Runescape: The Brink of Extinction Review

Finished doing "The Brink of Extinction" last night.  Monique and I both got it done. Surprisingly, it was voice acted.  The Tzhaar used some kind of voice modifier to give them a rocky, grating tone.  Worked really well- with only minor exceptions, the voices were amazing.  My only complaint for voice acting would be when Ga'al Xox is giving his final speech.  He's supposed to be in constant agony, and the voice acting is reminiscent of William Shatner's style of speak-dramatic pause-speak-pause...

Aside from the mild over-acting, the voices were otherwise a great addition to the quest.  This is supposed to be the final Tzaar quest, and has a grandmaster rating.  To address the Grandmaster status, TBoE was a long quest.  The first part was pretty easy, and non-combat.  The last part was a mix of combat and puzzles.  The puzzles were easy, many didn't even really qualify as puzzles.  The combat started off easy enough, and grew more complex as it progressed.

The story was emotionally satisfying.  It was a good ending to the Tzhaar arc.  The boss fight took me a bunch of tries, but I finally got it.  It seemed easier than Nomad, but harder than Vanstrom.  I tried many setups, but the best involved Ice Barrage because it's stun prevents TokHarr-Hok from healing in the lava-fall.

Beat the big guy, and the rest crumble

In terms of story, I can give it Grandmaster.  It was satisfying.  In terms of combat, it was very difficult, but I'm not sure it qualified for Grandmaster.  I enjoyed the combat.  If it was really Grandmaster, I'd have spent a couple of weeks complaining and getting killed.  This only took two days.  :^)

The rewards were not for me.  3 Quest points, okay, good.  100k exp Mining... I just got 99 mining a few days ago.  Didn't do anything for me.
The exp lamp with 275k combat exp is great, but all my combat skills are maxed.  So again, useless to anybody who's max combat.

The Fight Cauldron - This one I like.  It sounds like fun to go back and try again. I'm looking forward to that.  I'll need to find out more about the Obsidian Armour in regard to the Cauldron, Kiln, and Fight Cave.

Speaking of the armour, this was the main reason I wanted to do the quest.  But it turned out Obsidian Armour is only useful in the Tzhaar areas.  Wear it in combat anywere else in Runescape, and it gives a triple damage penalty when you get hit.

That's very disappointing.  On the other hand, I still haven't beaten the Kiln.  So even though limited, it's useful for that.  Adding a teleport to the Tokkul-Zo ring is nice, but I'm not jumping up and down over it.  
The "TzHaar" title is also nice, but I have a feeling it's not going to be that exclusive.  Still, I like being called TzHaar.  2 spins on the wheel... can take or leave this one.  I don't hate the wheel like some do.  But I hate that it very rarely gives me anything useful.  Most of the time it's low-level junk that does me little good.  It used to be good for at least a small exp lamp every few days.  Either I've got horrible luck, or they've nerfed the wheel.

The Brink of Extinction was a good, fun quest.  But I think Jagex had an agenda here.  Coming right after the Evolution of Combat, BoE seems more like a shakedown cruise.  To beat the quest, you've got to complete a long combat sequence, but you get it in small manageable chunks.
BoE was a training run.  Beat it, and your understanding of Abilities and the Action bar should be much better.

I've learned a lot, and like the action bar much better now, even though I already liked it.  The quest was worth doing just for the sake of doing it.  The rewards could have been better, especially the armour. 

Killed the Ranger with melee, then switched to Ganodermic Armour, Armadyl Staff, and this action bar setup.

The real benefit was getting to know the Action Bar.  Using it so much made it a lot more comfortable.  I think in the long run, I'm probably going to keep a picture record of favorite setups.  Then I can recreate different loadouts for different purposes.