NegativeEdge

It did have groin shots though

Am I the only one who love BG1 more than BG2？ Nah, I prefer 1 by quite a margin, replaying it now in fact (original not EE). I love BG1. I enjoy the danger of low level combat, the huge wilderness maps, companions are less intrusive and there's a different ambiance about it compared to 2 which is hard to describe but I definitely prefer. I remember reading a retrospective on BG2 by the BioWare docs and they talked about how some of the big goals in 2 were to makes sure the player felt like the universe revolved around him, every companion had to hang on his every word etc and I dislike that kind of thing. BG1 feels more like a quest and world where sure you are important but you could also just die to wolves outside Candlekeep and nobody gives a damn. The environmental art design is better in 1 too imo, all the little details in those areas mean that even if they are not content heavy they're a pleasure to explore and just look at.

The smilie is Josh's face shopped on to the guy in American Gothic, implication being he is a dour puritan and not a cool fun-haver. Not sure who the woman is.

Good review. The ennui is so real in this game, I can't get past Act 2. I thought it was because I was picking the wrong class but it's the gameplay, The combat is never fun or dangerous or wild, you really do use the same spells and abilities on everything. It also kind of feels like every time you think of a potentially cool synergy between spells or talents or weapons the game slaps your hand away. Want to start a fight with that spell? combat only, sorry. Think that talents Acc bonus applies to spells? it doesn't. Want to dual wield pistols? you can't. I don't care about engagement just give me some room to try things like that time in BG2 when my wild mage fired off so many time stops, wail of the banshees and gated in so many pit fiends through reckless dweomers that when the game tried to resolve it all it just decided to crash instead. Or that lower level chaos spell that RNGs anybody in the aoe, just anything to make the combat more fun and unpredictable.

All priest and wizard spells are per rest, there should be a small number in the corner of the spell level icon that tells you how many uses you have at that level remaining. At higher levels (9 I believe?) wizard 1st level spells become per encounter rather than per rest. Before that the wizard has arcane assault as his twice per encounter ability (small blue book icon) and Durance has Holy radiance (blue man icon) as a once per encounter ability. Holy radiance can be upgraded through talents and there is another per encounter use called Interdiction which priests can get at level 4. Every ability and spell should say on the tooltip, just underneath its name, whether it is per rest or per encounter.

The PC in PoE has a perfectly plausible reason to go to Defiance Bay, more so than the protagonists in BG and BG2 to go to Nahskel or spellhold. You could argue that in New Vegas the courier has no compelling to reason to do anything other than turn around and leave Vegas which of course would make for a pretty dull game. At some point you have to meet the narrative half way and say yeah OK, I want to go on an adventure. I don't think BG or BG2 executed anything (storywise) better than PoE and even if they did, a well executed turd is still a turd after all. That PoEs story, writing and companions are leagues ahead of those games is even in question really surprises me. BG1 is a by the numbers hero tale and the companions are just walking memes and while BG2 may flesh the characters out it's early BioWare decline all the way so it's just hanging rotting flesh off a pandering carcass (one of the reasons I prefer BG1 to 2 actually). And before anybody mentions Irenicus he's no better, it just seems that way because a very good actor elevated some very bad writing. I think that the writing in Pillars is very strong so far (middle of act 2). Here's a story about a self inflicted collective trauma and how humanity and the world is changed by that, how people try to come to terms with what's happened and its legacy. And it goes beyond the Godhammer. That's the climatic act of brutal arrogance and the crossing of boundaries (the bridge) but it really began with colonial aggression which is why it figures so heavily in the writing and peoples thoughts. It's not just "lore". They know terrible things were done in the name of builidng an empire and you can try and convince yourself that economic might and success justifies it all (the Vallians) but the reality is that going around killing others and taking their lands and sh&! messes you up. Messes all of us up collectively, maybe for good. Eora is stumbling into vicious modernism and just as the first world war concussed and traumatised us, after the godhammer people in Eora are disillusioned and suffering something not unlike a mass psychosis (you don't visit an asylum for no reason), and things are just descending into moral chaos. The first thing you see in Gilded Vale is a huge tree where the only leaves are recently hung residents and yet the town sort of just carries on around it, the people are shell-shocked and subdued. Hoping things get better, which is exactly what Eder says when you ask him why he hasn't left town. Obsidian have said that they write companions to partly reinforce the themes of the work and the mental trauma people are suffering is obviously most directly referenced in Aloth who is a literal schizophrenic. His civilised exterior conceals a trucculent bestial nature that it would arguably serve him better to adopt in the disintergrating world around him. This also ties into the role of Dunryd Row and enlightened, benign ruling elites and their role in society. After the first world war there was a consensus among governments and prominent thinkers (most notably Sigmeund Freud) that human beings had to be tightly controlled because they could not be trusted to not do terrible things to one another and that the best way to achieve this was not through force but pacification. The "bewildered herd" had to be guided by wiser and more benevolent hands to protect them from themselves. When you first visit Lady Webb she tells you that this is the exact role of Dunryd Row and for the exact same reasons. The game asks us to think about how we deal with human nature at its worst and how to move forward after terrible things have happened. Pretty cool stuff for a video game. As I said I haven't completed the game so what it utimately has to say about this is unknown to me but as a meditation on mans inhumantiy to man and how that degrades us all and what that means for the future it is cohesive, thought provoking and well realised. It blows lol iron cirsis big bad man kill daddy, half sister kidnapped and tbh all the other IE games out of the water.

I think 1.04 is definitely harder, on PoTD at least.

Yeah they look like normal young people, not harbingers of decline. I was that age (maybe a little younger) when I first played Baldur's Gate and was knee high to a grasshopper when I played and loved dungeon master. Young people aren't the problem, publishers and developers treating them like idiots is.

"Three wagons grope blindly..." I should have picked Chanter... "Three wagons grope blindly..." Why did I put that many points in Resolve? "Three wagons grope blindly..." They say rangers suck but I've always wanted my own lion... ad infinitum

Either I'm going mad or PoTD is harder in 1.04. Eder is getting stunlocked by shadows on the way to Caed Nua, to the extent that he can'e even act at all, same with Xaurips in the Compass. I used to breeze these parts without even pausing the game with the same companions and equipment.

You have the right idea with fan of flames and any fire damage but fire isn't the only thing shades are weak to, The have low fortitude and so anything that targets that defense should be considered. Durance can be useful here as I believe barbs of condemnation targets fortitude. Consider giving Aloth a shield in his 2nd weapon set off hand so that when they teleport all up in his grill (and they always do) you can switch and give his deflection a boost. Don't rule out Chill Fog either as although the Shades and shadows are resistant to the cold damage that isn't what makes the spell good, it targets fortitude and will still inflict the blinded status which should level the playing field a bit. See if you can bait out their teleport before dropping it though. For high risk/high reward lols just have Aloth toss as many rolling flames around as possible and cross your fingers.

Either way it doesn't work and is asking for a new installer, which is a 6.3 gig re-download. Back to Underrail it is then! Edit: Looks as though you can just re-download the 1.03 patch, install and then apply the 1.04 patch.

What hotfix? there isn't one How can it be working all fine for you if GoG didn't include the hotfix?

Wow, 10!

But that sounds like a great job?

I wonder if the devs feel like a protective parent just before their kids first day at school? Cos I definitely don't feel a little bit like that after following this for 2 and a half years because that would be stupid. go get 'em Project Eternity!

Nah, you don't get to tell people how to abbreviate or use terminology, sorry. But I'm definitely looking forward to playing PoE, or Project Eternity. I'm going to make a Cipher because their spells look fun, was going to go Ranger but the pets don't look that great.

GoGalicious!

: http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/291650/manuals/pe-game-manual.pdf?t=1427236869 NOTE: manual appears to be outdated. Will change link if it gets updated. Thanks for reminder Justinian

You've pre-loaded? where did you buy it from?

Is it wrong that the thought of streamers dieing in droves to disengagement attacks makes me happy?

Maybe it would help if there was tooltip, an auto pause on disengagement and maybe a reassuring message to the player that it wasn't their fault and doesn't reflect badly on them as a person. If it keeps happening the game should offer to lower the difficulty, skip combat in a kind of 'story mode' and finally; to play itself and ask the player to imagine it's a cinematic experience, provided going to the cinema involves being jettisoned 300 feet in to the air and made to watch the action at a cavalier oblique angle. I just think that anything other than expecting people to RTFM, think for themselves or figure it out should be considered.

Dude you're a good mod, not just for this but you seem like a chill guy and reasonable person whenever I see you post, kudos to you. Most places have some way to deal with self promotion and I don't begrudge anybody their hype, would just rather not see streamers fishing for an audience here in GD or outside a sticky or whatever.

GMT is PST + 7

Yeah a megathread is a good idea.