Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
I downloaded the new Escape from Tarkov patch that does some pretty major changes and additions. It runs way smoother now and also I fucking suck at everything. I've just been doing offline pve to practice so I don't loose any of my gear and the random npc scavs are murdering me.
I still really like the idea of having to check the magazine to find out how many bullets I have and having it only tell me an approximation.
Okay I think I am just going to move on from Pillars of Eternity unless someone knows of a mod that autoequips your party for you.
Who has time for this shit?
yeah like are you playing this for the combat?
the story?
because the game is combat heavy, there's just a lot of it and most of it is not avoidable
and it's very difficult to engage with the combat in a meaningful way without engaging in the inventory/party management portions of the game
I made it through... most of the game turning the difficulty down to Story mode? But some of the expansion fights were still rough.
yeah I really enjoy the granularity of speccing out every character and trying to optimize skills and synergies into something worthwhile
it's like 9 equippable slots per character, 18 or so skills per class, over a hundred consumables and buff/debuff quick item modifiers, and then all of that multiplied by six characters, and then spells and magic on top of all of that, so there's a lot of room for variation and finding things that work together or can be used for a specific strategy
but like it's an incredibly fussy thing and I am under no illusion that every person, or even most players, will enjoy it
Well this is depressing: Afterparty is fucking buggy as hell. Gamebreakingly buggy. "Can't transition between sets causing soft locks" buggy, "crashing randomly" buggy.
That and Milo, one of the two lead characters, is losery in the exact same sad way that Ren or whatever his name from Oxenfree is. Just unbearable to listen to, to be around, to root for at all. I found myself just not wanting to play the game after 2 or so hours, which really saddens me considering how much I liked Oxenfree.
The options are really interesting though - the core gameplay really makes you feel like the right buff might make the conversation go completely differently. Not sure how much of that is illusion
EDIT: I powered through and got an interesting ending and warmed up to Milo a tiny bit. The writing is good - very naturalistic and on a broader level has a couple of themes it hits on pretty successfully. I'll go through it again because it's a fairly short playthrough and I suspect there'll be NG+ options with how openly meta the game is. A solid 7/10 game after the first playthrough, but I'm hoping more playthroughs and endings (hopefully there's a secret ending) will raise that score. Good fucking lord is it buggy though.
Eddy on
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
I fucking love this game, I just wish there weren't so many trash wands that I have to carefully analyze the stats of anyway just in case it synergizes with something in some crazy way
I've tried playing fast and loose, with the rule of having to pick up and use every wand I come across without looking at it.. Very fun, but not really viable haha
Maybe with more gametime under my belt I'll naturally find a satisfying balance between the two approaches
There's been a suspicion that China and your Chinese business had an influence on the decision and the statement Blizzard made. Can you confirm for me on the record whether NetEase or any of your Chinese partners didn't have any sort of influence on your decision in this incident?
Okay, glad you asked that because I'd love to be very clear. The first thing that I want to talk about is that there is a massive amount of either confusion or non-understanding around what the regulations are in China. Blizzard is not legally allowed to operate or to publish games in China. You must have a partner. That is the regulation, that is law. NetEase is our partner. NetEase is not a government agency, NetEase is a company. They are the publisher. One of the things that has kind of come up around this is the Blizzard Weibo post and the text around that. We are not legally allowed to operate those channels. We are not legally allowed to contribute. That is a NetEase decision, they are the publisher in China.
Was NetEase in conversation around this issue? They were, certainly. As were the [Blizzard] Taiwan team, as was the Hearthstone leadership team, as was the esports team. All those various constituencies came together and one of the things that we said was we acted very rapidly and we acted very quickly. And that's certainly the failure of this story is those groups coming together and deciding in a very short amount of time what the right action to take forward was.
So the Weibo post that talked about defending "the pride" of China was written by NetEase?
Correct. We did not authorize it. We did not approve it. We would not have approved it had they asked.
As a longtime fan of baldur's gate (1 & 2), planescape the torment, and Fallout 1 (2 was fun but i never actually finished it).
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
+1
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Blizzard trying their best to distance themselves from a decision they obviously made and have no interest in overturning
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
Okay I think I am just going to move on from Pillars of Eternity unless someone knows of a mod that autoequips your party for you.
Who has time for this shit?
yeah like are you playing this for the combat?
the story?
because the game is combat heavy, there's just a lot of it and most of it is not avoidable
and it's very difficult to engage with the combat in a meaningful way without engaging in the inventory/party management portions of the game
I just thought the story was interesting and I liked the quality of the side quests and writing of NPCs.
Might be worth it to just turn the difficulty down to story mode - I think there are some fun quests in the PoE games, but the game just doesn't give you all that many opportunities to avoid a fight, and tends to penalize you in terms of XP/loot the few times you're able to sneak around them.
Blizzard trying their best to distance themselves from a decision they obviously made and have no interest in overturning
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
from a business standpoint they seem to have made the right call, seeing all of the hype for the trailers at blizzcon
always count on any moral stand from gamers to last until someone jangles keys in front of them
As a longtime fan of baldur's gate (1 & 2), planescape the torment, and Fallout 1 (2 was fun but i never actually finished it).
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
BG1 definitely had a slower lead-in, but the game was pretty happy to let you screw yourself over with a level 1 character who had all the damage output and durability of an inflatable balloon. Playing as a level one mage meant a bunch of fights where after using up your only charge of magic missile, you'd be forced into melee combat with like 5 HP and a THACO of 20+.
As a longtime fan of baldur's gate (1 & 2), planescape the torment, and Fallout 1 (2 was fun but i never actually finished it).
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
BG1 definitely had a slower lead-in, but the game was pretty happy to let you screw yourself over with a level 1 character who had all the damage output and durability of an inflatable balloon. Playing as a level one mage meant a bunch of fights where after using up your only charge of magic missile, you'd be forced into melee combat with like 5 HP and a THACO of 20+.
And then there's this fucker:
As a habitual mage/wizard player, that fight was a non issue because not only did i have the forethought of getting a sling, i also had 3 other characters with me by that point.
That said, not sure how that relates to my post, i never said BG had no challenge to it or you could not screw yourself over (like playing a mage, solo, and picking magic missile as your starting spell).
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
As a longtime fan of baldur's gate (1 & 2), planescape the torment, and Fallout 1 (2 was fun but i never actually finished it).
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
BG1 definitely had a slower lead-in, but the game was pretty happy to let you screw yourself over with a level 1 character who had all the damage output and durability of an inflatable balloon. Playing as a level one mage meant a bunch of fights where after using up your only charge of magic missile, you'd be forced into melee combat with like 5 HP and a THACO of 20+.
And then there's this fucker:
As a habitual mage/wizard player, that fight was a non issue because not only did i have the forethought of getting a sling, i also had 3 other characters with me by that point.
That said, not sure how that relates to my post, i never said BG had no challenge to it or you could not screw yourself over (like playing a mage, solo, and picking magic missile as your starting spell).
level 1 bg combat was a slog
like literally watching your level 1 mage whiff 20+ attacks in a row kinda slog
As a longtime fan of baldur's gate (1 & 2), planescape the torment, and Fallout 1 (2 was fun but i never actually finished it).
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
BG1 definitely had a slower lead-in, but the game was pretty happy to let you screw yourself over with a level 1 character who had all the damage output and durability of an inflatable balloon. Playing as a level one mage meant a bunch of fights where after using up your only charge of magic missile, you'd be forced into melee combat with like 5 HP and a THACO of 20+.
And then there's this fucker:
As a habitual mage/wizard player, that fight was a non issue because not only did i have the forethought of getting a sling, i also had 3 other characters with me by that point.
That said, not sure how that relates to my post, i never said BG had no challenge to it or you could not screw yourself over (like playing a mage, solo, and picking magic missile as your starting spell).
level 1 bg combat was a slog
like literally watching your level 1 mage whiff 20+ attacks in a row kinda slog
And?
No, really, and?
How is this related to my post?
BG was not a perfect, i never claimed it was, i just find the combat in newer games more of a slog.
Because while BG could have kinda poor start, it was just those few early fights, pillars of eternity, to give an example, has fights keep being a slog from level 1 to 14 (or was it 16? don't remember).
And if you missed 20+ attacks in a row, and were not dead yourself, i think you were incredibly unlucky.
And?
No, really, and?
How is this related to my post?
BG was not a perfect, i never claimed it was, i just find the combat in newer games more of a slog.
Because while BG could have kinda poor start, it was just those few early fights, pillars of eternity, to give an example, has fights keep being a slog from level 1 to 14 (or was it 16? don't remember).
And if you missed 20+ attacks in a row, and were not dead yourself, i think you were incredibly unlucky.
...
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
level 1 bg combat was a slog
that is how my post is related to your post
it is very easy for someone to find combat in either games a slog
like i played through bg1, but i doubt I'd go back to it, because barely any of the combat prior to getting to the actual city of baldur's gate is interesting to me
You may just not remember well enough. BG in particularly is very micro heavy, as well as save/load heavy. It also has a bunch of bullshit encounters that you only beat by fighting it, knowing what you need to counter, reloading and going in buffed to the gills.
Now PoE 1, I've always critisized for a single but terrible flaw: Encounter design.
That entire game is filled with maps full of similar enemy packs. 3 goblins. 2 goblins and a goblin caster. 2 goblins, a goblin caster and a dog. 3 goblins. 2 goblins and 2 dogs.
This is what makes it feel like work. There's very little interesting in such encounters. Even if it makes thematic sense to have similar foes in an area, just delete half of them and that game would improve.
The fact that the first dungeon uses ghosts as the main enemy, which negates all the tank abilities, and the first npc you get is a tank, is ...... confounding.
PoE 1 also heavily favors buffs/debuffs which means that autoattacking through simple encounters will have you take more damage.
Kingmaker is very close to BG 1+2 in my opinion. In flaws and where it excels. Its extremely oldschool in design.
A main problem is that their difficulty settings are bullshit and make the game unfun/some classes unplayable (because saves become impossible to beat)
Just play it on normal. There will still be very harsh encounters. You just stomp on all the filler.
There is also an excellent turnbased mod for Kingmaker.
I haven't played PoE II yet, but people like it more than 1, almost universally.
Tyranny has a simple flaw: All the combat takes 2x too long. It's real boring, waiting for good dicerolls. Play it on easy, it's mostly story driven anyway.
Original Sin 2 is quite cool, but the interaction based combat is very plodding. You can do a ton of cool stuff, but it takes time to explore.
And?
No, really, and?
How is this related to my post?
BG was not a perfect, i never claimed it was, i just find the combat in newer games more of a slog.
Because while BG could have kinda poor start, it was just those few early fights, pillars of eternity, to give an example, has fights keep being a slog from level 1 to 14 (or was it 16? don't remember).
And if you missed 20+ attacks in a row, and were not dead yourself, i think you were incredibly unlucky.
...
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
level 1 bg combat was a slog
that is how my post is related to your post
it is very easy for someone to find combat in either games a slog
like i played through bg1, but i doubt I'd go back to it, because barely any of the combat prior to getting to the actual city of baldur's gate is interesting to me
And?
No, really, and?
How is this related to my post?
BG was not a perfect, i never claimed it was, i just find the combat in newer games more of a slog.
Because while BG could have kinda poor start, it was just those few early fights, pillars of eternity, to give an example, has fights keep being a slog from level 1 to 14 (or was it 16? don't remember).
And if you missed 20+ attacks in a row, and were not dead yourself, i think you were incredibly unlucky.
...
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
level 1 bg combat was a slog
that is how my post is related to your post
it is very easy for someone to find combat in either games a slog
like i played through bg1, but i doubt I'd go back to it, because barely any of the combat prior to getting to the actual city of baldur's gate is interesting to me
some would say that i find it
a
slog
Then why not just come out and say it.
Fear of deadly mortal blade combat
Broke as fuck in the style of the times. Gratitude is all that can return on your generosity.
I think it's clear that there are differences in encounter design and people will respond differently as a result
I think BG had more easy fights, on average.
It feels that the never isomotric rpg's want fights to be more challenging, all the fights, so while there are easy fights, lot of them, especially later on (PoE white march dlc being a major offender here) become more like puzzles where the solution is always the same (crowd control, crowd control, crowd control).
The combat is more challenging on average, but lot of the challenge is just rote countering enemy actions, or applying cc over and over again, even in basic fights.
+1
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
Blizzard trying their best to distance themselves from a decision they obviously made and have no interest in overturning
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
from a business standpoint they seem to have made the right call, seeing all of the hype for the trailers at blizzcon
always count on any moral stand from gamers to last until someone jangles keys in front of them
Blizzard trying their best to distance themselves from a decision they obviously made and have no interest in overturning
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
from a business standpoint they seem to have made the right call, seeing all of the hype for the trailers at blizzcon
always count on any moral stand from gamers to last until someone jangles keys in front of them
there was still protests going on outside, and some inside too
people are still pissed and it's still being talked aobut, just that the inside crowd was mostly boot-lickers who would spend insane money just to see some blizzard stuff before everybody else
Blizzard trying their best to distance themselves from a decision they obviously made and have no interest in overturning
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
from a business standpoint they seem to have made the right call, seeing all of the hype for the trailers at blizzcon
always count on any moral stand from gamers to last until someone jangles keys in front of them
Real-time with Pause games really need to be more about the macro of fights than the micro. It's a shame nobody really picked up on the Dragon Age/Final Fantasy XII AI scripting.
I'm going to make a hot take here that d20-based real-time-plausible combat is just inherently a slog and not that great.
Givee me actual turn-based combat, at the very least, if you're going to insist on the d20 system.
Still un-fucking-believable we never got a 4e rule set turn-based strategy game.
Eh, kinda depends on how micro heavy you want combat to be.
Though i've always felt that RTwP was always kinda weird mix of real time and turn based and inferrior to both.
But the combat can be better than it has been lately.
Neverwinter Nights 2 had pretty decent combat without being constant "pause to re apply cc".
Though even that would probably have been better as turn based.
And playing PoE2 in turn based mode (and on casual difficulty) has definitely made the combat lot less of a slog than it was in PoE classic difficulty.
I'd love to see a fantasy RPG with the number of encounters you'd get in an actual PnP game. I don't want to have to kill 100 things in a single dungeon.
BG2 - at the top because I've played it the most, so I'm very familiar with it and that makes it easy to work with. The system is pretty complicated thanks to high level 2E rules, but that also gives it a lot of granularity. You can really customize your class options, but each class still feels unique. I love being able to get strong items pretty quickly since the game isn't very linear, and plan party builds around character taking on specific roles in the party, like a sniper ranger or a super tanky paladin.
PoE 2 - with all of its DLC and patches, it's a pretty expansive game. It's taking a lot of what I liked about BG2's combat and refining it, so there are fewer broken things. It's still very complex, and a lot of the high-level fights need to be approached like puzzles. Although they did introduce a fully turn-based system as an option, I don't think it's a particularly good way of playing the game due to how long a full turn can take with the larger battles.
D:OS 1 - Also pretty combat heavy, but with a lot of fun physics and world interactions you could do to make combat more interesting. Put a really heavy item in a chest and then teleport it on to an enemy head! Turn the ground into lava and box your opponents inside!
D:OS 2 - The game polishes a lot of the stuff from D:OS1, but also removes some of the more fun/broken elements, and for me that makes it a bit less interesting. The larger skill sets were fun, but I prefer the AP system of the first game, and the sheer length of D:OS2 and the amount of combat encounters that require you to have some foreknowledge of what's going to happen kinda kills the games' momentum for me.
Icewind 1 - so icewind 1 is just one long dungeon crawl, but the game has a weird exception to the standard 2e rule set where priests could have multiple chants/prayers/recitations that stacked, so you could buff your party like crazy, haste everyone, and then tear through combat. This was unbalanced but quite a bit of fun!
Tyranny - I remember liking the Tyranny combat, but I played as a pure fighter. The mage stuff seemed sorta interesting but i didn't like any of the magic side characters. The team synergies were a neat idea.
Shadowrun DF - again this was pretty cool when playing as a HUGESTRONG TROLL LADY who just smashed people with a giant axe. DF's combat encounters weren't too long or too frequent, which made it kinda refreshing, but the karma point system also felt like it limited your character, since you really wanted to specialize at the expense pf being well rounded. I also hated that so many bonus objectives and quests required having a decker, because Blitz always kinda sucked.
PoE 1 - I played most of this after the balance patches that changed most of the combat system. Typical combat encounters very often felt like you would cast the same set of spells every time, using up your per-encounter slots and trying to save your per-day slots for more interesting fights. There was just a lot of fighting throughout the game, which I don't think really engaged me all that much.
Shadowrun HK - kinda like DF, but with more combat. I like the HK companions more, but I think overall it's a weaker game. Playing as a rigger was kinda... dull. Like it's a very strong class because you get triple the AP at high levels, but you also just use the same basic robot skills over and over.
BG1 - at low levels it's kind of a crapshoot, your characters just aren't good at anything. Once you get a mage with fireball (and later cloudkill), the game kind of breaks and most encounters turn into AoE spam. The uncapped wand of monster summoning was fun though.
Arcanum - just so many unviable class builds that sound interesting, but then the game starves you of materials and experience so you can't do anything with them. I tried a dwarf sharpshooter who couldn't afford bullets, an elven mage who didn't know any useful spells, and then finally rolled an Ogre who had 0 intelligence but 20 strength, which unlocked a double damage perk that allowed him to just chop people in half with his hands. This also meant he gained vastly more XP and was quickly able to max out every other stat. The combat AI was never great, and the enemy variety was kinda poor, with a lot of enemy tech and magic users not actually using their skills at all. Just a lot of wandering the map and mopping up mobs of enemies that never stood much of a chance.
My callout of real-time pauseable d20-based combat doesn't just mean isometric-based. I was trying to play KOTOR2 not that long ago and it felt like pulling teeth.
Honestly, I should just like, look up console commands for that so I can waltz through all the combat and experience the fucking story that everyone holds in such high regard.
Posts
yeah like are you playing this for the combat?
the story?
because the game is combat heavy, there's just a lot of it and most of it is not avoidable
and it's very difficult to engage with the combat in a meaningful way without engaging in the inventory/party management portions of the game
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I still really like the idea of having to check the magazine to find out how many bullets I have and having it only tell me an approximation.
I made it through... most of the game turning the difficulty down to Story mode? But some of the expansion fights were still rough.
yeah I really enjoy the granularity of speccing out every character and trying to optimize skills and synergies into something worthwhile
it's like 9 equippable slots per character, 18 or so skills per class, over a hundred consumables and buff/debuff quick item modifiers, and then all of that multiplied by six characters, and then spells and magic on top of all of that, so there's a lot of room for variation and finding things that work together or can be used for a specific strategy
but like it's an incredibly fussy thing and I am under no illusion that every person, or even most players, will enjoy it
That and Milo, one of the two lead characters, is losery in the exact same sad way that Ren or whatever his name from Oxenfree is. Just unbearable to listen to, to be around, to root for at all. I found myself just not wanting to play the game after 2 or so hours, which really saddens me considering how much I liked Oxenfree.
The options are really interesting though - the core gameplay really makes you feel like the right buff might make the conversation go completely differently. Not sure how much of that is illusion
EDIT: I powered through and got an interesting ending and warmed up to Milo a tiny bit. The writing is good - very naturalistic and on a broader level has a couple of themes it hits on pretty successfully. I'll go through it again because it's a fairly short playthrough and I suspect there'll be NG+ options with how openly meta the game is. A solid 7/10 game after the first playthrough, but I'm hoping more playthroughs and endings (hopefully there's a secret ending) will raise that score. Good fucking lord is it buggy though.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Welp,
I fucking love this game, I just wish there weren't so many trash wands that I have to carefully analyze the stats of anyway just in case it synergizes with something in some crazy way
I've tried playing fast and loose, with the rule of having to pick up and use every wand I come across without looking at it.. Very fun, but not really viable haha
Maybe with more gametime under my belt I'll naturally find a satisfying balance between the two approaches
It's not long, but here's a highlight:
I have to say that the revival of isometric rpg's has not been what i hoped it would be.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny...
They all just seem to, miss, something.
All of them have plenty to love, but none of them really manage to keep my interest. (as me only having finished one of them, and that after 4 years of buying it).
Same for Divinity Original Sin (1 & 2) and Wasteland 2.
Part of it definitely just me not having the patience i had back when Baldur's Gate 2 came out.
But i also don't really remember having similar issues with resource management and the combat being such a slog back in BG 1&2 as they can be in PoE 1&2 or Pf:K.
And that's not just nostalgia, i played BG enhanced edition through last year, but did not really mange to get started with the siege expansion which i wanted to do before starting BG2 EE.
I think the newer isometric rpg's are just being made more for/by the in crowd, people who already were longtime fans and want to challenge themselves, and never players, or older players who were more into specific aspects of the game, get left behind.
That takes some doing!
I’m sure they’re telling the truth with regard to the Weibo post and such, but their lack of response to it says they don’t actually care, that the China money is too good, and that it outweighs any negative publicity that they can PR kickflip their way out of
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I just thought the story was interesting and I liked the quality of the side quests and writing of NPCs.
Might be worth it to just turn the difficulty down to story mode - I think there are some fun quests in the PoE games, but the game just doesn't give you all that many opportunities to avoid a fight, and tends to penalize you in terms of XP/loot the few times you're able to sneak around them.
from a business standpoint they seem to have made the right call, seeing all of the hype for the trailers at blizzcon
always count on any moral stand from gamers to last until someone jangles keys in front of them
BG1 definitely had a slower lead-in, but the game was pretty happy to let you screw yourself over with a level 1 character who had all the damage output and durability of an inflatable balloon. Playing as a level one mage meant a bunch of fights where after using up your only charge of magic missile, you'd be forced into melee combat with like 5 HP and a THACO of 20+.
And then there's this fucker:
That said, not sure how that relates to my post, i never said BG had no challenge to it or you could not screw yourself over (like playing a mage, solo, and picking magic missile as your starting spell).
level 1 bg combat was a slog
like literally watching your level 1 mage whiff 20+ attacks in a row kinda slog
Also it's a very different slog from PoE where the encounter design has more in common with something later like Icewind Dale II
No, really, and?
How is this related to my post?
BG was not a perfect, i never claimed it was, i just find the combat in newer games more of a slog.
Because while BG could have kinda poor start, it was just those few early fights, pillars of eternity, to give an example, has fights keep being a slog from level 1 to 14 (or was it 16? don't remember).
And if you missed 20+ attacks in a row, and were not dead yourself, i think you were incredibly unlucky.
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...
that is how my post is related to your post
it is very easy for someone to find combat in either games a slog
like i played through bg1, but i doubt I'd go back to it, because barely any of the combat prior to getting to the actual city of baldur's gate is interesting to me
some would say that i find it
a
slog
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you will rue this day
and rue it hard
Now PoE 1, I've always critisized for a single but terrible flaw: Encounter design.
That entire game is filled with maps full of similar enemy packs. 3 goblins. 2 goblins and a goblin caster. 2 goblins, a goblin caster and a dog. 3 goblins. 2 goblins and 2 dogs.
This is what makes it feel like work. There's very little interesting in such encounters. Even if it makes thematic sense to have similar foes in an area, just delete half of them and that game would improve.
The fact that the first dungeon uses ghosts as the main enemy, which negates all the tank abilities, and the first npc you get is a tank, is ...... confounding.
PoE 1 also heavily favors buffs/debuffs which means that autoattacking through simple encounters will have you take more damage.
Kingmaker is very close to BG 1+2 in my opinion. In flaws and where it excels. Its extremely oldschool in design.
A main problem is that their difficulty settings are bullshit and make the game unfun/some classes unplayable (because saves become impossible to beat)
Just play it on normal. There will still be very harsh encounters. You just stomp on all the filler.
There is also an excellent turnbased mod for Kingmaker.
I haven't played PoE II yet, but people like it more than 1, almost universally.
Tyranny has a simple flaw: All the combat takes 2x too long. It's real boring, waiting for good dicerolls. Play it on easy, it's mostly story driven anyway.
Original Sin 2 is quite cool, but the interaction based combat is very plodding. You can do a ton of cool stuff, but it takes time to explore.
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He replayed it recently
I think it's clear that there are differences in encounter design and people will respond differently as a result
Fear of deadly mortal blade combat
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It feels that the never isomotric rpg's want fights to be more challenging, all the fights, so while there are easy fights, lot of them, especially later on (PoE white march dlc being a major offender here) become more like puzzles where the solution is always the same (crowd control, crowd control, crowd control).
The combat is more challenging on average, but lot of the challenge is just rote countering enemy actions, or applying cc over and over again, even in basic fights.
there was still protests going on outside, and some inside too
people are still pissed and it's still being talked aobut, just that the inside crowd was mostly boot-lickers who would spend insane money just to see some blizzard stuff before everybody else
Givee me actual turn-based combat, at the very least, if you're going to insist on the d20 system.
Still un-fucking-believable we never got a 4e rule set turn-based strategy game.
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Though i've always felt that RTwP was always kinda weird mix of real time and turn based and inferrior to both.
But the combat can be better than it has been lately.
Neverwinter Nights 2 had pretty decent combat without being constant "pause to re apply cc".
Though even that would probably have been better as turn based.
And playing PoE2 in turn based mode (and on casual difficulty) has definitely made the combat lot less of a slog than it was in PoE classic difficulty.
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Still so mad we never got a 4e TRPG on the DS. I'd probably still be playing that.
BG1
BG2
Icewind 1
Tyranny
PoE 1
PoE 2
D:OS 1
D:OS 2
Arcanum
Shadowrun DF
Shadowrun HK
My preference for combat would be:
BG2 - at the top because I've played it the most, so I'm very familiar with it and that makes it easy to work with. The system is pretty complicated thanks to high level 2E rules, but that also gives it a lot of granularity. You can really customize your class options, but each class still feels unique. I love being able to get strong items pretty quickly since the game isn't very linear, and plan party builds around character taking on specific roles in the party, like a sniper ranger or a super tanky paladin.
PoE 2 - with all of its DLC and patches, it's a pretty expansive game. It's taking a lot of what I liked about BG2's combat and refining it, so there are fewer broken things. It's still very complex, and a lot of the high-level fights need to be approached like puzzles. Although they did introduce a fully turn-based system as an option, I don't think it's a particularly good way of playing the game due to how long a full turn can take with the larger battles.
D:OS 1 - Also pretty combat heavy, but with a lot of fun physics and world interactions you could do to make combat more interesting. Put a really heavy item in a chest and then teleport it on to an enemy head! Turn the ground into lava and box your opponents inside!
D:OS 2 - The game polishes a lot of the stuff from D:OS1, but also removes some of the more fun/broken elements, and for me that makes it a bit less interesting. The larger skill sets were fun, but I prefer the AP system of the first game, and the sheer length of D:OS2 and the amount of combat encounters that require you to have some foreknowledge of what's going to happen kinda kills the games' momentum for me.
Icewind 1 - so icewind 1 is just one long dungeon crawl, but the game has a weird exception to the standard 2e rule set where priests could have multiple chants/prayers/recitations that stacked, so you could buff your party like crazy, haste everyone, and then tear through combat. This was unbalanced but quite a bit of fun!
Tyranny - I remember liking the Tyranny combat, but I played as a pure fighter. The mage stuff seemed sorta interesting but i didn't like any of the magic side characters. The team synergies were a neat idea.
Shadowrun DF - again this was pretty cool when playing as a HUGESTRONG TROLL LADY who just smashed people with a giant axe. DF's combat encounters weren't too long or too frequent, which made it kinda refreshing, but the karma point system also felt like it limited your character, since you really wanted to specialize at the expense pf being well rounded. I also hated that so many bonus objectives and quests required having a decker, because Blitz always kinda sucked.
PoE 1 - I played most of this after the balance patches that changed most of the combat system. Typical combat encounters very often felt like you would cast the same set of spells every time, using up your per-encounter slots and trying to save your per-day slots for more interesting fights. There was just a lot of fighting throughout the game, which I don't think really engaged me all that much.
Shadowrun HK - kinda like DF, but with more combat. I like the HK companions more, but I think overall it's a weaker game. Playing as a rigger was kinda... dull. Like it's a very strong class because you get triple the AP at high levels, but you also just use the same basic robot skills over and over.
BG1 - at low levels it's kind of a crapshoot, your characters just aren't good at anything. Once you get a mage with fireball (and later cloudkill), the game kind of breaks and most encounters turn into AoE spam. The uncapped wand of monster summoning was fun though.
Arcanum - just so many unviable class builds that sound interesting, but then the game starves you of materials and experience so you can't do anything with them. I tried a dwarf sharpshooter who couldn't afford bullets, an elven mage who didn't know any useful spells, and then finally rolled an Ogre who had 0 intelligence but 20 strength, which unlocked a double damage perk that allowed him to just chop people in half with his hands. This also meant he gained vastly more XP and was quickly able to max out every other stat. The combat AI was never great, and the enemy variety was kinda poor, with a lot of enemy tech and magic users not actually using their skills at all. Just a lot of wandering the map and mopping up mobs of enemies that never stood much of a chance.
Honestly, I should just like, look up console commands for that so I can waltz through all the combat and experience the fucking story that everyone holds in such high regard.
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I mean its alright its not fiction that will blow your brains out the back of your skull
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