xzar_monty

I don't want to be crass with you, but you are talking about your own personal opinion. It has no relevance outside your personal life. There's nothing wrong with your opinion, but if you cannot back it up with any kind of argument, it is essentially worthless.

Btw, some people regard Gorecci Street as the hardest fight in the entire game. I personally found the digsite encounter to be the most difficult of all; nothing after that came even close, no matter how many red skulls there were.

This is the Deadfire system in a nutshell, and you've captured it quite beautifully. You do indeed have an awful lot of options for building your characters, but they all come down to the same in the end. The system is so balanced that ultimately your choices (in classes, skills, items, whatever) matter little, because everything works pretty much as well as everything else. You really have to make an effort to get something that doesn't work or causes you problems. Mind you, I like both games, as I've said, but I do agree that nothing packs a punch in Deadfire. And then again, a Knife Master, for instance, in P:K, deals so much damage that most other melee classes pale in comparison. Which is a problem, too.

I'm still kind of disappointed that Konstanten isn't a full-fledged companion, because goddamn his voice actor is good. It's a great voice, superb diction, marvelous overall. I don't know who he is, but he's seriously good. He even manages to make Konstanten sound completely convincing when he makes a stupid joke that he knows is stupid but still likes and very much hopes that others like it, too. (I think it had something to do with ablutions/absolution, so it was a forced pun indeed.)

To an extent, you do have a point. But consider for instance the Florence of Leonardo and Michelangelo. Both were gay, both were known to be gay, both were among a fairly large number of artists known to be gay, and neither got into considerable exterior trouble about it. (Leonardo was twice accused of sodomy, but nothing became of it, whereas Michelangelo's interior troubles were considerable indeed, but only a part of them had to do with his sexuality.)

I'm sure it is. I mean, nobody who truly is supremely confident goes around making noise about it. Except maybe Zlatan.

Hmm, the point about the Gullet is interesting. I never had him there with me. For me, it was precisely the initial phase that turned me off. He seemed ridiculously full of himself, and in a humourless way, too. In fact, this was the reason why I didn't like Edwin in BG2, either: he was just too full of himself. Obviously there's the difference that Edwin is mean and cynical whereas Tekehu is not, but it was precisely their ridiculous overconfidence that turned me off. I love flamboyance, I think it's lovely. Haer'Dalis, for instance, in BG2, is superb because of it. LGBT is neither here nor there -- it can work or not, it's not a decisive factor in itself.

I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to with this. I had Serafen with me all the way, and he was excellent, both story-wise and as a member who pulled his weight. So, to suggest he's worthless sounds entirely wrong to me. The unpredictability is definitely there, but it never once led to insurmountable problems. If I had to assess, I would say that on balance I probably benefited from it more than it hurt me. Besides, I enjoyed many of the unpredictable effects, even some of the bad ones. I didn't enjoy Tekehu and ditched him pretty much straight away, but this is obviously subjective (I also didn't like Pallegina in either game). I wholeheartedly agree with Boeroer in that you should bring Eder and Serafen along.

I wholeheartedly agree that Deadfire does start rather poorly, especially when compared to the best bits in the game: Beast of Winter, the Arkemyr storyline, the Benweth storyline, much of the Gullet, and much of Eder's personal story. Interestingly, the main storyline in Deadfire didn't interest me very much, but in PoE I found it absolutely great up until the point where I got to the Council of Stars and basically went ho-hum. As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a single unnecessary or overcomplicated thing in the early part of PoE. It's all very good.

But this is subjective, of course. I personally found PoE's opening to be superb. You get introduced to adra and the Engwithians pretty much straight away, and right after that there's something really mysterious (the Watcher thing). I thought it was just great. Back in the day, Ultima IV was a game where it took me quite a while to recognize what it was I was supposed to be doing, and that sense of mystery was lovely. I wonder whether the reviewers you bring up expected what is called hand-holding. Would you care to provide some links so that I could check what they write? (I suppose we all agree that reviews tend to be very, very poor today, because proper computer game journalism, as serious journalism, has essentially disappeared.)

I think it's a fair point that a direct conversion of PnP rules into a cRPG probably isn't the optimal solution, so yes, I tend to agree on that. However, if we look at Deadfire's set of rules that aren't based on anything in PnP, I'd say they also have a series of problems -- other kinds of problems, but problems nonetheless. For me, both games ended up being enjoyable enough to finish, so in that sense I'm completely satisfied. And it has to be said that both games were a mess on release. I did my playthrough close to or over a year after release date with both, which I find very unfortunate. I mean, games tend not to be worth playing upon release, and that's just not good.

Could you please elaborate a bit more on how the D&D rules ruin the game? I don't think there's anything wrong with D&D 3rd edition -- actually it's my favorite system in PnP. And BG2 was superb, even if it was built on AD&D rules that are definitely dodgy in many ways. I finished P:K yesterday, and in my view it's a gem but with several serious flaws. Much of the writing is so bad and full of cliche that it verges on parody (or maybe it is parody?), and the whole game takes a serious turn for the worse once you get to the House at the End of Time; the mobs are just senselessly designed. And the whole endgame is far too long. But, as a whole, the game remains a gem and was definitely worth playing once. I'd say there's no chance of me even considering a replay (but then the same goes for Deadfire, which was also great).

I agree that the Flying Dutchman idea is not taken into any kind of conclusion. And I also agree that BoW is very good; for me, too, it is clearly the best of the three DLCs. I quit SSS about halfway through, because it was essentially just battle and I didn't need more of that, and I basically didn't even start FS because I had already reached max level and didn't see the point (both PoE and Deadfire suffer mightily from the fact that you max out on XP way way way too early). Actually, I found it quite interesting that arguably (but for me quite clearly) the most ambitious and multi-leveled storytelling in Deadfire happens in a DLC extension, i.e. Beast of Winter. Come to think of it, it was close to the same in PoE, too... As for The Elder Scrolls: I cannot comment, I have never even seen the game.

To an extent, you quite obviously do have a point (although not everyone is drunk by any stretch of the imagination). But hey, when you consider the average fantasy RPG, surely they're all the same in the same way? The dragons, the elves, the halflings, the dwarves, the heroes, the villains, the treasures: they're all cliches.

Durian is naturally a piece of cake compared to surströmming. )

Incidentally, I have now spent about two hours at the House at the Edge of Time, in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and I think I'm going to stop playing that game just about now. It's frankly astonishing to note how poorly designed this (final?) dungeon is. The battles are way, way overpowered, to the extent that the game is basically cheating to get you killed. Never seen stuff like this in a cRPG before, ever. A big, big surprise. What on earth were the developers thinking, I will probably never know. So, when it comes to the question of Deadfire vs. P:K, apparently Deadfire wins hands down.

That's a good theory, very sound and logical. And of course we cannot know if it's true or not, but it certainly could be. And yes, the money question is relevant, too -- and also something I hadn't considered at all. There was certainly a time when I was in that age bracket myself and had to consider very carefully what to buy and what not to (and for the overwhelming majority of games, the only reasonable choice was not buying). Heck, there was even a time, in the ZX-81 era, when we programmed our games ourselves (though it has to be said that I only ever knew the basics). Personally, after playing (let's say) enough cRPGS with Tolkienishly medieval settings, I was quite pleased with the world of Deadfire. And as I've said before, it's one of the very, very few games where I've taken special time and effort to appreciate the gorgeous graphics. Boy, does the game look fantastic. Normally, that's purely secondary to me, quite possibly because of my rather long experience with computer games. I mean, there certainly have been plenty of rubbish games that look nice, so "looking nice" tends to have very little inherent value.

Which choices are you referring to? I'm playing without mods, and I've enjoyed it a lot. I'm currently in the House at the end of Time (or something), and at this point things do seem to get a bit dodgy. I don't like the encounter design, for the most part. There seem to be some absurd design choices in the game. An example: extraordinarily expensive trade deals that require years of game time for you to even get your investment back. I can't get my head around some of this stuff - why do that?

So, you would your argument go something along the lines of "Pirates of the Caribbean" implying a humorous tone and hardcore cRPG fans not being a humor-oriented bunch? This is a genuine question, I'm not criticizing your take. I'm very curious to know why you think the Caribbean theme might be a turnoff. And yes, it could be, no question. As for reinventing the game mechanics: it was a slight turn-off for me in the beginning, and I did have my what the heck moment, but I think it's pretty obvious the new mechanics are better.

Really? Wow. Good to know, thanks. I know the post mortem exists but I've only watched it here and there, for a total of maybe five minutes. And as I've said before, what impressed me that Sawyer was forthright enough to take some blame and acknowledge that he made mistakes. That's really something. Laying the blame is the easiest thing in the world and everybody does it, so the opposite of that is always worth a mention.

As far as I know, at this point nobody has any proof whatsoever concerning any of the possible reasons for poor sales. I'm not sure whether an extensive consumer survey has been made, but if not (and I think not), the fact is that we have no proof. Plenty of online comments do not amount up to a cogent explanation (and obviously I'm not suggesting that you think they do). The important thing to keep in mind (and I've already said this in another thread) is that we humans are, after the fact, extremely good at coming up with reasonable-sounding explanations for why things went the way they did and, at the same time, disregarding the fact that we actually have no way of knowing whether our explanations are true or not. As for the game and its development, there are two big things that make me think that something was rotten in the state of Denmark: 1) Ship combat. This is the obvious biggie. They spent a lot of time and resources on this and still explain how unhappy with it at least some of them are, and how contradictory their feelings are/were regarding the whole thing. To an outsider looking in, none of this sounds good. 2) Adding turn-based mode so long after the game came out. This is just baffling. It's a huge endeavor, and I'm not sure whether it even has a precedent.

That's another valid meaning, sure. Another would be "clever" in the classical sense that a clever person can work himself out of a (physically, morally, legally or otherwise) tight spot that a wise person wouldn't fall into in the first place.

When it comes to these dispositions, "clever" is probably the most ambiguous from a purely linguistic and cultural point of view. Thus, it is a slightly unfortunate one-word description. After all, one of the dictionary definitions of clever is "intelligent", which is a world away from your "sarcastic jokester", another perfectly valid meaning. All the others are either completely straightforward or, at the very least, straightforward enough. Of course, one could argue that making "clever" one of the dispositions was a clever move...

Whoops, we sort of hijacked your thread. Apologies for that.

Ha, Baldur's Gate II has essentially the same bug: you can pickpocket Tolgerias for the Ring of the Ram and then kill him for another. (Fixed in the EE, I believe.) Edit: or was it Kangaxx and the Ring of Gaxx?