NWN2 is it's own worst enemy. It has good gameplay, and the MOTB expansion has the best storyline of any game I've played - perhaps the only game writing that I'd assert would stand up as a good novel... but the user interface is terrible to the point of being hostile to the player. It is a huge hurdle to surmount to play the game when there are plenty of other good games around that don't feel like they are trying to punish the player for wanting to manage their party members.
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NWN2 is it's own worst enemy. It has good gameplay, and the MOTB expansion has the best storyline of any game I've played - perhaps the only game writing that I'd assert would stand up as a good novel... but the user interface is terrible to the point of being hostile to the player. It is a huge hurdle to surmount to play the game when there are plenty of other good games around that don't feel like they are trying to punish the player for wanting to manage their party members.
Yeah, that's what I read later, too, about how PoE was a very slow starter and PoE2 was a straight up better game. Which made me really hesitant to get back into it.
But I figure if the first fight or two just grabs me? Then we might be a go. Because the combat is what specifically made me quit playing all of those games. I just couldn't get into it at all, for a variety of reasons.
Tastes change and all that, so yeah, I think might do that - see if the first couple of fights/what have you of Pillars work for me.
Oh good lord that interface. THAT was a near instant uninstall, many many years ago.
TBH if it's mechanics that are the sticking point, I'd maybe say Tyranny.
Pillars 1's combat often feels messy because it has quite large encounters with lots of enemies and they have a tendency to get all over the place. Especially when they're big goobers that can't get many of them in contact with your front line so they walk round and start punching the squishies.
Tyranny is smaller encounters, where you also only have to manage 4 characters, but those characters have combo moves which is an extra layer of interest.
(Also in all of these modern Obsidian games turn on the combat auto-slow option.)
Our tastes seem to align pretty well, and this is another case of "yeah, me too" although maybe not for the same reasons.
I think it's due to a playstyle that's not unique to cRPGs, but which hurts them the most: I want the "clever" solution to every situation. If there's a way to deploy some item or clue you've acquired so as to avoid a fight, then I want to do that.
cRPGs lean into that, and set up all sorts of payoffs for thorough exploration. Search every goddamn drawer and go through every branch of every dialog tree, and you'll have the ammo to get the best outcomes (literally and metaphorically).
Problem is, that kills pacing. There's only so much rifling through drawers, inventory management and standing around talking to people that I want to do, but the payoffs for doing so encourage me sit there and wade through it all. I crawl through the storyline, get inundated in sidequest drama, and become mentally overburdened. I carry around too much, and the fun gets smothered under it.
Again, it's not unique to isomorphic cRPGs, but they suffer from it the worst. Right next to them are Bethesda games. I spend too much time on sort-of-fun, and the genuinely-fun moments get diluted too much.
Dude. DUDE.
This may hit the nail on the head. Like, EXTREMELY on point. I was nodding along pretty much from 'clever' onward.
Earlier this evening I was thinking about how I'd have to tell myself that no, I'm not going to save scum, and whatever happens happens. This is my playthrough, and even though it may end in tears? I won't beat myself up about it. Yet another thing to try with a Pillars of Eternity re-install, I think - see if I can find that mindset. I think I can, but I'm not certain!
I've certainly found it in other games - the JRPG's that malor mentioned, for one, and that made those experiences a LOT more enjoyable for me when I learned how to stop worrying and to love "it's good enough".
I play the big RPGs but do not finish many of them. I never finished BG1, 2, Torment, NWN2, D : OS. And yet, I picked up BG3 because it looked like it had a lot of things I like or thought would be neat.
I still get my money's worth. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that I do get caught up in the side missions and the wandering around and lose sight of the main story. Honestly, the main stories are rarely all that interesting. But the minutiae is often fascinating. And the gameplay is often entertaining.
So it's not really about "finishing" the game as much as it is, playing and getting caught up in it. And if I spend 100 hours or even 50 hours in those kinds of games I still feel like it was worthwhile. I mean, it held my attention for a considerable amount of time.
The Mass Effect games have been the best investment so far. I have thousands of hours in those games. I have finished them several times, but don't always. And they are always installed because I keep going back to them. Fallout New Vegas is another one I have played numerous times, but only finished once or twice.
I still get my money's worth. It's not that I don't like them, it's just that I do get caught up in the side missions and the wandering around and lose sight of the main story. Honestly, the main stories are rarely all that interesting. But the minutiae is often fascinating. And the gameplay is often entertaining.
So it's not really about "finishing" the game as much as it is, playing and getting caught up in it. And if I spend 100 hours or even 50 hours in those kinds of games I still feel like it was worthwhile. I mean, it held my attention for a considerable amount of time.
The Mass Effect games have been the best investment so far. I have thousands of hours in those games. I have finished them several times, but don't always. And they are always installed because I keep going back to them. Fallout New Vegas is another one I have played numerous times, but only finished once or twice.
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1) I already own Pillars - no need for further investment. I'm NOT going to spend money on a game in a genre that I have demonstratably NOT enjoyed just to see if that taste has changed. Hence, Pillars. It's the newest of these games that I own. Edit: to clarify - I received the game for free from some giveaway or another.
2) Playing Pillars in this case is more in the nature of an experiment to see if the basic ways that cRPG mechanics operate is something I'm even interested in pursuing and playing. I figure a couple of hours is all it will take - since I've never made it past a couple of hours in any of these games before. I don't think I'll be playing Pillars more than that, either way.
3) If I end up enjoying the basic cRPG mechanics, Tyranny is DEFINITELY going on the list. That game has intrigued the ever-living piss out of me ever since announcement, and everything I've seen on it since has me convinced that narratively it looks amazing. It was only it's cRPG mechanic underpinnings that made me really hesitant to buy it.
But first, beat Eastward. What a mess.
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Yeah, if you're save scumming, that can multiply the problem ... but at least you get to see the good outcome.
Unless there's a wipeout, I usually try to let the chips fall where they may, but that doesn't solve the pacing problem.
In a concluding scene, I'll either have found the right path through the dialog tree, or I'll say the wrong thing and, sigh, regretfully murder everyone. Either way I've already spent all that time skulking around, interrogating the maid about the baron's love life, and finding out why he's got a rubber ducky in his pocket. Allowing the failure doesn't get that pre-emptively spent time back.
Yeah, reloading saves is for deaths in combat, not outcomes of conversations.
On this note, if you get to PoE2, don't sidequest yourself to death. I never finished the main story for reasons already stated because I tried to boil the ocean with all sidequests and DLC when I most certainly didn't need to.
And unlike Skyrim, where you can really make your own fun and ignore the real quests, PoE2 and almost all other CRPGs don't do that.
Well, if you're in it for the story primarily, Larian tends to be, how do I put it, sort of hit or miss in terms of their overall tone in their games. Divinity: Original Sins' writing carried a tone of trying very hard and not succeeding often enough, though I hear that improved in Divinity: Original Sins 2 (not that I noticed the prose being substantially better in the first few hours I played). The best I can put it is that the writing's pitched at 'amateur theatricality fused to jokes that miss more than they land', and that might be something to check before you pull the trigger on BG3.But.. the setting! And the story! And the characters! I may end up pulling the trigger anyway. Mostly because the LAST time I tried to play an isometric cRPG was enough time back that my tastes have changed. I should have played the damn early access build at least once.
I am willing to give DOS 2 a fighting chance though - as noted above, while the actual words might be pitched to a different temperament, the options the narrative gives you might be worth seeing through - I just haven't gotten around to it yet. (Tangentially, gameplay-wise the systemic absurdity these games enable is near-unmatched, and is the primary reason I like playing them; though that comes with, as many have noted, equally absurd difficulty spikes.)
If someone knows how to disable smileys for a post, please lemme know. While rendering the title as
OS2 is unintentionally hilarious, I'd like to make it intentional in the future.
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Many thanks! That'll do in a pinch for the (hopefully) few times I'll need it.
Also, so many crpgs punish the player for not playing the full murder-thief hobo. Murder and theft are unpenalised in any game I can think of right now, but the opportunity cost of trying to be noble is always huge.
I've come to despise XP as a mechanic, largely due to how Original Sin 2 handled it - if the player committed to murdering absolutely everyone they would have a 2 level advantage over someone trying to roleplay a hero by the end of act one.
Wrath of the Righteous locked a levels worth of XP and some of the best early game loot behind chaotic choices, significantly punishing anyone role-playing lawful.
Acting like a criminal should result in NPCs refusing to help the player or give out sidequests, at a rate that balances out the opportunity costs of different gameplay styles IMO. Then the game can be balanced in a way that allows for actual roleplay.
Part of that is because the paladin trope of the time was "lawful asshole" in no small part to the real-world politics of various churches going after D&D. The other part is that it was easier for most devs to build encounters that way. Planescape torment comes the closes in that era, and even that isn't particularly high on EQ. Not until Disco Elysium, at least.
This is why I much preferred both Mass Effect and 3D Fallouts. Paragon/Renegade is not a matter of gameplay in ME so neither was really going to get ahead of the other in terms of leveling. As for FO, 3 and 4 prevent whatever constitutes "evil" over-leveling by flagging a bunch of characters essential/unkillable. FONV lets you murder every single named NPC not a child but the lack of quests would actually hamper leveling as opposed to help it. The latter still series still suffers from hoarding but hoarding also really doesn't help you in the FO series as much as you think it does.
Follow-up on Pentiment; I've finished Act I and am now getting stuck into Act II. All those reviews that claimed the narrative is strong once it gets going? Damn right.
Act I was brilliantly written; you're basically forced into a murder investigation with not enough time. It's not a typical video game investigation where you are rewarded for following every little lead which of course ties neatly together to reveal the TRUTH; rather, your findings will be based on half-understood evidence and hearsay; and revealing the evidence you have discovered might not be the moral choice.
I was drawn in by the gorgeous presentation and historical detail, but now the characters and narrative are definitely holding my interest.
Act I was brilliantly written; you're basically forced into a murder investigation with not enough time. It's not a typical video game investigation where you are rewarded for following every little lead which of course ties neatly together to reveal the TRUTH; rather, your findings will be based on half-understood evidence and hearsay; and revealing the evidence you have discovered might not be the moral choice.
I was drawn in by the gorgeous presentation and historical detail, but now the characters and narrative are definitely holding my interest.
Something that is actually annoying me as I go thru Witcher 2...in-game economies. W2's is especially egregious. FO and the like pull a buy/sell price ratio starting at 2:1 globally and adjust from there. I hate it for how lazy it is but at least it means I can have money when it's needed...which is so very rarely. W2, however, has a bevy of items available but the buy/sell ratio seems to go past 10:1...and if I had known chapter 3 had no good money farm, I would have farmed the arm wrestling champ back in chapter 2.
Cyberpunk has a lower ratio IIRC but still not anywhere close to 2:1, has stuff gated behind buying, and CDPR went out of their way to kill easy money farms like the optical mod.
If a game is actually putting useful gear in a shop I would at least appreciate a better exchange rate for goods.
Cyberpunk has a lower ratio IIRC but still not anywhere close to 2:1, has stuff gated behind buying, and CDPR went out of their way to kill easy money farms like the optical mod.
If a game is actually putting useful gear in a shop I would at least appreciate a better exchange rate for goods.
There is an arm-wrestling quest in Chapter 3 as well, not sure if you can do it just once or infinitely.
But yeah, I felt that too in The Witcher 2. I ended up using a mod to give myself a few tens of thousands of orens, using the rationale that "The game would have let me arm-wrestle Adam Pangratt 200 times, and this is equivalent to that". But it didn't feel good to use said mod, and I found it detracted a bit from the role-playing experience.
Then again, in Chapter 3 you have to fight some gargoyles in places, and one of those fights is difficult enough that I was glad to have the best armor and weapons in the game.
The Witcher 3's economy is better. You're still never rich, but as long as you do all the quests and loot every single lootable item in the world (except for people's homes, because Geralt is no thief), you'll be able to afford all of the shiny things in the world, or near enough.
Picked up The Wandering Village on Game Pass, and this is just the city builder I needed right now
I enjoyed the demo a LOT. I'm going to wait until the full release to jump into it.
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Okay, here is Eastward in a nutshell.
Do you want to play this game? Let me save you some time.
Watch the full opening cinematic that plays BEFORE YOU GET TO A START MENU.
Watch this release date announcement trailer to get an idea of the actual moment to moment gameplay and the look of everything in the game BESIDES that opening cinematic.
Do the following:
1) Go to another room, and retrieve a thing, bring it back to your PC/Tablet/Device.
2) Do this three more times.
3) Put everything back.
4) Call a friend.
Optional) Call every single fucking person in your contact list.
Repeat the above three more times.
Watch the release date / gameplay trailer again.
Then watch the time warp section of Rocky Horror Picture show.
Read a news article slowly, to simulate unskippable credits.
Congratulations, you just played Eastward. I saved you 20 hours of your time. You’re welcome.
Edit: You really want to play a good looking pixel-art-ish action RPG? Play CrossCode. It is a better game in every way.
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In order to rinse that out of my mouth, currently installing my last Game Pass title - Ori and the Will of the Wisps. I hugely enjoyed Blind Forest, so I'm looking forward to this one.
Part of my issue with CRPGs has less to do with the writing and more to do with the lore. I enjoy the old Bioware games up through Neverwinter Nights 2 in part because I'm familiar with The Sword Coast and all of the shenanigans therein.
When I started Pillars of Eternity, I felt like I had to digest a massive lump of information about souls, biwacs, politics, and factions that got in the way of me hitting monsters in the face with an axe. And I feel that way about a lot of newer isometric CRPGs. Some handle it better than others (I liked the new "Torment" game, for instance) but often the lore either gets in the way of the game play or it gets in the way of the actual storytelling. If I have to read the equivalent of a novel (in a bad font, with page-turning animations) to understand the background of the game I'm playing, you've failed as a storyteller. The best of the CRPGs introduce the world as part of the story. The ones I tend not to finish don't do that.
Elder Scrolls and Fallout are different. You can merrily go through both without reading a book. But the overarching story in those games is rudimentary at best; they're more about exploration and discovery than any sort of narrative.
Have you seen my daddy?
Holupaminit, there might be something in that small shop over there...
Finished The Witcher 2 and I felt... underwhelmed. The game is fairly short storywise for an RPG in part because it wants to play at "branching paths" that are entirely irrelevant to the canon (with respect to the third game, as I can tell) and more about the expectation of replaying the game. Im essence, they prefer multiple short parallel experiences to a longer serial one.
As for how it fits into its greater lore...
Imagine the houses in Game of Thrones with even less character established to even care about the various factions and players. I kinda enjoyed Roche and his crew if only because the game puts you with him from the start. But honestly the novels, show, and games are too busy throwing schemes and big historical events at you to ever really grow to care about any part of the world.
As for how it fits into its greater lore...
Imagine the houses in Game of Thrones with even less character established to even care about the various factions and players. I kinda enjoyed Roche and his crew if only because the game puts you with him from the start. But honestly the novels, show, and games are too busy throwing schemes and big historical events at you to ever really grow to care about any part of the world.
Oh, good gravy. I think PoE's lore was actually its biggest miscalculation - the ridiculous nouns of high fantasy are the genre's worst habit, not its best, and having the story riddled with arcane stuff to remember isn't fun for most people. I think PoE had more good things going for it than bad, though the combination of its lore and gameplay design was a real pace killer.
And yeah, I play these big RPGs for the experience of the characters, stories, and gameplay as a unit. It's good when they're firing on all cylinders. I never play ES or the Bethsoft Fallouts for that reason, they're more things to unwind to as popcorn entertainment in RPG form - and you're right to miss out on the books, most of them are pretty laborious.
Speaking of ES, I installed that Fabled Forests mod for Skyrim recently, and it might actually get me to play it for real. Such forest! So wood!
Maybe I'm off base, but I always assumed that was part of the point. Geralt does not care for politics or governments. He cares about fighting monsters and at some level helping smallfolk. All the political movements and spying and whatnot are important because they move the world he's in but until it directly impacts him or those he cares about it's all background noise.
So from my perspective, you're experiencing that world the way Geralt does. Not particularly caring about the movements of kings and their actors, simply trying to achieve what you want to achieve. I think Witcher 3 established that better, since you get more of "here are a couple people Geralt will move heaven and earth for" plot lines, while 2 seemed more like him tossed into the politics and there mostly because he didn't successfully avoid it.
The apolitical attitude would be fine if this was Geralt anywhere between his first years on the path to first finding Ciri, but this takes place after the first Nilfgaard invasion attempt where he already had to pick sides. The attitude would also be way more acceptable if the game had a lot more simple monster-hunting Witchering. But since this is so much later on the timeline with Geralt working directly for major armies. Geralt already went through this arc.
The distinction is that the first two games assume that you haven't read the books, and largely ignore everything that happened in them.
That's why literally the most important characters in Geralt's life, including the one his fate is magically bound to, don't appear until the third one.
(And yeah, one of the very first stories, "The Lesser Evil" is about how Geralt's "dont get involved or take sides" attitude led to everyone, including him, getting screwed over. Dandelion in one of the stories points out that he does actually care quite a lot, he just pretends not to).
I see Warhammer 40k inquisitor: martyr seems to have the same ridlus scaling as other rpgs. Mainly you tend to be some walking god of destruction later in the game.
Case in point. I have crusader melee player and i'm mowing down chaos space marines left and right and taking on chaos dreadnought without suffering too much.. By all means I should be something they scrape off the bottom of their boots when they laugh later at the puny human who waved around a sword at them.
I also played a PvP match and whoever i played against wiped me out in seconds
Case in point. I have crusader melee player and i'm mowing down chaos space marines left and right and taking on chaos dreadnought without suffering too much.. By all means I should be something they scrape off the bottom of their boots when they laugh later at the puny human who waved around a sword at them.
I also played a PvP match and whoever i played against wiped me out in seconds
Yeah, I get that. I think the best way they could have approached that in the games before Yen and Ciri show up would have been best conveyed by being mostly about monster contracts first and then trying to tell the story through them.
It's really hard to look back and judge accurately with neither nostalgia and/or hindsight, but I do know that at the time (having zero knowledge of the books, and obviously not of TW3 or the Netflix show) I thought TW1 was a really interesting concept in a super-janky shell; while TW2 was a narrative masterpiece and unquestionably my GOTY. I remember finishing Roche's Act II and thinking that was probably the most engrossing story I'd ever played.
(Side note: Holy shit, 2011? But that was just a couple of years ago... right? Right?)
I haven't gone back to replay TW1 or TW2 recently, so I honestly don't know whether the storytelling doesn't hold up to modern standards, or whether prior experience with the setting is actually decreasing your enjoyment of a largely self-contained story.
(Side note: Holy shit, 2011? But that was just a couple of years ago... right? Right?)
I haven't gone back to replay TW1 or TW2 recently, so I honestly don't know whether the storytelling doesn't hold up to modern standards, or whether prior experience with the setting is actually decreasing your enjoyment of a largely self-contained story.
For reference:
The Witcher - 2007
The Witcher 2 - 2011
The Witcher 3 - 2015
The Witcher - 2007
The Witcher 2 - 2011
The Witcher 3 - 2015