The Loyal Nub

Only got an hour in last night but first impressions were very good. Love the score, first and foremost, and was pleasantly surprised by how easily sucked in I was to the story. Can't wait to get back to it this weekend!

Dragon Age: Inquisition, Mass Effect series, and Total War: Attila.

I like that there are a lot of classes and more in fact than the standard RPG of the day. I don't think 11 classes is the problem or the size of the game world. I agree that animations need some improvement and I think they agree too and I suspect it's one of the things the delay is meant to address. Animations particularly don't work well in the combat side of things and combat needs to be looked at too. I also do not need voice-acting. I can read well enough. It might turn off the more ADD gamers but let's face it they weren't playing this anyway nor were AAA title buffs. The audience for this is probably the one playing D:OS right now and that game sold well enough despite not having AAA graphics (although they are better than what I've seen so far here). You seem to be rather dour about this already. I think they are doing the right things. They released a beta or what they called one (I think it was an alpha) and got a strong reaction to it. They re-assessed their state of things or their perception of them and were tough enough to admit that it wasn't where they wanted it to be. I think they're doing the right things...so far. No need to panic yet!

Believe it or not there are. There are also very likely to be people who will think PoE is a massive waste of time even if we all love it here and reviewers like it. It's how the world works. There are always people of a different opinion or perception of things.

I will probably be playing the besheezus out of DA:I from late November anyway (probably) and looking into the early new year you do have The Witcher so yeah they'd be smart to delay to the end of March or into April just to take advantage of the market and demand.

Sensible decision. It clearly was not ready for a late-2014 release. I think there is a good game here but what I've seen of it so far has been so rough. I think it will benefit from some extra months polish. I'd rather a developer took their time to get it right then rush it out and have it disappoint many.

Maybe it's a Doctor Who sort of thing? You know some weird space/time/dimensional sort of thing.

I will but I've got a feeling it's related to the "deep wounds" ability Fiebras mentions the "missing stringers" have. I think that's the cause because party members they were targeting went down fast. In most of the fights he targeted the Priest first and that char was down in seconds. They need to do something with that ability or any time you encounter it in game it's going to be a gamebreaker. Might limit the amount of times you can use it one fight to say "once" if it's going to be that powerful.

Its probably the *Missing String* Archers. They use Deep Wounds so a portion of the damage you do to them gets redirected to the party member they are targetting. I had a chanter so everything was directed to skeletons but you can actually have your wizard facetank it with Corrosive Siphon if you are fighting a large enough group. That thing heals for so much I was constantly having my Wizard´s stamima going up and down like a pogo stick. He had literaly no health at the end though. It seems ranged warbow monks might be the thing to go. Also, Skaen enemies drop so much good loot on Hard. Im rather grateful for the stash mechanic and am starting to find it less and less annoying with each playthrough. Now if only consumables and scrolls actually worked in combat I can see the "this is your quickbar, not your inventory" design working. Though I still think there should be larger individual party member inventories instead of quickbar inventories. Though the quickbar inventory size is probably so as to not clutter up the main abilities bar with consumables. But you could always have a separate ability sub-menu for consumables and scrolls for every character like we have for spells which even if they maintain the current inventory system I wish they would implement. It was a lone "missing string" archer. I will try your method of attack. If it fails I may see if I can bypass that encounter as he is in a spot where I don't think I really need to kill him to get anywhere. @Sensuki I was playing off a saved load but I'd already executed several moves and fights before this encounter. But maybe the save causes the invincibility bug? Oh wait I recall now that I did quicksave after killing two Cultist guards before I encountered him. Hmm.

Feel a little better knowing this might be a bug. I'll go to another area and leave this amazing Archer alone.

There's a Cultist archer I encountered in the Dyrford Ruins last night that is ridiculously overpowered. Wiped my party 7 times last night in seconds even after I had rested them so that they were at full strength! I've knocked him down. Hit him with fireballs, more knockdown, lightning every thing I could see I tried and pause and check and "barely injured." I think I found Amazing Indesctructoid Man! I think I will wait for more patching. Combat, stamina recovery are completely wonk in this right now. This was also on "easy."

Well my second impressions are generally positive. Pathfinding is much improved but most importantly I can see my party a little better now against the terrain and in combat. I also think the icons for spells and actions are much improved so kudos to the developers on that. Combat still seems too fast but I may have to get used to that and rely on pause as my friend. I'll play around a bit more with it this weekend. Didn't get a chance to test saves yet as my party were wiped by the third beetle encounter!

The patch was uploaded too late for me to play it last night but everything seems really positive about it. I look forward to taking it for a spin when I get off work today!

I hope this gets a patch soonish so I can get at it again. But I understand they want to take their time ironing out as much as they can. I'd rather they took their time and care with this anyway.