Noin

Comparing ANY story-driven RPG to Planescape Torment would be unfair, in my opinion. Doesn't matter whether it's new or old, it's not about the technical stuff anyway. The technology may have improved, but the right team, the motivation, the talented people. In some cases it's a combination which might not happen again. It's like comparing dubstep to Schopenhauer's music is unfair... for the Schopenhauer, because he lived a long time ago and the sound recording and whatever technologies are much more advanced now.

I'd also rank D:OS's character building/customization up there with any game. And while people usually just lump D:OS's amazing environment interaction mechanics with "combat", I Don't. They're their own category, and deserve separate praise for what they are, since they're often used to solve NON-combat situations/puzzles/challenges. D:OS's Co-op play is also quite good. I don't recall another game that did it better, or even tried. And the Music....oh god...the music.... It's so good that it almost doesn't fit a game of D:OS's caliber. Edit: of course, D:OS's flaws are also numerous. Stealing is too easy. Party members are IWDish, The story is so excessively light and non-captivating that it almost seems deliberate....as if the developers were encouraging you to ignore it and just enjoy the combat and environment. The Humor is Beavis and Butthead-like and can become grating after a while. What's good about the character building? I mean there is only one race and only two variants: male and female. Doesn't matter what you do, the girls look like american cheerleaders and the guy like some fitness trainers. I'd argue PoE has ten times better character building: I added some custom characters in my party instead of the story NPCs because I got got an idea and I wanted to check it out - for example I made a dwarf hunter (even though he is technically a rogue) wearing a wide-brimmed hat, Dyrwood clothing and shooting enemies with an arquebus. I just love him. Second custom char is a dwarf barbarian with a mohawk with two axes who wears no armor (Gotrek anyone?)) etc. In D:OS there is no such freedom.

The fighting mechanics are terrible however, and are MUCH better in BG. It just feels like a cheap MMO rather than a RPG. Also, BG has more depth and is less gamey overall, there is more freedom (all this crap like giving your companions trinkets to get +1 to relations, or this horrendous camp). All in all, the result is thus: BG - finished several times, DaO - finished 0 times, stopped playing and never touched the game again. Neither do I want to. Lol. In what way is DAO like an MMO? This: Ways DAO is like a MMO: There are DPS, Heal and Tank roles, most encounters are solved in the same way. Barrage of AoE, Tank tanks, Healer heals the tank. Boring like hell. For me the biggest drawback of DAO is its target audience and all that it implies. The most popular mods for DAO are "beauty" mods and "sexy armors" and such stuff. Tells a lot already. And also the simplification of everything. I was a lot more dissapointed with DAO than with PoE.

I'm guessing Drakensang:River of Time? Isn't Drakensang based on The Dark Eye, which would be Das Schwarze Auge (DSA)? I admit Drakensang was my first thought and DAS could just be a typo... Ach so, that explains it. As much as I'd like to enjoy that game, the story was boring and the combat pretty bad. Definitely not holding a candle to BG.

The fighting mechanics are terrible however, and are MUCH better in BG. It just feels like a cheap MMO rather than a RPG. Also, BG has more depth and is less gamey overall, there is more freedom (all this crap like giving your companions trinkets to get +1 to relations, or this horrendous camp). All in all, the result is thus: BG - finished several times, DaO - finished 0 times, stopped playing and never touched the game again. Neither do I want to.

But the thing is, almost none of the games released since BG were better than it. BG2 aside. So by itself it doesn't say anything. What are you talking about? Unless you mean RtwP this is untrue. Games like fallout, DX, Morrowind etc were superior to BG. Most of the fascination for IE games comes from their precedence to other games that were inspired from them and their aesthetic appeal. For RTwP itself, I would rank DAO and DAS:RoT higher than BGs. 1st and 2nd Fallouts were released before BG. To me, they are the ones which matter. Fallout NV is okey, but it's a completely different type of the game. Also, I don't like Morrowind and it's a completely different genre. I tried to play it multiple times and despite it's amazing (at that time) graphics, I just couldn't. BG's graphics survived the tides of time much better than morrowind as well. DaO - struggled through the middle game, never finished. Too gamey and mainstream to me, definitely not better than BG. What's DAS:RoT?

But the thing is, almost none of the games released since BG were better than it. BG2 aside. So by itself it doesn't say anything.

Well, I did finish on TotD + Expert Mode. So your argument is kinda invalid...

Apparently I have another game. I played 100 hours and only encountered a couple of bugs so far. VERY stable and very solid on release. Yes, it was really solid on release when double-clicking an item made you permanently lose every passive ability you had. Didnt know about it until Ive read about it on the forums. If I werent reading them I wouldve never known. So thats not what I call game breaking. Never a single crash, no fps spikes on a laptop, no problems with effects - textures - animation.

What?? I couldnt even finish DA:O, the tedious battles... Its like playing MMO but single player, simply terrible in my opinion. NWN2, especially the original campaign Id rate much worse than PoE as well. Even after several expansions and countless patches NWN2 stayed clunky, the UI is terrible, there are no Char pics even... Apparently I have another game. I played 100 hours and only encountered a couple of bugs so far. VERY stable and very solid on release.

Only game of those that is Obsidian's is PoE. BG I & II are Bioware's games and IWD I & II & PS:T are Black Isle's (which is company where some members of PoE's team worked before Obsidian) games Kotor II, NWN II (+ its expansions MotB and SoZ), Alpha Protocol, Fallout: New Vegas, Dungeon Siege III, South Park Stick of Truth, Pillars of Eternity and Armored Warfare are Obsidian's games. I know It's a bit late and apparently I can't explain my thoughts in an understandable way anymore. The comparison made is with the IE games, not other Obsidian games (Because that's what the Codex guys and Sensuki compare PoE to all the time). NWN 2 is also pretty terrible in my opinion, I tried again to play it some time ago and it's pretty much unplayable to me. PoE is better in every single aspect.

Jedem das Seine - to each it's own. I couldn't force myself to complete IWD II even once. And that's even though I completed BG 2 uncountable amount of times. Ah, and G3 modpack is something I would never play with.

Didnt read the full review but that I did read is totally blown out of proportion. The worst Obsidian game ever? You gotta be kiddin me! Seriously. I'll tell you that: I played BG2 ten times. I played BG2 on Insane difficulty with difficulty increasing mods. I played BG and BG2 combined in one Big Picture with several dozens of mods. I played with parties of gimped characters (Tiax!) to increase the difficulty past Insane because it was too easy. And I also absolutely loved PS:T, one of my alltime favorites. IWD and IWD II I didn't like so much. And now my opinion, having said that: BG2 > PS:T > PoE > BG I > IWD I > IWD II Yes, PoE did not manage to overcome BG II as a pinnacle of RPGs of all time. But yet it's ridiculous to call it "terrible". The environments are beautiful, the dialogues are colorful, amount of options is staggering. UI is really good as well. Mechanics are not perfect, but let's face it: Obsidian is not so experienced with creating their own worlds and gaming systems. Both MotB and F:NV were using the bases created by someone else. (Which is a lot easier as creating everything from scratch!) They definitely beat all the other Kickstarter project to date. Yes, Original Sin has more fluent mechanics but the writing and the story are bad and childish. The battles become repetitive faster than in PoE (in PoE there are much more options about the character customization) and there are only two types of character: male human and female human, that's it. All in all, PoE is a good base for more to come.

Thats the thing I like about expert mode actually. Its so easy to abuse AoE, its just not fun for me. All this pixelhunt to hit your enemies but leave your chars unhurt... Bweh. In IE games you never had aoe tooltips and my chars dying from my own fireballs is just part of the charm for me.

Hear, hear. I could NEVER understand such complaints. Ever since I started playing PoE I decided certain house rules for myself, such as no slicken, no min maxing etc. And I play PotD and Expert Mode. When I played BG I got really annoyed by Haste. I was casting it every damn battle, and so at some point I stopped using it at all. My last BG Trilogy playthrough I had a party of me, Gnome Illusionist, Jan Jansen, Tiax (through a mod which made him playable), Quayle (also a mod which makes it possible to choose him or Aerie) and Mazzi plus Korgan. Was it difficult? Yes. Could I easily make a more efficient party? Obviously. Was it fun? Hell yeah (considering that it was on Insane difficulty with half a dozen of mods making the game more difficult, like Sword Coast Stratagems) And now in PoE, I made a custom char who is dwarf sharpshooter. He is wearing a cool wide-brimmed hat and he shoots people with a rifle. Is it an optimal character? Nope. But I like him. I guess I am just a RPer at heart is all.

If you are not lazy, go for Baldur's Gate Trilogy with the Big Picture. It basically makes one HUGE game out of two BGs with their addons. http://www.shsforums.net/files/file/54-baldurs-gate-trilogy-weidu/

Bester, will you release / allow people to modify your mod? You can see it's important for a lot of people that your work will live on...

It seems to be a very nice bow, which causes jolting touch on crits. might make for some nice builds...

Mobbing causes phychological trauma. It's not that different from physical trauma, you just don't see it straight away. Imagine it as being beaten with police batons. But invisible ones. And not once, but continuously. If at first you are enraged against police brutality - "what's going on? i didn't break any laws!", after a while you just want the pain to stop. Both psychological and physical torture eventually lead to the same end. Funny that some people don't see such obvious things... Now enter police batons. What happened to the incident? I don't understand you. But actually, it doesn't matter - this thread reminded me why I love video games. There are (normally) no Crimea, no Russia, no US, no Middle East, no taxes, no free speech- or LBGT- or anti-LBGT or firearms-advocates, none of this annoying cr*p we have to deal with (one way or another) everyday. And so, instead of trying to make some people change their point of view (which will not happen anyway because people don't change) I'll rather play some PoE instead. Salamat.

I wasn't saying you were offensive toward me, calling anyone loony qualifies for being offensive - no matter what the reasons are. And it's just common logic, actually. And it's not about respect, it's rather about self-respect. If you believe you are right, give your reasoning. Don't start calling names, as that serves no purpose and only make the other side of the argument more determined to do whatever they can to make your life harder. Eye for an eye makes the world blind and all that, y'know

Stop twisting the reasoning. How is suicide out of stupidity and disability due to an accident fall under the same category? Mobbing causes phychological trauma. It's not that different from physical trauma, you just don't see it straight away. Imagine it as being beaten with police batons. But invisible ones. And not once, but continuously. If at first you are enraged against police brutality - "what's going on? i didn't break any laws!", after a while you just want the pain to stop. Both psychological and physical torture eventually lead to the same end. Funny that some people don't see such obvious things...

Well, right now you ARE being offensive, probably with purpose. I don't know, maybe it's the way you speak or how you were brought up, but I always believed calling people names because you don't like them or disagree with them to be rather... tasteless and childish.

It only removes the stars next to the recommended attributes, if you know how the classes work you don't need them (because it still shows that each point does)

Is that what you guys call regular people these days? I don't think people who compare a willingly changed limerick in a video game to Communism/Nazism qualify as "normal". Calling the mere desire for freedom of speech as "Social injustice" just shows how nutty these guys are. A lot of people seem to believe that Freedom of Speech means being able to say whatever you want without thinking first and ALSO having no responsibility for having said that. Which is laughable. Freedom of Speech as a law means that no matter what you say, you won't be shot by a death squad. Other than that, you are still responsible for what you say. Also, the game was created by Obsidian, it's THEIR property. You don't come to your neighbor's house and start calling his wife a wh*re and then accuse him of being anti-Freedom of Speech for kicking you out. They made this game, they decide what content there is. They even contacted the guy for God's sake!

Then He's made the world a service, he deserves a darwin prize. Nice edit, eh! Well, it would be a nice joke if you get really sick or disabled after incident or something like this and NO ONE would care about you and leave to suffer because... Yeah, weak people or people who are different are "nicht lebenswert"... And how do you decide who is malcontent and who isn't? A lot of people play God these days...