Tigranes

Soule has done way too many games recently, and it's starting to show. Repetitive, and generally boring. Surely he's not the only good composer for RPGs out there.

I wouldn't trust a passing preamble to a jade empire article from a commercial gaming website.

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but Irenicus is vulnerable to the Vorpal Sword, and SOA can end with a right hit from it. I always find RPG end bosses - especially Final Fantasy ones - depressingly bad. Writing and personality varies from game to game, but the actual fights are nearly always crap, and even the best RPGs don't save themselves from this seemingly inevitable design failure. Let's see. Irenicus has the power to cast spells seemingly without rest for prolonged period of time, throw out powerful death spells for sadistic enjoyment, construct amazing magical equipment, and when you face him all he is is a mage that has speeded through the SOA level progression, with a few extra gimmicks stuck on. Where are the unique spells, special equipment, etc? All he has is defensive contingencies, annoying mazes and a few high level mage spells. Blehhh. Sarevok wasn't any better; all he ever did was swing a sword and be immune to magic (which was, yes, verrrry annoying). The battle was improved by traps, Sarevok's allies and resulting chaos that emulated a proper battle, but it was depressing to pepper arrows into the endboss till he dropped on his face. I can't think of any examples that are better; in fact, Sephiroth of FF7 comes to mind (nearly a God? he can't do anything.), and Ultimecia of FF8, Necron / Kuja at FF9... they all are ridiculously weak, reduced to a beefed character with one or two extra gimmicks.

Very many, alan. Maybe if he cut his hair (or grew it), dyed it, changed hairstyle, put on lots of cosmetics, shaved off his trademark moustache, then held himself differently.

*grins* the first time i played a ff game, i looked after levelling up each time. then i found that none of the insanely numerous values actually really meant anything, except "X gets more uber". Ah, kefka, there is a difference. At level 99 of a final fantasy game, you've got spells of mass destruction, innumerable immunities, and basically maxed out the limits of that particular RPG character system. In D&D, you haven't done that yet; so think of FF's level 99 as.... TOB level 50. There's just nowhere else to go because you can't make magic or build golems or whatever. Every system has its limits. D&D just makes you take a looooong time to get there.

I hope everybody realises that ALL sites such as those - even big ones like amazon and ebgames - are notorious for making up anything they need or want. Baldur's Gate 3 on shelves with full release dates, name tags, and whatnot. It's most likely anything on such a site is simple crap somebody thought up in 2 seconds. No, I'm not being cynical or sarcastic, for once.

It confounds me that if he needed it so much, he didn't simply ****. How could you arouse yourself naked next to a donkey?

There's also the fact that it takes you a *while* to get up a level. (final fantasy eiiiiight..... ever gone up multiple levels for three people in one battle?)

bg had lots of complaints for being uber munchkin in second half of soa and tob, but it had worked because they planned beforehand, and D&D allowed this. rather, AD&D. now, if its like final fantasy or something... level 163? no way. the reason bg made it work, the reason D&D can support sequels, is that after spending hours to get to level 5 or so, there are lots of levels of spells you still can't memorise at all.

SP: Yes, but 7 had 3 members per party. You always had to carry cloud around, and if you had to do it with aeris too, you'd only have choice of one other; not only would it be very annoying if done for the entire cd, it would make it very hard for you to try or beef up other characters. It'd be like playing BG where you *had* to take jaheira, khalid, minsc, dynaheir. I don't know, dating Tifa is hard if you play as a casual player... I always have aeris in my party for a decent amount of time even if I've played the game countless times and realise she's going to die. If you just hate aeris, well, it's not very hard to date Tifa then.. but a lot of people like aeris.

Shadowpaladin: But aeris was quite heavily involved in the story throughout disc 1. She was very central to the midgar story, along with tifa, and the temple of the ancients, and all that. not to mention it is very, very hard to date someone other than aeris (due to the coding).

Actually, I do suggest he was joking... of course, some feminists don't even like those kind of jokes about women. I haven't helped, have I?

Translation: Warfl warfl warfl?? Warfl!! Warfl??Warfl???Warfl?? Warfl warfl warfl warfl warfl!Warfl warfle, warfle..warfle WARFLE?????WARFLE!!

Do you expect any more than ten of one thousand fan (by that the normal population)'s suggestions to make it into a game? You shouldn't, because fans make a lot of conflicting and/or stupid suggestions. Not to mention differing from game design/theme or improbable in development scheme.

Bio took a lot of suggestions. Just not an incredible amount. Besides, you can't collect a huge mass of fan suggestions and make a game out of that, especially since this particular crowd disagrees with each other a lot, and some opinions are downright stupid (which is why the owner of such opinions would never make good games. no, im not pointing at anyone, sheesh.) All that remains is that you want gamemakers to make a game that you want, and too bad if they dont.

For people who are too lazy to type obsidianent.com but will look at their emails inboxes.

For what news? "Chris Avellone had a sandwich today"?

Yes. It appears that we all agree on the same point. You see, my experience is that when i first saw the game, I was.. hm... 11? 12? and I had got bored by the time I had reached the Buried Village because I couldn't handle the game. The one part that stands out to me from memory is Deionarra in the Mortuary; I was just confused and bored by the talking going on and on and on. Of course, now I play it, I'm simply amazed by the game, and the Deionarra apparition stands to point out for me how good the game is if the player is right.

*rolls eyes* I worship Torment, so don't pull your defensive stance on me. I am simply explaining what the masses felt about Torment, and if they dont like it, it doesnt matter whether those are qualities that make Tormenta goodd game, or it was unique, or anything. To the masses, they dont like it. period. i am simply stating this fact. not judging torment or anything. so buzz.

This is more to the truth; the *huge* complaints were 1) An incredible amount of text, and 2) Crap, crap, crap combat. Then we latch onto other flaws of the nich

I think we lost about seven hundred one-smiley posts. Yup. Start crying.

Probably because it was beginning to reach a new accelerative rate of degeneration. Oh well, it's not like we lost any good posts.

Yeah. What do you think comprises the entire second half of the game? You mean Chapter 2? Where you dont even have to do half of those sidequests? Was that an attempt to start yet another pointless I hate Karzak war?

Wrong place.

Actually, they can.