Tigranes

I did? I'm at an airport and I'm sure I'll turn out to have contradicted myself, but I (currently) don't think poe is less tactically deep/sophisticated than bg. There are clear pro/cons on player end when you play both games, but what poe lacks certainly isn't sophistication in its systems. Anyway, finished the game a while back, and combat just became worse as the game went on, especially since difficulty is even easier than vanilla poe. Why loot, why train, just select all and attack and occasionally press the shiny buttons if it's a 'difficult' battle. The most charitable guess I can make is that combat was low priority from day 1 for the project? Eh.

I don't think the designers thought anyone would take a level 4 party all the way over there while specifically going hours without anybody in mechanics when the skill has nothing to do with the class. Neither should they. And for what, the tiniest inconsequential gain in your points spent efficiency for skills? Skill points / difficulty is so generous in this game that all you have to do is pick *anybody* for mechanics, lore for scroll users, and after a while everybody has all the skills they could ever want.

I love it, this is the logic of a Trump victim in action. Not Trump logic, because Trump logic is a finely crafted piece of manipulation in action, but the kind of logic that screams "someone come and make a chump of me". Will a wall do anything? I guess, right? I mean, people are talking about a wall surely it must do something right? Is it worth building? I dunno, who knows? Nobody knows, right? So why don't we build that wall 'cuz it surely will do something right? Right?

There's a point of no return at the very end of the game, but the game automatically creates a separate save for you. You only get stuck if you, for some reason, deliberately delete that.

Kudos to you, TCS is one thing but it's a whole different question to do all bounties, dragons, etc. It's been a long time since I touched POE, do none of the key enemies have endurance/health regeneration? Seems like pinging Llengrath for 3 damage with Persistence for an hour would have been impossible otherwise. And then you have enemies with more powerful at-range attacks like Master Below, but I guess in that case the defences numbers game is easier to overcome as a properly stacked Paladin, and as you say the real problem is petrify. Did you scale up for WM/Endgame? How did Thaos go? The potion bug really gets my goat because it just adds frustrating nonresponsivity and confusion to what is already one of POE's key weaknesses - visual / feedback confusion in combat.

You're certainly right about the historical context, and there's a huge amount of naturalisation over time as well. When people hear Blackstaff they don't hear "Black + Staff" anymore, and so nobody complains that Candlekeep is a hackneyed name, we swallow it whole. POE worked against this current and basically made people switch their forks and knives and drink from bowls - and then, once people start feeling like it is weird and unnatural, there's not much persuading them that it is actually a lot more sensible and cool. It's a pity for a history nerd like me, but it's no surprise that most people just thought POE names were stupid in the context of its identity as an IE successor. I specifically called out American comic books because it feels to me a lot of the visual direction was inspired from there as well - though, again, as someone who doesn't read the stuff, I could be wronger than Trump. In any case, I was at least glad that Tyranny sported a relatively consistent style that was also sufficiently distinct from POE, but even within the kitschy over-the-top milieu, there's still degrees of cringey cheapness. A made-up assortment of random syllables, like Szass Tam or Otiluke, at least is easy to just incorporate and say "fine, that's his name". When Graven Ashe is, you know, a graven character, and Bleden Mark cuts people up, it's just one degree too freaking obvious that it's embarrassing. The irony, of course, is that a lot of British surnames and landmarks were coined in this way - your John Smiths and your Portsmouth - and it's also the case in many other countries, though the names then appear plenty exotic to non-native speakers. So it's not even necessarily that Graven Ashe or Halaster Blackcloak is an improbable technique for nomination, it's just about having a sufficient balance of familiarity and novelty to the target audience.

It's got nothing to do with 'less micromanagement'. Tyranny has no 'management'. You are like the dog that plays candy crush. For the most part you sit there and just press the buttons, then you press them again when they turn on. There are secondary causes to this; for example, from what I've seen so far (only some of Act 2), Tyranny has very few ways to modify enemy defences and boost yours selectively, and enemy variety is desperately poor, such that you lose the tactical targeting of specific defences that was key to playing POE tactically (which was only sort of required in POTD to begin with). It is also compounded by the spellcasting system, which is a very cool idea I'd like to see Obsidian take forward, but it has the effect here of flattening the kinds of modifiers your spells are going to have. So you sit there and there is no reason to save your fire bolt for a different enemy, there's no reason to not cast it because chances are it's better to cast it now and have the cooldown come back ASAP. Occasionally you'll save your accuracy-buffed spell for a more difficult enemy in the crowd. So pew, pew, wait, pew, wait, pew, hell I'm surprised you can't just put the entire party on AI and go have tea because all you need is to cycle through the active abilities. Microing four characters is actually more boring than a no-magic party in BG, because IE's underlying system and the way it gets represented in gameplay is more punchy, intuitive and favouring meaningful strategic intervention than POE/Tyranny's. (For example, even positioning is messy because Tyranny has the 'bobbly' colliding models typical of 3D era isometric RPGs compounded by huge characters much larger than POE's in collision terms.) POE worked hard to present its own set of synergistic effects and situations, presenting the player with opportunities; you could understand how to target an enemy's fortitude defence then exploit it, how to set them up for a flanking rogue, etc. In Tyranny you have some vestiges of that, e.g. KIS pounding on prone enemies, but mostly, meaningful synergy is limited to the combo abilities or to the general principle of debuffing an enemy someone else is attacking in some way. (When you say you miss the feeling of trying to figure out what spells to memorise, that was a clearly presented strategic choice where it was always easy to understand what the choice you were making was, and how that translates into your success. Such choices are almost totally absent in Tyranny, except at the level of not putting in an important spell in your slot (an impoverished version of the Vancian choice) or, um, picking the wrong talent at level up?) Perhaps it will change late game when you have the full complement of sigils and abilities, but as a simpler game with 4 party members, less skills/abilities, etc. it needed a system that's going to present you with some modicum of choice even when you have 3-4 abilities only. Right now the trend is you just pop more shiny buttons in your button belt and spam.

Played a few hours into Act 2 on POTD, will reserve full thoughts until the end. Combat is garbage, but at least it will forever stand as a good example of why just sticking cooldowns as your primary system is stupid design. You just sit there and mash the shiny buttons when they become shiny, like a dog. UI is worse than POE, riddled with small annoyances even down to how selecting a character has to bump up all the vertical portraits because they didn't legislate for the nameplate. The setting definitely has potential, and early game has some nice moments where you do feel like the lawbringer of an overlord. Apparently that doesn't last, we will see. Act 1 was certainly enjoyable. The names, jesus christ. Maybe it's a stylistic affinity thing? I thought people complaining about Duc and Fampyr were ridiculous given their clear historical and linguistic sense, but do I need to have read more American cartoons or are Graven Ashe and Bleden Mark the most idiotic 8-year old names possible? Might as well have named Tunon "Grimm Jack" and Nerat "Madd Fella".

You're in a high difficulty area in a mid-level region, and high mechanics skill has no systemic relationship with the rogue class. Not to mention it was your choice not to create a rogue companion. I think that lever is just a convenient way back, but my memory fails me.

"I can't beat this fight but I'm super sure I'm not doing anything wrong so game must be broken", can't argue with that. Look at the Bestiary, they have lower fort/will defence and burn DR, so target that instead of swinging at their face uselessly or whatnot. Fan of flames smashes them if you land a proper hit, so one way is to work on spells/items/food that increase the mage's accuracy and anything that lowers their reflex save. Given that it's well possible to solo POTD the temple with Barbarians or any other class... You could also go elsewhere in Act 1 and come back later, when you're levelled up.

Let him be, poor guy was traumatised by something or other and now believes Sawyer is personally conspiring to steal his babies and eat them with red onions. I expected the simplified combat, but I'm disappointed to hear from some quarters that character development also seems to be a bit of 'push big level up move on'. Are there not many interesting choices to make?

I've read many reviews from many different people for over a decade, and they've either been awful, or they've been decent but neither a good predictor of my preferences nor give the kind of information I want. Hence I go to a select few that that do work for me, and glean information I need from players. I don't find this particularly irrational.

Screw "reviewers", most of whom are idiots who can't write working for bribed desperate publications, or obnoxious hurr hurrs inflicting their voices on Youtube. Looking forward to impressions from people who've put a lot of hours in - esp. regarding overall combat difficulty (relative to POE POTD), encounter design variety (relative to POE), and the general tone (Nickelodeon? Goody good take on evil? Interesting nuance?)

Every time Chris Avellone says anything, there's always a bunch of people who for some inexplicable reason overanalyse and agonise until I can't figure out how they got from A to B. The only relevant quote from MCA I see on that interview is this: From which I gather, (A) MCA has zero intention of returning to Obsidian, (B) MCA thinks Obsidian has various unspecified higher management problems. Not sure where the "looking to be bought out" comes from, for example. Given that Obsidian has had the same owners since their founding ten years ago (minus MCA now), it would be informative if we could ever learn, say, how the decision-makin gprocess has cahnged over the years in terms of producers, external publisher contacts, amongst the owners, between Feargus and lead devs, etc. --- Edit; OK, I see buried near the bottom the bit about bought out: So MCA's speculating on this eagerness based on media interviews - does anybody know what he's referring to?

For Lagufaeth, I've found the best strategy is just paralyse them before they paralyse you. Sometimes hard to have good enough accuracy stats if you're lower level, but at 8 and above, you can reliably get most of them before they get you. Sirens I think are more difficult in that regard.

Why get snarky at people just trying to help? Nobody knows for sure what you tried or haven't tried. There's obviously Prayer against Imprisonment, and if sirens are jsut using standard paralysis spells (I can't remember), then problem solved.

Go anytime before entering the final pit. It's your choice but WM1 is more or less intended for midgame, WM2 a bit later. The game automatically creates a save before entering the pit, so unless you delete it deliberately, you can always pick it up there and do the expansions.

Do whatever you want and it's fine. Only exceptions are: 1) Faction quests: each one has a point of no return, after which you are locked out of other factions. Usually it's signalled in dialogue by the questgivers. Check online walkthroughs if you're anxious. 2) Some Defiance Bay quests are gone if you complete Act II, but that is still far, far away, basically after you get to see the .

POE uses pre-'painted' backgrounds, which are modelled, edited, rebrushed, etc. then baked into place like a nice sculpture. It provides an aesthetic that is distinctly different from full 3D solutions, and that was a major part of what people wanted back from the Infinity Engine games. One outcome is that it's not possible to rotate the camera.

The general drop in difficulty remains, but there is simply more upscalable high level difficult content for the party to engage in. Not sure about gold, after all there are only 3 pieces (main+WM1+2), but that's never stopped people in the past.

I second that. There's no point reading a million guides and worrying the ranger is slightly worse off than a rogue fifteen hours into the game or that you are screwed because you picked 14 resolve and not 16. Across 6 members in the party, the wealth of XP and loot handed out after early game, and the retraining options, you will easily be able to address any totally useless characters - and the chances aren't that high anyway, since there's ways to make many different kinds of characters work competently. It's subjective, but I find it's a lot more fun to just dive in once I know the basics, and then figure out the details as I go. To put it extremely, why am I wasting time playing if I'm using someone else's build guide, I make no choices, I just press the buttons, and then I fret that my character's not as powerful as it could be?

The game automatically creates a separate save for you, so it should be there unless you've gone ahead and deleted it. If there really is no save, you can use the console to teleport to any area outside the final dungeon, and then just head to the White March. AreaTransition MapName PointLocation Example: AreaTransition AR_0002_Dyrford_Tavern_01 North1 The list of all areas: https://dl.dropboxus...8/poe-areas.txt You might have to iroll20s first in the console, disabling achievements.

If Improved Anvil is your sweet spot, it's probably impossible to reach it for almost every RPG ever made. Even SCS is well beyond the highest difficulty in most games. If we wanted to jack it up for POE, the problem is that after a while the ways to jack up difficulty end up HP / stat-bloating the enemies (e.g. going in 4 levels lower than usual effectively is bloating the defence stats of the enemies), and beyond a certain point (shall we say, 50% XP reduction on POE), it just becomes tedious, instead of adding further strategic complexity. POE isn't really mod-friendly, either, so we haven't been able to see people really play with alternate encounter designs and things like that. I suppose some of the things you could do are house rule limitations - e.g. no-heals party, no rest until an entire level is clear at least. Limiting certain tactical options forces you to use the rest to the fullest.

Ok, but in a lot of games, you lose out a great deal of efficacy. This is one of nice things about Pillars, most playstyles are at the very least VIABLE sub PoTD(maybe even there, who knows?). If you don't know what the f I'm talking about, here's a bit of extra sexiness from Josh himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvyrEhAMUPo (be careful tho, this is VERY NERDY) That it is a nice thing about Pillars is exactly what we're talking about (and what the OP disputed). Melee wizards, non-shapeshifting druids, ranged rogues, etc. are easily viable in POTD.

Then play the druid, and don't shapeshift. I've done that before, you end up with a strong character with plenty of things to do. I hardly think asking for the ability to prohibit shapeshifting enhances replayability.