The GWJ CRPG Club - Part 1 - Old Thread

Sorbicol wrote:

That’s...... an interesting list. Some good options for future play-throughs though!

However any group that thinks Dragon age: Origins and the original Witcher game are better than Pillars of Eternity is a seriously niche group.

Edit: All is forgiven as they have Space Rangers plugged down lower in the list. Oh man I loved that game.

Keep in mind it's the kind of place where a term like 'storyf*g' gets frequently tossed into discussion. Then it will probably make more sense.

Oh, wow, I didn't even catch that they had Arcanum at #4. That's a bit mystifying.

And Skyrim doesn't even make their list at all? Say what? Even though Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Oblivion are all there? Huh?

oooo - the codex has "opinions" about modern Bethesda games, don't you worry!

pyxistyx wrote:

oooo - the codex has "opinions" about modern Bethesda games, don't you worry!

That's fine and all, but how can you include the first three games in the series there and then stonewall Skyrim?

I don't understand, and understanding is the first step to empathy. I learned that in Ender's Game. Wait, was it the other way around? Empathy is the first step to understanding?

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

Oh, wow, I didn't even catch that they had Arcanum at #4. That's a bit mystifying.

And Skyrim doesn't even make their list at all? Say what? Even though Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Oblivion are all there? Huh?

They have jagged alliance in there. On that basis XCOM2 should be No 1.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

oooo - the codex has "opinions" about modern Bethesda games, don't you worry!

That's fine and all, but how can you include the first three games in the series there and then stonewall Skyrim?

Simple: They never actually got around to playing Skyrim. They've spent all this time installing new mods, checking compatibility, making sure the mods don't conflict, etc.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

oooo - the codex has "opinions" about modern Bethesda games, don't you worry!

That's fine and all, but how can you include the first three games in the series there and then stonewall Skyrim?

'cause anything newer than Morrowind is tolerated, at best, ignored at worst. Doubly so if it's been 'dumbed down for consoles'. Skyrim doesn't fit their "PC Master Race" Aesthetic the way older games do.

Sorbicol wrote:

However any group that thinks Dragon age: Origins and the original Witcher game are better than Pillars of Eternity is a seriously niche group.

Agree to disagree. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

yeah, i'm afraid I found PoE to be an inexorable bore that I barely managed to slog through.

Eleima wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

However any group that thinks Dragon age: Origins and the original Witcher game are better than Pillars of Eternity is a seriously niche group.

Agree to disagree. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Add me to this group too.

I enjoyed PoE but Origins and the original Witcher are still two of my all time favorite games.

If there had to be a winner among those, I'd say PoE, but all 3 are great. PoE wins in combat, but is probably the weakest in story pacing.

I hated PoE with a passion.

HOWEVER...

To my surprise, PoE 2 is actually much, MUCH better. Especially since it has a turn based mode.

I would actually love to hear more about this.

There was a lot I liked about PoE, but I found the real time with pause super tedious, and thought the game would have been much better as a turn based game. After playing it, I actually kind of thought I hated RTwP, but I’ve found it much more tolerable in Baldur’s Tate. Probably because there are fewer abilities, so less micromanagement. I take it you fee the same? How well do you think they pulled it off?

Turn based is a huge upgrade; reminiscent of Fallout 1/2, IMO.

yeah, it's pretty good. At least part of that is I much prefer the pace of the game with it included. i've not played it much yet, in case it shows up in a future club thread but i really like how it works in the fights i've had so far.

Not seen this posted elsewhere but there is some footage of the Wasteland 3 alpha here:

Pillars of Eternity had too many variables in combat for real-time with pause. There was too much going on simultaneously, too much choice on top of too much choice. It's not unplayable, just not particularly well balanced. I do still find worth there, though, even with these criticisms, just not enough to try tackling it again, not yet.

I found the story interesting, and the dialogue to be better than most, but the pacing and the telling of the tale was wayward. Forgettable characters, unlikable characters, save for a few.

Compare to Dragon Age Origins? Okay. The story there was predictable and well, well trodden, but it was told rather well. The dialogue is quite naive and mostly nonsense, yet the characters come across well, memorably so.

The combat is somewhat building block elementary. It can become dull. It's easy to unintentionally autopilot through lack of engagement.

I would probably opt for Pillars of Eternity, as I believe it has a more rewarding combat system, complex as it is, and the dialogue is less mind numbing. Story wise it's a toss up. One is predictable but well told. One is interesting but verbose.

Luckily, everyone can choose their favourite. Or both.

I forgot about The Witcher 1! I'd probably rank it beneath both Pillars of Eternity, and Dragon Age Origins, as much as I enjoyed my time with it.

You can nab both Tyranny and Pillars of Eternity for less than $5 (together, not apiece!) over at HumbleBundle.

Oh, I suppose I should throw in that I finished BG! As always you can find my closing thoughts in the game thread.

imbiginjapan wrote:

Oh, I suppose I should throw in that I finished BG! As always you can find my closing thoughts in the game thread.

Congrats! I've kind of fallen down a Football Manager rabbit hole the past couple of weeks, but I'm back now.

I'll get you all leveled up later tonight.

RnRClown wrote:

Pillars of Eternity had too many variables in combat for real-time with pause. There was too much going on simultaneously, too much choice on top of too much choice. It's not unplayable, just not particularly well balanced. I do still find worth there, though, even with these criticisms, just not enough to try tackling it again, not yet.

I felt much the same about the systems in Pillars. There was a lot there to optimize but to do so one needed to consider the effects on percentages of decimals of ten or so damage types and roughly two dozen status effects against the various resistances and weaknesses of a couple dozen monster types. It's one thing to do that for a single character in an MMO but managing and controlling six characters felt to me like too much to realistically (let alone enjoyably) manage.

So I've been trying (again) to get through Divinity: Original Sin. I saw that it was a prior Club Game and had fairly high completion rate. My issue is that I'm just finding it really, really hard to be interested in the characters, the setting, and the story. The combat felt deep at first but I've been using the same tried-and-true combos for so long that it has lost its shine.

Did anyone else have this happen during their playthrough? For reference, I've put about 30 hours in and am currently looking for the "Mines" after rescuing some witch from Hiberheim.

Math wrote:

So I've been trying (again) to get through Divinity: Original Sin. I saw that it was a prior Club Game and had fairly high completion rate. My issue is that I'm just finding it really, really hard to be interested in the characters, the setting, and the story. The combat felt deep at first but I've been using the same tried-and-true combos for so long that it has lost its shine.

Did anyone else have this happen during their playthrough? For reference, I've put about 30 hours in and am currently looking for the "Mines" after rescuing some witch from Hiberheim.

You are not alone, that's where I stalled out when playing for the RPG Club. I made it further in my playthrough when it was released but did not finish even then. An attempt between those two stalled even earlier.

I agree the non-combat bits bring little to the table. It has a tone problem, in my opinion. The minute-to-minute is pretty light-hearted and silly which clashes with the over-arching "heaviness" of the backing story. The game being so long makes the dissonance worse.

The combat is a series of puzzles that, once you find a "solution" that works for you, it keeps on working with little incentive to change things up. Finding the "solution" is fun; after that, much less so (for me).

tboon wrote:

I agree the non-combat bits bring little to the table. It has a tone problem, in my opinion. The minute-to-minute is pretty light-hearted and silly which clashes with the over-arching "heaviness" of the backing story. The game being so long makes the dissonance worse.

Yeah... the Larian logo pretty much sums up the company's attitude. It acts as sort of a friendly warning of what to expect, I guess.

IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/Larian_Studios_Logo_2012.png)

For me the enjoyment only really faltered very late as they tried to inject some more 'classic' adventure-game style puzzles into the environment. The game is best when it lets you mess around with materials and teleportation mechanics. Late game puzzles involved a lot of pixel hunting for items and mechanisms combined with riddle solving. Before I was able to 'break' any puzzle I didn't particularly feel like engaging with and that was refreshing. Those fuzzy solutions all got taken away at the end of the game and felt far less satisfying for it.

D:OS 2 is endlessly better than the first game at least. Didn't like that one either.

imbiginjapan wrote:
RnRClown wrote:

Pillars of Eternity had too many variables in combat for real-time with pause. There was too much going on simultaneously, too much choice on top of too much choice. It's not unplayable, just not particularly well balanced. I do still find worth there, though, even with these criticisms, just not enough to try tackling it again, not yet.

I felt much the same about the systems in Pillars. There was a lot there to optimize but to do so one needed to consider the effects on percentages of decimals of ten or so damage types and roughly two dozen status effects against the various resistances and weaknesses of a couple dozen monster types. It's one thing to do that for a single character in an MMO but managing and controlling six characters felt to me like too much to realistically (let alone enjoyably) manage.

YES.

I feel like so many of the instincts were good, but the execution was so confusing. Like when you consider D&D (which was obviously the inspiration for PoE’s mechanics), it is totally arbitrary that the attacker rolls a die when trying to hit an enemy, but if you try to throw a fireball at an enemy, poison someone, or charm them, the defender rolls a die. So in theory, it makes sense to treat each of these things as a type of defense that the attacker can target. But in practice: now you have four different numbers for defense numbers. Plus another number for damage mitigation. And then attack numbers vary widely depending on what you’re trying to do. And then you have six primary stats that sound like the D&D primary stats, but actually do wildly different things than the D&D equivalents. And a bunch of status effects that sound like plain English but are actually very specific!

It was all very confusing for a while.

For the most part, only the 4 defenses really matters. And the game always tells you about the enemies defenses and armor values. Much more accessible than D&D imo.

Erm. Isn't it time to start thinking of the next game?

Well, well, well...just in time for Halloween, eh?

* ponders 'option' *

pyxistyx wrote:

Well, well, well...just in time for Halloween, eh?

* ponders 'option' *

I'm right there with you. Costume Quest it is! It's like you're reading my mind!