Masquerade: The Baubles of Doom, unbeatable on Easy (unbalanced gameplay)

I can't say that I suffered through this game because it was peppered with lots of comedy. It has character, though that character may not be to everyone's taste. Suffice to say, for an indie brawler it isn't all bad. The gameplay mostly works, but it is
flawed in a couple of critical ways . . .

I have to take exception with the "Big Nose" end boss fight. I played this on Easy and streamed the gameplay on Twitch (SPOILER ALERT and COURSE LANGUAGE): https://www.twitch.tv//v/62370417

It was ultimately a failure for a number of reasons. I feel that the fight is unfair and completion is unachievable, except perhaps by a very lucky series of events (so, unlikely). So I e-mailed the developer with a shopping list of problems that I found
in the game. I'm going to share these with you as a sort of buyer beware advice. Bear in mind that this post is made on April 25th, 2016, so by the time you have read this the could have changed:

1. Throwing hammer doesn’t reliably work. While I’m busy running, avoiding trailing enemies, coming up to other enemies and archers, I want to throw my hammer. They even have the reticle on them, like in your built-in instructions. But the hammer throws 90
   degrees to the left, to nowhere. Why?
2. Archers get golden crowns appearing over their head when they are about to shoot. But in the instructions this means an attack which you should counter. But you cannot counter archer attacks. Why? These enemies seem to take advantage of your approach to
   always get off one or more extra shots at you. Sometimes with no reload time. This is patently unfair
   
3. How are archers able to land an arrow in me while I’m on a random, arcing path?
   
4. Your game allows 2-3 simultaneous enemy attacks, but there aren’t enough animation cycles to counter more than one. I found myself often in a “stun lock” situation, particularly around spawn points (outhouses)
   
5. Why can’t I use a super move on a spawn point?
6. Why do the super moves do so little damage on bosses? I find the standard attack on bosses much more effective
   
7. Why can’t I regain health after a battle? It seems odd to do a platforming section with no health. Sometimes it makes more sense to just jump to my death to restore full health after a checkpoint, just to end the heatbeat sound. Again, seems like punishment
   
8. Invisible checkpoints. No rhyme nor reason where you respawn
9. The evade move sucks and doesn’t work. I have tried evading Big Nose by evading to the left and instead Jaxx evaded forward, right into the stampeding bull
   
10. There is no easy way to tell when Big Nose is charging. I can’t see him [behind me, out of camera], and despite having headphones on, there is no discernible sound of him charging or being close
    

:)

 

unbalanced gameplay

Chinese Stealth Armor can be repaired with recon armor. You don't see them a lot in shops, but you'll find one once in a while. I always buy up any I see for this very reason.



A few pointers:

Bethesda ruins are a great place to gather weaponry early on. While the Raiders there won't carry the Chinese Assault Rifle, they will carry regular ones, and with a good repair you can put their stuff together and end up with decent armor. You'll eventually
have to replace everything you get from them, but the stuff is useful when your level is low.



*Spoilers below*



If you have The Pitt it can be completed at a very low level. With one of my characters I came out of the Vault, got my Megaton home, then went straight to do Operation Anchorage, and from there went straight to The Pitt. One of the rewards for completing
The Pitt is the ammo press, which you can use to convert scrap metal and ammo that you don't use into ammo that you need (guns only, not for energy weapons). If you're having a lot of trouble with ammo in the lower levels then I would advise doing something
similar. In both of those add-ons you don't get to use your own stuff, so no worries about how much ammo you have when you start them.



Keeping your weapons in good repair and having a high guns (or energy weapons) skill will both make sure you are maximizing your damage per shot, and thus minimizing the amount of ammo you need to use per enemy.



If you have the stealth armor then work on getting your sneak up high enough that the bonus from the armor boosts your sneak to 100+. Once that happens you can usually sneak right up to enemies even in broad daylight. If you have a decent melee weapon
and skill level then you can kill a lot of enemies with a single sneak melee attack. The really nice thing about this is that melee weapons are considered silent, so you can actually take out a whole series of enemies that way. Just be careful not to bump
into them or you may be spotted. The shishkebab is excellent for this, especially if you have the pyromaniac perk, and you can get schematics for this weapon early on. You'll have to build up a few caps first, depending on your barter skill, but Lucky Harith
sells one of the schematics for it and he appears outside Megaton periodically.



One more note: If you have Operation Anchorage there is a glitch that you can exploit to gain massive amounts of ammo and some gear with extremely high HP, so they rarely require repairs. Also, the Winterized T-51b power armor you receive at the end has
almost 10 million HP, so you can wear it for a very long time before you can actually see its condition fall. That doesn't help with ammo supply, but once you have it you will probably wear either the T-51b or Stealth Armor for the rest of the game.

 

unbalanced gameplay

Strive for the harder levels. More rewarding XP wise and challenging too. Early on inthe game prior to level 10 resources will be limited. Play on very hard You can max a character in under 35 hours both SPECIAL and skills. Look for unique clothing to artficially
boost SPECIAL like pre war hats, the lucky shades to boost luck. They do help. Don't lose faith it's a great game to play. AS for slepping You can find free beds close to Megaton. SPringvale and down at the Super duper mart and under the bridge to the right
of the store. Good luck

 

That's one heck of a list. Did they respond to your email?

 

They haven't, but it has only been one working day. I doubt that there will be fixes coming. When I rank on the game's Leaderboards and my position is in the low double digits that probably means the game is selling poorly. I am not exceptional to earn top
ranks. Two of the sales are from me because I purchased both on Xbox One and PS4 -- wanted to see if the controllers made a difference, and no they don't.