by Hope of Sparta » February 22nd, 2009, 7:13 am
I try to play the samurai route on this game since I grew watching tons of Afro Samurai and Samurai Champloo. You know? Quest to be the greatest warrior/swordsman of the land.
I walk around, make a living stealing other people's crops, do random quests so people know who I am, and face overwhelming odds in battles. Just the other day, while on super hard difficulty, I decided to take on a group of bandits in this fort that was near some lake. I allowed them to chase me outside. So, in the bright daylight, I saw 7 bandits ready to strike me down. 2 archers and 5 warriors. Mind you, my character only had 40% armor rating b/c I never bothered to repair it. So the first thing I do, I run straight for an archer and whip out my daedric longsword. I roll right between the group of warriors, jump in the air and use a paralysis slash in mid-air. The archer is paralyzed and I decide to focus on the other archer. I run towards him, block an attack from 1 of the bandits, get lucky as one bandit moves in the way of the 2nd archer's arrow, and then poison my blade with a heavy damage health effect. I roll past the archer and strike at his back with my blade. I start running, taking cover behind whatever I can find, including a wild brown bear. When I turn around, I start for the group again, with the bear hot on my trail. The first archer is up again, and the 2nd archer has lost about a third of his health. However, instead of attacking me, the warriors attack the bear. The bear takes out 2 warriors and severly damages a third before dying. One of the archers tries to fire at me, and ends up killing the wounded warrior. The 2 warriors start to focus on me. I run into the nearby lake. Both warriors follow me as I go deeper and deeper into the water. That's when I use a slew of heavy burden poisons on one of the warriors who can no longer move. I then start to swim upward and with the small amount of time I have, I focus on one of the archers. It appears to be the wounded archer, whom I make short work of with a few poisoned slashes. Just as the other archer is about to shoot me, I roll backward...right into the other warrior. Reacting quick, I block the warrior's mace and get in a few quick slashes. I manage to knock the guy to about halfway health. I start rolling backwards over and over again as the guy swings away. The warrior gets hit twice by arrows. It happens to knock his health down enough where I can deal a quick finishing blow. As I see, the last bandit/archer, I start running towards him. I dodge every one of his arrows and get withn striking distance. I attack a few times to force him to switch to a dagger. As I keep slashing away, that's when I almost soil myself out of surprise. From the distance, I see another bandit. It's the same bandit that I had overencumbered near the lake bottom. Yeah, he's still alive and he looks pissed. I try to slash the archer as many times as possible. I almost kill him, but then the warrior comes within striking distance. I would poison the archer but I already used all of the useful poisons during the majority of the fight. Regardless, I have to have a straight up fight with 2 guys at the same time now. I rush back towards the lake so that the distance I put between myself and the archer is enough to get him to switch back to his bow. Success! Now, all I need to worry about is the warrior as long as I keep him between me and the archer. We trade hits and he gets in a few. However, I'm not as worried much about my health as I am about my surroundings. If I keep backing up, I start noticing that rocks are behind me and may throw me off. Just as I am about to run out of places to back up to, I roll to the side and take a huge hit from the warrior's mace and another from the archer's arrow. My guy is about 40% health left. I trade some more blows with the awrrior and finally kill him. I have about a quarter of my health left. Just as I start for the last bandit/archer, I take another arrow. My guy loses balance and I know the next arrow will kill me. As I see my character'slife flash before his eyes, and try to get ready for that last arrow, the archer dies just as he is about to shoot his arrow. Confused, I slowly approach his body. Guess what had happened? As the archer had been focusing on my character, he had failed to notcie a rat approaching behind him. I am guessing the rat may have come from one of the nearby ruins. The archer's health had been so low, the rat was able to make the finishing blow. Owing my life to the rat, I decided to spare it and I ran to a nearby inn to tend to my wounds.That day, my character had fought like a lion, and had been saved by a mouse...or in this case, a rat.
Symbolic? I don't know. Maybe.