MCAlliance Reviews: The Ship

Shipwrecked:

Reviewed by Krakkenfish

Maps based upon ships have grown tremendously in the adventure map scene. Not that ship. But rather, the kind that floats on water. Or rather, the adventure map by GoncaloMD. For a debut map it does have high expectations, and The Ship meets most of them with flying colours. You can expect hordes of mobs ferociously pouring down on you as you battle your way through the ship.

The Ship was undoubtedly the most difficult adventure map I have ever played. It was insanely challenging trying to get from place to place without being swarmed. Half the time I was retreating in terror. You’ll find custom mobs armed to the teeth and you’ll have to keep moving if you want to get out of every situation. Its difficulty proved to be a major asset throughout the gameplay, fighting time and time again.

It forces you to think through every confrontation, without giving you time to rest. Strategy is everything this map is about, and I always had to use the environment to my advantage. From using mobs as human shields, to finding vantage points, every action required critical thinking. Fights were well paced and it does a great job building climaxes without making the anticlimax ruin the consistency. However, the difficulty in The Ship did pose a few major problems.

I struggled getting from checkpoint to checkpoint. I kept on dying so many times that it was almost impossible not to feel frustrated. It made the pace become inconsistent and I paid more attention to blasting my way through mobs than to the story, which I’m not even sure you can call a story.

At one point I felt like quitting the game entirely just because of its overpowering difficulty. After completing the entire map in hard mode, which was almost impossible, I discovered that I died 57 times. 57 times! That’s practically dying once every 2 minutes for the entire length of the game. If you’re lucky, you’ll complete the map in 2 hours. But I ended up spending twice the amount of time to finish the entire game. This is due to the fact that I needed to collect music discs from boss mobs after killing them. But this is where things get really infuriating.

Since there’s so much fire everywhere, the disc would easily be destroyed and I wouldn’t be able to move on. Then you had to either restart the entire map or you had to cheat and give yourself the music disc. Of course, they tried to fix this by making music discs burn after a while longer. But this was like asking players to run into the fire and commit suicide just to get one music disc.

This reminds me of the final boss fight against the Wither Boss. Sure, it was really hard to defeat the Wither, but it was so generic. And it just showed The Ship’s lack of originality when it came to boss fights. Actually, the previous boss fights in the map were very well done, and bosses felt more original then, but the Wither just ruined everything. Sometimes I wasn’t able to decipher whether I was fighting the Wither from Herobrine’s Mansion or fighting the Wither from The Ship. Though, this is a bit understandable since so many people have been using The Wither Boss in their adventure maps after Hypixel’s use of it in Herobrine’s Mansion. It’s so popular, that even Hypixel himself began using it again and again for no good reason at all.

Presentation:

For an adventure map based in the captured space of a vessel, The Ship still managed to give you something great to look at. The exterior design was fantastic, giving that pirate age feel in the foggy atmosphere. Presentation wise, it clearly stole the show. The vast size of the entire ship spelled exploration immediately. But is the interior better than the exterior? Not necessarily. Of course, in some ways the interior is better in the sense of exploration. I found myself looking under every rock for anything I could find. Room sizes varied and expanded over large areas. However, one very issue was the lack of decoration and variety. Every area had the same kind of blocks, and I had to see them over and over again. And due to the problem of checkpoints being so far away from each other, the layout soon became confusing with its repetitive rooms. I saw many areas which could have used more detail. Some areas also seemed flat and too pattern like. But let’s not forget, when I got to the main deck, the sight was all the more rewarding.

The Verdict:

The Ship was still extremely challenging and no other map has tested my skills more. Its difficulty did pose some advantages like when I played it with friends, we found ourselves relying on each other to overcome every obstacle, which is a great element for any adventure map. And considering that it’s a debut map, The Ship truly exceeds all limitations.

+Challenging and fun

+Great for co op gameplay

+Vast space and exploration

- Overpowering difficulty

- Extremely frustrating

- Generic Wither Boss fight

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Good