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steinrokkan posted:The main problems with Tyranny combat are that 1) there are basically only what, three enemies? That repeat ad nauseam 2) the cooldowns on character powers are absurdly long, as I remeber it. And it plays more like an action RPG with cooldowns than a Baldur's Gae-like.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 12:06 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 20:12 |
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Banes are the only ones that add some variety to the mix cause they have elemental immunities and weaknesses. You can see Chorus and Unfavored and other human groups having slightly different focuses but it never affects what you're doing. Even the old man wizard-healer character can survive a lot of punishment, and the healing items are plentiful and apply almost instantly, so the characters are only taken out when you are distracted. You are never in a situation when you realize you should have approached the combat differently. PoE1/2, in comparison, has a limited amount of healing available (it's not strictly true, but the replenishable ways to heal are relatively weak) so the obvious default approach of grinding the enemy and outhealing them doesn't work. I know that the answer to this is don't use the boring reliable tactic that turns every fight into a 10-minute slog where you sometimes interfere and heal but it's a developer's task to make effective play interesting. Yes, I'm the person who goes back to the inn after every fight in a game with per-rest mechanics, why do you ask?
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 12:25 |
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I haven't played Tyranny in a while but I did enjoy it when I beat it. I don't recall combat being particularly complex or difficult, but the story was enjoyable and it's a shame that it didn't do that well because the sequel hook was interesting.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 15:01 |
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ilitarist posted:I suppose you could do it using a technology similar to the one that caused the Hollowborn crisis. Engwithians ripped the souls out of the whole nation in an instant, they could maybe do it slowly taking the souls of the dead. It would probably take a long time and result in more Hollowborn. Presumably, when the nation died and stopped giving birth to children it helped with the balance of souls. Also new-formed gods helped with maintaining the Wheel. I think it was a plot point that as the population grew souls were getting weaker on average as the total was being split between more and more people. Especially with the gods siphoning some of it off for various purposes (to feed on, to destroy, whatever Wael is doing on that other planet etc).
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 15:32 |
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Zore posted:I think it was a plot point that as the population grew souls were getting weaker on average as the total was being split between more and more people. Especially with the gods siphoning some of it off for various purposes (to feed on, to destroy, whatever Wael is doing on that other planet etc). It can also be surmised that one of the major benefits of the Engiwithan Wheel is that it immediately boosts Eora's carrying capacity by more efficiently tapping the soul power reserve but maybe to the detriment of its long term carrying capacity as the trauma of life is what is expected to crush souls to soul chaff. Vermain posted:The general impression I got is that souls take on the characteristics of what they're incarnated into and are otherwise just a kind of energy floating about. Mass sacrifices of people were necessary for the gods to be made because they'd otherwise be lacking in the intelligence and drive that are the trademark of kith souls. There's also really stubborn souls like those that result in Watchers, or especially Thaos. Thaos always looks like Thaos. Overall, the gods consume souls to remain powerful but there seems to be some measure of you are what you eat. Creating the gods seemed to definitely take sacrifices of large amounts of paragons of the tendencies they were meant to embody. Especially if needing to recharge large parts of themselves, there's room for change; Abydon's reformation resulted in something different.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 16:50 |
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Entropy is a thing and souls split and become weaker during reincarnation, but the Engwithan apotheosis project was designed to make the wheel less error prone and give kith a steadier path to advancement. In other words, the wheel was designed to make kith stronger, wiser, and more intelligent over subsequent cycles. The problem with that is if it keeps happening kith might eventually grow enough to create or desire to create a world without the gods. Woedica thinks any such society is doomed to eventual failure and that kith won't be able to live without the gods. So there's a kind of weird contradiction with the Engwithan gods in that they were created to provide purpose to an orderless world but the Engwithans also improved the wheel with the goal towards strengthening kith all the while knowing that doing that might eventually result in a world that made the gods obsolete.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 17:28 |
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zedprime posted:There's also really stubborn souls like those that result in Watchers, or especially Thaos. Thaos always looks like Thaos. Thaos is different though. Thaos always coming out as Thaos is due to Woedica's direct intervention. He's essentially completely outside the soul cycle.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 17:50 |
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zedprime posted:Souls definitely seem to have a disposition of what type of body they should be a part of though, or else the whole soul transplant thing would have resulted in a better result than wichts. What I mean is that souls, upon taking a physical form, have the qualities of that form impressed on them; the soul takes on the shape of the jug it's initially poured into, so to speak. You can pull out a kith soul and put it into a weapon and have an intelligent weapon not because the two have any real compatibility, but because the soul of a kith has the ability to speak and reason, qualities it retains regardless of what form it's subsequently put in.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 17:55 |
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Dick Burglar posted:Thaos is different though. Thaos always coming out as Thaos is due to Woedica's direct intervention. He's essentially completely outside the soul cycle. Vermain posted:What I mean is that souls, upon taking a physical form, have the qualities of that form impressed on them; the soul takes on the shape of the jug it's initially poured into, so to speak. You can pull out a kith soul and put it into a weapon and have an intelligent weapon not because the two have any real compatibility, but because the soul of a kith has the ability to speak and reason, qualities it retains regardless of what form it's subsequently put in.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 18:03 |
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Vermain posted:What I mean is that souls, upon taking a physical form, have the qualities of that form impressed on them; the soul takes on the shape of the jug it's initially poured into, so to speak. You can pull out a kith soul and put it into a weapon and have an intelligent weapon not because the two have any real compatibility, but because the soul of a kith has the ability to speak and reason, qualities it retains regardless of what form it's subsequently put in. This isn't really true though because souls don't always reincarnate as people. A human soul can be reborn as a deer, like with Sagani's quest.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 18:05 |
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If I recall right, PoE1 even had a lore tidbit of animancers finding souls in trees.Ginette Reno posted:So there's a kind of weird contradiction with the Engwithan gods in that they were created to provide purpose to an orderless world but the Engwithans also improved the wheel with the goal towards strengthening kith all the while knowing that doing that might eventually result in a world that made the gods obsolete. I'm pretty sure that the only ingame source that says the Engwithans "improved" on the natural state is Woedica. And I'd consider her to be very much an unreliable source.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 18:13 |
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Raygereio posted:If I recall right, PoE1 even had a lore tidbit of animancers finding souls in trees. I don't really think she lied about that. Soul maladies like hollowborn being more frequent without a manmade wheel makes a lot of sense. To take a real life example, imagine if we had mastery over genetics such that we could prevent people from being born with mental disabilities etc. The Engwithan wheel is the fantasy equivalent of that. Except that the Engwithans apparently only could exercise so much control over that process....or they didn't want to exert too much. Obviously you've got situations like Maerwald still happening and all the other soul maladies that we still see in Eora so either the Engwithans couldn't prevent all such instances or maybe things were even worse before they corrected the wheel.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 18:40 |
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I don't know. It's open for interpretation, I guess. I can't really get past there not being anything to support Woedica's claims. Though I don't reckon she's lying per see. Woedica would probably be perfectly honest in thinking that she and the other gods are necessary.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 18:54 |
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I don't really see any reason to doubt the Wheel works as stated, or that pre-Wheel reincarnation was "messier." All of the Engwithan machinery seems to work as designed, the accidents involving them seem like the equivalent of early modern explorers messing with a mostly-intact nuclear reactor. It's the idea that the gods are necessary to keep it all running that's probably flawed (seeing as the Engwithans did all of this before their horrible realization).
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 19:07 |
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zedprime posted:The speed of his reincarnations might be intervention and his soul might have had Engwithan animantic intervention to allow such a thing but his soul is the basic catalyst for being Thaos. He still incarnates Thaos even after you mind wipe him and make him useless to Woedica. I was under the impression that Thaos-always-comes-out-Thaos was due to Woedica tweaking his soul, as well as watching out for him in other ways. I don't think Thaos' soul gimmick was a thing before the Engwithans mass-suicided to create the gods. My understanding is that he was the one chosen for his duty not because of his soul-gimmick but because he was the most devout, and that he received the soul-gimmick from Woedica after the gods were created.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 19:53 |
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I don’t know if Peak Soul is actually an issue in Eora, it is mentioned souls get stronger over a kith’s lifetime, especially due to big achievements or what have you, so I think there’s natural ways to maintain Enough soul energy there.
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# ? Aug 5, 2022 21:19 |
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yeah giving ydwin the unique blunderbusses turned her into a complete badass wtf???
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 05:05 |
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Ginette Reno posted:This isn't really true though because souls don't always reincarnate as people. A human soul can be reborn as a deer, like with Sagani's quest. Sure, but the soul retains the characteristics of its current incarnation until it returns to the Wheel - there's nothing in the text that indicates otherwise, and plenty that supports this reading (re: everyone that sticks their soul in a sword or a statue). To go back to the original point, it's why the thinking souls of kith were needed to form the gods: even if animals were found that were once kith, their souls in the present had the qualities of beasts and were thus useless for the goal of forging a deity.
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 05:22 |
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Lady Radia posted:yeah giving ydwin the unique blunderbusses turned her into a complete badass wtf??? If you ever want Ydwin to get back into melee, there's also Seeker's Fang, a pretty sick soulbound rapier you get in the SSS DLC that is very powerful on ciphers because it does additional damage based on your focus amount as well as more damage to enemies who are afflicted. So you can use Kitchen Stove's Thunderous Report on some enemies to max out her focus in one shot, switch to Seeker's Fang, hard CC some enemies with spells like Mental Bindings or the rapier's own per-encounter web cone, and then just start messing everyone up.
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 05:29 |
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Starting a new game and I rolled up a Troubador/Psion to see what all the fuss is about. Any advice on the character build? Playing on PotD w/ only up level scaling. I maxed int and then split the rest of the points between dex and perception. I usually roll with weird melee builds, so I’m having trouble remembering which items I should immediately shoot for 🤔
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 22:30 |
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Somehow can't recruit Mirke after blowing up Benweth using his piano.
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:25 |
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Gato The Elder posted:Starting a new game and I rolled up a Troubador/Psion to see what all the fuss is about. Any advice on the character build? Playing on PotD w/ only up level scaling. Gear-wise for this multi, I emphasis Intellect so my spells can hit the most targets for longer duration and then Perception so my spells can actually land and then crit for more duration, and then supplementary gear that increases either AoE, accuracy, and duration. Here's what I go with: Head: Helm of the White Void because it grants +10 accuracy for all types of afflictions which will be a majority of your spells. It's found later in the Beast of Winter DLC, so until then I use either Heaven's Cacophony or Mask of the Grotto Deep for the +2 Intellect. Another consideration is Acina's Tricorn which states that it increases ranged accuracy but it actually effect spells as well. The coding is a bit wonky so you have to experiment around with it because it'll apply to some spells but not others. Cloak: Cloak of the Theocrat for the additional Intellect. Giftbearer's Cloth with maxed History skill is nice if you find you need more defense. Necklace: Charm of Bones for the flat +2 Intellect. Cog of Cohh is a good choice if you are standing next to a high-damage ranged character in your party who's going to be getting a lot of kills like a Ranger so that the Aware inspiration will proc regularly for you. Gloves: Gloves of the Dungeon Warden for the added accuracy. The more common Gauntlets of Accuracy will also do the job since the per rest ability of the first option isn't super necessary in this build, and the second set is available very early in the game. Rings: Ring of Overseeing to increase AoE size. You can wear two at the same time and their effects will stack and they're easily found from dropped loot or vendors. Chameleon's Touch from an early bounty gives bonuses to both Intellect and Perception for our multi so it's perfect for our uses. Belt: Girdle of Eoten Constitution for the +3 Constitution or Gwyn's Bridal Garter if you want less of a constitution bonus in exchange for Dexterity affliction resistance, which is nice to protect yourself from getting paralyzed. Least Unstable Coil is another choice if you go with a particular weapon which I'll get into later. Boots: Vithrack Silk Slippers for a chance to echo cast spells. It's relatively low chance but all you'll be doing is casting spells so you'll be seeing it proc pretty often. The only problem is that it's late game in the Forgotten Sanctum DLC. Armor: Aloth's Armor just for more AoE size. It's a little bulky so you could instead go with any of the robes so that you don't get a recovery penalty. Late-game, Robes of the Weyc is pretty amazing for a synergy if you again go with a particular weapon suggestion. Weapons: To preface, as you level up and gain more power levels, the amount of focus you passively gain per-second as a Psion will increase, to the point where you will always have enough focus to cast a spell (provided you don't get hit and also intersperse casting Cipher spells with your Chanter invocations). What that means is that you will hardly have to auto-attack with your weapons as the game goes on so you can use your weapons more as "stat sticks" that you just have equipped to supplement your spellcasting. An obvious selection for a Chanter is Sasha's Singing Scimitar with the Refreshing Finale upgrade which will let you freely empower an ability once every encounter and return more phrases. Not only will this essentially give you an extra, free super-charged invocation in every combat, but the Empower effect will synergize with the aforementioned Least Unstable Coil and Robes of the Weyc by giving you a random Tier 3 inspiration, faster chanter rate, and more amazingly give your entire team Brilliant inspiration (which you can then indefinitely prolong with a priest's Salvation of Time spell). For your offhand weapon, Griffin's Blade can provide a +10% increase spell damage. As a Psion/Troubadour, I make sure to grab the spells Soul Shock on the Cipher side and the upgraded Her Revenge Swept on the Chanter side -- as power level 1 spells, they're very cheap resource-wise, scale as you level and get more power levels, and deal the less commonly resisted shock damage in an AoE so you'll always be able to provide some damage, making Griffin's Blade a decent stat stick. Alternatively, you can also wield the Outworn Bucker in your offhand. As a small shield, it doesn't negatively impact your accuracy and it gives a small increase in deflection. More importantly, it has an aura which reduces the duration of hostile effects on your party, which is a very rare and valuable effect. Another decent off-hand choice is A Whale of a Wand which has a chance to charm targets with every spell cast; since you'll be casting a lot of spells and hitting a lot of enemies each time with your enlarged AoE size, this can proc a decent amount. Finally, another option is the soulbound arquebus Blightheart which, when soulbound to a Chanter, gives you +1 phrases for every kill -- even from kills from your casted spells. So you can do stuff like Empower an Eld Nary invocation with Sasha's Singing Scimitar, swap to Blightheart, and then gain a phrase with every enemy killed by Eld Nary, which hits hard and bounces several times.
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# ? Aug 6, 2022 23:29 |
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MonsieurChoc posted:Somehow can't recruit Mirke after blowing up Benweth using his piano. Do you definitely have the DLC installed? Dumb question maybe, but I'm not 100% sure how free DLCs work and if you have to claim and activate them manually or something. I remember it being a hassle when the game was first out, I could only claim a free DLC while the game was actually running
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 00:13 |
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2house2fly posted:Do you definitely have the DLC installed? Dumb question maybe, but I'm not 100% sure how free DLCs work and if you have to claim and activate them manually or something. I remember it being a hassle when the game was first out, I could only claim a free DLC while the game was actually running That's probably it. Gonna have to try and install them again lol. I did love how I fell backwards into going for the most Looney Tunes ending to that quest possible.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:15 |
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I've started playing PoE 2 with RTWP after 1 wasn't as rough as I thought it would be. Two initial impressions: 1. Ship combat is so much better that it will be hard to go back. 2. I have no idea how I'm going to beat the Oracle of Wael/Beast of Winter without precision usage of Wall of Many Colors, which is my big lategame crutch. DJ_Mindboggler fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Aug 7, 2022 |
# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:19 |
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Tried to start playing Deadfire on my PS5, or at least mess around with character creation a bit Treated to an opening text crawl about the last game (bad), a much more concise bit of Eder musing about the last game before Eothas goes hog wild (good), and then an incredibly slow walk down a hallway with even more narration about the main game (bad) before you can create a character at all. And THEN when I tried to fiddle around with the ranger preset to remake my ranger from POE1 ran into a bug where I couldn't get to my race/class/etc because it would get stuck on naming the companion, and then when I tried to back out of that it kicked me back to the title screen instead of the character creation screen, so the ten minutes are so I went through recreating my POE1 save were for nil! Of all the things the first game was missing, a Bethesda style unskippable 10+ minute walking sequence before you even look at character creation was not a great choice (unless I can skip it on future playthroughs or something) ALSO plain black boxes and white text instead of the first game's lushly bordered dialogue box? Incredible downgrade
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:38 |
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Wolfsheim posted:Of all the things the first game was missing, a Bethesda style unskippable 10+ minute walking sequence before you even look at character creation was not a great choice (unless I can skip it on future playthroughs or something) You can after your first time exiting the Beyond, yes. You just get the little table meeting with Berath that you can mash 1 (or whatever the Dualshock equivalent is for the first option) to get through fast.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:42 |
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Wolfsheim posted:Tried to start playing Deadfire on my PS5, or at least mess around with character creation a bit The recap and ghost walk are skippable after going through it once, but maybe it kicked you out too soon to register. Its an option when choosing new game that was added in one of the early patches . Efb Starks fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Aug 7, 2022 |
# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:49 |
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The beginning is pretty weak. By the time you actually get control of your character you've been given two summaries of the first game and two summaries of the intro to this game. It picks up the instant you get off Prologue Island
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 02:54 |
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That sucks that the console version still isn't as stable as the PC version. I was hopeful that the announced Switch version would mean another round of patching and optimization for console players, but I guess that ended up being a no-go.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 03:02 |
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I bought BG Collection on switch (I never played Siege of Dragonspear and forgot most of BG2) and I couldn't play it properly anyway. It all feels horrible to select actions and especially how you explore dungeons, activate traps, and manage inventory. I was hopeful because tactical RPGs like XCOM actually play great on gamepads, but Infinity Engine games weren't converted well. I never tried PoE1 on console and I can see how it might be more playable. Has anyone tried it?
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 08:55 |
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Man I thought they did the controls pretty good justice on Switch with BG/BG2, so much so I wish I could play the PC EE versions with a controller like that. Maybe I'm a disgusting freak though.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 09:09 |
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I like the slow walk beginning, but I don't compulsively restart games a thousand times. It's not really much longer than being forced to walk to the sofa in Doc Mitchell's house in New Vegas, in my estimation.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 10:46 |
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Aware posted:Man I thought they did the controls pretty good justice on Switch with BG/BG2, so much so I wish I could play the PC EE versions with a controller like that. Maybe I'm a disgusting freak though. Maybe I'm not used to gamepad controls in general. I like Civ6 controls on Switch more than on PC. But I despar when in BG I have to manage the inventory, or when I go through a dungeon... To move into a room I have to select my rogue, press X to go to the action panel, press Right several times to select look for traps mode (I know AI should handle this part but for some reason this option in AI configuration does nothing for me). Then I move somewhere and see a locked trapped chest. In PoE1/2 I deal with it clicking on it twice. In case of BG on Switch I have to select my rogue, press a button to access action panel, select rogueish actions, click on the trap to remove it, then to repeat the whole process again to remove lock. When I look into container itself and it has more items than it can show at a time you'd expect arrow keys to scroll the list... But now, you have to navigate to select the "down" button and click it to scroll the list. Same with actions panel and spell list, for example. Mind you, I've played for several hours and probably almost completed the first stop on the way to Dragonspear. So it's not like I didn't "get" controls, it's just felt like most of my energy was drained by fighting the UI, not the world. Half of my issues come from the way Infinity Engine works but a lot of it could be fixed very easily. So I can imagine PoE1 on switch can work fine.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 13:15 |
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I think that's totally fair criticism and I guess I was more surprised it translated as well as it did. I definitely agree inventory management was a pain, I think I got used to the rest and in my head being able to switch over to mouse on PC for that stuff would be amazing.
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# ? Aug 7, 2022 13:28 |
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I picked this up since it was on sale last week and it has been the first old-school isometric RPG style game that has finally enraptured me like the old classics. It has been a bit overwhelming lore-wise since I only played a few hours of PoE but the writing has still been hugely enjoyable.
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# ? Aug 9, 2022 08:37 |
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Carver posted:I picked this up since it was on sale last week and it has been the first old-school isometric RPG style game that has finally enraptured me like the old classics. Oh man, enjoy the ride. It’s a great game that leads to an even better one with PoE2.
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# ? Aug 9, 2022 16:48 |
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Playing Kingmaker and I'm enjoying it, but man, I really don't see in what ways that is more enjoyable than Pillars. Like, don't get me wrong, it's an impressive game! But also, goddamn, the writing is worse, the art is worse, the UI is slow as molasses because they need to do power point transitions between every screen, there's no fast mode, rest is very slow, the world map is the slowest and clunkiest I've ever used in a videogame of this type and also, it's, uh, based on Pathfinder 1st ed. Now, the last one is a pro for a lot of people, and mind you, there's fun to be had with the amount of combinations available, but it's just so clunky for so little gain, and the moment to moment writing at the start makes me appreciate Pillars' "dry" introduction all that much more.
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# ? Aug 9, 2022 19:37 |
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Kingmaker's not great imo, I don't know if there's many people saying it's better than PoE (either of them). I'm a sucker for any kind of game that involves a kingdom management sidegame, which KM extremely does, and even I couldn't finish it. Wrath of the Righteous on the other hand, is extremely good. I'd rate it above PoE 1, bit of a tossup between it and 2 honestly, I like them both in different ways.
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# ? Aug 9, 2022 19:45 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 20:12 |
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I dunno about goons, but I've definitely heard lots of people talk about how Kingmaker blew the PoE games out of the water, or even lamenting that Obsidian didn't use a tried and true PnP ruleset. As for Wrath of the Righteous, I'm waiting for the Definitive Edition, given it seems to have come out pretty broken at launch.
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# ? Aug 9, 2022 20:48 |