Jasta11

Priests are ridiculously powerful in this fight. Not only are you swarmed with Vessels (making for an extra juicy Holy Radiance) but the Alpine Dragon has enough accuracy to actually hit most tanks, Éder included, for a lot of damage requiring you to buff and heal them for once. My advice is to send your tank straight for the dragon, to keep it busy, and above all make sure the beasts's sides face the party, last thing you want is to get hit with Frost Breath or tail lash. Don't group the rest of the party too closely, the Blights have AoE attacks. Take them out first if at all possible, then the bevy of Vessels, then the dragon.

Well damn, if the Witcher is from an Atheistic point-of-view then that completely destroys my "Atheists are intellectually lazy" argument I'm not going to make friends by saying this, but I find The Witcher to be a bit of a lazy setting overall. A lot of its stories are fairy tales with added gore, its monsters are often lifted straight from Eastern European folk tales, its different countries and nations are either stereotypes (Nilfgaard, Skellige) or undistinguishably bland (all the Northern Realms). It also abuses character archetypes; peasants are pogrom-happy and supersticious, soldiers are sociopaths who hang everything that moves, sorceresses are conniving and ambitious, kings are racist **** when they aren't just mad. Eora has shown more originality and personality in its setting that the Continent did in three games to me. In the light of the above, the writers of that series treating religion with all the maturity of an edgy teenager doesn't surprise me. Cripes, even Dragon Age did much better in Inquisition. Also, if one example is sufficient to challenge your ''atheists are intellectually lazy'' theory, maybe it wasn't that good a theory in the first place. But The Witcher is based on a series of Polish fantasy books. That kinda makes sense, right? Well, OK, to be fair that explains using common Eastern European monsters and folk myths. But I feel the rest still stands. For all the talk of TW being a "mature" setting, I feel it doesn't really explore explore its themes, beyond "war is bad" and "racism is bad" or "religion is stupid". Pillars does it better I find, with far more nuance and subtlety. To get back to the topic, I do feel that the whole "gods aren't real" reveal is flawed because the setting doesn't quite earn it yet. We're only one game in, and the writers already drop such a huge lore bomb on us, which I feel is too soon. I mean, sure, divinities and their effect on the setting were prominent in the game, but not omnipresent, and a lot of that happened in side-content like the Temple of Eothas or the conversations with Durance. I'd wager most players didn't really care that much about the gods and their lore, then the game goes "Aha! Gotcha! they're fake!" and many would go "Ah, well, that's a thing" rather than ''Oh snap, that changes everything!''. I'd compare it with Dragon Age, which waits until the third game before it starts dropping huge reveals on its diverse backstories, and on a pantheon in particular. Since the series had much more time to establish all the lore, the bomb is far more effective I find.

I always end up coming back to the Temple once I've cleaned the wilderness around Gilded Vale a bit and grabbed at least 4 party members, preferably 5 (MC, Éder, Aloth, Durance, Kana or an adventurer). Once you have enough bodies to throw at them, those shades aren't so scary.

Well damn, if the Witcher is from an Atheistic point-of-view then that completely destroys my "Atheists are intellectually lazy" argument I'm not going to make friends by saying this, but I find The Witcher to be a bit of a lazy setting overall. A lot of its stories are fairy tales with added gore, its monsters are often lifted straight from Eastern European folk tales, its different countries and nations are either stereotypes (Nilfgaard, Skellige) or undistinguishably bland (all the Northern Realms). It also abuses character archetypes; peasants are pogrom-happy and supersticious, soldiers are sociopaths who hang everything that moves, sorceresses are conniving and ambitious, kings are racist **** when they aren't just mad. Eora has shown more originality and personality in its setting that the Continent did in three games to me. In the light of the above, the writers of that series treating religion with all the maturity of an edgy teenager doesn't surprise me. Cripes, even Dragon Age did much better in Inquisition. Also, if one example is sufficient to challenge your ''atheists are intellectually lazy'' theory, maybe it wasn't that good a theory in the first place.

Inquisition actually has bonuses for each race. Humans gets an extra ability point, elves ranged resistance, dwarves magic resistance, Qunari extra HP I think.

I disagree. Sure, you can cheese th mechanic by backtracking a lot... but I don't want to do that. I want to press forward and see how far I can get before I am forced to use supplies. Several maps also have supplies liberally distributed about. The only area that is designed not to be completed in one go are the Endless Paths, and that's kinda the point of said Paths. It sure as hell beats the Baldur's Gate system where you have no reason not to rest between every fight regardless of how little sense it made to spend 3 days escaping Chateau Irenicus.

I don't exacty get how a game that has existing, tangible gods (that you can have chats with, for frick's sake) and portrays a vast array of religious people, some of them being very nice and reasonable like Éder, is somehow an ''atheist cliché''. As for the gods of Eora being jerks, a cursory glance at any polytheistic pantheon shows us that Woedica would be tame compared to the likes of Zeus. To say nothing of Old Testament God who smote all the things which displeased him with extreme prejudice. You want an atheist cliché? Look at The Witcher games, where almost every hip and cool main character is atheist to various degrees and the main stand-in for Christianty is invariably, across three games, portrayed as overzealous, corrupt, racist, or a combination of those three.

I had Pallegina ever since I could in my party, and she definitely earns her keep. Her damage is good, her tankyness is acceptable for someone using a two-hander, Lay on Hands is endlessly useful, Reviving Exhortation is a lifesaver when Durance eats one blow too many, Zealous Focus is nice, and Sacred Immolation is so gud. Given that Obsidian's vision for the Paladin is of a support-heavy frontline combatant, I'd say they do that job well. If you want melee damage, Barbarians and Rogues are here for that. My bow-using Cipher does less raw damage than a Ranger, but he compensates with his array of useful spells. Same deal for Paladin vs other melee combatants.

The patronising is strong in this one. Anyway, ''P&P RPG'' is a vast medium. They don't all play like D&D by any means. So it's hard to say that Bioware has veered away from tabletop since tabletop is an incredibly diverse genre. They moved away from doing D&D games, sure. But given that I am lukewarm at best towards the D&D ruleset and think alignments are pure idiocy, I don't consider that a bad thing, all things considered. And yes, I have played P&P. But I think judging an RPG simply by how much it emulates P&P is a bit nuts, since not only does it change so much depending on the game but on the GM. All the D&D campaigns I've played had not a lot of player choice (to account for 4 players) with a plot that was mostly on rails so that the GM didn't have to spend his life creating new plots. Doesn't seem to different from Bioware RPGs, or any other RPG from that matter.

I think it was the intent, too. Not to make all stats equal for all classes (that would be boring anyway) but putting Int on fighters, Might on mages and Per on druids can all be helpful, to some degree. The major flaw is that we have two stats (Res and Per) that do very similar things, and Con is just not very useful. With some tweaking, I could see PoE's stat system be very good indeed. I also like the lack of a Charisma stats, because in a game where the player controls the whole party that's utterly useless to put on anyone but the main character. Res is a much better replacement. The other thing I would change is more penalties for stats below 10, with a gigantic one at 3. I've heard of people having tanks with 3 Con, and that simply shouldn't happen.

Yeah, but those are all relationships between characters. PCs (especially in games like PoE where there is so much variety in race, background, attitude, etc.) are almost never characterized strongly enough for a romance to feel very compelling as anything other than fanservice. Romance between CNPCs, that could possibly work. I'm not convinced by that argument. Surely if the PC can form other kinds of relationships (such as friends) with NPCs, they can form a romantic one if well written. Whatever some people might say of Bioware romances, some of them work very well. It's all a question of writing them accordingly.

So we are looking for a non-backer who should have had a cat picture up until now... or... You know you sound a lot like a dev yourself so it's probably you. If I was a cat worshiping developer I would definitely want to post in such a thread as my secret alter ego. I wish my career was half as successful as Josh's, so I'll kinda take it as a compliment .

Yeah, if I was a game dev I knew I'd be jumping with joy to interact with people who say things like that about me. I know people love to cover up things with similar tone as "constructive criticism". But there is also a social aspect of things like that. If some guy sells me a product that I'm not happy with, I don't say "you're a bootlicker, now listen to my complaints and do something about them". That's probably the most basic lesson in social interaction. If you want someone to listen to you, then try not to insult them first you know? It's apparently a very hard-learned lesson on the Internet. Definitely this. If I spent all my time on a game, I would welcome criticism, but I would not welcome people making snide remarks and borderline insulting comments all the time and hide behind ''constructive criticism, grow a spine'' when called out on it. At some point, some people have to recognize there are human beings on the other side of their forum posts. Humans who just might (and brace yourselves, I know this will hurt) not agree with their viewpoints, and who have no obligation to answer one particular criticism over thousands and thousands of others, nor to cater to a particular group if they don't want to. The more I look at the sort of virtual lynch mobs that form as soon as something they don't like happens, the more I understand why developpers increasingly seek a more controlled environment for their feedback. Some might call it isolating themselves or censorship or whatnot, I call it being able to keep their sanity in an era where you can get death threats for changing the stats of some guns in Call of Duty. To say nothing of cluster****s like the recent controversy about paid mods on Steam.

Thankfully, because looking at stuff like the Colossus in Od Nua and the souls-stealing machines, if the Engwithans were as advanced in metallurgy as in soul manipulation they would probably have been packing 10 story tall mechas and railguns.

-Disagree on limited campaing supplies. I feel that it makes rest a meaningful mechanic, rather than something you need to stop yourself from doing after every single fight to keep the challenge up. -Disagree on custom companions. I use them sparingly, and they're a nice feature. Even nicer for people who want to Icewind Dale it and don,t care much for custom made companions. -Agree on the Stronghold. It didn,t have its place in the game and felt like a tacked on stretch goal. -Disagree on enchanting/crafting. The system just needs refining. Obsidian already did a good crafting system back in KOTOR 2, and they could also look to Dragon Age: Inquisition for a decent crafting system.

Dude. The guy You can already choose to kill either, neither or both of them. Is that not enough choice? Why would you need an option to pat the guy on the back for what he did. Because, in the world of PoE, that was all his right and a legitimate thing to do. What could possibly make you say that. Everybody who found out about it was disgusted, the man was going out of his way to hide it, and he bribes you to keep it quiet. The whole point of the speech about it is saying that he's using his power and nobility to *hide his crime*. I'd say odds are, it's not something the Dyrwood approves of. Well obviously the peasants of Dyrford are going to hate it, but even before the reveal happens they already resent him for being a noble who parades in their town and bosses them around. The noble's colleagues are probably going to act shocked publically, but not care much. At least, that is the probable reaction in a close-to-real-life medieval setting; we don't really know how such things are viewed by the Dyrwood's authorities. But obviously his blue blood alone means the guy most likely gets away with it, even if it is not his right to rape his niece. I also agree with Luckmann that the narrative is not Obsidian's best. The player lacks motivation until Act 3, and that's when they slap a big ultimatum on you and make it so going around doing side-quests makes no sense story wise. They could have handled this better by adding some urgency in Act 2 and taking some off Act 3.

You know, I'll bet quite a lot of reviewers have preconceptions about what they're reviewing. Particularly if they've been already paid to do a glowing review . Personally I find this review refreshing - Roxor might get a bit colorful and take a few liberties here and there but he's made it plainly clear that he didn't think it would be a good game to begin with and it turns out he didn't like what he played. Now it seems to you and others a 'good review' is where the writer tries to take himself out of as much of the writing as possible, leaving his opinions but trying to cover any trace of bias or preconception so that you don't see it, even though it's probably there in spades. Personally though I'm really sick of reading reviews like that. It's boring, and a bit dishonest, if anything. In comparison, this review is a breath of fresh air - nice and raw, the writer explains his 'bias' at the beginning. I had a completely different opinion of the game before it came out, and couldn't have been in a more polar opposite position to Roxor, and yet we wound up with very similar conclusions about different parts of the game, via completely different paths. Personally I found that very interesting. Now, as for that review you cited. Do you know who Brother None is? He is an inXile employee, was a Line Producer on Wasteland 2 and is now doing some writing and producing for Torment. He's also been a webmaster for the inXile forums and was he an NMA moderator before that? Regardless - he's always been a person with responsibilities and while he may never have been interested to write a seething review of Fallout 3, it certainly would have never served in his best interest to do so either Personally I don't mind those style of reviews either, but I also see merit in Roxor's style of review as well, as raw as it may be. Eh, starting a trial of intention towards the reviewer is not what I want to do, and I could easily do it with Roxor if I wanted to I'd wager. If you think Brother None wanted to appease Bethesda, despite being vocally against the game and Bethesda probably not caring in the slightest what some dude on a website that sees 1/1000th of the traffic of their own boads thinks, be my guest but it kinda looks like you want to discredit him for something other than what he actually writes. Which strikes me as a bit dishonest. I already said I don't want nor expect 100% total, dry objectivity in reviews- even if only because a review with no opinion is impossible if you go into details. But there is a vast difference between this and the nerdrage-y drivel that was the Codex review. If you like it, more power to you, I have no interest in that sort of writing myself. I'd gladly take someone like Brother None, or to take a more popular example Totalbiscuit, who share their opinion, sometimes with passion, but don't back them up with falalcious arguments and gross hyperbole in the name of ''fun''. Lord knows we have more than enough of those sort of reviews on sites like Metacritic (to say nothing of forums), and being overly critical is in my mind just as bad as being an IGN writer who can't give AAA games a bad score for fear of losing his privileged access and marketing money.

You say "this is your opinion". God damn right it is. Do you think I give a damn if you require a review to be objective? The RPG Codex does not, and thus - reviews are not boring. I honestly couldn't give a rats about the 'quality' of the review. I agree with the reviewers opinions, even if he got to them a completely different way than I did (which is quite telling, actually!) While I reject the notion that a review should be 100% objective (since it's really just an hopefully elaborate opinion piece), I do think the Codex's is a bad review because the writer obviously has preconceptions about the game. It oozes from every single sentence, really. He's not trying to inform people about his opinion on the game, which is what a good review does IMO, but attempts to grab the reader by the throat and shove how terrible the game is in their face. Add to that some very weird, if not borderline falacious opinions (Spiritshifting is good? really? Obsidian's worst game when DS3 exists?), some quite unfunny and/or immature humor, self-reference up the whazoo and a generally antagonistic tone for little reason, and there's very little value in the review, I find. It's tedious to read, barely goes into any depth save for a handful of pragraphs, and amplifies the writer's bias to make it all-encompassing so that you can't help but picture him frothing at the mouth like a crazy manchild when he writes it. As a comparison, I'd showcase this review of Fallout 3, by No Mutants Allowed, a famously militant fansite for Fallout. And while it's obvious the author isn't a big fan of the game at all, he also recognizes what strenghts it had and the overall tone is a calm yet opinionated one. That's far more valuable, and make for much better feedback if you ask me. And, if I want to be entertained by a review, I'll go watch Angry Joe. With all the posturing on the Codex, you'd think they would be above that, but apparently not.

Yes, I recall doing the Skaen Temple once in the beta. Once was enough. Going through it again in the game was a chore, only saved by me being able steam roll everything and get it over and done as fast as possible. That however I fully agree with. The dungeon felt more endless than the actual Endless Paths. Doesn't help that it makes no sense for the Skaen cultists to dwarf the population of Dyrford. With that said, some IE games had long stretches. The Underdark and the kingdom of those shark-men I never remember in BG2 got tedious, so did Carceri and some optional areas in PS:T.

Afaik, they used to be affected.. no? I remember it being discussed extensively during BBv480, and how Dexterity favoured Firearms because the reduction got applied three times; fire, recovery, and reload, while everyone else just got their fire and recovery affected. I may be wrong, simply because I wasn't the one that did the crunching, but I wouldn't expect this to be "fixed". I think they did "fix" it already, into the opposite of what you (and me) wants. You say "omnipresent in the genre", but that's actually extremely far from the truth. Firearms may be somewhat ubiquitous now, but fantasy still usually doesn't include it, and certainly not two decades ago or less. To me, it's all about setting, and PoE pulls that off admirably. The firearms just fits. Whether pikes and full plates ever shared battlefields with firearms in the real world is completely irrelevant. My point is that plate armor (often inches thick and with massive shoulders for flavor) is omnipresent in fantasy, as are late medieval weapons such as pikes, but for some time guns were verbotten despite being used at about the same time. Fanasy has started to include guns, but many settings still ignore them, or just have gunpowder like in Dragon Age.

I never understood the argument that guns don't belong in fantasy. They were in use at about the same time as the pikes and full plate that are omnipresent in the genre. To say nothing of trying to bring up realism in a game where I can duel-wield spears or have my saber slice through plate armor, on top of all the dragons and magical shenanigans

Seriously. Not liking a character's look is OK. But the obsession with wanting every female to be a supermodel is getting a bit disturbing. I actually think Cassandra is pretty, even if she isn't very sexy. Definitely not some sort of hideous mutant. Besides, given that the majority of female party members in Dragon Age are drop-dead gorgeous, variety is welcome. Not everyone in a medieval world is going to look as good as Morrigan. To say nothing of Mass Effect in which every single major female character was fanservice-y to a degree.

QFT. I enjoyed DA:I thanks to its better companions and fun, if easy combat, and the dragon fights? freacking spectacular. I enjoyed PoE a bit more, thanks to its fairly robust mechanics, C&C, and dat Obsidian writing. I can't understand, for the life of me, why one has to drag one of the games down. There's more than enough place on the market for both. And for bother styles of RPGs such as Banner Saga and The Witcher as well. I enjoyed DA:O more than either games, that being said, but that's a given since it's my second favorite RPG after PS:T. And to the people whining about EA, well I have no lost love for them, but they acquired Bioware in 2007 (as the company was financially dying, and before the Kickstarter safety net existed) and released DA:O, Bioware's best game IMO, in 2009. So for that alone I'm willing to accept a DA2 crap from time to time.

Typically for the Codex, the good points are buried beneath an avalanche of self-righteous bile. Yes, engagement needs work. Yes, encounter design could be better. Yes, Dragon Age manages to have better itemization. The game does have problems, and it's important to ackowledge them. But the reviewer obviously has an axe to grind and was visibly determined to hate the game before even playing it. So his feedback is lackluster, if not worthless. Plus, some of the complaints are just mind-boggling. The writing is bad? Compared to what, Baldur's Gate or freaking Icewind Dale, to say nothing of D:OS's borefest? The oh so clever ''not-D&D'' tripe that could easily be leveled at any fantasy game on the market? Obsidian's worst game to date? This is clear attention whoring.

There's a reason no game developper that has any sort of success has released an open-source game, apart possibly from Valve who have the absurd Steam cash cow to print money with. Open source is not profitable at all, and games are expensive stuff.