Tigranes

Better solution; don't review games before they're released. Review it once you get the Gold.

Junai, I'm no hardware expert, but; I have Athlon XP +2600, 1gb ram, ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256mb... in other words, crap. I can still run Oblivion and Gothic 3 with medium settings, given the right .ini and setting tweaks. I expect it to be similar with NWN2, possibly a bit worse. Usually the key is to turn the shadows/shaders and lighting/post-processing off or low. This might be difficult, though - isn't NWN2 100% dynamic lighting? If so, that itself might screw a lot of us minimals up.

Perhaps I missed a bit more than I thought; though it's hard to see how. Before I set it down I checked the maps on the net and saw that I had indeed checked out every single 'location', and talked to every person. It's hard to miss a significant portion of the game if you do that. I made extensive use of fast travel though; early-game I was still on 512mb and trust me, 'exploration' really loses its flair when you're on 13-15fps and you can't see any grass. I still walked a fair bit, though, or I'd never have discovered every ruin and so forth. Yeah, I think my previous post shows my stance - that I would never say something like that. I do see the value in a game that loses much of its appeal after one play-through. It's simply that its strengths lie in other areas - as I said, for example, if a game's major appeal is in discovery of the unknown, then you're not going to have very strong replayability.

A replay of a game is naturally never the same as the first playthrough. It's not the question or more or less but of difference. For example, some people enjoy playing more 'passively' or 'tamely' on their first playthrough - letting the story guide them, playing more conventionally, and perhaps a bit recklessly. Then they start to really look at nooks and crannies, do some silly things, or look at deviant character builds / actions / etc. This obviously would give great pleasure and value for money to those who like it. For me, I usually tend to do everything I can in my first playthrough, and my characters often do not deviate much (e.g. Wizard, or Thief, in D&D, in terms of character build.). But replayability can still be a factor. In Planescape: Torment, there wasn't much I missed in the first 2 playthroughs, but I keep playing it as the same logic that I come back to a book I like after a while; I just enjoy the story even if it's no longer new. The story might remain the same, but I have changed. In the case of BG and IWD games, I enjoy the tactical combat, and it is guaranteed to always bring about new memorable situations. I enjoy the combat there and thus, even if I, say, don't find IWD1's story particularly engrossing the 7th time through, I can have fun. With Oblivion, I spent 60 hours in the first playthrough and pretty muchv isited every single dungeon, cave, and whatever in the game. I'm also pretty sure I did over 80% of the quests, except for very rare ones and the ones that were mutually exclusive. Afterwards i could never start a new game; the novelty of the world and visceral combat was gone, and that was really the only things I thought were great about the game. The sense of exploration and discovery, and of the unknown. Unlike the games I listed above, I didn't find much appeal in any other part of the game (and I hated the end), so that game for me had no replayability. But yes. Let's say player X plays Final Fantasy XIII, which takes about 100 hours to complete fully, then has no incentive to play it again. The same player plays Jade Empire, which takes, what, 20-30 hours, generously; but thinks it has great replaybility value and plays it a lot. (Hey, this is hypothetical. I was thinking of a short RPG. ) It's simply a different kind of enjoyment derived from the fact that the strengths of the two games lie in different areas.

It's 16th of November now. Why the hell do you need 16 days to put CDs on a plane, use the postal service, then truck them to various stores?! WHY?! I predict further delays, eventually resulting in 30th of November. Go go globalism.

9th of November, probably to be pushed back, for NZ. Heck, Gothic 3 isn't even here yet. O_o

It was the only game to make me feel I was watching a Japanese soap drama.

No-Enc was also in FFVII, although it didnt come quite so early (requiring lots of materia XP). I can also remember it in some of the other SNES/PS ones. And jags, which boss fights were ever 'unbeatable'? I can think of the spider-like thing in the Nibelheim reactor and the feckin' Door in the Temple of the Ancients (GOD, I hate that thing.), but apart from that FFVII was fine. FFIX was easy. So was VI, really. It was more the regular encounters that wore you down and killed you.

Yes, but he didn't write Picard, did he?

Sure. I live in New Zealand.

Out of all the people I know in Bethesda, Id have prefered him the most, so yeah, this is sorta good news for now. He certainly does have an eye for making interesting 'levels'. Although, who knows what will happen 2 years from now. Ferrrrrrrecough.

"More" is not the right word there.

Everything on the other side was horrible for me, because 1/ It was ugly and of horrible exploration value, which cuts out a lot of Oblivion's advantages. 2/ There was ONLY combat. And way too much of it. 3/ I prefer my enemies to do something other than GROAR and run directly at you. The first Clannfear battle in the courtyard, when you go to that K-town thats ravaged. Now that had a real sense of thrill and 'terror'. But do they really have to make you go in there so often? ...no, I didn't think Illusion would be very useful as a Major discipline. ;

Spider, that was in comparison to my point that nearly every game fails on its initial ambitions. I'm not saying it's horribly unfinished compared to KOTOR2 or other games like that. I wouldn't make such a point when the stupid stupid country STILL doesnt have the game in stock. ; For myself, I predict that I'll love it despite all the bugs. God knows I've played more buggy games. Can anyone else confirm that the 2nd patch fixes stunlock, btw? That would be pretty cool of PB.

I think anyone that was looking for DM to be more than a melee FPS will be disappointed.. that's the impression I got from the start, though that was partly because I didnt look into it as much as others. It's goign to have levels and you're going to fight with a pretty good melee engine. I'm excited about that, actually. THat's how I'd prefer DM to be. Real sword combat.

Or, everybody gets excited by their own projects and wants to complete their ambitions. Everybody who dreams and hopes will fall short in the end. PB simply did so in a way a bit more excessive and apparent than others. It's not a matter of basic stupidity as you imply, but a matter of a mistake, one they've admitted to, and will hopefully fix next time.

One of the biggest tabulature sites, OLGA, has been given orders to shut down (see pg1, pg2). People who remember the last thread about OLGA's impending doom will remember that the excuse given is tabs hurt sheet music sales and therefore hurt musicians. I can understand the sheet music debate since tabs, while not serving exactly the same purpose can be said to infringe on that market share. But musicians? tabs do a lot more good to a musician's lasting fame and contribution than it does harm by miniscule sale obstructions. Furthermore, it's nota s if sheet music for thousands of musicians are available, even online, outside a single country (usually the U.S.) If you live in, say, New Zealand, good luck getting real sheet music instead of tabs. It's pretty sad, really.

Is there a devpost somewhere in there? If not, no poitn reading past the OP... I dont see how it really matters to be honest, but its equally odd that the bracers and boots are in. "naked' people are usually used as slaves in the game, true, but it's still an unnecessary oddity.

Katana!

Fair enough Volo, I walked into that one. Now do that with the actual argument.

Question, DL: Why is it then the wearing of the Veil was not a widespread practice as it is now, before the 19th century?

It's about as silly as, oh, that's right, people buying what they want to buy with their money, Volo. I pre-ordered it in my case because it was 60% price of retail, and even if I bought it way later, it'd probably be for that same price. I also want to put my trust in PB, because everything I"ve heard indicates that underneath all the bugs lie a great product, and I want PB to survive and have another go at it. That's an extremely logical perspective of where my money will go and what effect it might have (however miniscule in the macro sense), so it is not 'wrong', whatever you might say. The superimposition of a singular, if correct, dictat onto every situation is extremely unreasonable.

Aye? I must have PK'd that bugger before he sang that, or I might have let him live...

From what I hear from people who've fought tooth and nail through the bugs, though, seems that a very good game lies underneath all the buggy crap. I've preordered it anyway (since it arrives at NZ this friday int he earliest anyway)... I think if you're lucky enough not to have gamekilling bugs on your particular system, then you can enjoy it a fair bit.

Then individually, Obsidian has FAILED with regards to timestop.