Thoughts on this as a /tg/ CRPG?

Really? No one? :(

>>54267930
It's boring shit.

>>54269188
This board is worse than /mu/ and /tv/ with it's non-discussion and meme replies.

>>54269320
You're not wrong.

I miss it when we still had quests. Boy, back then we still had some life in us.

>>54269320
It's not that bad, but you can see the /v/ influence when it comes to hating anything that's popular

>>54267930

I thought it was pretty good, but I've never really played the games it was inspired by so I can't really comment. I preferred the latter two Shadowrun games to it, although Tyranny, the next game the PoE guys made, seems pretty great from what I've played of it.

I know a lot of people hated it for various reasons related to older games, but none of them were things that really bothered me in my experience of it. I also loved how they made every stat useful to every character, even if there were some you should focus on.

>>54269356

Quest sympathisers should be permabanned.

>>54269320
It's meme now to call your favorite game boring shit?

>>54267930
It's boring as fuck. I didn't manage to finish it, and I've beaten Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign twice.

>>54269377
>non-discussion

Maybe the system could be interesting, but I prefer the world of Tyranny.

>>54269367
Tyranny was fun, the different ways you could run the story and end up with different results was refreshing. You could really run a diplomancer build and do well.

Divinity Original Sin was great as well. The main story was meh, but the side quests were enjoyable and the gameplay, turn based that emphasized strategy and planning, was a blast.

>>54269417
I liked the Tyranny very much, but combat in it was the most boring combat in any CRPG I played, ever.

>>54269451
Yeah, if you gave Tyranny Divinity's gameplay it'd be pretty fantastic

>>54269451

What about it bothered you? I found it pretty fun, particularly figuring out the various interesting spell combinations.

>>54269367
>Games it was inspired by
It's not as good as those but it's pretty good. People view the BG series with such rose-tinted glasses that they get pissed off at any little thing that's different.

I'll have to check out Tyranny then.

>>54269382
What did you find boring about it? The plot? The combat?

>>54269498
It's a small thing, but I liked that the game allowed fighters to play with spears and javelins. I enjoyed the versatility of being able to play javelin and shield, and being able to fight melee or ranged.

>>54269540
The plot was a complete borefest, yes. I didn't care for anything I saw on the screen, and from what I heard later, the game's ending is a fedora-tier faggotry.

>>54269572

I actually thought the metaphysics of the world were pretty nuanced and interesting. The concept can be done badly, sure, but the execution made sense to me.

>>54269572
>fedora-tier faggotry
kek.

I thought its been pretty interesting so far. You're trying to learn about your freaking soul and you get to talk to dead people. That's pretty cool to me.

>>54269498
That it was essentially turn-based combat, which for some reason was run in real time and took worst part of both approaches. For real-time combat it was too clumsy and slow. I also hated lack of any reason for using any combat tactics - spamming all abilities was more than enough to skim through game (on medium difficulty, at least). Only one fight in an entire game had any difficulty to it.

>>54267930
The gameplay is fun enough, but the lore is just complete trash.

It tries to imply again and again that there's more to the world than the Dyrwood, but it doesn't tell you enough about the rest of the world (or the Dyrwood's political AND physical place in it) for any of that to be relevant.

In fact, all the lore is kinda like that. They claim that it's expansive and complex, and maybe it is, but it never explains it to you well enough. They improved this significantly when they made Tyranny, at least.

The companions are okay, but nothing special. Easily forgettable.

>>54269606
>You're trying to learn about your freaking soul and you get to talk to dead people. That's pretty cool to me.
And watch how fast all that gets ripped away from you cause the gods are all fake.
just like in real life, yo
/tips fedora

>>54269692
Not the OP, but yes, my feelings exactly.

>>54269692

That wasn't my take away from it at all? Heck, a large part of the point of it was that they still had meaning, value and power despite that. The truth of their nature doesn't innately remove the value of faith, it's a matter of how you choose to respond do it.

>>54269662
Now, I do agree about this stuff completely so far. I like Eder as a companion but the others I'm pretty meh on so far. Except Durance, he's a complete asshat.

I can't get a feel for how this world is put together very well. Even in dungeon crawlers like IWD, you have a good idea of the world-at-large, but it seems pretty confusing in Pillars.

>>54269692
not gonna read the spoilers

>>54267930
The whole game should have been about inheriting the fortress, hiring companions to protect it and to go on adventures for treasure, managing its income and facilities, and slowly exploring the layers of its megadungeon until you beat the final boss. The gay story feels tacked on, and all I wanted to do was go on adventures and pursue my own enterprises. When they added those fake sidequests you can send idle companions on, I wished I could just play those instead of kind of being forced to play content related to the plot, which I had no motivation to engage with apart from some vague threat.

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>>54269692

> the gods are all fake

It's more retarded than that. The god are real, but they were created, yet the game still treats this as a "checkmate Xtians" moment despite proving that gods objectively exist in the setting, just not in an ex nihilio capacity like in the Abrahamic conception of God.

Though fedora faggotry aside, the worst part of that ending was just how hamfisted it was in trying to make the player sympathize with that ghost elf bitch.

I was roleplaying as a super goody-two-shoes priest of Aeothas (sp?), and was horrified that someone didn't want to get back into the soul recycler, so naturally I chose that decision.

For the game designers though, that was obviously a super badong decision, because my character's cruelty score instantly shot up from zero to my 3rd highest modifier. Fuck whoever designed that and their shitty waifu.

>>54269806
Shhh Anon, he's bootybothered because a vidya used a twist he misconstrued as an affront to his religion. Arguing otherwise will only prompt a flood of *tips fedora* and reeeeeing with a side of /pol/posting and deus vult faggotry.

>>54269884
yet the game still treats this as a "checkmate Xtians" moment

Citation fucking needed. This feels like you projecting your own insecurities, nothing to do with the game which took a much more balanced, open ended approach, letting you choose what it meant to you.

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>>54269912

>>54269606

The trouble is that they really just put that in there as a crutch so they could frontload every story and not have to be clever about world building. Rather than put together clues in your environment, 9 times out of 10 you just talk to some ghost memories and instantly know everything that happened.

>>54269875
That might have been cool, or if they had figured out how to meld the fortress into the story a little bit better. Otherwise it'd be kinda Diablo-ish.

Maybe have the keep be your reward for getting rid of Raedric and then the weirdass spirit stuff starts catching up with you.

>>54269912

> Poor storytelling, waifuism and blatant railroading in what was, up until that point, a flexible and interesting RPG is okay because it fits my beliefs.

Apply yourself.

>>54269986
>they really just put that in there as a crutch so they could frontload every story

that's not how writing works. They put that in there to be the plot hook, and THEN used it poorly in some parts. Though they do have you talk to several ghosts much of the time and then piece things together for yourself.

I'm assuming you aren't a fan of these types of games anyways.

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It's mediocre shit. People are lauding it as some sort of classic because they're starved for crpgs, but it's really fucking boring on its own, and downright terrible if compared to older games.

All the companions are boring as shit (Yes, even Durance) because they barely interact with you and the plot and because they mostly have nothing interesting to say. The main villain is weak and the game has to make him teleport on-screen to make him do something bad to remind you that he's there and the story is mostly an excuse to make you explore the OC donut steel setting they've created. Most of the time I found myself wanting to leave, and I've never experienced that sentiment when playing a video game before, let alone an rpg. The gameplay is also meh and the enemy selection is downright insulting.

Obsidian used their freedom from publishers to release a really bland and boring rpg and I have a hunch that it turned out the way it did because a lot of old timers left and were replaced by people who weren't even born when Baldur's Gate was released. Just play Mask of the Betrayer if you want to see what Pillars of Eternity would've been if released by a competent team.

>>54270042

Alternatively, people have different opinions and interpretations and you're just butthurt.

>>54269967

It would have been perfectly fine if the game designers had actually implemented the option for your character to tell ghost elf lady that her logic is ridiculous, and the gods being created doesn't detract from their obvious power and, well, *existence.*

Instead, we're treated to a chorus of everyone except that Elf mage losing their shit, and liking and trusting this random ghost despite having never met her before (PC aside).

Disagree with that ghost? Eat shit and take a buttload of Cruelty points.

>>54270079
>People are lauding it as some sort of classic
wut. where have you seen this? Literally all I've ever seen people say is either it's shit or it's decent but not great. Literally look at this thread.

>Just play Mask of the Betrayer if you want to see what Pillars of Eternity would've been if released by a competent team.

The same competent team that released the same shit OC of NWN2.

>>54270125
I've seen a lot of people say it's some sort of masterpiece. In fact, I've seen more people say it's a great game than actually see them discuss anything from the game, probably because there's not much to discuss, since all you do is fight boars, shades, beetles and slimes and 90% of the story is exposition.

>The same competent team that released the same shit OC of NWN2.
Only Sawyer worked on both, from what I recall. Maybe Avellone, too. And NWN2's OC was a million times better. It was generic and cut down in several places, but to me it gave the impression that it was parodying or commenting on generic dnd stories in a way while treating its' threat seriously, and it had a few genuine moments of brilliance, like Khelgar's sperg-out, the trial or Bishop's betrayal.

>>54270039
It doesn't have to devolve into an entirely mindless treadmill if you focus on making those quests and adventures interesting. The best thing you can do in one of these types of games is to make the world naturalistic, then the player can tell their own story. Designing a game like that is a rigorous process though, and the game industry as it is has no motivation to do that, because it makes no more money than if they just pay a guy to write some really bland prose in the archetypal style of a popular genre. And that's what we got with PoE.

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>>54269875
Don't remind me about that shitty fucking stronghold.

>Game gives you a fortress for doing a really easy mission and says that you're now a noble and own land around it
>It's never mentioned again in the story or by anyone else

It's like they wanted to do the Crossroad Keep from NWN2 again but turned it into a facebook game, just like they tried to do the trial from NWN2 again and failed as well. This is what happens when you add gameplay "features" cause of kickstarter.

>>54270234
>I've seen a lot of people say it's some sort of masterpiece
Well if you really have then they're wrong.

>since all you do is fight boars, shades, beetles and slimes and 90% of the story is exposition.
So pretty much the same thing as any of the Black Isle games that everyone loves.

NWN2 did have a few moments, I'll give you that. But oh my god they were buffeted by the most boring, trivial crap ever. I finished that game once and will NEVER go back.

>>54270236
>if they just pay a guy to write some really bland prose in the archetypal style of a popular genre
Wasn't it all written by Sawyer?

>>54269540
>BG series
>Forgotten Realms
cucks

>>54270337
what did he mean by this

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>>54270293
It's a lot more tripe than other black isle games. The exposition and the descriptions are full of repetitions. In fact, from what I remember, the main villain's hair and beard are described at least three times in the game, despite him having an avatar and a model. It's just walls of text filled with redundancies, backstory, pointless descriptions and over-indulging flowery dialogue. It also has a serious problem of only voicing half the dialogue, and the voice acting being generally terrible. One moment you read a character's dialogue and suddenly the next line is voiced, and after a few lines it goes back to not-voiced.

I think the only reason people gave it the time of day was cause its' competitor was Dragon Age Inquisition.

>>54270078
Just calling it how I see it. Sure, the ghost soul thing might be interesting in the hands of competent writers, but that's not who they had on hand, or if they did, they were lazy and just said fuck it here's the story. There's not any room to infer things nor to interpret them. They tell you how shit went down, and use arbitrary pacing by spacing the ghost visions out in phases through a quest. When they aren't using ghost visions, they throw in journals or just people telling you things. That's the closest it gets to piecing things together, or true investigation. Most of the time I found the visions occur unprompted, sometimes in the middle of a conversation when I would otherwise be meant to draw my own conclusions, just to give me exposition that explains everything I need to know. After a while, it's hard not to just skip through it, especially because it affects the gameplay very little and is not enjoyable to read.

I liked Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment. Those are pretty good games but I don't think anyone's really made a game that capitalizes on the cRPG genre's potential to a wholly satisfying degree.

>>54270410
>It's just walls of text filled with redundancies, backstory, pointless descriptions and over-indulging flowery dialogue.
That about sums it up for me. Tyranny wasn't much better in this regard, but at least it had a highly entertaining and unique premise.

>>54270443
>unique premise.

>You're evil
>But you don't get to do evil shit
>Also mind my pronouns, shitlord
Yes, it was certainly... Unique.

>>54270462
I got to do plenty of evil shit. Did you end up sucking some faction's dick?

>>54270443
The reason I liked tyranny more than poe is that it lets you punch uppity npcs instead of having to sift through their bullshit dialogue.

>>54270443

> highly entertaining and unique premise

Until the game railroads you into cookie cutter "chosen one" bullshit fighting against the evil overlord at the end. Fuck knows how they thought that one through, considering the entire marketing campaign was built on being a functionary for the bad guy.

>>54270517
Because they wanted to leave the story open for a sequel, which will never happen because of its' abysmal sales.

>>54270538

200k units on Steam doesn't seem that bad?

>>54270538

What, it's impossible to continue with more stories while still serving Kyros?

That "twist" actually ruined any interest I could have had for a sequel. Doing a complete 180 turn on the entire premise of the story and game's appeal gave them an ending even worse than PoE's. I had stuck with the game up until that point, even through all the on-the-nose SJW shit like every single couple being a gay one.

>>54270578
It's not as much as Paracocks wanted

>>54270290
Well I guess it should be ironic that the fortress and megadungeon are the most compelling aspects to the game, apart from the stuff that's sort of inherently cool about the genre that suckered idiots like me into buying it in the first place. I'm just sad I played PoE and not the hypothetical game that's just based around the idea of an adventurer running a fortress and exploring the dungeon beneath it. I wish I was talented and rich enough to make that game.

>>54270410
> the main villain's hair and beard are described at least three times in the game, despite him having an avatar and a model
Agreed that's pretty bad. I wonder how much proofreading was done.

> It also has a serious problem of only voicing half the dialogue
This is exactly the same as the old Black Isle games. Not anything specific to this game.

>I think the only reason people gave it the time of day was cause its' competitor was Dragon Age Inquisition.

No they gave it a try because it was a throwback to those old isometric RPGs and people revere those.

>>54270436
I'm not arguing that they used exposition to advance the story. They definitely did.

>I liked Baldur's Gate
They also use exposition to advance the story here. HARD. You find out you're a bhaalspawn through a fucking letter, and all of Sarevok's plans are detailed in his diary. You might not even read them since it isn't required.

I feel like these games are kind of aping the stuff they think of as "good" in Baldur's Gate/Planescape to the point of parody. Those games were dense and often dark, sure, but they had moments of levity and Baldur's Gate had a really compelling character and combat system (so much so that DA1 which tried to resurrect it is still considerably inferior).

It's like what someone trying to take all the "deep" parts of those games and amplify them would make, which makes it all the more depressing that it's the same people. And they clearly got a bit carried away by the scope in either case.

I think as >>54269367 says the Tyranny game and the Shadowrun series are a lot more sensibly constructed and IMO have more enjoyable gameplay options. The second Expeditions game (Vikings) also basically shifted from a tactical/resource management game into a full-on RPG and I found the historical Denmark-and-Britain setting of that very interesting.

>>54270293
NWN2's Mask of the Betrayer is genuinely fantastic though. I found the core game enjoyable enough to play through but MotB is like some A+ shit. And the base game has plenty of cute shit like the trial anon mentioned, or the dumbass adventuring party that show up at your fortress themselves.

>>54270704
>Mask of the Betrayer
Can I play this as a stand-alone without playing the core game of NWN2?

>>54270704
Agreed MotB is dope.

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I remember not liking it. It started off bad enough with the game not giving me any real reason to do the main quest and a special snowflake power that manifested in giving me the ability to read exposition, but what killed it for me was the quest when I was trying to find that elf girl. It turned out she was kidnapped by a retarded magician who sperged out because her uncle fucked her and he put some magic in her to punish her uncle. Everything about that quest and that guy's tirade and the fact that the game acted like her uncle did an extremely heinous act and not allowing me the option to not think it wasn't heinous is what killed it for me.

>>54270650
Agreed that Baldur's Gate has exposition too, not agreed if you think its usage of it is equally bad (the actual content is more digestible in BG for example), and also not agreed if you think it's a necessary or inevitable component to these games.

>>54270704
People keep talking shit about the trial because no matter what you do, it always ends with the boss fight, but personally I loved it. It was more about the journey than destination.
Also, the scene in the chapel, when you're praying and your companions come to talk to you before the fight? Best moment in the game.

>>54270769
I found the trial to be great as well, and I think people are overreacting about the fight with Lorne. The game doesn't throw your achievement of defending yourself under the rug, and even your companions rage against the injustice of it.

>>54270762
>not agreed if you think it's a necessary or inevitable component to these games.

never argued that.

>the actual content is more digestible in BG

are you meaning the actual prose? I agree.

>>54270739
Yes, though if you do NWN2's OC you'll (potentially) start with more levels, more frames of reference for a few things and you might care about your character a lot more, because MotB is a very personal story.

Other than that, MotB's story is almost entirely disconnected from OC.

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So what do you guys think of Torment: Tides of Numenera?

A better effort than PoE?

>>54270831
But you'll have to sit through the first part of NWN2. which is the worst part of a game ever. It makes the Planescape tutorial look like an adrenaline rush.

>>54270862
Do you mean the tutorial, the first act or the OC? Because I'll have to disagree. I think it gets too much undeserved hate.

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>>54267930
I couldn't get past how much like Baldur's Gate it was.

I get it, BG was good and there's a market for nostalgia, but both RPGs and computer games have evolved a lot since then. To get something that is so blatantly a throwback to the 90s in this age of Skyrim, Dragon Age and even indie stuff like Cave Story feels like a huge step backwards.

Of course there's something to be said for taking a retrospect and trying to bring back something new computer RPGs may have lost, but PoE does this in what I consider the wrong way. Instead of creating something that takes the best of old games and enhance it with new experiences they just make a copy of things as they used to be. This does not really help evolve computer RPGs, it just defaults to something that has come and gone.

To be clear this is my own personal perspective, opinions are like assholes etc. I have nothing against people who enjoyed the game.

>>54270819
Yeah the prose is more sensibly constructed and disseminated. With modern games it's a real nightmare every time, whether it's voice acted or you're forced to sit through reading it all. Game studios are still approaching story blind to the nature of the medium, and even worse they consider it an afterthought.

>>54270841
It's worse.

>>54267930
I liked it, but it has huge problems with how it chooses to tell its story. This manifests in several ways.

One way is that NPCs have a habit of delivering lots of information that isn't relevant to anything actually in the game. For example, all the Dwarf Ranger companion ever talks about is her hometown, but you never go there or anywhere where that information is even remotely relevant. That's maybe not such a terrible thing, but shit like that happens again and again and again, which only reinforces that the generic pigshit fantasy countryside land the game takes place in is literally the least interesting place in the entire setting. And not just the place, but the time as well. You get to hear a lot about a war where the avatar of an angry god invaded the land and they ended up blowing him the fuck up with a magic nuke. That's some interesting shit, but you only get to hear about it. Meanwhile the most interesting thing that's happening in the game that doesn't directly involve the player is that a lot of kids are being born with no soul. Which is sad and a little creepy, but it's not particularly exciting stuff. But anyway it's all just stories that don't affect anything, and for some companions like Sagani, the Dwarf Ranger I mentioned, "hey let me tell you about the lore of my people who live on the other fucking end of the world" is like 90% of what they have to tell you. They barely even have a personality. Sagani's personality is "I miss my family but my mission is important too and this gives me internal conflicts." And there's nothing interesting to discover about her because she straight-up tells you this after the first time you meet her.

(1/2)

>>54270759
>a special snowflake power that manifested in giving me the ability to read exposition
kek this is so fucking true

>>54270841
What can I honestly say about the effort they put in when I have no firsthand evidence? As far as I know, the developers at inXile worked very hard to get this off the ground.

But as an intended result, regardless of the effort invested, it's shit.

>>54270920
Another big way is that the player's goals are unclear and just plain bad for most of the game. Without spoiling too much, you basically meet a guy in the first 15 minutes of the game. You don't know the guy, but he does something (you don't know what) and then something magic happens and then you feel different. There's no real indication that whatever he did made you feel different, it might've just been a coincidence, but when you're told that the "feels different" thing might eventually drive you insane (and that's just a maybe, because all you have to go on is "the same thing happened to some other guy"), it becomes your goal to track down the mystery man in the hope that he's the one who caused it (you don't know for sure) and that he can also undo it (you have no reason to assume he can). And let's not forget that even though everyone keeps saying you might go insane or even die, this never ever happens no matter what, and you suffer no negative consequences whatsoever, only positive. And this is all you have to go on for 90% of the game. Sure you slowly learn a thing or two about the mystery man and you find out that he's probably a bad guy, but that's it. And eventually it all makes sense and you find out why you have to stop him, and the story becomes a lot better by then, but that's in the final 10% of the game so it's too little too late. and by that time there's so much you need to know, that it gets condensed into like three giant loredump conversations. That's just awful writing.

(2/2)

>>54270891
Not everything. I think Arkane does a really good job with the stories of their games, being able to delve into some pretty complicated ideas while keeping everything very accessible and playable and using a lot of physical, visible storytelling just in the actual gameplay.

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>>54270944
In spite of what I said in broad terms, I couldn't agree more with your choice of counterexample to the prevailing mediocrity. Arkane know how to tell story and convey meaning through interactive environments, which is the biggest untapped strength of the video game medium as an art form.

>>54270841
Nah.

PoE, for all its flaws, is at least entertaining.

Torment Numenera is basically just a vague idea of "PS:T, so we're going to try our best to be original and weird as well," but the writers lack any talent so it just comes across as bland, confused and forced, a not fully realized idea sewn together with shit mechanics and some of the worst purple prose to ever be featured in a video game.

>>54270885
>To get something that is so blatantly a throwback to the 90s in this age of Skyrim, Dragon Age and even indie stuff like Cave Story feels like a huge step backwards.
Dragon Age literally got off the ground by being a huge throwback to Baldur's Gate. And the second DA game was dreadful, only the third was where it found its space as an actual game.

Same deal with Skyrim honestly. Skyrim is not a good game for the kind of game it wants to be. The Witcher blows it completely out of the fucking water (helps that they have like 1000 eurodrones working on a game for Eastern European wages) but even if you compare to like, Dragon's Dogma: all of the action in that game is 10x better than Skyrim and while the story is less detailed its premise is actually more interesting and encourages more questions.

TES decided it was only ever going to be generic fantasy with Oblivion and Skyrim follows up on that with a Norse flavour. It's unambitious in both story and gameplay.

Now I actually agree PoE isn't very good, but that's more because it does what the old games did well badly than for anything else.

>>54271027
>only the third was where it found its space as an actual game.
Shame that it was complete shit.

>>54270538
It's getting an expansion, isn't it?

>>54270607
>What, it's impossible to continue with more stories while still serving Kyros?
Not impossible, but then they'd have to account for two wildly different starting points for the sequel. So you either get this, or you get some Telltale-style crap where your choices just get undone at the start of the next game via plot bullshit. Both options suck, but at least this way is a bit more straight-forward.

>>54270841
I found the setting to be painfully jarring and anachronistic, with the constant flood of exposition about it eventually scaring me away from playing the game at all.

I do not care the procreation of a species that I will never encounter except in the form of this sole character explaining it to me.
I do not care about the psychic wars and the literal ten thousands of words of exposition about them which aren't relevant outside of the tavern for psychic veterans that you hear them in.

There are so many elements that clash with each other that the game is so eager to shove in your face. It's exposition saturation of the absolute worst variety.

Maybe if it was relevant to the game, or if Numenera was actually an interesting setting, I would have liked it. As it was, the only interesting part of the game was the story of the Changing God and his Castoffs.

>>54271027
>The Witcher blows it completely out of the fucking water (helps that they have like 1000 eurodrones working on a game for Eastern European wages)
CDProjekt had like a fraction of the team that Skyrim did and Polish wages are about 1/2 that in western europe.

>>54270885
While I fully understand and partially agree with what you're saying, this game was literally sold on the premise of "it's just like Baldur's Gate! You remember Baldur's Gate, don't you?!"

If they had made it too original, the Kickstarter backers would've rioted.

>>54270976
Yeah, they know how to use both environmental and in-character PoVs (and the actual PoV you have as the game's protagonist, the PoV of playing through it) really well. There was an interview with the new hire for Arkane recently I heard and she was talking about a game that didn't really appeal to me, but made some great points about the explorability of the environment in a vidya and how that's just inherently massively different from any other kind of storytelling you can do.

And that actually doesn't even mean it has to be like this fully realised 3D environment, it's just about the environment presented and what you do/how you look at it as a player. I'm sure none of this is new to you and all, just agreeing + speaking my opinion.

>>54270920
>>54270936
Your walls of text are long but also full of truth. The story of the game does not present a sense of urgency, which is mainly necessary because it is not in and of itself compelling. When playing the game, you're mainly motivated by the desire to explore, loot, and conquer enemies. The story only serves to interrupt that rather than complementing it.

>>54271080
But PoE is considerably worse at being Baldur's Gate than Baldur's Gate was. Icewind Dale is a better Baldur's Gate than PoE.

>>54270920
This reminds me that I immediatly figured out the elf faggot's gimmick the moment I met him, but the game still pretended like it was a "mystery". AND THEN out of the blue he reveals that he was a spy sent by Thaos all along, and your character can be mad or not and then nothing happens and it's never mentioned again.

>>54271125
They dropped the cutscene where you fuck him in the ass and everything is forgiven, that's why.

>>54271080
Kickstarter devs are not beholden to their backers, apart from fulfilling the pledge promises. It didn't matter if they changed the game or kept it like Baldur's Gate. What they failed to do was make the game good, or at least better than mediocre.

>>54271080
It was sold on the premise of "It's just like Baldur's Gate 2" but they made it like Baldur's Gate 1.

>>54271197
S A V A G E
A N D T R U E

>>54271125
Yeah I think part of the reason for this is that the various writers didn't communicate their intentions enough. So you get Aloth making a big revelation about who he's working for, but then his personal story ends and there's nobody to pick up that information and actually use it when it's relevant.

The most blatant example of this, in my opinion anyway, is at Dunryd Row. All right, so the game doesn't do a very good job of explaining the difference between Ciphers and Watchers, but the general idea is that Ciphers can read and manipulate minds/souls, but a Watcher can also see into the past of a soul, and even including the souls of corpses and past lives. Doesn't seem like as big a deal as the game makes Watchers sound, but still, that's clear.

But then you come across Dunryd Row, which are very clearly Ciphers and definitely not Watchers. But the first sidequest you get involving them says that one of the services they offer to the knight guys is reading their soul lineage so they can see if they have any evil indluence or whatever from past lives. Which is something that's already established to be the domain of Watchers, and not Ciphers. So here you have a while organization of Ciphers doing something Ciphers can't actually do. It's ultimately not a big deal since it's just a sidequest thing, but to me it clearly shows that there are different writers on the team that have different ideas of how the game should work.

>>54271081
I think the best word to describe the unique way games, and other interactive media, tell stories is "tangibility." This is an emotional response that can be triggered by illusion, much as in literature a writer can evoke visuals using imagery, and visual artists can convey motion through animation. Video game developers, by the same token, can evoke "tangibility" with tools and tropes that I don't think anyone fully understands yet due to a lack of formal study. The most common terms people associate with this phenomenon are "atmosphere" and "immersion" which always end up being nebulous because people have an understandable difficulty in articulating the sensation. What's clear here is that it's inherent and unique to the medium and it's also rarely done well. And I assert that it's because of the lack of motivation in the industry, and the fact that video games are too young to have a serious presence in academia.

favorite part of planescape torment was

>lower ward
pea brain

>curst
some brain activity

>sigil underground
normal brain

>clerk's ward
super brain

>>54271327
My favorite part was the Sensorium.

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How do these games compare to the real masterpiece RPG?

>>54270841

Contrary to the rest of the opinions in this thread, I enjoyed Torment

Until it fucking ended at what should have been the end to act 1.

"Oh, btw I'm secretly the last castoff and here comes the Sorrow, xD"

>>54271492
"Ending was rushed" is the typical lament.

>>54270879
Anything from the swamptown into the first part of Neverwinter is awful.

>>54271292
I'd argue that "atmosphere" and "immersion" are in my experience most prevalent in certain styles of games and are due to certain factors. First, People like the capacity of videogames to let you dive into a setting at your own pace and to a degree with which you are comfortable. Even tabletop can't do this unless your GM has compiled a Wiki for their setting you can dive into. Consider how Dishonored, Metroid Prime, Elder Scrolls games, and Souls games all feature a ton of supplementary material (often in the form of in fiction books) which are there if you want, and can be ignored if you don't like them. This creates a feeling of existing in a real world separate form our own with things as mundane as different calendars or snippets of fake novels that evoke a certain sense of tangibility. The next thing is good environment and prop design. When everything in a Metro game is jury rigged slapped together shit, you really get the post apoc setting; when you go through a bunch of subway stations and they are all different, you really feel like you're visiting different subcultures. Finally, good sound design is paramount to the feeling of playing in a tangible world. When the monsters in Silent Hill make alien yet familiar sounds or the music is full of oppressive industrial noises you really enter a mental state distinct to the game.
In short, I'd argue tangibility is learning about, seeing, and hearing a world that is unique to the real one.

Have you heard of some of the games these games?
How do they hold up?

Anachronox
Betrayal/Return to Krondor
Serpents in the Staglands
Avernum Series
Geneforge Series
Arcanum
Wasteland 2

>>54271652

The Avernum series are remakes of the Exile series (Which are now being re-remade, Spiderweb certainly likes their game series)

I'd recommend playing the Exile games rather than the Avernum games

>>54271652
>Anachronox
Greatest party member in any RPG I've ever played.

>>54271652
I've only played Wasteland 2, and while it's pretty good, it's nothing amazing. It particularly drags during the first half, but really picks up during the second half. I liked that the game map is the kind where you can go out of your way to find hidden areas like and old school CRPG, and I also liked the create a party of four and add companions rather than just make one "chosen one" protag. It has the typical strengths and weaknesses of a skill based rather than class based system, in that while your characters are more flexible and play exactly how you want them to play, they don't have much identity or unique cool stuff. Divinity Original Sin avoided this by giving cool tactical powers to certain skills while still letting you mix and match. I haven't played the Director's Cut, but I hear good things, including good controller support if you want to play on the couch.

>>54271640
>First, People like the capacity of videogames to let you dive into a setting at your own pace and to a degree with which you are comfortable.
People like that because it's easy, but good doesn't mean easy.

>>54271652
Anachronox is decent. Graphics aged like milk and the combat isn't much to speak of, but the offbeat story and characters are a lot of fun.

Arcanum is great but flawed. The combat especially is a fucking mess. Apart from that it's 100% worth playing.

Wasteland 2 is ok I guess. I wouldn't say it's outright bad, but every single aspect can be described as "not quite good". Like, you can see how it might've been good, but it just doesn't make the mark.

>>54271798
See Morrowind and BG1. How many times have people died to Tarnesh not understanding why they can't hit him and why they're running away?

>>54271737
why play the original Exile games besides old school appeal?

>>54271652
Betrayal at Krondor is one of my favorite games, but Return sucks. The actual spiritual successor is Betrayal in Antara.

I wish there were more companions, or that they were more interesting.

>>54269382
>and I've beaten Neverwinter Nights 2 original campaign twice
You were younger then

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>>54271981
Not him, but I replayed it last year and I still had fun with it. My only regret is that I couldn't find a mod to restore cut content.

>>54269806
>The truth of their nature doesn't innately remove the value of faith, it's a matter of how you choose to respond do it.
Of course it does. All you're doing is worshipping the guys with the biggest sticks, instead of actually having a connection with deeper truth and meaning. Rather, said deeper truth is obfuscated, because said guys have lodged themselves in the place of the deepest mysteries of the universe and whack everyone who dares to come close for a look. Faith in them is not only meaningless, but completely misplaced.

>>54272020
I'd rather play NWN1

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>>54272090

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>>54272090
If that's your personal taste, that's fine, but I think you're saying that just to be contrarian.

>>54272122
>>54272103
I was being facetious but I have fonder memories of NWN1 due to all of the online play.

>>54272170
Yeah NWN1 definitely had better online functionality.

>>54270841
I enjoyed it quite a bit. It can get heavy on the exposition, but if don't want to read something from a sidequest, you don't have to.

I can understand how a lot of hardcore backers were disappointed, because the game is shorter and delivers less content than promised. Instead of getting on the hype train I put in 40$ as a backer just to get a discount copy of the game, ignored all of the preview content, prepared for disappointment from the outset and was pleasantly surprised.

The two flaws that stood out to me that I felt could have been corrected easily were the lack of non named NPCs that you could talk to, and the fact that only you and your companions got portraits and voice lines.

In PS:T you could talk to random people on the street, prostitues, or different generic faction members, and you'd usually get the same dialogue trees, but occasionally someone might recognize you from a past incarnation, or something else might happen. It made the world feel a bit more alive and less like a sandbox for you to go questing in.

And I would have loved to see/hear some of the main NPCs in Tides, like The Specter, Aadiriis, Paj Rekken, and Maralel, just like how Deionarra, Ravel, Trias, Fhjull, and TTO had voice lines.

>>54272090
You're an idiot.

>>54271640
These are all things that contribute, but they aren't the only things, in my experience. I've been immersed in games of only text, or with little to no graphics, and with Commodore 64 tier sound quality. Sound design can be used to contribute to immersion, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient on its own. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that it's about interacting with a world that feels real even though its apart from our own. But that's just reducing the concept to its most basic definition. How does one evoke that feeling? Well you don't stand much of a chance of doing it unless you're willing to commit to the task of creating an entire world first, and to account for as much as you can. And that's why it's so difficult.

>>54270578
>200k units on Steam doesn't seem that bad?
For indie game, it's solid.
The thing is developers wanted to get beyond that.

>>54272785
It's not an indie game, however. It's published by Paradox.

>>54270290
>>It's never mentioned again in the story or by anyone else
You have to fight a minor war against someone else with a claim to it, but I think that was only added later in a patch or one of the expansions

>>54271349
Mine too. I still get chills thinking about Deionarra's sensory stone, and the ones with Paranoid Incarnation and Ravel were great too. A lot of the shorter ones in the public section were neat, too.

>>54271492
>"Oh, btw I'm secretly the last castoff and here comes the Sorrow, xD"
>not already knowing that Maralel was the Memovira before confronting her
git gud

>>54272785
>>54272837
It also did not get 200.000 sales. It got 200.000 recorded sales on a single platform.
The majority of their sales were prepurchases on a little something called Kickstarter.

>>54271465
Completely, utterly underrated game.

The only bad thing about it was that once you cleared out a good part of the game, it could become hard to find out what you were supposed to do or where you were supposed to go, and you had to search and slog through miles of empty tunnels.

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>>54270337
>>54270365
>mfw Eberronfags get triggerd by FR

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>>54270841
Wait what, when was the full game released?
How awful was it then that I didn't even hear how it was finally released?

>>54273342
>Wait what, when was the full game released?
February
>How awful was it then that I didn't even hear how it was finally released?
It wasn't awful, just flawed and too niche to draw the kind of publicity PoE did.

>>54273342
>>54273360
It's like a quarter of a good game, ish.

Out of the games to come from the CRPG renaissance, I think PoE was pretty mediocre. It didn't have the quality of combat that Divinity:OS had (which may well be straight-up the best combat in a crpg period) or the strength of writing that the Dragonfall and Hong Kong campaigns in Shadowrun Returns had to carry it. Without strong combat mechanics or strong dialog, the game didn't have much besides some neat worldbuilding to carry it, and most of the engaging world building happens in the background.

It kept my attention longer that Wasteland 2 did (which was just clunky and mediocre all-round) but I lost interest by halfway in and never went back. Tyranny was a better game in all regards.

>>54270125
>where have you seen this?
Personally I've seen people say that on RPGCodex (including their latest review, a retrospective review of the fully patched PoE which is what, a year old?) and on SomethingAwful (and you can probably trace every bad design decision to that place due to the lead being a goon)

>>54273303
Both are trash.

>>54273360
No, it's awful.

>>54273342
I've had a hard time hearing specifics, but whenever I hear someone mention the game it's usually followed by the words "pretentious" and/or "shit"

>>54273342
It's not awful, it's just bland. The whole thing is PS:T watered down. It's a gluten free pie made with artificial sweeteners.

>>54273961
>RPGCodex
Look at their top 70 RPGs of all time as voted on by the community and try to tell me those people have good taste that's not tainted by nostalgia. PoE was funded on nostalgia, and it shows in every facet of the game.

>>54274271
I think my biggest problem with Pillars of Eternity was just how out of their way they went to make it hard to stomp the fuck out of everything when you get to higher levels. Half the fun of BG2 was seeing just out overpowered you could get.
On a technical level as a CRPG I can't bring myself to call it bad even comparing it to the ones I really liked, but a lot of the stupid fun was kind of missing

I enjoyed Tyranny slightly more until the third act dumpster fire. Really hoping the DLC makes it a complete game.

I've played (aside BG1,2; IWD1,2; P:T, Fallout 1,2):

>PoE
Generic fantasy setting until the very end, with the fedora tier bullshit. Other anons told better above.
System could be good, there was one YouTube video of how Sawyer made the system to avoid dump stats or gimped characters. But they kept on safe waters in a way each character don't get too much different aside their class abilities.
PoE 2, only in Steam Sale

>Shadowrun
Great setting as always. Returns was a safe bet on plot. Dragonfall and Hong Kong were better.
System is good, but the mission-intermission-mission breaks a little of immersion, making the game feels more like a game than a story.

>Blackguards (das Schwarze Auge)
First game have a good plot, second one is horrible plot-wise, did not make me matter on the vengeance plot.
System is good, love hexes and turn based.

>Divinity Original Sin
Story is good, the world is really nice in that you can open a door by lockpicking, smashing with weapon, blowing with spell, using an oil barrel, pick pocket the key... You can steal almost everything.
System is the best out there. Truly tactical.
D:OS2 only waiting the Early Access to end to play it.

>Wasteland 2
Plot is lame, but moves forward.
Combat is clunky and don't have much tactics.
Wasteland 3 I don't think so.

>Torment
Numenera have a great setting in the right hands. Not in this game.
Combat is awful. Look like an afterthought.
T2 never again.

Next to play is Regalia: of Men & Monarchs.

Never played Tiranny. How can it be both evil and SJW at the same time?

>>54276067
The evil overlord is a woman and you have no option other than to declare war on her, the egalitarian faction is populated by lunatics, and killing a baby isn't the "wrong" option. The game has female characters in positions of power, but the narrative never gave the impression it was written with SJWs in mind.

>>54276067
>Never played Tiranny. How can it be both evil and SJW at the same time?
Gays. Gays everywhere.

>>54276197
>The evil overlord is a woman
They are? I recall it mostly being left up in the air.
>>54276199
I love how there's like, two gay couples in the entire game and everyone constantly freaks out about it. It's like Dragonspear where the heal dispenser has a single line and oh no now the sjws ruined the entire game.

>>54276285
I think beamdog's remakes which added nothing of value to the games and it being an expansion added almost 20 years later was the bigger reason people complained about Dragonspear

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>>54272528
>only you and your companions got portraits and voice lines.
Yeah, voices I can understand because that costs quite a bit of money, especially in text-heavy games, but FUCKING PORTRAITS were missing?!? That's, like $500 worth of work from some random artist on deviantart. And it really detracted from my immersion when my PC had a portrait that was talking to a random blob of pixels. Fucking Hell.

But the landscapes and environments were absolutely amazing, especially in The Bloom.

>>54267930
My problem is that I backed Pillars of Eternity. Then I played, and I got super fucking bored. Either the combat was too obtuse for me to enjoy, or the story and character interactions were just terrible.

Like the bard guy with the gun. His song effects weren't visually striking and I found keeping track of them really annoying. His gun was also shit.

Individual sidequests were decent. The whole "take over the castle" opening was fun. But after that, I just felt so "so what?" I put my guy on the throne and what benefit did I get from it? It didn't seem like Shad Nuatha or whatever your personal fortress was called got anything out of it. And managing that fortress didn't seem to do much either; you just got some merchants. Why not some character moments, like you get on the Ebon Hawk in KOTOR or how characters interact and build supports in Fire Emblem?

I only got through the first town and the cult village before I gave up on it. I just didn't care.

In contrast, I found Tyranny quite compelling, the characters were pretty interesting and comprehensible from the get-go, and their interactions felt a lot more natural than the random band of hobos you meet in POE.

>>54276403
They improved Cad Nua a lot through patches, which is sort of my biggest problem with PoE. It just wasn't very finished when they put it out. Just playing through it now is fine, but I remember they would do shit like nerf a class with a new patch in ways that seemed nonsensical to do for a non-mmo

>>54269356
I miss quests. They're so much slower on /q/.

>>54276329
BG1EE let you open up your inventory without being murdered by kobolds, which is all it takes to justify it's existance imho.

I liked that it was effectively a 4e game, using tons of 4e mechanics and the fact that PoE2 is even CLOSER to 4e just makes me fuckin' smile.

There's stuff to like in the main campaign, but there was this odd sense of the developers limiting themselves to make it like Forgotten Realms which is a shame because it only started getting interesting in the expansions, despite those being fairly story lite, they had a good story and the lore was actually interesting. Release PoE was kind of horrible, current PoE + Expansions and 3.0 patch is really good. The main quest still feels like a slog at the worst of times and at the best of times it's some of obsidian's best work. Most of the "wow this is good" is contained in the expansion, and that's a serious problem, guys.

Still, we never got a good 4e video game, and this is the best we've got. And it's better than Daggerdale, at least.

>>54276403

Caed Nua's gotten much better content wise. For one thing, the phone-game tier quests have actual writing behind them, so it's not literally "major adventure" anymore. The loot is better. There's a quest where a dude tries to take it back from you and you gotta fight his army. There's a dozen or so events where you sit on a throne and decide how to deal with a situation, although it's usually "help" "not help" "pretend to help but actually fuck them sideways"

Still, the first version of PoE is horrible in comparison so..

Since we're talking about CRPG games, how is that Sword Coast 5e game that was recently released?

>one class is completely overpowered and can alter the entire path of the story
>the other classes don't even get special dialogue options

Fuck Pillars of Eternity.

>>54277065
Which one was that? The mindblade girl?

>>54276370
>Yeah, voices I can understand because that costs quite a bit of money, especially in text-heavy games, but FUCKING PORTRAITS were missing?!?
What was weird is that they already got a ton of artwork made for the Meres, so it would seem easy to just get 4 or 5 more portraits drawn. Most of the characters I mentioned actually show up in Mere artwork in good detail, too, so it's not like they didn't have an appearance in mind for them.

Also, with the voice lines, I'm not talking about having everything they say voiced. Only a fraction of what you and your companions say is voiced. It would just be a few important lines and then a generic greeting/farewell for when you engage them in conversation, so you can get a feel for how they sound. That should have been much easier than writing all the banter and contextual stuff your party members have.

What I think happened is actually that someone decided the combination of voice/portrait/theme music should be reserved for companions only, to make then seem more special. Which is stupid, of course.

So what're some decent /tg/ vgs? I loved Fallout 1-2 and New Vegas, played and half-liked Wasteland 2, but haven't really played anything super decent in a while.

>>54277077
The Cipher class.

>>54277262
I feel like most classes had at least a couple dialog options though they were mostly minor, and the only cipher ones I remember were side quests and can also be done by having Grieving Mother in your party (one of them also only saves you a trip to the main city IIRC).

>>54277197
Vampire the Masquerade with the fan patch, as well as KotoR 2 with the fan patch come to mind. If you're just talking about things that in some way draw from tabletop games the list is kind of endless

>>54277197
Baldur's Gate 2.
Planescape: Torment.
The Numenara video game.
Mechwarrior 4

>>54276067
>the mission-intermission-mission breaks a little of immersion, making the game feels more like a game than a story.

Well that's because it's a GAME, you mongol.

>>54277032
It's shit.

>>54273269
>You do nothing to contribute and just shit up /tg/
So just like questfags.

>>54276067
>Next to play is Regalia: of Men & Monarchs.
That one's easy to sum up.

Combat is fairly simple, but well-designed and has just the right level of challenge especially with the optional objectives in every encounter. Non-combat mechanics are fun in theory, but poorly designed and don't add anything meaningful to the game. Writing, both of the story and the characters, is absolute garbage tier, being extremely generic and predictable while barely ever going more than two sentences without injecting a bad pun, meme or pop-culture reference.

>>54276285
>They are? I recall it mostly being left up in the air.
It is. Kyros' gender is intentionally left ambiguous. There are a few characters that claim to know the truth, but they're not reliable. For example, Syrin says she knows who Kyros really is, but she keeps switching pronouns every other sentence.

>>54277065
>>54277262
Ciphers most definitely do not get to "alter the entire path of the story," and all classes get some special dialogue options.

What the fuck are you talking about?

>>54277740
>The Numenara video game.
No.

>>54277032
You mean Sword Coast Legends?

It's pretty awful. It feels more like a dumbed down Diablo hack&slash game than anything to do with D&D.

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Any chance picture related will turn out good?

I'm not the biggest Pathfinder fan around, but it looks nice at least.

>>54280257
>written by Avelone
>made by Russians

Kinda sums it up.

>>54280257
Going to be bad. Really bad.

>Get a quest to recover some woman's stuff from a shipwreck.
>Approaching the location, two dudes attack me on sight with their bows.
>My full party of heavily armed warriors butchers them
>Arrive at the shipwreck, find like other three guys looting the place
>"Oh my gosh you killed our friends!"
>"But we're totally villagers, we have nothing to eat and we're looting this because the flood destroyed all our stuff"
>Nah, you're not taking anything else.
>Besides you look like looters anyway
>Just go away
>"YOU LEAVE ME NO OPTION"
>Instead of just walking away like reasonable people they charge against an obviously superior force and get slaughtered
>"You have lost reputation with the city of Whereverville"

The pinnacle of interactive storytelling, boys & girls.

>>54270079
>tfw can't romance best boy Eder

>>54280538
t. George Bush

Why do you hate loot- I mean, why do you hate PERFECTLY INNOCENT CITIZENS *FINDING* SUPPLIES ANON?

>>54280329
Is it really written by Chris, though? Every project likes to throw his name around but he hasn't been at the helm of anything for a while.

>>54277740
The numenara video game sucked donkey dick. I'd replace it with Dragonfall.

>>54269662
I guess they plan on expanding with the second game, from the stuff that they showed it's going to be more espansive, rather than focussed on the same region

>>54281429
That would be cool. It seemed like they were making the geography and different cultures a big deal but then nothing comes of it.


I really hate that you don't get xp from killing monsters. It makes exploration feel pointless.

>>54280538
I really disliked that part too.

Couldn't get invested when every proper noun in the world was some unpronounceable not!Welsh. I liked Tyranny quite a bit better.

>>54270517
The thing to remember there is it is less that you betray. And more that the other guy betrays you first because you being there is a plot in itself. You would have to be retarded to stay loyal at that point or suicidal.

>>54269373
>Quest sympathisers should be permabanned.

>>54269646
I wonder if the difficulty being lower was a result of their shitty difficulty on PoE.

They obviously wanted it to be hard in the vein of BG1 and 2, but then they designed the system so that you don't have a dump stat and no gimped characters, which kind of goes against the first idea but whatever. Then they randomly spike the difficulty. You can be steamrolling everything but if you come across some Feral Druids then you will die even if you know what you're doing because the whole thing just turns into RNG fest of who can kill each other the fastest.

Sure there were areas in BG1 and 2 that would kill you instantly, but there were specific counters to those so that it was like a puzzle rather than just absurd combat. Like the Basilisk area, you use the ghoul. The Liches and Mages in 2, you use Breach and other tactical things to strip protections.

In PoE, for both encounters, it's just who can get a CC spell off first and hope for the best. Fucking Web doesn't even work half the time. And if you can't beat it, you just wait until you're overleveled and come back to steamroll the encounter. That is horrible design. Not to mention the effects are so generic and similar that it's hard to tell what is happening and what you should do to counter. Finally, the combat rules are retarded anyways. Take Ogres for example, they have one attack per round for a retarded amount of damage. But there's no way to use that information against them other than hoping you'll interrupt them. You can't step back because you have the disengage penalty which is an insta-kill with that specific enemy. So combat becomes pretty much exactly the same no matter what enemy you're facing, because the solution to Ogres is to try and CC them with spells, and there's no other tactics other than a chokepoint with, you guessed it, CC spells! No backstab or sneak attack viability due to the shitty disengage and slow stealth system, and I can keep going but the comment is too long now.

>>54281979
>makes exploration feel pointless.
Interesting considering you DO get XP for visiting new locations, and you DO get XP for killing NEW kinds of monsters.

If anything PoE incentivizes exploration more.

>>54283081
Ok but on one map lets say there are Forest Trolls. I've cleared out one group of Forest Trolls and gotten the bonus XP. I have no reason to explore the rest of the area because I won't get any XP, and I will just have to use my Camping Supplies if I have to rest, so it will actually cost me money and time.

>>54283103
Right, so it doesn't incentivize you to trawl every map and kill everything on each map.
Except for the quests you might stumble upon and the loot you might find. And the new kinds of monsters you might find, which will give you XP. And the new locations (caves, etc.) you might go to that will also give you XP.

But I agree, it isn't exactly like Baldur's Gate and we're upset about that.

>>54283139
>But I agree, it isn't exactly like Baldur's Gate and we're upset about that.

Not my argument.

>Except for the quests you might stumble upon and the loot you might find
Woah like the on where you have to kill a wolf or two for 50xp? and the sweet loot like Dyrwood clothing and a sword. Got it. You're right, I definitely want to explore more and do meaningless quests for meaningless rewards.

All these revival crpgs are so infuriating, the infinity engine combat has never been good and the fact that they haven't learned from divinity is really unfortunate

>>54283284
This. Baldur's gate was crap and I don't know why everyone liked it so much.

>>54283311
Did you play it when it came out in 98?

>>54283311
Pretty much my opinion to be honest. Baldur's gate plotline didn't really interesting me. I'll never really understand why people talk like it was one of the greatest games ever.

>>54283345
I did suspect that to be the reason.

>>54283374
Yeah nostalgia fuels a lot of it. It was very good for the time. Especially when you compare the combat in BG to the combat in like Fallout 1 or 2.

The combat still holds some fun as a puzzle mechanic, since you have to know how to fight certain enemies, and you'll fight different ones with different tactics rather than doing the same thing the whole time. It does lend to tons of cheese tactics though, but that's kind of the fun - by the end you are a God.

>>54280210
There's a vision in the game that shows machinery in the spires and oldwalls being activated by a woman.

>>54283374
A bigger reason is that it was baldur's gate 2 that people liked, which aged significantly better than 1.

>>54283431
That likely wasn't Kyros there. It's been a while but the spire mentions the people you see are those that failed to use it's full potential and was after the time that Kyros was running around.

If that was Kyros then the spire there would already be under the overlords control.

>>54283441
I actually prefer BG1 to BG2 but you're probably right. I get burnt out in 2 and especially ToB when you just stop using your martial characters and it becomes Mage-fest 2017. But that's higher level DnD.

>>54283489
This reminds me of how absurd Sarevok was in ToB. I could solo the final boss with him and he wasn't even a mage.

>>54283511
Ravager Halberd + Deathbringer Assault + GWW = guaranteed instakill in a round. Yeah. He was ridiculous.

>>54283489
I like how much more of a traditional DnD story the first one is in some ways, but I still prefer 2 and wouldn't bother playing 1 without Tutu
>>54283511
ToB was a pure power trip, particularly if you were a high level fighter or monk from what I remember

>>54271652

Gorath is, almost objectively, the manliest non-Tolkien elf ever created.

>>54283587
>ToB was a pure power trip, particularly if you were a high level fighter or monk from what I remember

What's the point when you can just be a sorcerer and use Project Image to summon a thousand Planetars and empty your spell book 4-5 times to nuke an entire area. Then you just cast Wish to restore all of your spells without even resting.

>>54283650
I think the stupidest build I've ever created was some mage build that could deal like 50 damage a hit with physical attacks. But also was a top tier mage capable of doing the wish-rest trick to spam out spells if needed.

It's amazing how overpowered you can get.

>>54267930
too boring. hopefully it gets fixed in the sequel.

>>54283733
I always have trouble in bg2 and never beat ToB.

You get so powerful, that it ends up annoying to do most of the fights. Like, why am I using my party? I can run a mage in and kill everything, or buff a fighter and kill everything, or I can micromanage the whole party and hooray I've killed like, thirty shit mooks

>>54283733
Yeah dual-classing can break the game. I'm assuming you're talking about a Kensai->Mage which is the #1 power build alongside Sorcerer and Kensai->Thief which can be just as ridiculous since there are literally no restrictions and only a shit ton of bonuses at the end game. Time Stop traps, Mislead backstab cheese, Spike Trap spam, etc.

>>54283771
The real cheese starts when you abuse multiplayer party exporting and item dropping to fill your inventory with Crom Faeyrs and other goodies at beginning of ToB.

>>54283839
That thar be cheatin'

>>54283408
My tactic in Infinity engine is always grease + web/entangle, bows, slings and some AoE DoT. Summon Monster to tank and only then put my Fighter in the melee.
Lie, at early levels sometimes I Sleep and kill one by one while the others sleep.
Went quite well.

>>54283650
It may not be the most OP shit, but I still had more fun as a thief backstabbing with the staff of ram than anything else

>>54284052
Web is one of the best spells in BG but it does not work well in PoE for some reason. The area is too small and the enemies never seem to get stuck. Sleep is also the best spell for 99% of BG1 and it's a level 1.

>>54280210
Well yeah, she said she was doing it to fuck with you, which makes sense.
>>54283345
Nope, However, having played other old games on the same engine like PS:T and BG2, I can safely say it was possible for people in that era to make games that weren't crap.
>>54283408
A puzzle where the solution is always AOEs cast on monsters that are currently offscreen

>>54284285
> same engine like PS:T and BG2

They both came out later. BG was the first one. You have to take history into account.

>A puzzle where the solution is always AOEs cast on monsters that are currently offscreen

If you want to cheese sure. But even that won't work all the time. Liches are immune to any spells level 5 and below, for example.

You sound like a miserable person.

>>54270841
I liked it quite a lot. But it was about 30-40% too short.

I liked the setting and ideas explored. There just wasn't enough of the content on them. I really don't get the hate it gets.

>>54284377
>They both came out later. BG was the first one. You have to take history into account.
Coming out later doesn't mean a game is better. For example, Icewind Dale 1&2 both came out after PST, if I recall correctly, and they're both objectively worse than it. Hell, they're worse than BG1.
>spell immunity
Well yeah, the solution to liches is to wack them with the mace of disruption a few times

>>54284614
I really enjoyed the end fight, and I kind of botched it. The interactivity was neat, but it had the same problem as the rest of the game's combat--slow and clunky.

A major disappointment was the Sorrow at the end of the game. It got stripped of all mystery and was basically turned into monologuing badguy beyond reproach. Shitty the same way ME3 ending was shitty.

>>54284766
I agree with the ending. It definitely felt like a cop out, which was a shame because it the buildup of the sorrow as a villain was interesting.

>>54271197
I mean, basically this. BG1, but without what little personality and wonder BG1 actually had.

>>54271580
200% agree.

>>54284683
It was their first Infinity Engine game. You said the second one was better, I was saying that you need to take in account that it was their first try.

IWD is a completely different game than PS:T. They're dungeon crawlers and PS:T is more story focused. BG is in the middle.

>Well yeah, the solution to liches is to wack them with the mace of disruption a few times
Not going to do any good until you dispel the protections, which is why I called it a puzzle.

Nothing special. Torment and BG were much better.

>>54284766
>>54284950
The ending was kind of anti-climactic, because after you get in the chamber the Sorrow basically asks, "Okay, how do you want to do this?" but I still thought it was well done because it gave you an actually difficult choice to make. There's no "best" outcome like in P:T, and unlike P:T you can avoid your fate if you're willing to sacrifice others. I wouldn't compare it to ME3 because there are definitely consequences to whatever choice you make.

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>>54280762
Well yes.

>>54285446
>IWD is a completely different game than PS:T.
Sure. In that it's garbage, whereas PS:T isn't.
>>54285446
Casting a million of all the various dispel spells til they get past spell resistance isn't a puzzle.
>>54285754
I'm just shocked they didn't turn my blue/gold character to blue/red after they decided there's no such thing as That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know (TM)

>>54286774
The decision you make after you leave the chamber (assuming what's leaving is still you) does give a fuckload of tide-points, though.

>>54286774
You are a pedantic turd.

one last bump

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>>54271465

This game is great, although glitchy. The entire encounter with the black demon creature] was impossible because he turned invisible.[/spoiler

CRPGs would be so much better if the developers just stuck to turn based on a grid. RTWP is awful, the good games with it were good in spite of it rather than because of it.

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>>54271793

That final boss encounter was absolute horseshit, though. Literally being attacked by super-tough one-shotters against negligible cover. Died 50 million times to that shit.

>>54288801
The 2E games aren't too bad, but 3 and 3.5 NEED to be played on a grid to work correctly. This is why combat in NWNs sucks while ToEE worked well.

This was a very nice thread.

>>54288974
Thanks buddy. This is the longest one I've ever had as an OP.

>>54283081
Too bad there's nothing interesting to explore. It's all boring countryside and boring ruins that all look the same and all you do is fight beetles and *teleports behind you* shades.

>>54289354
The most interesting exploration is the Endless Paths dungeon but even that feels annoying because there's no point in fighting other than hoping to find some loot.

Why have a dungeon crawling section when you don't gain any XP from dungeon crawling? So lame.

>>54289475
Old style of gaming with modern style mechanics. They clash.

>>54289982
I just don't even understand the point of creatures not offering XP

>>54290083
Not him, but I understood it in PoE. It's so that you can level up from doing things that aren't killing. The problem is that it's impossible to play as a non-combat character because there's monsters in your way to every place you have to go, they aggro the moment they show up on the screen and they're difficult to kill, and also the roleplaying and non-violent aspect of the game is irredeemibly shit. Like another anon said, it's all exposition and description. All your dialogue options essentially give the same outcome and that outcome is exposition.

>>54288801
Ain't that the fucking truth.

I wonder if I would've liked Inquisition if it was an FF-style game or just a straight up action rpg. Probably not, but that would make combat bearable.

>>54290160
They also fucking swarm you IWD style some times. It's literally impossible to play pacifist but there's no reward for surviving the tough encounters.

>>54290083
He >>54290160 almost got it. It is because they wanted to avoid grinding and make the player do quests for their XP, not only to advance the plot.
0D&D gave XP per gold coin spent, and monsters gave little XP, so combat was considered a fail state because it drained too much resources for too little reward. Since magic items were not on sale, that gold was well spent. When they removed gold = XP, chars amassed gold without real need.
Now we see XP being replaced by milestones, so you level up after important events, not because you killed a goblin to get that last 3 XP that you needed for the next level.

But then they put a dungeon crawl there. If gold spent on the Caed Nua reverted to XP, people would be happier.

>>54290302
This would make more sense. Is there a modding effort around for PoE or has that been ignored?

>>54271072

I think the implications is that they are either very skilled or their working environment is the digital equivalent of a sweatshop.

I'd say it was better than the glut of "open world RPGs" but that it's kind of stale compared to some of the older CRPGs. There's a lot I like, but none of the character or the story have really hooked me.

>>54267930
Tyranny was much better, IMO. Though there were a few interesting characters in PoE, and some of the setting was pretty cool.

Like the ranger chick's whole thing about finding the village elder's next life about how the village is going.

And the fact that the party cleric blew up a god and was forever scarred by it.

You know /tg/, I gotta say I'm happy to discover that a lot of people on here seem to enjoy Tyranny over Pillars of Eternity. On /v/ it seems to be the exact opposite opinion for some reason.

>>54292454
Why do you prefer Tyranny

>>54292620
I'll admit that I have not gotten as far into Pillars as I have into Tyranny, but mainly I prefer Tyranny's sense of creativity and the way in which it tells its story. Tyranny has a really interesting world, but it's not hard to learn about it through dialogue, the factions you meet, the quests you go on, ect. Plus the choices, while leading to a similar end point, add enough of a sense of control and influence to really make it a world I want to keep playing around in. Pillars on the other hand seems to focus way more on walls and walls of text, throwing you into the setting with little context, and having you need to fight more for your story. Plus, the characters seem to be more "oh hey you found me, let's team up" rather than characters creatively relevant to your adventure.

But like I said, I still need to give Pillars its fair shake. It just seems that when Tyranny is brought up on /v/, everyone calls it shit and says how Pillars is better. As opposed to this thread, where the opposite is happening.

>>54292701
That's because /tg/ enjoys a good story, whereas /v/ just wants to hit things with swords.

>>54292877
Why don't we have both?

>>54293425
We do, it's called Dark Souls

there are other good games with both good combat and stories but that was the first one to come to mind

>>54293439
Why the spoiler?

>>54293461
For dramatic effect

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>>54293439
>Dark Souls
>Good story

Yeah man, it only took us like all of recorded civilisation but the most superior form of story telling is to put exposition in the tooltip on inventory weapons. So deep!!

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>>54293946
You looking to start something buddy?
Because we can start something.

>>54294002
Fun game but I tune out people who say the story was anything special. The setting was interesting but that's not the same as a story and forgoing meaningful characters in favour of exposition delivered in text in mini menus is laughably bad

>>54294048
I enjoyed the characters of most of the souls series.


except dark souls 2. I'm still bitter because it wasn't similar enough to dark souls 1, but at least i'm honest about it.

>>54294048
The characters are meaningful, their dialogue is just sparse. They do a lot to help further the atmosphere and narrative of the world while saying little. Plus the main story of all the games does a solid job at exploring the themes it sets out to do.

>>54294618
The difficulty curve and certain mechanics was the bigger problem I had with 2, but there was a lack of memorable characters. Either way aside from having common fantasy elements I don't really consider it all that much of a /tg/ game. It doesn't really use any tabletop game mechanics or tie into any actual tabletop games until that board game that came out a little while ago anyway. I really only bought that for the minis though so I haven't bothered to find out if it's good or not

>>54292205
I still love that the party cleric's good end involves him going off to build a suitcase nuke to kill all the other gods.

>>54273080
it had under 75k backers on kickstarter

>>54270337
>Accuse people of having like the one fetish that /tg/ -doesn't- attribute to Greenwood
One job, people.

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What do you think of Underrail?

>>54293439
fuck you

>>54297613
Compelling argument

Gameplay was kinda fun, but the story was pretty bland. I prefer Tyranny.

>>54270607
**They will actually add an option to side with Kyros.**

>>54270920
>which only reinforces that the generic pigshit fantasy countryside land the game takes place in is literally the least interesting place in the entire setting.
Exactly! They're always talking about how the world is so interesting and amazing and shit and you'll never get to see anything like that because developers chose to throw you in the middle of fucking nowhere to tell their story.

>>54271125
All of the companion interactions are bland and boring as shit. You might as well go with custom hired companions.

>>54276067
Nothing really SJW about it. There's a single quest involving a lesbian couple from what I remember, and that's it.

PoE2 is looking like it will be a much better game, we'll see.

>>54299432
I think ship management has a lot more potential than stronghold management in terms of staying relevant to your character the whole game, but otherwise it looks like more of the same in a more polished engine (which is fine by me so long as there isn't a bunch of buggy shit on launch like last time)

>>54299245
Eder was pretty endearing but he would only work with a good-type PC. The rest of them were either annoying af or bland nothingness.

>>54299175
This is compounded by the lack of reward for exploration.

>>54299472
Hopefully the fix the XP and Rest systems. Or at least give Wizards and Druids more per encounter abilities like the Cipher.

bump for defiance bay

>>54296750
Sell me on Underrail, I've heard good things but it looks a little bit simple and clunky from screenshots.

>>54300590
Wizard in general were one of the strongest classes. They kind of suck at lower levels, but that's more a victim of them playing like DnD wizards than anything

>>54301937
It's been a while, but as far as I remember its aa postapocalyptic game where everyone is stuck underground, mainly in some old world company's railway system and facilities attached to it.
It encourages exploration by making it the primary way of gaining experience (you get xp for finding lore items in containers, enemies, etc. plus for finishing quests)
The crafting system lets you customize the stuff you make to some degree.
Psychic powers give you AIDS.
Just play it, it's on GOG, so there's probably torrents everywhere.

>>54302041
It's just that they're below the Cipher due to the per encounter nature of their attacks. Maybe if they said 1 spell per level was per encounter or something. Otherwise the wizard just stands in the back with his wand 99% of the time unless it's a huge fight, or you're running back and forth to the inn. Which is tedious and boring af.

It had potential but the characters were very bland. I've tried getting into it multiple times but I always lose interest pretty early. As other anons have mentioned, it takes place in a very dreary and gray countryside.

>>54292454
That's because /v/ perceives Tyranny to be a SJW game.

>>54302306
Cipher was pretty consistently nerfed throughout the patches over time, but they also did do something like that. At higher levels wizards, priests and druids get to pick lower level spells to be per encounter

>>54302577
>dreary and gray countryside.

Only Gilded Vale is really, but it's just that the rest of it is about as interesting as Oblivion's Cyrodiil but without the dark and twisted underside.

It's like Middle Earth with everything remotely interesting stripped from it.

>>54302689
Yes but by the time you have that, money isn't an issue anymore so you can rest however many times you want and just re-up camping supplies.

>>54296750
It's name sounds like undertale, which I find funny because based on that image it is completely unlike undertale
>>54302306
Sure, but the cypher has to spend a ton of time plinking with their attack too cuz that's literally how the cypher class works. Unless you're a munchkin who grabs the blunderbuss and that upgrade that gives 1 extra mana per hit.

>>54303015
>plinking with their attack too
Except their whole class is designed to hit hard until they get their focus up with the whip talents, so it's not plinking.

I think they actually nerfed that so the blunderbuss doesn't count per pellet anymore.

>>54303015
>>54303050
Cypher strategy 101 was basically
Step 1: Survive to the level where you get the fast paralyze power
Step 2: Start every fight using it
Step 3: Use a blunderbuss and basically autocrit the guy you paralyzed for a few seconds to get all the points you need
And as far as I know it hadn't really changed much throughout the patches, though they did make it slightly less effective and efficient over time

>>54300590
All classes in PoE2 have their encounters on a per encounter basis. However, you get a certain number of "empowers" a day. Basically, you can make any ability or spell act as though it was done by a higher level character, but only a certain number of times a day. Also they're ditching health/stamina. When you lose a certain amount of health over the course of a day, (more or less depending on your CON) you gain a lingering wound which is a small debuff. These build up over time and you eventually have to rest to heal them.

>>54303273
> their encounters on a per encounter basis
what did he mean by this

ugh that health system sounds awful and way too try hard.

>>54303331
Derp, I meant their powers on a per encounter basis. And the health system is essentially the same as Tyrrany's system.
http://tyranny.gamepedia.com/Wounds

>>54303403
Interesting. I've never played Tyranny but apparently I should since everyone here seems to love it.

>>54303207
No that's pretty much still the open but you don't gain Focus as fast anymore. Which is honestly fine.

I think the main problem is just the Cipher is so overpowered compared to the Wizard for 99% of the game.

>>54302208
>Psychic powers give you AIDS

Wut.

I always thought it would be cool in a Fallout if you could use Psyker powers at the cost of being irradiated more. Or maybe they could use your rad level for them but you'd have lower health and other penalties to trade off.

>>54304264
>Wut.
IIRC, your character always has the potential to use psychic powers, but accessing it would take years of meditation and whatnot. Some scientists however have developed a method of skipping past that at the cost of weakening your immune system.
In-game it's just an optional loss of max hp for the ability to learn psi powers.
Last I checked the unarmed/psi build was still fun as fuck

>>54292701
>Tyranny has a really interesting world, but it's not hard to learn about it through dialogue, the factions you meet, the quests you go on, ect.


Pillars tries to do this too but because it's exposition you get overloaded with information. Like when telling you the gods names, they just tell you what they're the god of, but don't offer any other ways to describe them so they're just faceless other than Magran and that's only because of Durance.

>>54304573
Interesting. I guess that kinda still fits the niche of the physically weak but mentally strong wizard.

>>54267930
It's alright not a huge fan of overhead perspective in RPGS though. Didn't get too far in the game, kinda got annoyed that most of the interaction is just observing souls that kickstarter contributers put in and are meaningless to the story.

>>54299432
Looks a lot more polished and better thought out, but the plot does seem very 'sequel-y'.

>>54303455
I don't love it, it's just better than PoE.

>>54305691
I was being a tiny bit hyperbolic

>>54304577
IIRC, Eder describes one of Eothas's manifestations. And you get a vison of another one in Eder's quest
>>54304968
I just like that they've got folks from Old Vallia. Now my PC will have other not-romans to complain about the not-italians with

>>54267930
hate to say it but I regret buying it. Overall it just lacks character and the rest of it is just dull.

>>54301937
It was great. Catered to my grognard need to draw my own maps, and the exploration aspect was very rewarding.