Emerwyn

By my experience so far, as long as you are not travelling to different areas to use "free rests" because you're running out of camping supplies, you're playing it right. If you can beat levels using only the resources within that level + camping supplies, then you're doing well. If you find that's a bit too easy, you need to up the difficulty up to the point where you find that levels are challenging enough to require you to exhaust most or all of your resources and almost force you to leave the area to return in a better condition. The Path of the Damned difficulty is hard enough to force everyone into thinking cleverly about how to use every tool at their disposal, so the game will never get "too easy" for those who are looking for a challenge, at least as far as I've played myself. Just need to adjust the difficulty level appropriately to suit your own level which should be given by the sum of party synergy power+playstyle+skill level+IE prowess.

This thread is related to this other one: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/72691-the-one-thing-about-the-game-that-has-irked-me/ I wrote in there what I think of this whole topic: This kind of thing does not belong in a narrative RPG. It just defeats its whole purpose, and cheapens the product as a whole. It's a shame that these memorials were included. This doesn't have to sound drastic or dramatic, because I'm just one pre-order user that Obsidian likely wouldn't miss, but I'll personally double check if these tombstones are present in any future PoE DLC/sequel before purchasing. I personally can handle the jokes, but not the modern, real world references and website advertisement in a RPG like PoE.

Well, I understand it was offered as reward, but then that was the mistake to start with. I mean, I'm sure there would have been a thousand ways to reward certain tiers of backer, and especially a thousand different ways to promote certain websites different than ruining the game's lore and immersion. I don't know, I can't imagine watching the Lord of the Rings, the battle rages on, Dwarves charge downhill, the wraiths stand defiant. The rohiri ride across the battlefield as the elves shoot their silver arrows, Sauron himself awaiting atop an army of uruk-hai, when suddenly a modern airplane trails across the sky with a banner (www.mcdonalds.com. I'm lovin' it). Then you can say "But dude, McDonalds gave 500,000 dollars that helped make the movie!" and another person will say "Well you don't HAVE to look at the part of Mordor's sky where the boeing 747 is trailing across with the banner". Whatever, it's lame, and it shouldn't be there. For some people it might have been a minor thing, but we're talking about the storytelling of an immersive RPG... no, the storytelling of THE immersuve RPG being raped by a few dollars in a way that was really not necessary.

The Level 1 Wizard Fire Cone spell (can't remember the name) is a winner against these. I cleared out Eothas temple in Path of the Damned difficulty with Level 3 Fighter (main), level 2 Wizard (scripted NPC), level 2 priest (inn recruit). Engage, block doorway, hide your back members so the phantoms/shades/etc won't teleport to them, and force only one or two of them to be able to attack the fighter, then use some quick in-and-out positioning with the Wizard the light them up. If the Fighter's defence is crumbling and she's dying, just use the level 1 priest bubble spell (again, I forget the name, but it makes a party member invulnerable and regenerates full health over a period of time). The doorway will still be blocked and you can keep fighting flaming the shades from behind. Watch closely for the shade teleports, you'll see the spell casting icon on their healthbars before they do it, and you'll be able to break line of sight with them before they complete the cast (thus, denying the teleport). By the way, this tactic works with about everything, not just shades, and it's so far the only reliable way I've found to get through hard encounters in Path of the Damned difficulty at low level. For obvious reasons it doesn't work in open/wilderness areas though.

I managed to clear the first level of the temple with 2 party members and the second level with 3 party members in Path of the Damned difficulty. Party members were my main character (Fighter), certain NPC you recruit for the first level, and added a recruited Inn NPC priest for the second level. My party members were level 2, and main character level 3. You could say I used cheese tactics, and I'm not sure what enters the realm of the spoiler here (considering we're in spoiler-free forums, I don't want to say too much), but it involved a lot of doorway/choke point usage, clever positioning and AoE magic. A couple of pulls were especially difficult, but with patience and some luck it all goes down.

I don't know why it was really necessary to go ham with the out of character meta-messages in the tombstones you find around the world. I mean, already seems like a silly cliche that every RPG will have a graveyard that repeats the same tombstone jokes (Here lies John Smith. Pardon me for not rising.) But alright, I can put up with that, some of those jokes never get old. But going nuts with real world modern references really ruined my immersion at that point. Like, completely shot down in a way that I decided to take a break and pretend I never saw it. I even saw references to web pages (with the full www.thiswebpagesucks.com). Really, really disappointed at that. For the rest, the game is brilliant, and I can't stop playing it. But you really dropped the ball there, Obs.

I'd go with War Bow in Hard or PotD difficulty only down to the fact that most enemies have high DR, and it's preferible to shoot fewer shots, but with a higher damage per shot.

I very much doubt that. The map I was talking about, is the very first one I got to after the "supernatural event" that starts the storyline... On hard difficulty, from those 3 encounters you are talking about, my pally tank PC managed to do 2, though the one you are referring as brutal was utterly impossible. Also managed those two encounters in PotD difficulty with a two-handed weapon fighter, but I don't know how much more difficult PotD is compared to hard. On the third one, same thing. My Fighter just gets mangled in one hit - two at best. Something for later into the game.

Erm... I could very well be mistaken, but I'm fairly certain it does more than that. I think you don't get the mouse-over-a-foe tooltips for their HP and defense and such in combat, and you aren't told which dialogue options are unlocked by which stat values, or how certain responses will be taken, etc. No, its inherent purpose isn't to be a difficulty setting. But, the game gains at least some degree of difficulty from Expert Mode's activation. Unless I'm mistaken, you can access creature stats in the journal, more information added the more creatures of the same kind you defeat. I'm not sure what info you get when you mouseover with Expert mode toggled on since I'm playing with it disabled, but I'm guessing it's not much more than what you already have access to. About what stats you need to unlock what conversations, I wish that was actually a different feature, because I'm a completionist and I'd really like to know what dialogue choices I'm missing by not meeting some requirements that I may want to consider for a future play-through.

I see people mentioning here they have Expert on as if it means anything, and it doesn't. Doesn't make the game any harder or challenging at all, it simply doesn't send you pop ups with very basic tips the first time you encounter something new in the game (such as "put your potions in your belt to be able to use them in combat" etc). Expert is just a fancy name to say "I know how IE games play out", but not a difficulty slider by any stretch of imagination.

Path of the Damned without any extra gimmicks for now (No Ironman and such). I'm a tactical combat junkie and I'm having fun so far micromanaging encounters to maximise damage output and minimise damage income. It's the first break I take since I installed the game about 7 hours ago and so far I'm very satisfied.

Problem is, you can't counter 1's with 10's, since the average of that is 5, and the game deserves probably a 9.X score. You could counter it if you could vote a 18 or something like that.

I'll do a Ironman PotD playthrough, but it won't be the first playthrough. I don't have enough knowledge of the game systems, talents, feats, skills, etc to feel confident about succeeding.

Metacritic is unfortunately filled with trolls and haters that will spam unrealistic 0 votes without even bothering to try the game, so I wouldn't expect anything above 85 for the public score.

10 hours from this post. Take it easy, you won't have to wait much more. Also changing sleep patterns around the release sounds like you need professional aid, especially for a game that doesn't have scheduled events and you can play at your own leisure, but to each their own.

What the hell is Gamefags? Anyway, congratulations Obsidian, you've done it. Hope this is just the beginning of a great many years of enjoyable and true RPGs, not this crappy crop of 8-button brainless action games that people call RPGs just because it has two dialogue lines and you can upgrade your weapon.

I used to love Demons's Souls, but each sequel becomes weaker and weaker. Not saying that Dark Souls 2 is a bad game, but it's 7.5 or 8 that comes from something that was a 10. I kinda expect the same trend in Bloodborne. And I'm definitely not paying 70 bucks to play it, which is what it costs in Playstation. If they release it on PC in some time, I'll possibly check it out. Possibly.

I'm going pretty blind, though I've watched a couple of twitch videos with Josh Sawyer explaining what PoE is about, and read one or two spoiler-less previews. I have watched zero (0) minutes of game-play, going as far as shutting the Josh Sawyer video down when he started playing the game. Did try Backer Beta through a friend (I didn't back myself, though I have pre-ordered), spent a while around the backer town, killed some beetles, saw what I needed to see, uninstalled. I'm playing a cool little indie tactical RPG called "Enemy" for the last couple of days, having a lot of fun. Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC is downloading as I type this. Due to this, chances are I won't play PoE until the weekend at least. Looking forward to the game? Of course, very much. Hype? Not detected.

I'm quite curious if your wife doesn't point it out for you when you get a critical strike on an enemy and his body is cut in pieces tumbling across the screen, or when you use one of your character's necromantic/demonic powers to raise zombies/demons to do your bidding, or simply go Dirty Harry on everyone you encounter deciding who should live and who shouldn't. Because really, the double morality on this topic is astonishing. I said something similar in a previous post, but it feels like for some people being a video-game gives them charte blanque to commit all manner of sociopath and homicidal deeds without really minding it, but man, spelling out a well fitting "f***" now and then, that's clearly stepping over the line. Well she doesn't sit and watch me game as that would bore her to death. But she can hear. I use headphones when I can, but my son's new kitten ... well that didn't end well ... for the headphones. The biggest double standard I've had in games is that you can murder at will but flash a tit and it's suddenly a Mature game. Though I'll admit NA games are starting to get a little better about this. EDIT: After reviewing the ESRB description it almost looks like they added the word just to get an M rating. About everything else could have been T. I think it's psychological effect. A lot of people have more assumed that murdering people and raising demons is fiction, but insults sound still very real. And it's also because it's English, and everyone is familiar with how bad do those words sound. One of my favourite characters of all time, in one of my favourite games spent a lot of her time swearing. If anyone remember Tali'Zora from Mass Effect, she had whole lines of swearing and rambling... but she did it in her native language, Quarian. Everyone liked her saying that Miranda was a bosh'tet, but I wonder how many would've had their sensibility hurt if she had said that Miranda was a bit**.

Blooodborne = PS4 only. PoE = PC only. Doesn't really matter much if they're released at the same time. Not only that, those games target different audiences. True that the same person can have both systems, and like both games, but being one of those persons myself, I don't have any trouble playing PoE now and waiting for Bloodborne to go down a few notches on the price. I mean, that 70€/$ price-tag is asking to be ignored for a while (like most PS4 games anyway).

I'm quite curious if your wife doesn't point it out for you when you get a critical strike on an enemy and his body is cut in pieces tumbling across the screen, or when you use one of your character's necromantic/demonic powers to raise zombies/demons to do your bidding, or simply go Dirty Harry on everyone you encounter deciding who should live and who shouldn't. Because really, the double morality on this topic is astonishing. I said something similar in a previous post, but it feels like for some people being a video-game gives them charte blanque to commit all manner of sociopath and homicidal deeds without really minding it, but man, spelling out a well fitting "f***" now and then, that's clearly stepping over the line.

To be honest, Dragonfall had one of the best writings I've seen in a videogame, at least recently. I didn't notice any particularly outstanding swearing in it, it all played so fluidly within the context that I simply devoured dialogue after dialogue. But as someone else said, different strokes, I suppose, and everyone is entitled to their opinion.

I understand that PoE is single player, and I'm quite fine with it because at least the first playthrough I'd have done it as single player to play my way and take my time with everything I feel like, but I don't get what's so hard to grasp for some people in this thread about the possibility of PoE being multiplayer just to have fun with some buddies. It doesn't require too much brainstorming to figure out how multiplayer could be successfully implemented and the appeal it could have. Example 1: Each of my friends plays one character, and the combat doesn't need to be paused, it all plays in real time. That makes aiming spells dangerous and exciting, yes. I could see myself having quite a few laughs over it with my buddies after one of them blows another up. Example 2: The game implements a menu where each player can assume control of certain number of characters simply by sliding them under their player name (for example, if 2 people are playing, each can control 3 characters) and that's the characters they can control in any combat situation, or give orders to while the game is paused. For conversations and everything else they can talk it over ts or mumble or whatever, and take decisions together, decide what's best for the party, or do rock paper scissors with every decision in the game, I don't know. The point is, we're in 2015. I don't know any single gamer that doesn't use some kind of voice communication on daily basis to play with their friends. You don't need to be so obtuse and narrow about some concepts that have been around for over 10 years.

I'm pretty sure PoE will have as long legs as D:OS, if not longer. And in the last year alone there is, just to mention a few notable cases: Heroes of Might and Magic X, Shadowrun Dragonfall, The Banner Saga, Wasteland 2, Blackguards 2... right now in development is Shadowrun: Hong Kong, as well as some form of D:OS 2, The Banner Saga 2, Torment:ToN and so much more. It's a good time for PC RPG gaming.

While I agree with pretty much everything else you said, I disagree with this. I loved Battlestar Galactica but every time I heard the word 'frak' it threw me right out of the show. Sounded way too forced and contrived to me. I feel they should have just gone with the real thing and just toned down the amount of times they used it. Obviously, this whole discussion is totally subjective though. Same. Fake swear words are one of the most immersion breaking thing in the genre for me. Agree with this sentiment. Either make scenes where no swearing is needed, or spell out the proper swearing. Fake insults just make scenes unbelievable and immersion breaking.