Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-06: Ukuja, The First Wall

I'm writing this review on behalf of my regular players. This was ridiculous. The combats dragged on and on. Some of the enemies couldn't do enough damage to make it worth having them in it. And because there were so many different creatures with different abilities in each combat, I kept losing my place and screwing up. And why was the final boss so easy. He was dead after 3 rounds, but my players had to continue on for 10+ more rounds to kill the minions. And no, they did not focus on the big bad, only two of them did while the other four worked on the minions. I hope the sequel is more focused and less ugh.

Wall is a classic combat scenario with some investigation and some horror elements.

One of the combats are tough but overall was good for subtier 7-8. In some ways the combats were redundant with other combats in this scenario and other recent scenarios.

The scenario finished in 4 hours, although one non-optional encounter was skipped through good scouting.

There was an influence section but it was over fairly quickly (30m), so there were no issues. I thought it was ridiculous to introduce the PCs to all of the council, with extravagant descriptions, do a few skill checks, and then have it be completely irrelevant to the scenario. Again I think the scenario would be better WITHOUT the influence system. Simple is better.

I agree with the other reviewers.

Overall: A fairly straightforward (but enjoyable) combat scenario. (7/10)

Played recently, has potential but also a couple of unfortunatey choices regarding the narrative, and maps involved.
Worth running for groups that crave a fair bit of combat, but runs long.

You like fights? This scenario has fights. Lots of fights. A couple of satisfying and intriguing ones, even.

Before I ran it, I heard it would run long, and I can confirm that it ran pretty long (if memory serves, I think I was at around five hours, with five players at the higher end of low tier).

There was an interesting combat in the middle, both in terms of the layout and the enemies' abilities. The final combat was satisfyingly challenging with some novel elements. I enjoyed that final battle both when I played the scenario and when I ran it.

I suppose I wouldn't have minded dropping one or both of the other fights (though I enjoyed the first one) and having more of a chance to explore the setting. Overall a good effort, and a scenario I can see myself enjoying again.

Overall this is an intriguing scenario with some unique engagements.
There's way too many combats, but the one place that the players wanted to engage for Roleplay wasn't allowed by the weird unexplained railroading that you have to tell the players sorry you can't do that because I don't have a stat block and you are told to

Overall, I give the plot premise a 4 or 5. The execution is a 2-3. Too much combat, poor written assumptions that someone is going to read into what you said to mean something you quite simply didn't. No help for key issues. The end brings the original premise of the beginning into question as to why its unclear how the party should act in the first place. It would have been nice to seen a better establishment instead of a weird trope for a pointless scene that only acts as an irritant to the players because you have to force them to do something without any realistic options as a gm.