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prometheusbound2
Jul 5, 2010

Phlegmish posted:

It's been at least a year since I played it, but when I did I definitely did not consider Normal to be a cakewalk throughout the entire game, and I'm a reasonably experienced CRPG player (never tabletopped though). And that was after there had already been several patches that tweaked the difficulty.

But by the same token, it's good that they actually have been polishing their game all this time. Doesn't make up for the launch, just like No Man's Sky, but I can respect that. I checked their Steam page just now, and they put out an update only yesterday talking about some kind of beta.


I don't know what eurojank RPG writing is, but if it's like Larian's writing, I unironically prefer that over modern Bioware's amerijank.

Except maybe the first D:OS, there it's a toss-up because it seems to have been written by someone who got hold of a thesaurus and then had a bad case of verbal diarrhea

Bioware is aggressively and actively bad. From well before the EA acquisition. With the exception of Mass Effect 2 sidequests (which I think came after the EA acquisition). Minsc and Aerie are among the worst examples of video games writing, ever. Like I would rate Bethesda writing as far better than Bioware writing, because at least its neutral? Most Bioware writing is offensively poor. I guess I'd also add Baldur's Gate I as not terrible, because it was being tongue in cheek. But in general I would say Bioware set the RPG genre and video game writing conventions back by years. In writing, Baldur's Gate compares really poorly to contemporaries like Fallout, Arcanum, and PS:T (same engine! same combat system!), even if it moved the genre forward in terms of graphics, UI design, and general user experience.

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Vargs
Mar 27, 2010

Baldur's Gate is actually fun to play unlike PS:T, Fallout, and Arcanum though.

mbt
Aug 13, 2012

Vargs posted:

Baldur's Gate is actually fun to play unlike PS:T, Fallout, and Arcanum though.

i think theyre fun to some people

babypolis
Nov 4, 2009

Phlegmish posted:

I thought the writing in Pathfinder: Kingmaker was fine? Especially for an ESL quasi-indie Russian studio where it could have gone off the rails in any number of :yikes: ways. It was nothing special, no cathartic experience that will change your soul forever, but I had no problems with it that I can recall. If I had to pick one major aspect of Kingmaker to complain about, that would definitely not be it.

the writing was fine for the most part, nothing overtly embarassing as you said. the biggest problem and I think what that other poster referred to was that absolutely none of the characters have a real voice. they all sound essentially the same with varying degrees of assholisness

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Vargs posted:

Baldur's Gate is actually fun to play unlike PS:T, Fallout, and Arcanum though.

I found arcanum loads of fun. Finding new tech recipes and even looking through bins all the time was honestly amazing to me. I'm a sucker for weird tech items that aren't necessarily useful but are secret so they're worth making because they're different from anything else.

Kingmaker's writing is fine but I did get bored of them constantly telling me how beautiful that tower shield warrior woman was. Or the orc guy being comedy evil 100% of the time.
And yea any sort of "Maybe the kobolds/trolls are nice" immediately makes you evil which is loving insane honestly.

UrbicaMortis
Feb 16, 2012

Hmm, how shall I post today?

Making a fantasy setting where the traditional elements of the genre are subverted (in this world the elves live in ghettos and are victims of racism!) has got pretty old at this point but playing Kingmaker definitely reminded me why people felt compelled to do that stuff in the first place. The alignment stuff especially feels very goofy.

Nephthys
Mar 27, 2010

babypolis posted:

the writing was fine for the most part, nothing overtly embarassing as you said. the biggest problem and I think what that other poster referred to was that absolutely none of the characters have a real voice. they all sound essentially the same with varying degrees of assholisness

Did you recruit Nok-Nok? Because I'm pretty sure that guy has a unique personality compared to the other characters.

Taear posted:

Kingmaker's writing is fine but I did get bored of them constantly telling me how beautiful that tower shield warrior woman was. Or the orc guy being comedy evil 100% of the time.
And yea any sort of "Maybe the kobolds/trolls are nice" immediately makes you evil which is loving insane honestly.

If you go through that orc guy's plot-line you find out that he puts on that kind of personality to hide his massive insecurity and self-loathing while purposefully leaning into self-destructive tendencies. You can even find him self-harming at one point. Eventually you can help him become a more healthy person and he becomes Chaotic Neutral. The Reg-Octavia poly romance was one of the best romances in an CRPG I've experienced actually.

IMO Kingmakers writing is pretty good if you actually play through the whole game. Its a long game which means most of the characters get to have actual character arcs which not even Obsidian fully manages tbh.

Nephthys fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Aug 2, 2020

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

Nephthys posted:

IMO Kingmakers writing is pretty good if you actually play through the whole game. Its a long game which means most of the characters get to have actual character arcs which not even Obsidian fully manages tbh.

The game was so broken that I never managed to get far enough to do that.
But Chaotic Neutral isn't an...aspirational alignment, what a weird thing for them to do.

Nephthys
Mar 27, 2010

Taear posted:

The game was so broken that I never managed to get far enough to do that.
But Chaotic Neutral isn't an...aspirational alignment, what a weird thing for them to do.

CN in Pathfinder isn't really the same as the babbling lunatics of the original D&D editions.

Amiri, Harrim and Jubilost are also Chaotic Neutral companions and they're all pretty different in terms of personality, they just share that they don't value law and don't tend towards benevolence or cruelty. With Reg he doesn't suddenly start hugging kittens but he stops murdering puppies, so Neutral makes sense.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


imagine not hugging kittens

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

Reg wasn't comedy evil at all, he's cruel and merciless towards your enemies and slavers in particular but dunno where the kicking puppies things comes from. Sure you weren't thinking of Jaethal?

Nephthys
Mar 27, 2010

I mean he does literally kill a dog and smear its remains on its owner so they give him their cloak he in turn gives to Octavia in a 'romantic gesture'. :airquote:

Avalerion
Oct 19, 2012

Nephthys posted:

I mean he does literally kill a dog and smear its remains on someone so they give him a cloak he in turn gives to Octavia in a 'romantic gesture'. :airquote:

Oh. Never mind then, is that when you are romancing them? :doh:

Nephthys
Mar 27, 2010

Avalerion posted:

Oh. Never mind then, is that when you are romancing them? :doh:

I think so. A big part of their romance is that he's only able to empathise with Octavia and the player and even then only kind of. He is Chaotic Evil, just not 100% a dick.

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Yeah I mostly benched him, and romanced Octavia without getting the 'poly' outcome somehow. I want to be neither cuck nor cuckee, and she chose me over the psychopath orc fair and square.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






The discussion kind of proves the point though which is that he’s not cartoon evil.

Kingmaker was great. I enjoyed the Divinity games and PoE series as well, but Kingmaker is the easiest entry point of all three, in that it’s the most kind of basic/expert set of all of them.

Divinity 2 and PoE 2 felt to me like the D&D session you’d play with a GM and group who are all kinda friends already and know each other well, for a fun/wacky and serious campaign respectively. They’re HBO prestige drama, and require a degree of commitment.

Kingmaker is the cable police/medical procedural that rises above itself at times: it’s light and easy to pick up and put down but not totally dumb.

All of them have their place and I’m looking forward to BG3.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!
Whereas I feel like PoE2 is the best entry point because the way it displays your characters and how they level up makes the most sense to me.
Pathfinder gives you so much choice I'm just overwhelmed, especially since I know there's loads of trick/trap options.

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat
THe idea that Pathfinder is the easiest to pick up of the three actually made me audibly chuckle.

It not only has the most needlessly convoluted rules of them all, by far, it is also hampered by being incredibly obtuse by design, with many features not explained at all or only very obliquely and the GUI being very confusing and poorly laid out, with repeating icons, lists upon lists etc. Building a character in POE is a joy in comparison, not to mention DOS where you basically just pick spells and don't have to worry about much else.

Unlike the other games, Pathfinder actually made me feel like a newbie at a table run by grognards who just stare you down if you don't have encyclopedic knowledge of all the pointless rules, a feeling I never had with any other CRPG based on tabletop rules.

steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 15:47 on Aug 2, 2020

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



Yeah, Pathfinder: Kingmaker is hard as balls in various ways, even for many people that have played tabletop-inspired CRPGs for years. It absolutely is not for people new to the genre.

If you mean solely in terms of story and writing, I could agree that it's the middle-of-the-road option.

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






From a mechanics perspective, it’s familiar because it uses the single most common RPG system. It’s chock full of trap options but those usually don’t become evident for several levels.

In the mean time, it has a main plot that is extremely easy to follow. It’s an easy game to start, even if not to finish (and yes the last couple of levels are awful).

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Beefeater1980 posted:

From a mechanics perspective, it’s familiar because it uses the single most common RPG system. It’s chock full of trap options but those usually don’t become evident for several levels.

In the mean time, it has a main plot that is extremely easy to follow. It’s an easy game to start, even if not to finish (and yes the last couple of levels are awful).

How is that a good thing?

Beefeater1980
Sep 12, 2008

My God, it's full of Horatios!






Strom Cuzewon posted:

How is that a good thing?

It isn’t. But I wasn’t making some kind of top to bottom evaluation of which game was best, I was saying which was most accessible (that is, easy to pick up and play), and I think that’s kingmaker.

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

Beefeater1980 posted:

It isn’t. But I wasn’t making some kind of top to bottom evaluation of which game was best, I was saying which was most accessible (that is, easy to pick up and play), and I think that’s kingmaker.

I've made a similar point before and I still agree. Kingmaker isn't accessible because it's actually EASY or newbie-friendly, it's accessible because it's FAMILIAR. (so it's not the kind of accessible that you'd give to someone new to RPGs/CRPGs, but it's the kind of accessible where someone who liked the BG games wouldn't necessarily bounce off it like a lot of people did for PoE or even D:OS, which I both give credit for trying to do something new).

The story is familiar, the language is familiar, the rules are familiar if you've spent any time with 3.x D&D (and a lot of CRPG players have), the characters are mostly archetypes, etc. That kind of head start can make up for a lot.

Dallan Invictus fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Aug 2, 2020

Phlegmish
Jul 2, 2011



That does make sense if you put it that way, although you shouldn't overestimate the number of players who are truly familiar with D&D-like rules, even people who finished Baldur's Gate 2 however many years ago.

Difficulty isn't entirely separate from accessibility, though, and I imagine a significant number of people bounced off of Kingmaker after selecting Normal and immediately getting wrecked by the cave spiders, some of the first enemies in the game. Especially right after launch.

Khanstant
Apr 5, 2007

Fruits of the sea posted:

There's always the Morrowind option: Make medium armour hella cool looking and also extremely useless.

hey now, I have distinct memories of hunting down some bone mail or ordinator armor to wear and go get hit by mudcrabs to and fish to level up my endurance or something so it wasn't _all useless_

Avalerion posted:

I appreciate kingmaker for just having a straight forward story that ends with you kicking the bad guy's rear end and just plain being allowed to win, no forced bitter sweetness or sacrifice required.

Haven't beaten it yet, but isn't there a little wiggle room for sympathy for the antagonist? I thought her whole evil deal was basically made compulsory by some curse, you learn a lot about curses through the game, I was figuring at some point I'd cure that lady's curse and we'd team up to kick the curser's rear end. Then again she seemed to kind of enjoy and take pride in her cursed work... My PC is also technically evil, despite how many really good things I do, like making friends with goblins and some other cultures normally marginalized by humans without a second thought. I've got a community center for Kobolds FFS, but yeah, I maintain thin veneer of evil for the better summons from my monster tactician class. I also let that supremely evil dude keep possessing the Maeghar guy from the sidestory campaign, curious what kind of end title card that gives me.

Andrast posted:

I feel they did a better job with it in OS2 than their previous games

At the same time it felt oddly generic at times, like props to them for writing actual characters instead of for the nameless formless custom potential custom PC, but overall it just lacked some kind of depth or verisimilitude, idk what I'm trying to articulate rn. I also played it right after Deadfire, and Deadfire and DOS have some overlap on plot points or themes at a few points and I felt Deadfire did em better. And just overall DOS2 felt a bit hollow story-wise after coming right off of POE2, which had me appending sentences in my head with fictional regional vocal tics for a week after and overall did a great job fleshing out the people and cultures in the game.

I've been thinking of Kingmaker as BG3 since I played it but that won't make sense anymore and come to think of it, it's more like a NWN3 anyway. It was very familiar and understandable immediately because of NWN, but I can't imagine anyone playing either to get into cRPGs and BG is just as bad for that too. The first time I played BG I really struggled trying to "get" the character creation process and stats, thac0 and the dnumbers were all very alien to ten year old me and I struggle bussed my way through as far as I could, cheated to get a bit further, then got bored/frustrated and summoned a bunch of Drizzt's to make them fight for and against me and gave my friend his burned CDs back. I only revisited years later after playing some other cRPGs and finally learned a version of the rules to work back fro mthat I was actually able to enjoy BG1/2.

Khanstant fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Aug 2, 2020

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat
E: Already addressed

Khanstant posted:

Haven't beaten it yet, but isn't there a little wiggle room for sympathy for the antagonist?

There is, and there isn't... you'll see.

steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 18:21 on Aug 2, 2020

Dallan Invictus
Oct 11, 2007

The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

Phlegmish posted:

Difficulty isn't entirely separate from accessibility, though, and I imagine a significant number of people bounced off of Kingmaker after selecting Normal and immediately getting wrecked by the cave spiders, some of the first enemies in the game. Especially right after launch.

I bought it at launch, shelved it in early game (more due to bugs than difficulty but really a little of both), and didn't get around to actually beating it until like three months ago so I absolutely get these people.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Kingmaker is the one of the three big modern CRPGs that people should pick up and play, it's more that I'm not surprised at how many people did, despite its flaws.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Phlegmish posted:

That does make sense if you put it that way, although you shouldn't overestimate the number of players who are truly familiar with D&D-like rules, even people who finished Baldur's Gate 2 however many years ago.

Difficulty isn't entirely separate from accessibility, though, and I imagine a significant number of people bounced off of Kingmaker after selecting Normal and immediately getting wrecked by the cave spiders, some of the first enemies in the game. Especially right after launch.

In the age of Critical Role's incredible popularity you shouldn't underestimate the number of people who are familiar.

Unrelated but: The Lantern King's voice actor is fantastic.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


lol imagine someone listening to critical role and jumping straight into Kingmaker

They'd be so loving lost

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Andrast posted:

lol imagine someone listening to critical role and jumping straight into Kingmaker

They'd be so loving lost

Oh they're gonna be lost after 5-6 level ups but they're gonna feel right at home starting out, which is kind of what Dallan is getting at. The reason Kingmaker outsold the hell out of Deadfire is because it is FAMILIAR not because it's EASY. It's an objectively worse game system but it's recognizable and has ten thousand fiddly bits to play whatever sparkle prince or princess you want, regardless of whether or not that sparkle prince or princess is any good.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Captain Oblivious posted:

Oh they're gonna be lost after 5-6 level ups but they're gonna feel right at home starting out, which is kind of what Dallan is getting at. The reason Kingmaker outsold the hell out of Deadfire is because it is FAMILIAR not because it's EASY. It's an objectively worse game system but it's recognizable and has ten thousand fiddly bits to play whatever sparkle prince or princess you want, regardless of whether or not that sparkle prince or princess is any good.

The reason Deadfire sold like poo poo is because PoE1 was bad. Sequels always suffer the failings of the predecessor.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Andrast posted:

The reason Deadfire sold like poo poo is because PoE1 was bad. Sequels always suffer the failings of the predecessor.

I would like to believe it’s that simple. I much prefer the PoE games. But that analysis fails to account for the fact that not only did Kingmaker dramatically outsell Deadfire despite being a much wonkier and less intuitive system, the crappy launch of Kingmaker has not stopped the kickstarter for its sequel being more than twice as successful.

If it was as simple as “ah sequels always pay for a bad first entry” well logically Wrath of the Righteous should be eating poo poo not raking in the cash given how Kingmaker was panned at launch for being overtuned having a super punishing end game bugs etc etc. And yet here we are.

The market does not want what we want. If you care enough to seriously analyze RPG systems you are already not the average consumer. Familiarity goes a long way.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Captain Oblivious posted:

I would like to believe it’s that simple. I much prefer the PoE games. But that analysis fails to account for the fact that not only did Kingmaker dramatically outsell Deadfire despite being a much wonkier and less intuitive system, the crappy launch of Kingmaker has not stopped the kickstarter for its sequel being more than twice as successful.

If it was as simple as “ah sequels always pay for a bad first entry” well logically Wrath of the Righteous should be eating poo poo not raking in the cash given how Kingmaker was panned at launch for being overtuned having a super punishing end game bugs etc etc. And yet here we are.

The market does not want what we want. If you care enough to seriously analyze RPG systems you are already not the average consumer. Familiarity goes a long way.

My impression of Kingmaker is that most people who got it liked it, flaws and all.

The market definitely wants what I want too since OS2 sold loving gangbusters and Larian even got the BG3 deal put of it.

Ace Transmuter
May 19, 2017

I like video games
I have heard generally good things about Kingmaker, I've just made it a point to avoid all things Pathfinder, in favor of less difficult and needlessly complex faire.

You know, something like Eve Online

steinrokkan
Apr 2, 2011



Soiled Meat

Captain Oblivious posted:

Oh they're gonna be lost after 5-6 level ups but they're gonna feel right at home starting out, which is kind of what Dallan is getting at. The reason Kingmaker outsold the hell out of Deadfire is because it is FAMILIAR not because it's EASY. It's an objectively worse game system but it's recognizable and has ten thousand fiddly bits to play whatever sparkle prince or princess you want, regardless of whether or not that sparkle prince or princess is any good.

That makes it worse

The game fails completely to prepare the player for long term PC development, it just leads him to paint himself in the corner until he hits the wall and has no real way forward.

Again, in this regard Pathfinder is way, way worse than any of he BG / old DnD PC games that had incremental difficulty curve without the layers and layers of customization that are never explained.

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

steinrokkan posted:

That makes it worse

The game fails completely to prepare the player for long term PC development, it just leads him to paint himself in the corner until he hits the wall and has no real way forward.

Again, in this regard Pathfinder is way, way worse than any of he BG / old DnD PC games that had incremental difficulty curve without the layers and layers of customization that are never explained.

You're not listening. People. Do. Not. Care.

The later in the game a problem is the less likely they are to give a poo poo. Divinity Original Sin's end game was a tepid disaster. 90% of players don't get that far. They don't care.

Reddit and this forum and so on were rife with complaints about the House at the Edge of Time in Kingmaker. The market doesn't give two shits. You can take whatever stance you want on whether it SHOULD be the case but it is.

Andrast
Apr 21, 2010


Never take this forum as a gauge for the general popularity of anything. Like, this forum has all four people who like Alpha Protocol so you might think it was popular game going by that.

The amount of forum complaints doesn't really tell you much in general either since it only accounts for the loudest and the angriest. People who like a game aren't usually going to be angrily yelling about it on internet forums.

Also Alpha Protocol is the best

Andrast fucked around with this message at 21:31 on Aug 2, 2020

Vargs
Mar 27, 2010

I genuinely love spending like 2 hours finetuning a character concept before starting to play. Sometimes I like it significantly more than the game itself, such as in NWN2.

Dexo
Aug 15, 2009

A city that was to live by night after the wilderness had passed. A city that was to forge out of steel and blood-red neon its own peculiar wilderness.
Jumping in to say Alpha Protocol owns.

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Kokoro Wish
Jul 23, 2007

Post? What post? Oh wow.
I had nothing to do with THAT.
Alpha Protocol is probably the only truly great and ambitious game that Obsidian ever made.

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