tldr; Just here to glaze ashes of the damned and thank Kevin Drew and the rest of the zombies team for cooking so hard thus far on BO7
I finally beat the easter egg on solo last night during my fourth attempt, and I have to say that this is an impeccable launch map.
Level Design: The map looks beautiful, plays well, and has buckets of character. Ashes captures the “feel” of zombies that prior games have struggled to maintain and feels unique. Hopefully this level of care, map specific enemies/features, and personality carry forward into the upcoming maps
Depth of Content: I just beat the egg and I feel like I’ve only barely scrapped the surface of Ashes. At the time of writing this I believe the community has only found 5/9 relics, and I’m excited to experiment with all of the replay ability that Cursed mode adds to the map as well as learn about all of the side Easter eggs I’ve missed thus far
Egg Difficulty: The easter egg steps are a healthy mixture of “know what to do” steps such as collecting the serum parts, launching the rocket, and the black water film reel step and “skill check” steps like the serum lockdown, collecting the keys in the mist, and the farm defense ritual. Most of the egg is interacting with the map, but there’s enough difficulty to occasionally require that you focus up.
Boss Difficulty: I know this is a cold take, but I think most of the boss fight is well tuned. I got absolutely wrecked on my first attempt but steadily improved as I learned the bosses attack patterns and tweaked my augments and loadout. I think the most satisfying wins are the ones that aren’t guaranteed, but earned through practice and quick reflexes to setbacks
However, I would say that the final phase laser is a bit overpowered with the amount of resources you have playing solo, but I’m optimistic about being able to pull it off without gobblegums eventually. Maybe a tweak to where the boss only begins to charge the laser if Tessie’s health is above zero at the time?