Video Games

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Tue Oct 13, 2015 11:09 am

Good point, that is also a perfectly acceptable way to do it. You spend some cash and don't get *as much* stuff, but it's so much quicker and easier. Besides, you solve a problem with dynamite. I think we can all agree that is the best course of action.

On Sword Coast Adventures: I'm sort of keeping an eye on it. They're doing their very best to make the Real Time With Pausing (ie Turn Based) look cool and effective, and to make the DMing multiplayer mode thing look really easy and fun, but I can smell the marketing on the trailer, I want to see it in a LP. And they boast that it's by "the same people who made Dragon Age", which makes me wonder "So... someone stands in town spruiking DLC, and they jam a romance down your throat so hard that it gets its own DLC?" I mean, I should consider what I liked about DAO, it was a fun game, yet that's what sticks in my mind.

Overall I'm keeping an eye on it, but want to see someone else play a bit first. Hopefully TotalBiscuit will. Or Dodger could do a complete LP with a derpy character.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 4:58 pm

I see "made by the same people who made Dragon Age" and basically think "So... it's going to have a system that is arbitrarily different from how that sort of game is normally done and makes the actual game play sort of shit?"

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 8:48 pm

Prak wrote:I see "made by the same people who made Dragon Age" and basically think "So... it's going to have a system that is arbitrarily different from how that sort of game is normally done and makes the actual game play sort of shit?"

Not sure where you get that, since Dragon Age Origins had like one change from standard RPG mechanics, and it was the supremely better than all other mechanics maintenance method of buffs.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 9:02 pm

The psuedo-RTS nature of managing the party was weird to me. I'd have preferred a more straight RPG set up, like Skyrim, which even handles companions just fine.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 9:18 pm

Prak wrote:The psuedo-RTS nature of managing the party was weird to me. I'd have preferred a more straight RPG set up, like Skyrim, which even handles companions just fine.

"I think it is weird, that this overhead isometric RPG plays like overheard isometric RPGs such as LITERALLY EVERYONE EVER MADE instead of like first person elder scrolls which is nothing like conventional isometric RPGs" said only really dumb people.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 9:24 pm

Ok, so I have a small sample-size for CRPGs.

I'll amend that to "by the people who made Dragon Age" to me means "by the people who wrote an awesome game for a computer game control scheme I sort of hate."

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 7:08 am

Well, if you hate that style, then yeah, you can safely ignore SCA because it's that style of gameplay: overhead isometric with control of the whole party, and turn-based/real-time-with-pause.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:45 am

I think mostly my hate for it is one of those "well that's not what I was fucking expecting" things, plus not being used to it (as I have always been rather broke, so I didn't grow up playing Balder's Gate and the like). I like the DAO characters and story, so I plan to go back to it eventually, it just... bugs me that its not a straight third-person hack and slash RPG. I just need to get used to it.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 8:55 am

Whereas contrariwise, I prefer the third-person style with pausing or preferably flat-out turn-based. Indeed I'd be more than happy for them to just re-release NWN1 with just the following changes:
1. More stable (mostly in the sense of the game sometimes feeling like crashing - I'm even willing to accept the basic "Caught a guard in your Grease spell when fighting bandits? Now you can't continue because the entire Authority faction has set you to hostile, including the people who progress the story and handle quests" still being a thing, likewise "Hahaha, you accidentally killed a recruitable before recruiting them? You can't recruit them, they're dead")
2. Integrates the expansion and the PRC so you basically have the entirety of 3.5

Anything else (from "closer adherence to the rules" to "You can control your whole party like basically any other game" to graphical upgrades to "you can now have up to FOUR classes on a character") is just extra. Obviously if they went all out and included the NWN2 and BG1+2 campaigns (plus expansions), maybe even IWD and ToEE, that'd just be amazing and I'd forgive the owning company for the past transgressions of their choice. But that level of thing is just wishing for what will never be.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 9:08 am

The world needs more turn-based RPG's. Not the menu-based JRPG kind, but the map-based kind.

... Most of those are probably also JRPG's, now that I think about it.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:32 pm

Koumei wrote:Whereas contrariwise, I prefer the third-person style with pausing or preferably flat-out turn-based. Indeed I'd be more than happy for them to just re-release NWN1 with just the following changes:
1. More stable (mostly in the sense of the game sometimes feeling like crashing - I'm even willing to accept the basic "Caught a guard in your Grease spell when fighting bandits? Now you can't continue because the entire Authority faction has set you to hostile, including the people who progress the story and handle quests" still being a thing, likewise "Hahaha, you accidentally killed a recruitable before recruiting them? You can't recruit them, they're dead")
2. Integrates the expansion and the PRC so you basically have the entirety of 3.5

Anything else (from "closer adherence to the rules" to "You can control your whole party like basically any other game" to graphical upgrades to "you can now have up to FOUR classes on a character") is just extra. Obviously if they went all out and included the NWN2 and BG1+2 campaigns (plus expansions), maybe even IWD and ToEE, that'd just be amazing and I'd forgive the owning company for the past transgressions of their choice. But that level of thing is just wishing for what will never be.

Closest thing out right now to that is Pillars of Eternity and Divinity: Original Sin.

CapnTthePirateG · Post by **CapnTthePirateG** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 3:38 am

I really feel those two games are overhyped.

I can't speak to Pillars of Eternity except that I was never interested enough to proceed, but Divinity is full of bad and irritating puzzles such as pixel hunts, instadeath traps, instadeath dick waving NPCs, etc. The combat is interesting but the rest of the game is awful.

Shady314 · Post by **Shady314** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:49 am

Over-hyped for sure. Though not as over-rated as Wasteland 2. Still over hyped doesn't mean bad. PoE recently got a patch with some much needed improvements.

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 4:52 am

One of Nippon Ichi's more obscure titles is "Rasetsu", PC isometric turn based (but also real time) RPG with a PS2 adaption "Rasetsu Alternative".

Don't think it ever came out in English tho

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 10:40 am

Shady314 wrote:Over-hyped for sure. Though not as over-rated as Wasteland 2. Still over hyped doesn't mean bad. PoE recently got a patch with some much needed improvements.

What possible improvements could make the combat actually interesting, when every ability does about the same damage and has a rider effect of approximately just as good and all of them are 100% party friendly bullshit so you don't even care about aiming.

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Mon Oct 19, 2015 3:46 pm

The only really bad thing i remember from Wasteland 2:
No sneak/Stealth/Thievery System <.<

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 1:25 am

Almost have my Wizard down to 100% CDR. Seems quite manageable, haven't run into a cap yet. Need one more 15% CDR item to make it. At which point I can cone of cold as fast as I can click (Comes with a save or five second paralyze effect).

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:45 am

Kaelik wrote:Almost have my Wizard down to 100% CDR. Seems quite manageable, haven't run into a cap yet. Need one more 15% CDR item to make it. At which point I can cone of cold as fast as I can click (Comes with a save or five second paralyze effect).

Which game?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 9:21 am

Korwin wrote:
Kaelik wrote:Almost have my Wizard down to 100% CDR. Seems quite manageable, haven't run into a cap yet. Need one more 15% CDR item to make it. At which point I can cone of cold as fast as I can click (Comes with a save or five second paralyze effect).
Which game?

Tales of the Sword Coast Legends.

Archmage Joda · Post by **Archmage Joda** » Tue Oct 20, 2015 6:14 pm

So then would that make you a Wizard of the (Sword) Coast?

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Oct 21, 2015 6:02 am

So as someone who's played it/is playing it, would you recommend it?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Oct 21, 2015 9:10 am

No. I would recommend burning the game in a fire, just like Pillars of Eternity as an example of how people can somehow still make games worse than Temple of Elemental Evil and Baldur's Gate II more than a decade later.

Koumei · Post by **Koumei** » Wed Oct 21, 2015 10:11 am

Thanks. I had my suspicions, and the fact that it has a "Mixed" rating on Steam suggests there are serious problems due to "Mostly Positive" meaning "Hit and Miss" and "Mixed" meaning "Probably Bad". And the reviews suggested it was a Diablo-style game and not a good one, with their much-touted DM mode being pretty limited.

But it's good to hear "never stain your hard drive with this filth" from someone with opinions I already vaguely know and trust on these matters.

RufusCorvus · Post by **RufusCorvus** » Wed Oct 21, 2015 8:31 pm

Sword Coast Legends has the dubious honor of being the first game I've returned on Steam. Total playtime? 42 minutes. Most of that time was spent looking through the module creation and wondering if anything about it wasn't total ass.

Spoiler: Module creation was total ass.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:18 am

Sooooooo... thoughts on the Age of Sigmar tie in game?