xzar_monty

But surely the fact of mindless filler combat is a feature of encounter design, not a question of TB vs. RTwP. For instance, PoE and the White March in particular was full of mindless filler combat, but that was due to poor design, it had nothing to do with RTwP. In Deadfire, an awful lot of filler combat was cut out. Less encounters, a much better gaming design. It's also possible that I misunderstood what you meant, in which case, please correct.

You are the only one talking about idiots here, did you notice? It's not very kind, in my view. And you're still not making any kind of argument.

Do you intend anyone to take that a serious argument? It just doesn't work on any level whatsoever. Chess is a different game. There is nothing wrong with chess. However, cRPG characters are not inanimate pieces of wood/marble/whatever that are placed on 8*8 squares, etc.

This is naturally a matter of opinion, but my (rather limited) experience with D:OS2 suggests that the turn-based combat system used in that game is in every way inferior to the RTwP systems used in the Infinity Engine games (BG) or PoE/Deadfire. It's not immersive, it looks stilted and unnatural, and it just doesn't flow. Its most obvious drawback is its blatant artificiality. First, you have a group of characters wandering around the map. Then you encounter some other beings that may or may not turn out to be enemies. If it's the former and combat begins, suddenly everyone starts moving around according to a strange and funny-looking choreography, the most striking feature of which is that everybody spends most of their time just waiting around for others to do something on their turn. For me, nothing in this system works.

Personally, I find TB utterly baffling in CRPGs. RTwP is obviously impossible in tabletop RPGs, which is why turn-based combat exists in the first place. But as actual combat is never turn-based, I can't for the life of me understand why developers want to implement that system in computer games.

I didn't think the interaction with the environment in D:OS2 benefited the game experience in any way. Being able to move stuff around was meaningless to me. Also, the fact that you couldn't highlight things with TAB was annoying in the extreme. But thanks! I see where you're coming from. We just disagree.

In what way? This is a serious question, I am interested in your thoughts on this. How would you compare it to Deadfire's engine? For me, Deadfire wins hands down. PoE, too. Edit: I mean the engine, specifically.

It is, indeed, quite interesting to note that apart from the next Pathfinder game, this niche genre (isometric fantasy RPGs) essentially doesn't exist anymore. I do find it sad, because it's my favourite genre by far, but there you go.

Was going to ask the very same question! It's certainly not a particularly busy franchise (not that it ever was).

There is also the question of, shall we say, dignity, or integrity. In other words, if the successor of a classic has essentially nothing to do with said classic, a lot of people are going to feel that it might have been more decent not to make that successor in the first place. I'll give you an example from another context: Peter Jackson's movie trilogy for The Hobbit. I only saw the first one, but it was so poor and so out of touch with pretty much everything told in the book that I decided it would be best not to see the other two. Granted, some of the story bore some resemblance to things that happened in the book, but the spirit was completely wrong in pretty much every conceivable way (essentially, Jackson tried to turn an exciting children's story into a dark heroic epic, which just didn't work at all). The movie(s) did not tarnish the book in any way, but the decent thing would have been to not make the movies at all. It was such a colossal failure. Now, Larian may of course try to profit from the franchise, but if the result is completely out of touch with the spirit of BG, I suppose a fairly large number of people are going to feel disappointed., simply because the original classic is so good that it doesn't deserve poor treatment or watering down or what have you. Mind you, if it turns out that Larian's BG3 is excellent, I will be a happy camper indeed. And yes, I know that dignity or integrity or other terms like that don't matter to some people. That's fine. They do matter to me, and I'm pretty sure they matter to an awful lot of other people as well.

I'm sorry but that sentence doesn't make any sense.

Mine was just over 24 hours, but I understood perfectly well that there were many side quests I did not finish. So it's a bit on the short side, I would say, but definitely worth it.

Well, looking at that preview, the game certainly does not seem particularly interesting anymore. A bit of a shame, that. I'm not entirely sure whether there's meant to be a significant difference between BG3 and D:OS2, but for me, they looked essentially the same -- which is a huge downer, as I found D:OS2 almost completely uninteresting. The gameplay graphics just aren't very good. Some of the small details were really awkward, too, like the asterisks around dialogue options; I can't see why anyone would want those, as they look so highschoolish (and of course I admit this is nitpicking of the highest degree). The game also repeats a trope that I find very unflattering and unworking [sic]: NPC characters' lips move when they talk. It just looks so bad. Here's the thing about verisimilitude: if you want to make something appear realistic, it has to be pretty darn good. Otherwise it will just look silly and take away from the illusion of reality. Looking at those lips move in a way that has basically nothing to do with the words the characters are saying just looks so shoddy. The whole idea of showing those NPCs in such great detail and as such large figures on the screen has (in my view) not reached the level where it's worth it. It takes away from the (admittedly artificial) realism, instead of adding to it. It takes away from the immersion, in a big way.

Oh, there's no question that sidekicks are vastly superior to hirelings. I completely agree on that. I would never use hirelings myself, but I understand it's a viable approach, given certain preferences.

@Boeroer: Not being impressed with the sidekicks does not equal hating them. If you were referring to other people making nasty comments about them, that's fine. My feelings towards them are lukewarm, there's certainly no hatred. (I wrote this comment partly because this hate and hater talk has become so common and so cheap, and it only brings the level of discussion down. Criticism does not imply hatred, and not liking something doesn't, either. The words inside these parentheses aren't particularly directed at you, they're just a clarifying cmment.)

Interesting that you like the combat in DOS2. I have tried the game but found it very hard to get into. The writing seemed frankly awful, and I didn't find anything in the combat system to recommend it, either. Everything seemed overly simplified. But obviously this is a matter of taste. I understand the affinity for the Ultima series very well, because Ultima IV and V were huge, at the time, for me, something really special. Ultima VI was good, too, but nowhere near as engaging as the previous two. I've never even tried I-III, and I've only glimpsed VII. It's those three in the middle, and two of them in particular, that were magic for me. But then, even Ultima pales in comparison to the subtleties of NetHack. Best computer game ever. Ask me, I know almost everything.

Frankly they do seem a waste of time and effort, except for Konstanten in SSS and Ydwin in BoW. Does Rekke get reactivity anywhere? One properly fleshed-out companion would have been nicer than all of the sidekicks put together, in my view.

Where does Mirke get reactivity?

As long as it's isometric, I'm at least interested in checking out. If it's 3D, then that's another thing.

That's an interesting point of view. When it comes to breaking barriers, you could well be right, but the rest of what you say about that shows that breaking barriers is in no way necessary: BG2 combined excellent storytelling, immersive world-use (can't say world-building because the Forgotten Realms were already there) and player-friendliness exceptionally well, which made it a classic. As for it not even holding a candle to the newer RPGs, I'm simply going to flat-out disagree with you on that. And the fact that BG2 is still generally ranked very high in most "best RPGs of all time" lists will show you that your view is probably not that widely shared. However, what I'm more interested in is this: why do you think it doesn't even hold a candle to the newer RPGs, and what specifically are some of these newer RPGs? I'm very interested in your answer. For me, BG2 is better than P:K, for instance. It is also a lot better than PoE, and better than Deadfire. Both P:K and Deadfire are veritable competitors, but BG2 edges them both out -- which is not to say that BG2 doesn't also have problems. Games like D:OS2 are so simplified and veer so strongly towards showiness (i.e. graphics) at the expense of proper writing that there isn't even any competition, BG2 simply wipes the floor with them. Incidentally, this is not nostalgia talking. There are some old games that were absolute classics at the time and still remain viable, NetHack being by far the best example. That one is from 1987 and it's still superb. There are other old games that were brilliant at the time but are completely outdated now and not worth bothering with. Ultima IV, Ultima V and Dungeon Master are all good examples of this. Baldur's Gate 2 is old, but it hasn't become outdated. Everything works. Interestingly enough, Neverwinter Nights (which wasn't very good to being with, mostly because of the 3D approach and terrible storytelling) has aged a lot worse and looks simply unplayable these days.

How does it cheat? This sounds intriguing, and I'd be really interested to know. I know that Owlbear occasionally cheats with encounter design, and I feel that was a really, really poor choice. At other times, the encounter design is just nasty (most notably at the end), and while that isn't cheating, I still thought it was also a poor choice. But, good game.

To a certain extent it is, yes, with a little bit of Leisure Suit Larry decadence thrown in. It's an extremely well-written cRPG with Police Quest overtones. It's very heartily recommended, especially if you like good storytelling (as opposed to, say, mob fights).

Is this common when PC games are ported to consoles? I mean, this sounds awful. I would be extremely disappointed, given that the game is already quite old.

Does "allies" mean one of the possible factions? I never sided with any of them, so I never had any in the first place. If this means no dragon as a helper, that's fine.

I played Pathfinder: Kingmaker on Normal difficulty but with the enemies customized to 100% (they are set to 80% on Normal, for whatever reason), i.e. with the rulebook as it is. (*) Being someone who wants to avoid walkthroughs and discover pretty much everything on their own, I never once had difficulties with the timers. (I have no idea how close I came to that, of course, except in the main quest, where I wasn't close.) However, after finishing the game I found out there were some puzzles which not only did I not solve, I didn't even find the rooms they were in. But that's fine, the game was enjoyable. (*) I did turn the difficulty down to the easiest possible level at the very end, at the House at the End/Edge of Time, because I thought the encounter design there was just ridiculous.