HOLLOW!
Flavour wise this was excellent, and the (relative) lack of fights, with all but one being single-opponent, was a breath of fresh air. One of the things we really appreciated was the LEARN actions providing hints about where to go - the Church leading to the Observatory and the Observatory leading to the Crater in particular.
Church of Stars (point 4)
The Protovoid Fight was a bit frustrating; the Blink power was punishing for the combo I was using (Drake Talon and Engulfing Flame spell have 1 move between them) but knowing that you could escape or just die and come back with a different weapon set mitigated that a little... or they would have if I hadn't been very worried about wasting actions given the limited Realm Clock. In the end I only won the fight by using the Draco rune when the thing teleported from A4 to D1 and I'd had enough of slowly walking towards it.
Observatory (Point 5)
Likewise the fight in the Observatory was fascinating, but luring the Azure Comet fellow round the permanent terrain until I was ready to rush in and beat it to death lead to a certain amount of lurking in a corner while it healed itself. I don't know if it's intentional, but Azure, First Sign has a major weakness; once you are adjacent to it, it can't hurt you. As long as you generate at least 1 Move each turn you can *stay* adjacent to it thus preventing it attacking (as it only attacks at range 2 and 3, and only has Move 1).
Comet Strike Spell
The Comet Strike spell appears to have a typo - the dice ranges for it's powers are 3-5 and 5.
Anfel
The limited clock added real tension. We we picked up the Void Blessing we had some serious decisions about whether to duck back to get the boon or push on and explore points 6 and 7. Unfortunately the tension was a bit undone when we discovered that if Anfel beats you, you have another six segment clock. But Anfel didn't beat us so that was fine.
The Anfel fight unfortunately just didn't seem to work. There's a few things about it. Just to be clear before I start, it was conceptually fun and captured a real spirit of a Final Fantasy boss battle complete with choral music and lots of expensive SFX
- We couldn't see an indication about when Anfel changes phase. We assumed it was when we defeated him in Phase 1.
- In Phase 1, Anfel's only Move is on the action that causes him to do harm at Adjacent range. His other direct Harm action only works are Range 2 and he has no Move to go with it. So he moves to Adjacent range on a 1-2... and then can't do damage with his 3-4 unless the Engraved is retreating.
- Because the two Phase 1 basic attacking actions are at different ranges, it's hard to see what the intention is with Prophecy. If you rolled 1-2 and 3-4, then presumably Anfel the only way he can complete both actions is if he is already at range - attack at Range 2, then move to Adjacent range. If he's already Adjacent, he can;t use his second attack action.
- Comet works fine and was fun the one time it went off.
- In Phase 2, Anfel has no movement. Consequently we just stayed adjacent and beat him to death, blocking occasionally when he did Meteor or his (cool) Range: ALL attack. His basic attack action at Range:2 won't work on adjacent or same targets.
- Corruption creates hazards that trigger if the Engraved moves into them - and this would be really exciting if not for the Anfel's lack of movement. Because the enemy just stayed where he was, we didn't need to move, so even when he creates hazards in the space the Engraved is stood in, it doesn't do anything.
- The shape of the fight seemed cool, but it didn't seem to work in practice which was a real shame.
Summary
The realm was great, bursting with falvour that really put me in mind of the old 4e D&D evil stars (one of my favourite bits of 4e), with a nice cosmic horror-without-tentacles feel, but i felt the Rune Lord fight let it down a little.