Tigranes

Fair enough to cliche Fantasy, but isn't cliche scifi just as bad? I don't know where ME goes as I haven't played it yet, but I mean, I'm sick of cliche scifi just as much as elves & dragons.

Ohhh, The Beast. Odd, I didn't have trouble with that particular fight, but I think I leveled up quite a bit in Chapter 1. Aard indeed is the best sign, I also like Igni + Strong Silver for the combination damage. Have hardly bothered with the other signs yet.

Aren't all the stories finished? I wouldn't know about NWN1 OC though, I guess I'll finish it one day when I want to see what Hell is like.

Yeah, I didn't find out about the mod Mus links to until I was in chapter 4, so I'll try it when I replay the game at some point.

Couldn't get into first ep of Gurren Lagann, but I'll give it another go sometime. Bamboo Blade's been funny the first few eps, but it's starting to get really bogged down. It needs to be quick and funny, instead of dwelling on its "side stories". Atreides, is minami-ke actually airing on anime these days? I've read some of the manga and love it.

I think it would be unfair to give up on the Witcher that early, theslug. Also, you will totally find that your particular annoyance by and large disappears once you leave the castle (which, once you make the potion, is very very soon). You will still find that some enemies are more conducive to certain styles, but that is only natural; otherwise it would make the fights less realistic and more boring. But it's certainly not as extreme as in the prologue, and you will soon get the hang of it I think. I played through Chapter 4 quite quickly, fairly enjoyable. Perhaps because of the broken dialogue, the whole game I've felt like the story isn't taking front seat and centre in the game, but rather runs along with you as an implied background thing - I think it is due largely to the translation blunders. I'm taking a break for a few days again because this *is* a long game, and I understand Chapter 5 is the last. It's been quite an excellent game, though no groundbreaking elements, and I should think that it has a fitting ending.

Wow, that's horrible. That must be impossible to understand. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what we can do - the localisation is SUPPOSED to be done by the publisher (Atari), but if Taiwan Atari are dragging their feet... The only way to get good localisation is to do it yourself (fan-fixes) or force Taiwan Atari to do it, but I'm not sure how that could be done. I don't think Obsidian Entertainment would be able to put that much pressure on Atari, much less Taiwan Atari. I do sympathise, though - do you have any suggestions on how we can help? I suppose its good at least to put the word about and make people realise.

Played a bit of Ch4, the loading times are really better, at least two or three times better, its amazing.

Aw snap, I'm just getting into chapter 4! I had taken a couple days' break, but the promise of reduced loading times is getting me going again. Also, best patch note in the history of gaming:

Maybe just a lack of interest at this point in time, since this subforum isn't the most popular we have. Unfortunately, it happens to the best of us.

Steve, if you can run the Witcher without significant lag, I would say intermediate is fine. If you take the time to explore places, fight everything you come across (instead of doing some Indiana Jones running), and understand the uses of alchemy, you should generally be fine. But then, I found Jade Empire (on normal diff.) ridiculously easy, and didn't struggle much with Oblivion's either. I would say the Witcher requires less 'twitchy' things as a whole though, basically all you are doing is clicking the left button again and again at certain times. Just have no lag, and smell the flowers (and pick alchemy ingredients!) as you go along, etc, and you shouldn't end up beleaguered. I think it would be a pity if you picked Easy and it turned out too easy, it would hurt your experience for Witcher.

Yeah. If you were hanging on literally by the ends of your fingers for MOTB, probably not Witcher, but I can for example play both at low settings.

I am, indeed, awesome.

Well done to the fellow, regardless of the religion stuff they insist on hyping up. I think, as others have said, the one thing we should worry about is the idiots who would attack people for saying Happy Hannukah. It's indefensible and very unfortuante.

I wish we could stick with a single engine for long periods without completely reworking it, like we did with IE, though its no longer feasible now. The way IWD2 abused and squeezed the engine was delicious, and Electron is surely capable of whole new degrees of optimisation and efficiency. That said, I'm so used to playing games at Very Low and 7fps anyway. I defy Gamer Savings Time. I've already finished both OC and MOTB twice though, so won't be going back for at least half a year, or until Westgate comes out.

Some new fellow, I suspect. I really hope they do the climactic battle by the book, with all those varieties of races throwing their weight about. Smaug/Mountain should look delicious, too. I wonder if the Hobbit really takes two movies to tell, though. Maybe these will be shorter?

Gandalf better return, is all I say.

Kaftan: personally, I'd ask not what's the forgiving factor, but what's the damning factor - the majority of the game is good, and I think Tale would agree despite his point about Chapter 3 being a bit draggy. I'd say its a pretty similar game to Gothic 3 actually, but a bit closer to Black Isle traditions.

The faction decision really did put me on the spot for a while, and I tried to role-play it too. Throughout Chapter 3, since the game made it quite clear I couldn't stay neutral, I was unconvinced the Scoia'tael's quest would ever really succeed; and it felt like the nonhumans were most likely doomed to a shadow of their former existence. That said, it wouldn't be bad for the humans to wake up and realise what the fruits of their xenophobic policies were, and while I could count on the Scoia'tael being reasonably straight with me, and needing me as much as I needed them (due to their beleaguered status), shaking hands with the Order would involve me with allies whose identity are even more in doubt, and I wasn't confident on getting the help I needed while dancing out of the trouble from all the high politicking and scheming of the humans. With the romance bit, though I chose Triss, since she seemed more able to help; and Just getting into Chapter 4.

Sounds like packet loss, things to check would be router/ISP compatibility, cable/modem quality and functionality, wireless and any other odd settings.

On the topic of laptops, my friendly recently purchased one and wants to TV-Out it to a widescreen HDTV, but claims he's getting blurry screens. Probably a resolution problem, right? Any suggestions on that front? That one was a Dell by the way. It's in NZ so situation differs, but it was actually quite customisable; I tried to recommend one under his price range but still with a decent enough graphics card, it's crucial to get one (GeForce something) that isn't integrated so he actually has a shot at running games, even on Gamer Savings Time. If there is money though, a Sony Vaio is always a nice choice on all fronts.

Advertisements for commercial products are not permitted on these forums, Monsieur Linlin. Move along now.

How about telling us some games you've enjoyed in the past, so we can get a feel for what we can recommend? e.g. Have you played any of the previous Final Fantasies? I haven't played x-2 but 10 is a pretty solid game, though I would recommend 12 a lot more if you have a PS2 to begin with.

I do hate the long loading times (on my sad excuse for a computer it takes me three minutes to travel from one big quarter to the other, cause it saves, too), but apart from that, still loving it and on Ch4. On intermediate (and, admittedly, with quite a bit of lag) I find it challenging enough, I'm using alchemy which has a good solid system, and it manages to integrate the viscerality of action RPGs well. I wish there were more than five spells (lots of unique individual spells like "Wall of Fire" or projectile evocation would have been nice), but yeah. I guess it's just you not liking the style, which is fair enough. I don't find it much worse than most RPGs these days to be honest. The only extremes are the 'Contracts', but those are not tied to any story and you can just ignore them. But then, I enjoy the combat, so I don't mind as much - I suspect if you find the combat a chore they are more annoying. I would indeed have liked to have seen one or two large, complicated sidequests with innovative solutions (there were a couple with potential, e.g. , but ended up being fedex) I'm not sure what's so bad about the translation actually, guys. I'm normally quite sensitive to that stuff, but apart from the very noticeable cuts, the dialogue appears to be pretty Biowarian - standard, does the job. The voiceovers hardly bother me since I'm a fast reader and skip half the voiceovers, and the important characters are done acceptably. They do this in a slightly different direction from western developers, and don't seem to rely on the same set of 'developer's tricks'. Some speech skills would indeed have been nice, though; I think, leaving the Talents system as it is now, having 'special skills' you can learn from quests or characters (a la Fallout's special perks) would have been nice; e.g. reading that book on seduction actually giving you a tangible skill on eloquence, or stuff like that.

Odd, despite my hideously crap computer I can still alt-tab. It lags a lot, but it can do it. The Witcher's had zero bugs so far, except for a couple of random crashes. In Act 3 now and the game is still going strong.