along with you mid-boss fight getting there felt a bit stale though.

 

One thing I did like was the difficulty level. I found myself really having to step up my game as I played through each mission. Although the base missions felt a bit repetitive with nothing to break them up the progressively tougher bosses in each one were a nice highlight. Because of this the final boss actually felt a bit disappointing. It would be nice to have seen more than two attacks and really get the geography as with the mid-level boss. Viperia was really a highlight of the Serpent Lantern and the fight with her, even dying a dozen times was fun and challenging. I really didn't mind dying so much as I was working though this solo.

 

Overall, Serpent Lantern feels short to me, if possible I'd like to see it expanded on.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Re: The Certified Serpent Lantern Review

 

I thought it was pretty great for a scalable, solo-able mission. It probably could have been longer or, at the very least, made to feel longer by having more varied checkpoint/bunker setpieces. Overall, though...I'm happy to see a higher difficulty level and free expansion of content, especially VIPER.

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Re: The Certified Serpent Lantern Review

 

The Bunker missions are good in themselves but need something to break them up in between. This could take on several forms, maybe stopping a supply caravan or an attack on the forward base itself. To test out the high difficulty I decided to run Serpent Lantern again solo with my main character Lady Night. The character was a theme kind of concept that worked out and can take on things 2-3 levels higher than her with little problem.

 

On Very Hard she breezed through the first Bunker and didn't really have any issues taking down Viper-X. The second Bunker was a repeat of the first, no real challenge just cruised through until Freon. There was nothing I could throw at him that had any real effect. Ultimately I broke down and had to call in the aid of 2 other players. Now some people might call this a failure but I think it's a good thing. I'm not sure Soloing on Very Hard should be a breeze and it was nice to hit a wall like that. One of the players stuck with me for the remainder of the task force and we cleaned house fairly quickly. The character was a Fire/Power Armor themed hero and focused heavily on dishing out damage. So the two characters blended well.

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  • 2 months later...

Re: The Certified Serpent Lantern Review

 

Serpent lantern was good, but instead of running the same bunker missions 3 times, they couldve put the 3 bunkers on the starting map since the starting map is instanced anyway, made changing maps kinda redundant. I went through solo play and team, both went well and were challenging. They seem to be getting more and more away from the bags of hitpoints you have to knock down and putting actual mechanics in thier fights, Vibora bay was good with putting actual mechanics in as well. However making these adventure packs may be shooting themselves in the foot. The adventure was good, but short. I got through it in a night, then back to the same old grind. I'd much prefer a full sized area like vibora bay, with the crisis and story line in that i still look forward to running my toons through it when they get to level. I still give serpent lantern good marks for boss fights though, I like doing the serpenta fight and the last fight most.

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Re: The Certified Serpent Lantern Review

 

Freon's been nerfed, and Draconis is now the hard boss of the AP, though the Serpent gave us a pretty good whomping when Albert and I did the final section a few days ago.

 

SL is repetitive, but if you play it in chunks, that's easy to live with. And it really shines with a 5 man team on the higher difficulty settings. It's great that it's versatile enough to be soloed and teamed, and feels iike very different playing experiences when done both ways. The writing and story set-up could be a lot stronger -- which is true of CO in general -- but even with the grind, I find it's a lot of fun.

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  • 1 month later...

Re: The Certified Serpent Lantern Review

 

Viper-X is a pita.

 

One of the best things I've found so far as items is the Viper Rage Serum, you can buy it for 5 Merits or whatever it's called. This gives you 3 uses and turns virtually all the bosses into a cake walk if you were having problems with them.

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