Zorfab

If you want to maintain modicum of challenge everywhere? That´s hard. You could try what I did my recent PotD game: 1. Act1 >1. Endless Path (1) 2. Act2 >2. Endless Path (2-8 ) 3. Act3, including clearing Burial Isle (scale up if Act 2 just felt too easy) >3. Endless Path (9-11) 4. White March 1 (scaled up) >4. Endless Path (12-15) >4. You can also finish with the final Caed Nua stronghold mission with two allies, no need to get third through WM2. 5. White March 2 (scaled up) >5. Cragholdt >5. The Bog (after Cragholdt) 6. Court of the Penitents Throw in bounties somewhere if you like, but remember that those give a lot of exp which will then make the main experience of the game easier. I usually just do bounties that give equipment pieces that I really want and ignore the rest. And play in PotD, of course...

Both are from smaller studios and use style of much older games, but otherwise the games are vastly different. I´d say both are worth playing and good specimens of their own genre. People who like puzzles should go with Grimrock 2 and anyone who does not like a little bit twitchy combat should get PoE. Grimrock 2 has plenty of encounters where proper timing will save you a lot of trouble.

It is not an oversight, but a deliberately made choice. Not that I disagree with you, but it is what it is. I have no idea if the game actually broke if people could wear amulets and cloaks simultaneously, but given how the game prunes bonuses that overlap... Probably not.

Actually chess games can be quite exciting for people who are well versed with the game. Seeing a brilliant move that you did not notice is always a nice experience and an eye opener. Although these days with all the computer data base analysis Go is probably a better choice for surprises. And besides that, Chess is actually an unbalanced game that can only be balanced over a series of matches, since white has the advantage when both sides play properly and first mover guides the game down to lines that give him preferential winning chances.

I don´t think this game lets you do that in any case. As far as I can see, it is very very hard to make a one trick pony type character. Weapon specs always include multiple different weapons with different damage types and rest of the feats are quite generic, applicable in just about any situation. If you have wizards, priests or druids in your party you can always fall back to other elements and they are enough to deal with the enemies even if you lack the spec feats that give you extra damage. At worst you´d have to reload once and swap few spells on your grimoire if you run three wizards with same spec or something.

Don´t be so narrow with definitions. There is no divide between RPG and action. Both can exist within the same framework. Something like Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is most definitely both RPG and action game and extremely good RPG at that (action part is only serviceable).

I hope it´s ok to ask, but why did you choose Hard instead of PotD?

False choices are pretty common in games. Designers ought to keep that in mind when creating their game. Choice between good and better or bad and good is not much of a choice at all. How about the spell combos or something similar? Potentially good, but only if the option of not using the combo is better in some cases as well. If you get something that just gives extra damage when you do this + that... Looks like a no-brainer to me.

Honestly, Idleray came out of that "forum combat" with flying colors. Praise ought to be heaped on you for not going totally mad when reading the replies.

Hard crowd-control can be problematic to balance (petrify, paralysis, knockdown)... IMO, it feels like this game has very limited defenses beyond having a priest in your party against such attacks. And feats add +10 to one save defense only, which might not be enough to justify the cost of picking one of them.

Warhammer Fantasy 1st edition and I think I was ~12 or so. It definitely hooked me into the whole RPG thing. First game I DM:ed myself was Palladium Fantasy and then I transitioned to AD&D 2nd and Twilight 2000 (for a spell).

Deflection is the god defense here and lowering it by dumping Resolve and Perception creates a punching bag and not a tank or someone who can wade into melee and survive. Dexterity and might are DPS stats, Int is buff duration and AoE stat and Con is... punching bag stat. Does the stat system make sense? Not in a simulationist sense. It´s a gamist construct and exist outside conventional wisdom in some respects. Trying to apply realism or vision to such a thing is going to result in failure. Sorry you had to experience it first hand.

Agreeing with Luckmann here. Motivations of the main character are very flimsy for what he actually ends up doing until you are very far in the game already. I like mysteries, but you can´t dangle ghost carrot in front of players face for 20 hours before you let it materialize and let him bite it. Well, you can... But there is a cost.

I`m hoping someone ends up making a good SciFi RPG game someday soon. It´s been ages since we got anything from that front (Mass Effect franchise ended up as a space soap opera shooters). XCom revival and Xenonauts at least brought tactical scifi games back, but where is the RPG part and why nobody is taking on it? It´s been mostly procedural games these days... I do like them, but it would be nice to have a story to go with all that content too once in a while.

But, the video posted in the OP is from February. And PoE has been number 1 on Steam sales since it was released. I'm not sure how you figure Angry Joe is responsible for PoE becoming number 5 in the last day. I think people are talking about the actual review video that just came out and not the teaser interview stuff in the OP. This is a pretty old thread in forum standards.

Honestly, Bioware is not known for mis-management of that type. DA2 is pretty much the only game to display those symptoms to such degree. We will never know the specifics (those pesky NDA:s), but looking that BW track record nothing else seems to make sense. Inon Zur (composer for that game) did give out a small comment: http://kotaku.com/5780870/ever-wonder-why-dragon-age-ii-came-out-so-soon As to how accurate that is, your guess is as good as mine. But knowing how EA had conducted their business in the past... I would not be surprised. That´s also why it is pleasing to know that Obsidian is likely to avoid full entanglement with major studios for their next game too. At least I hope so. Partnering with someone is ok, but letting them dictate everything is a road to ruin.

Ultra hard combat encounters. No opportunities for excessive cheesing either, just do or die.

Hm, it's really just one track (at least in my ears) and for throwback purposes I adore it. Otherwise PoE has pretty much its own musical style. It could just be that I heard that particular track too much. Maybe I spend too much time in that location or something. This is a purely subjective thing, after all. I enjoy soundtracks that are unique and recognizable in some form the most, even if it is not the most pleasant listening all the time. Something like Remember Me soundtrack for example.

But imagine the epic rage from friendly fire from AoE spells... So much fun!

Reminds me of Deus Ex Human Revolution... That game had silly exp system that let you harvest it from multiple paths/sources, which caused some players to backtrack and do everything. Even though you did not actually need all that xp to get through the game.

Soundtrack is good, but I`m actually bothered by the BG2 style throwback music/sounds you occasionally hear. They should have just made everything unique for this game and not do that.

DA2 had exactly one thing better than PoE or most other RPG games for that matter: Ally scripting. Rest of the design was all over the place and showing signs of extreme rushing and lack of budget. Perfect example of Electronic Arts spanking the studio until it started bleeding from every orifice.

Don´t repost, there is already topic for this.

This is of course a missed opportunity in many games. Overland travel is treated at most as a super simple minigame. Recent example is Wasteland 2. It has a water meter (completely trivial since refills are everywhere) and handful of random encounters, almost all of which are of low in quality (much worse than in some older games like Fallout 2). And radiation which is actually just a plot barrier you need to collects items for to bypass it eventually.

Stealth is dead simple in this game. Most RPG games are the same actually... Kind of makes me wish we´d get an isometric RPG with actual stealth, combined with a really good tactical combat akin Jagged Alliance 2 in the future.