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A german shepherd, a doberman and a cat die and go to heaven. There they meet god who sits on his throne and he asks them some questions. "what do you believe in?" says god to the german shepherd "i believe in obedience and loyalty to my master" says the dog "good" says god "come sit next to me on the right. and you, what do you believe in doberman?" "i believe in the safety and well being of my master" says the dog "then come sit next to me on the left" says god and then addresses the cat "and what do you believe in?" the cat looks at god calmly and says "i believe you are sitting on my chair"

Not at this point of Early Access. Possibly not later either. Franchise background (you may want to skip ahead) Neocore's King Arthur as a game franchise started with King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame. It was mostly a Total War knock off with far deeper roleplaying aspects: more stats, skills and equipment than any TW at the time, choose your own adventure quests, and a morality chart that tracked the player's alignment on two axes - Righteous/Tyrant and Christianity/Old Faith - unlocking extra skills and units. It got two campaign expansions Saxons and Druids that allowed you to play the game as two different rulers with their own campaigns. Two smaller expansions added some units, items, and two more knights to recruit. A fifth, stand-alone expansion, Fallen Heroes, had a stronger rp character focus and was badly received. The game was followed by King Arthur 2 and it's pre-order bonus prequel stand alone dlc mini campaign Dead Legions. King Arthur 2 basically slimmed down everything from the original game. Players now had 3 specific heroes and only those three could lead armies. This gave the devs more control of what players could, but more importantly couldn't do. As every army in the game had a max size, this meant the devs could always know the max number of units a player would have in the game. They also simplified the game's economy, removing taxation of provinces etc. The decisions alienated a lot of fans of the original game. Combined with smaller enemy variety, as you spend a lot of time fighting the same line up of fomorian daemons over and over and over again, meant that the Steam forum at the time wasn't very positive (though not as toxic as Steam fora can get). The fact that Neocore is terrible at optimizing their games didn't help. The game got a couple of patches but no DLC. A promised patch never showed and the community manager disappeared. From a fan's point of view it appeared to be a complete failure. After Van Helsing and Inquisitor Neocore returned to the franchise. Knight's Tale was advertised as: "a Role-playing Tactical Game - a unique hybrid between turn-based tactical games (like X-Com) and traditional, character-centric RPGs." Most kickstarter backers and customers stopped reading right there and said "take my money". That is a problem that is now coming to bite Neocore, who had followed up with: "The story campaign puts a huge emphasis on moral choices, which have significant consequences in a rogue-lite structure" using a term that may not mean what they think it means. Keep the term rogue-lite in mind though, as we'll come back to it. Anyone looking at the kickstarter had to scroll down a lot to read this: "Reloading is not an option in Knight’s Tale – as you make your tough choices, the fun comes from dealing with severe consequences. " I hadn't read that. If I had, maybe I would have stayed away. Because Neocore proves they are who they have always been - a dev studio that does not care what the players want. Not because they are protecting an artistic vision, but because they *know* what is fun and what is right. Probably why they did not really look at the games of the genres they are dipping into. If they had, they would have noticed that Iron Man in XCOM for example was an optional mode. They would not have needed to go from Autosave at the beginning of a mission and at the end of a mission, to making a game mode where you are allowed to save on the world map. What they have not implemented and are not sure they will ever add, as it does go against their vision of the game is: Save & Exit during missions. Once you are on a mission, you either play it or quit and start from the last autosave. It is part of the "rogue-lite" aspect mentioned earlier. Neocore believes you do not need to save during missions, because missions are short. 20 minutes at most. Only, they are not really. Not always. A specific story mission lovingly coined by the community the "nightmare mission" (because of the nightmares you fight, not because of the difficulty of the mission) can take a lot longer to figure out. But let's talk actual Gameplay: The game is split into two parts: the world map and the missions. On the map you upgrade Camelot, assign heroes to be healed, to train. You buy from the merchant. You level up your heroes and manage their inventory. You make some choices (do you execute the surviving brigands from the last mission or do you give them a second chance? Do you let Christians build roadside shrines?). You spend little time here as you just do the in between missions stuff and move to the next mission. You take up to four heroes onto missions. During a mission you run around with your whole party using WASD. When you meet enemies the game goes into turn based. Sometimes you can then choose your party positioning. Most of the times they will just step up based on how they were running at the time. Party formation is controlled similar to IE games and similar to IE games heroes don't really always stick to their spot in the party... Heroes have action points - on average around 8 it seems. A normal melee attack costs 3 Action Points. Some Action Points can be reserved for the next turn. Heroes have Armour, Health Points and Vitality. HP and Vitality is similar to Pillars. Once the HP are gone, you start losing Vitality, which you can't heal with a potion. Armour reduces damage but can be shredded similar to XCOM. Every attack in the game shreds armour. Whenever you take vitality damage, you hero suffers an injury, giving them a persistent debuff until you heal them at the cathedral in Camelot - unless your hero has an Injury Token and can spend it to ignore the injury. Mission difficulty comes mostly through self reviving Lost, totems that keep spawning enemies, and waves of enemies. It likes spawning endless archers, who will always get some shots in before you reach them. As a result difficulty is basically a matter of "how much damage can you soak". I got lucky and my Mordred got loot that lets him restore one point of armour on kill, meaning my main tactical thinking is how can enemies attack him and my other heroes reduce the hp of those enemies so he can kill them off and get armour back. As encounters are in small areas with minimal cover and most of the time you don't get to deploy your heroes, any real tactical planning is rather limited. You try to efficiently take out opponents before they can damage you because there is nothing you can do about them damaging you other than killing them. The game has limited healing during the mission. Every hero can carry one healing potion. There are limited campfires around the map that allow you to rest and regain either a percentage of lost armour or of lost health. Heroes can level up between missions and equip stuff. Leveling up allows you to spend skill points on things like a Cleave attack or a Power attack or a passive damage boost. Equipment is rather boring. You do not find new weapons or armour. You find new runes for them. It is the same as equipping a new sword, only that thematically you put modelling putty in the old rune and inscribe a new one. Basically it means that the game only needs one model per hero which does not alter based on equipment. It does take part of the fun out of new equipment, as all you loot is new sets of stats for your existing equipment. It also means your hero will never differ much: Mordred will always be the dude with the sword and shield. Balin will always be the dude with the two handed ... axe? Tristan will always carry two swords. If a hero dies they are dead. Unless they were critical to the mission, then you fail and need to restart from the autosave. Mission failure is not an option: once you are in a mission you either keep trying until you succeed or you restart the campaign. Or uninstall. It is funny how devs never realize there is that third option. There are planned to be around 30 unique recruitable heroes in the final version, though based on your morality only some will be available to you. Currently, early on, when you only have a handful of heroes, if a hero dies you may as well restart from the beginning. Writing: The writing is not up to the standard of previous Neocore games. The English needs some proofreading. But even then, that can't fix the content. Mordred is a brat. "Are your sons as ugly as you?" does not make me feel that I am playing the dark knight who brought down a kingdom but a brat. It seems to mellow down a bit after the intro mission. Possibly because the very first feedback they got on releasing the EA was me saying on Discord that "I like the setting, but I don't like playing as Mordred" who isn't dark but a jerk. Most narration comes from the mission description and some comments by the Lady of the Lake during missions. Heroes will have a bit of story in the mission they are met and may trigger events on the world map after missions (whatsherface wants to host a tournament - do you host it for her so she doesn't get all the fame? Do you say no? Do you let her do the hosting? (+1 loyalty with all heroes / -1 loyalty with her / +3 loyalty with her)). And that's it. As tactics games go there isn't much tacticing. It is better than cash grab XCOM clones like Falling Skies or Narcos. But it is also not memorable or does anything to recommend it. And the writing early on just isn't strong enough to recommend it for the setting. King Arthur: Knight's Tale - It's a game. It Exists.

forgot to mention one o' our major gripes 'bout the defenders o' domestic authoritarianism. the police state handbook is a wonderful guide for what trump and barr did last summer and what the chinese do every spring, summer, fall and winter. the thing is, the chinese does better. cracking skulls is only 1/2 o' the effective police state approach. you gotta spend money too. whether is keeping pensions robust or infrastructure projects, you gotta spend money if you are gonna, "beat the f***," outta resistance elements. crack skulls is not a solution w/o investment. cop training in the US, such as it is, took many decades to become quasi-homogenized. how we got to the point where regardless if you is in florida or minnesota, any indication o' a contempt o' cop fail by a citizen is making reasonable a swift and immediate physical response is kinda complex. the fact such force is reasonable and more likely if you are minority is equal disturbing. regardless, in the US we already got a good start on the brutality aspect authoritarians admire. is the money aspect where we come up woeful short. carrot or stick is actual a misnomer for the would be authoritarian regime. beatings is considered necessary and desirable, but so too is the rewards and the visible benefits o' embracing the soulless autocrat. send troops into portland and chicago and weehawken (why not weehawken,) is pointless if you aren't willing to spend money in the same burgs and townships. trump and barr were monstrous for embracing the unconstitutional and overt authoritarian police state handbook recommendations on protest suppression but they were also unforgivable stoopid for failing to recognize that if you is gonna implement such brutality then you need pay for the right to do so by making real improvements in the lives of folks living in the places where you is trampling freedoms and protesters simultaneous. the people will happily embrace evil, but evil and cheap is unforgivable. HA! Good Fun!

Started watching this last night. The first episode was very good. It followed a family with a girl with epilepsy as they are matched to a service dog that can help her. It was definitely worth the time.

That looks pretty good. I... almost always skip opening credits unless they're unique for each episode. The only instance where I've always sat through all opening and closing credits when I had the chance to skip them (i.e. not while watching Sailor Moon on TV in the 90ies) so far has been Violet Evergarden. Cardcaptor Sakura's second outro I watched every time too, but only that. That was just great, a pity it lasted only a short while - 10 episodes or so, I think. Woops. Spoilers, I guess. Sumimasen! The outro/closing credits of Violet Evergarden were a great way to wind down, listen to the song that I actually really like and to... let the episode settle in, I guess. I think I posted that before. Of course sometimes it cheats and plays the closing credits over the final footage of the episode, and you can't possibly skip it. On the other hand it only does that rarely and to great effect. The Sailor Stars into I watched every time too. For the new song, and because it felt like the right thing to do with the rewatch coming to an end. So, no, watching intros or outros isn't really a mark of quality for me. In terms of closing credits it's a mark of impact, I guess. Except for Cardcaptor Sakura... that was just magic. All of it, really. I definitely posted this one before! Episode 9 of Love Live! was genuinely great. It did have one instance of Nozomi threatening to rub Hitori's, uhm, you know the drill by now, but otherwise that was just really good. Still never really going to like the animation. Nothing of it, really, from the character designs, to the shot composition and the direction, there's really nothing that stands out (except for the fanservice when it does happen and is paid undue attention to), but there are times when I find myself wondering if Honoka was meant to be a deliberate copy of Usagi, just without magic and more butt-wiggling. Onwards to the beach thing, now. Wish me luck...

It's surprisingly fun. Here's the real proof of how much I like the show - this is the intro that has played at the beginning of every episode: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/m3x25rf5ivfqetc/94xP8kTeJT.mp4 It's unreasonably long...but I've sat through each one and I can't imagine not doing so in the future unless the intro changes for the (much) worse for the second season or I don't like the second season. Being willing to sit through the intro of every episode is a pretty good measurement of how much I like a show, I think, . Similarly, after watching the intro of every episode of Sailor Moon up until SuperS, I started skipping SuperS's intros after only watching a handful of episodes of it since I was already having significant problems with it...and then I watched the intro of every Sailor Stars episode. I'm sure it'll be just great and not at all unnecessary or weird or stupid, . (e): @majestic lmao, this twelfth episode, just a little snippet of the plot at the very start of it:

I think you just sold that to me regardless of how the second season turns out. Which might prove to be an issue if the other episodes are terrible, but I don't know when I will get around to watching it. It sure looks I was wrong to dismiss it out of hand based on the discourse on it. Live and learn, I guess. A pity, really. The third Madoka movie has an instance of literal foreshadowing! Sometimes, you know, I think about asking a resident poster who is a history teacher and triathlon buff to watch Sailor Moon, or at least try to get his daughter to watch it. She's the perfect age for that and should be able to appreciate the cousins, but then I get afraid that we'd be getting posts defending SuperS as "silly fun" that's still "all right" to watch. Like his posts about about the new Star Wars films. Not that I think he'd watch Sailor Moon, anyway. I'm two episodes away from the Love Live! beach outing, I'll try to get to that today. Well, today will work for sure (just past midnight here), but I mean, now. I'm kind of dreading the horrors of what creepy grandpa Nozomi is going to do. Ideally not join them at the beach, but with her, uhm, weighty arguments there's no way in hell the animators are passing up that opportunity to draw them in swimwear.

Ranma, episode 11, a short (edit: not so short) synopsis of the episode (along with a few screenshots) in case you're wondering what kind of show this is: Anyone with any kind of sense hates that. The people who don't just convince themselves "it's a little different I guess but I still love it" even though it's objectively waaay worse, . Although doing that is complete nonsense, it's also an ability I'm rather jealous of - would be nice to so easily like and be content with such things! Yeah, that ship has sailed on Madoka!

I figured out what bothers me the most about King Arthur: Knight's Tale (the turn based tactics game in Neocore's King Arthur game series). The premise of the game is that King Arthur and Sir Mordred fought in an epic final confrontation which left both dead. The dying King Arthur's was taken by ship to Avalon but it sunk in a storm. Something happened to Arthur, and now the land is twisted and grimdark and people rise from the dead. Most of the knights can't die. Or they do die, but then they get back up. So does Mordred. And you play Mordred freshly raised from the dead, tryign to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. On your way you collect a band of other knights, all basically dead and risen again and again and again. The reason they tag along with you is simple: they hope you aren't very good at the game and will let them die. Because in Knight's Tale death doesn't stick, unless you die during a mission with Mordred, since those have permadeath. A game who's main premise is that the characters can't die has permadeath as a main feature.

I'm just easily entertained, and a little enjoyment is usually enough to drown out a lot of bad - but overall, you're probably right. Guess there's a reason why I have a thousand hours of time played on Master of Orion 3. It's the other way around for me, the good sticks around much longer, for some reason. Plus there's always the chance that later seasons of Love Live! don't up the ante on the silly fanservice and keep it less... ah, who am I kidding. This will only get worse the more episodes they do, won't it? That concept can't last longer than a season... Guess I'll see it when I see it. There's one exception. When something was really good, and then becomes less so, that is a much worse situation for me. Hence why I keep watching two episodes of Love Live! for each Clear Card episode. Objectively, Clear Card is better than Love Live!, even with all its problems. It's just... it could be so much more. edit: You should have stuck with Madoka, the third movie is really good!

Its a good game and definitely worth it. I literally didnt have 1 serious crash. I used one or 2 Mods with it like making the combat more realistic and tactical . Go to Nexus Mods and spend sometime seeing if anything appeals to you Dont expect engrossing Romance arcs Gorthfuscious, that was my one minor complaint

Not to nitpick but your specific example are not the product of an economic model. Rather is is the product of and inept attempt to manipulate an economic system for the purposes of political gain or to solve some perceived social ill (which amounts to the same thing really)

Bought Mass Effect: Andromeda - Deluxe Edition on Steam.... I may never get around to play it or it may suck badly or whatever. worst case scenario, it was less than 10 dollars, so a loss of about two cappuccinos. Best case scenario, I might actually play through it some day, unlike Dragon Age Inquisition, which is till gathering dust on my drive

If I had the answer to that, i would run for the presidency.... (in some country somewhere, as I don't qualify for US president, not being born there). I can observe a problem, not necessarily come up with a viable solution. I just don't think an increase in police brutality to crush dissent and unrest is the way forward. It will only make society implode eventually. Like the housing bubbles you know? Each crash will become worse than the next until someone realizes this current economic model doesn't work in a sustainable way

Packing up to hit the road. Sunny and I are going to Little Rock for some business then to Milwood State Park for fishing & Camping. During the week reservations are easy. Try that on a weekend and you’ll be SOL

*sigh* and yet you somehow thought it relevant to point out how political loyalty revealed through trump voting were a meaningful observation relative to this issue? is a forest for the trees error in any event. you are deflecting whether intentional or not. let's not revisit bruce support o' authoritarianism. lets ignore the causation v. correlation error. the important issue is whether bruce is genuine anti lib or not? fine. btw, Gromnir also suggested "defund" of police were foolish. that said, most cities only made token efforts to do so. whole lotta talk w/o much action. reason why were 'cause while folks who don't live in those south side neighborhoods o' chicago or similar think defund sounds swell 'cause cops is evil and whatnot, people who live in crime plagued neighborhoods gotta less enthusiastic pov on decreased police presence. john oliver telling us how there should be no drug warrants at all 'cause bad things happen during the execution o' such warrants has never had to share same building with a gang doing 24/7 drug business, and not the kinda drug business he might have seen while in college or on the set o' some tv show. am hopeful the progressives wakeup and take notice o' how eric adams message resonated in the nyc mayor primaries. 'course part o' the problem is that "defund" became the label for any effort to allocate police resources better or different. right wing media obfuscation. again, biden supports increased funding to police which emphasize dispute resolution training and mental health support and whatnot, and that were the approach numerous "defund" cities took. nevertheless, biden is usual accused o' supporting cop defund. also, expect such changes to have a positive impact immediate, particular post pandemic, is foolishness. last year we posted the camden efforts at defunding. is worth rereading. issue is more complex than defund v. no defund. regardless, crime is up in metros regardless o' whether they defunded or not, whatever defund means 'cause is hardly a term with a uniform definition though you wouldn't realize such from a bruce post or a tucker carlson take. given how crime is up regardless o' efforts to defund, am thinking a rather more nuanced look at causes may be beneficial rather than suggesting defund is the cause or even a significant cause. HA! Good Fun!

Yesterday, I've started and finished Deadlight: Directors Cut from GOG. Pretty nice and fun zombie platformer, with occasional shooting and for me very frustrating Second Act . Despite that, I've enjoyed the gameplay, even though platformers are not my cup of tea, and I tend to be very bad playing them . This game was not an exception, so the 5 and half hours to beat the game was perfect for me.

Its a good sales number especially considering many lovers of Bioware games have played all the previous ME games. So I doubt I will buy the LE because I know the narrative and it wont be new or exciting So this is good news and hopefully it means new gamers getting into Bioware which bodes well for the company

I'm watching the 1993-1994 OVA of Jojo's Adventure (which I think was the first animation for it to ever come out?) that covers some...specific arc(s) or something of the show, not the general anime that covers multiple arcs. KP would know more about the specifics. I'm watching this OVA because I don't really enjoy the general anime and my guy Satoshi Kon was involved in the making of the OVA (the entire thing was co-written by him, and he did some directing and animation). Man, you're way too forgiving - when I see too much of what I dislike in too short of a time period of a show, I automatically start completely forgetting all of the less ungood parts and start getting mad and annoyed at the entire thing, and the show would then have to prove that it's *not* going to keep being bad somehow...which hardly ever happens for whatever period of time I keep trying to stick with it (in regards to anime, My Hero Academia and Madoka Magica are probably the two I stuck with for the longest, and BOY were both of those mistakes for me! ).

I am aware that Zakaria jumped ship due to Trump. That doesn't make him a Democrat any more than, say, Liz Cheney.

He makes some valid points (Democrat legislatures are, indeed, often incompetent) but his dismissal of "Republican advantages", to push his own theories is disengenuous. The Republican advantage in state legislatures is almost exclusively a matter of demographics. As for businesses leaving California to Texas, one could argue that it could even help Democrats in Texas, although it shouldn't make that much of a difference either way. Also, Zakaria used to be a Reagan conservative. Just because he isn't the Trumpiest Trumper that ever Trumped, it doesn't make him a Democrat. Hence why he is basically pushing a narrative that spending by Democrat state governments should be curtailed.

Depends on the difficulty. At lower difficulties Rogues are great - but the more enemies the less impactful a Rogue becomes imo. Fighter is sturdy but boring most of times in my experience, but Charge - although late game stuff - can turn a boring Fighter into fun. A Rogue variant I liked to play a lot was Godansthunyr (hammer) + Badgradr's Barricade (bashing shield). Both sturdy (enough) and good damage output as well as decent single target CC. Before getting those items you can use any other hammer (there are some good early ones - or you can simply chose another main weapon) + bashing shield (the first one is Larder Door). The thing with Badgradr's Barricade is that it procs Thrust of Tattered Veils without limit per encounter. So every crit will proc it. And since spells work with Deathblows (not Sneak Attack) it will get +100% DMG if the target has two afflictions. Godansthunyr has two DMG types and stuns on crit which is also nice. They also look great together imo. Both Fighter as well as Rogue make good spell binding users. You know: using items that hold some spells per rest. Rogue has Deathblows which works with spells and Fighter has enormous accuracy due to starting values and Disciplined Barrage. It can spice both classes up to be able to sling some spells. For Rogue I would prefer damaging ones while the Fighter is better with CC components imo. Also stuff like Prestidigitator's Missiles (for Rogue) and Aspirant's Mark (Fighter) are not bad. It's like a mini spell mastery since 1/encounter.

atmosphere are one of the strength of poe but deadfire manage to convey depressive and desperate with mostly sunny tropical environment instead of boring standard fantasy with gun and slightly weird aedyran pronunciation the other strength would be saint war story line not in deadfire due to beening in a massive statue body walking around high level combat are faster in poe but few part are more interesting and player no longer need to constantly check if item give the same bonus was much better design

So far it's easily the most upbeat Lovecraftian game I've ever played. I like the aesthetic. I've long been a proponent of stylized art styles. They generally are less taxing on hardware AND can look better than realistic, provided it's a well realized and consistent aesthetic. As an aside, Nintendo, in particular, have a long history of having some of the best looking games in any generation and often on underpowered hardware, through the power of a great stylized aesthetic. Our heroine, Norah, is awfully chipper for someone whose husband is missing, has an unknown ailment, is all alone on a mysterious island, and who heard some weird alien (read: Old God) speech in a dream. Then again, she's on this amazingly lush and vibrant tropical island, which is a far cry from the foggy, dark, and dreary New England fishing villages I'm used to in Lovecraft. Maybe she'll change her tune later on in the game when (presumably) the Cthulhu intensifies.

"Hypersonic" is the new black, which is the same as the old black. What if I told you, that with my own two hands, I help assemble hypersonic missiles back in the early 90's. Say hello to the AIM-54 Phoenix missile. Weve been able to make rockets go very fast for a long time.

Hope it fits your needs!

Ascendant Cipher/Helwalker Monk is amazing. Wounds increase damage, which increases focus generation. Wounds also increase intelligence, which increases time of ascendancy.

lol, don't worry about it. I like that your portraits also fit PoE's style. I'm adding them to my collection as well, since we share the same taste. I'll go back to working 9-to-5 this week, so I'll probably not be able to do these so often anymore, but you can send one more if you wish!

No hardbass soundtrack, not worth watching.

For a beguiler/troubadour with a sword and board build, I'd recommend that you wield Sasha's Singing Scimitar and Lethandria's devotion in one weapon set, and then Grave Calling (to be replaced by Seeker's Fang eventually) and the Outworn Buckler. The nice thing about this setup is if you rapidly alternate between the two weapon sets, you will heal yourself and remove time from negative conditions. Instead of an arquebus, I'd recommend the Kitchen Stove in your third weapon set; thunderous report is crazy with a cipher or rogue. Your stats look fine. And definitely get the chants and invocations that cause afflictions, as they'll all be extended by lingering echoes. With a beguiler, definitely get Phantom Foes ASAP. One cast of it can fill up your focus if you hit a large group of foes. Make sure that you get the Empty Soul (more accuracy for powers that target will) and The Complete Self (+5 focus every time you crit with a cipher power). With these two abilities plus the beguiler's innate bonus to focus when hitting afflicted foes, you'll never lack focus when fighting mobs. You might struggle a bit against single bosses however.

Well, Sacred Immolation is quite good... the self damage is very high but with enough healing you can survive rel. easily (esp. if not tanking at the same time). Also it can run while you are casting an invocation at the same time which is cool action economy. Can't do that with more invocations. Maybe check out "Their Champion Braved the Horde alone". It gives you "energized" which will let you interrupt all enemies you land a crit against. This includes the pulses of Sacred Immolation which might crit enemies, offensive chants that may crit the enemy with every cycle and of course also your weapon attacks. It can be very good if you combine those things and disable enemies by simply landing crits/interrupts "on the fly" as secondary effect.

for turn-based mode, dex is pretty unimportant; i've even seen arguments suggesting that tanking dex is a good idea so you go last and can make sure your spells are never interrupted. Generally speaking Con is also pretty unimportant, because offense > defense. Resolve is really all-or-nothing. i play on PotD and Con/Resolve are my least invested stats. In certain situations [tank/deflection builds] I'll pump max resolve, but there's hardly ever a situation where I actually invest points into con. I know that some people don't like the idea of dumping stats (I hate dumping), but I'm going to suggest that at the very least dropping resolve to 8 will give you a couple more extra points without noticably hurting you that bad. My general finding is that might and perception are roughly equivalent in their net effect on your damage, and if you just care about damage, you should roughly balance them (for the same reason that maximizing the area of a 4-sided figure is to make it a square). This is only true for real time though, the graze range is huger in turn-based mode, so i think might may be better in general. However, depending on your build this rough guidance may not be the same. IMO for a Fury Druid, for example, you really really want your Relentless Storm, and Returning Storm to successfully debuff enemies (on turn-based the storms only stun on crit making it even more important to have high acc), so it may be that perception is more useful. You're also not going to be doing any healing as a fury druid, so it's not like might is going to help you heal anyway. Either way, intellect is a king stat for a caster, and is pretty good still for non-casters. On TB mode there are some awkward rounding thresholds for this, but I feel like if you go fury druid route, it's a no brainer to maximize this since you get larger AoE as well. (edit - one suggestion for TB fury druid stat spread: 13 m, 10 c, 10 d, 18 int, 18 p, 8 r; choose a background and race at your discretion. on rtwp i would invest less in perception and might and more in dexterity) i would also suggest just get going with something so you can get a better feel for the game, and don't be too worried about abandoning a character that's not working out.

Since you wanted to build a good Rapier user in the first place I wouldn't spend many points on spells. Instead I would make a collection of useful grimoires so that I can cast most spells I want from those books and only pick a few spells that aren't covered by the grimoires - or which I want to always have access to. Then I'd put most points into passives and some fighter actives. If you wanted to stack crit chances you missed Disciplined Strikes' 25% hit to crit conversion (you took Tactical Barrage). DS would stack with Merciless Gaze and One-Handed Style (not additively but still very nice) and you can get Smart by using Infuse with Vital Essence instead (no +1 PL from Acute though). I personally would def. go with a small shield and pick weapon & shield style. The good thing about Battlemage is the ability to stack very high deflection numbers and since deflection has increasing returns you should substitute that with a shield. Also kind of stacks with the "no flanking malus" from Squid's Grasp. The +12 ACC from one handed usage and -style are nice - but later in the game not as impactful as the added deflection. And you'll have plenty of conversion from Disciplined Strikes and Merciless Gaze anyway. Good fighter abilites that I would never skip as a Battlemage are Armored Grace (with Devil of Caroc Breastplate and a pet like Abraham you'll kind of have no recovery penalty but good AR and also +2 Discipline. Also looks rad on a fencer imo), Unbending, Refreshing Defense (it stacks with most of the Wizard's deflection buffs except Llengrath's Safeguard), Superior Deflection (if going for high deflection to start with) and such. Especially with Wall of Draining having Refreshing Defense and Unbending makes you almost unkillable (except one-shots) which is very powerful.

At an early point in the game, you have to make a binding choice, which of three candidates becomes your 8th party member. A paladin, a bard or a priestess. I went with the high and mighty upper class snob priestess... I still wish I could cart her over the edge to a long, slow, plummeting death. She really gets on my nerves At some point, you get a side mission to find her missing cousin Eugene. Turns out he has become a leader of the local cult of Slanoosh, god of perversion. Infiltrating the hidden abode, having made my way past the bouncers. The priestess (or wizardess, one of the two) did warn me, I better go into this with my eyes wide shut (obvious movie reference)

In all honesty even Barbie's Horse Adventures is better game than Anthem

I don't know if there is. However one is a heavily scripted experience with a focus on jump scares, and the other is a more sandbox, free-form, atmosphere based game. I was frequently frustrated by Exodus' faux-open world, in the sense that levels don't even try to conceal the fact that the player is being constantly funneled to where the designer wants them to be in order to trigger the next cutscene or QTE. I'm not saying it's bad design, just that it's not for me and not what I was expecting when going in. Not sure the chart you posted is on point regarding the fans, but it kinda is when it comes to designing a survival horror game.

Recap by the driver of the robbery video I link a while back.

I absolutely think that choice and reactivity is important, but for me how interesting those choices are is more important that how many they are or how much unique content they have. For example there is a big central conflict between two factions in BG3 and I feel there is a right way to proceed. There are few other ways one can handle the situation, but those others are **** paths - and not selfish ****, as if: I am screwing other people over, but it benefits me. Just yolo ****. I intentionally created an evil rogue character, and most of the time I couldn't justify following the evil path.

all I can say is I would not have been disappointed.

It's more correct to say that Baldur's Gate was a flagship IP two decades ago. While using Baldurs Gate 3 as the title was an obvious attempt to cash in on nostalgia, I think the big budget is mostly because WotC wanted a big game along with the new TV series to milk the IP. As such they'd probably throw many at anything they thought would be commercially successful, which is unfortunately the Forgotten Realms.

Welp looks like the most unique build was saved for last also dont forget what we win if this is confirmed

Shyla, may I ask you to check what the latest official word is on the Deadfire novella that was promised during the Fig campaign? It hasn't been released yet and there have been no updates since the end of the campaign. I understand there can be any number of perfectly valid reasons for being unable to deliver the novella—it's just that being in the dark doesn't feel particularly amazing. Thanks!