Matroska

I didn't link the stronghold upgrading to a Facebook game. That seems like an unfortunate result of missing out on a load of games throughout the last few decades, with Facebook being the sole way in which you've encountered it. The concept of having a castle or town that you can upgrade goes back way, way before Facebook. In Breath of Fire 2 (1994) you founded a town which grew it over time with your direction. It was optional but enhanced gameplay in various ways. The Suikoden series (starting 1995) has this idea at the core of its gameplay. The game is all about accumulating over 100 characters, each with distinct personalities, motivations and histories, and housing them in your ever-expanding castle which you can upgrade in various ways over the course of the game. Dark Cloud (2000) and its sequel (2002) are based around collecting items to upgrade your equipment as well as build various towns, the specific layout and design being down to the player. More recently, admittedly post-Facebook but probably before the proliferation of the kind of crappy timesink you're talking about, NWN2 had a similar thing, apparently Fable 2 did but I can't talk from experience on that one. It also reminds me of the various ways you could upgrade your castle and run the region in Dragon Age: Awakening. I actually think it's a great addition to a game, especially one in which you become a major player in the world yet are apparently still homeless, carrying about 2,000,000 gold pieces around with you in your hammerspace pockets, with nothing to spend it on. It's a noticeable way you have an impact on the world, it represents the player's rise in the world, it can be one way of rewarding the player for accomplishing certain tasks, it's another way to express yourself in the cases where customisation is an option (sadly this doesn't seem to be the case in PoE) and it's a good reason for gold to exist in the game since buying equipment is usually not a great idea in RPGs, especially when the best loot is usually found rather than purchased.

That does help, thanks. I guess it's not really a huge choice in the big scheme of things, it just felt a bit more important because Pallegina led me into it. That and it's a literal matter of life and death for someone.

I'm a bit confused by this. I don't care what the "best" choice per se, just what should make sense for my character. I'm playing as someone from Old Vailia who left their home due to a failed uprising they took part in. I don't know enough about this setting to really understand how that would interact with certain choices. If I've got this straight in my head, Verzano is from the Vailian Republics, a different nation from Old Vailia but one clearly related to it, like if the medieval Italian city states were unified, with Rome off on its own. So would my character feel kinship with people from the Republics or actually dislike them? Is it like the UK and US where we have that "special relationship", as they say? Also, in terms of the rebellious past, I feel like I should stick up for the underdogs in general, yet I'm not sure if in the long run the family Verzano has crossed are the underdogs of the three factions available in Defiance Bay. I also notice that killing Verzano and his men give me a mild negative reputation hit with the city as a whole - but is that the people of the city being annoyed at that, or the government of the city?

Well given that the expansion integrates into the base game rather than being a separate thing, you'd certainly assume so. Also, this is another great thing about not recording voice acting for every line; the only restriction is the writers themselves, there's no sense of "better dial back all this new Edér dialogue because we can't afford more than 100 lines from the VA."

I don't know much about iPads but I'm under the impression the Air 2 is a good one. That basically has about 1/3 to 1/4 of the recommended PC specs to run PoE. They'd definitely have to downscale it in various ways, although it should be said you can't really directly compare system specs across totally different systems like that. On the other hand, my PC only has 4GB of RAM, a 5800 series graphics card and a Phenom II X4 3.2Ghz - all a good step or two below the recommended - yet it runs it with maximum detail and 1080p very smoothly, so maybe the recommended specs are an overestimation anyway. Makes a nice change from them always being a significant underestimation, that's for sure.

Well this uses Unity, the same as Shadowrun Returns and Dragonfall. They're both on iPad, though admittedly have far more modest requirements. I really wouldn't want to play this kind of game on a tablet, though. I feel it'd be way too fiddly. If the reason for this is that you want to play it in a more comfortable position in your home, maybe even in bed, you can get software to stream your PC screen to a mobile device that also sends the tablet's touchscreen inputs back to the PC, interpreted as mouse clicks and drags. You could theoretically use this anywhere with a wifi connection but if the connection speed isn't top notch, it will be an awful experience, most likely. It'd probably be best to crank up the text size in the game, too.

Well people are talking about random encounters during the parts where you're travelling on the map rather than in a specific area. I just left one area to another adjacent one and it said it would take 16 hours. To be completely unmolested by anything at all, and not to meet another person of any note in all that time, is quite strange. I guess the flipside of that is denser encounters on the field view rather than the world map view (although that causes its own contradiction since you meet about 20 enemies in a small glade over about 10 minutes and then nothing at all over almost a whole day). Also, maybe if our local parks and forests were inhabited by trolls, ogres, undead and giant spiders, we'd encounter the local "wildlife" a lot more often, just like these unfortunate RPG adventureres. Yeah, I like that idea. It would also give a lot more use to the skills and abilities in a non-combat role. One of the things I was quite wary of when creating my character was how often would, say, Intellect be useful outside of combat, and thus worth taking just for fun, as you may have done in Fallout 1 and 2. Would I frequently benefit from having the Athleticism to clamber up cliffsides and leap over rivers and such? My experience with RPGs tells me that that kind of specific, set-piece event is quite rare throughout a playthrough, so these random encounters that make use of them and give the player rewards (either material or just bits of lore and stuff) from investing in them would be very welcome.

Well from one newer player to another, I'm playing on Hard and I went into the ruins under Gilded Vale with just my elven rogue character, Aloth and Edér all at level 3. Some of the fights against Shades went okay, others went downhill fast. Sometimes Aloth would cast the fan of flames spell and miss every Shade, sometimes he'd just glance them and do 3 or 4 damage. Blinding them worked better as it makes them easier to hit, but I could then only kill one or two of them before the status effect wore off. It also meant I had to rest very often. I managed to complete the quest there and clear out most of the enemies although that one room with a bunch of Skaldrs including two Kings was seemingly impossible. I could kill the normal Skaldrs but not the Kings. I felt quite confused by this sharp difficulty spike as well. In my experience so far it's a lot more based around buffs and debuffs than the IE games. I'm not saying they were devoid of them, but it felt more like it simply gave you an edge whereas in PoE they're necessary a lot of the time. This ties into the way that Obsidian have made a lot of skills and spells work on a per combat basis rather than a per day basis, the latter being the case in the IE games. For most of BG1, mages felt really weak and useless. Sure you could shoot off a couple of Magic Missiles but once that was done you were left with a feeble old man throwing darts at the ground around your enemy's feet. It was balanced for that, though, whereas PoE is balanced for you to frequently use knockdowns, blindness attacks and other buffs or debuffs. When you do encounter enemies in PoE that aren't as built on that idea as the Shades, it's actually pretty easy. I went through the area to the east of Gilded Vale and most of the enemies there just died in a few hits, posing no threat.

What about "flag as junk" or "flag to sell" button (e.g. Alt+LMB, if that's not taken)? Then there could be a "sell all junk" button in the shop interface. Maybe even allow flagging or directly selling via a lasso select, although that might be a bit too much of an overhaul to how the interface is programmed.

Yep, Wasteland 2 also does this kind of thing. If you're proficient enough in the relevant skill, you're asked if you want the encounter to go ahead. The same as, I think, Outdoorsman was in the original two Fallouts, or maybe just the 2nd one. On top of that, other skills determined how good or bad the initial layout of battle was; if you were low in those skills, you'd probably be surrounded with low prospects of survival. On the other hand, if you were talented, you'd find the tables turned. It would certainly give a very specific and characterful feel to playing with a group of rangers/druids/rogues and always choosing your battles, always being in control in the wild. Perhaps certain spells could have additional functions that would aid magic-users in this way, a kind of awareness boost or cloaking function for map movement.

Honestly, the only good thing about Minsc in my opinion is the obviously spoken "squeak!" that Boo makes when you click on him. Outside of that, his entire personality and dialogue reminds me of the "Penguin of Doom" copypasta from some years back. Of course, when I first played BG it was way before that so it didn't have that association. Back then it felt like he was written by Colin Hunt from The Fast Show, the office weirdo who wears novelty ties and is constantly telling jokes that only he laughs at. In my admittedly somewhat brief experience with PoE so far, the characters feel much more believable and fleshed-out. People in real life can be funny without being one-note "I'm so crazy! xDDD" machines. The same is obviously true with fictional characters. I'd say that humour that's actually coming from a relatable and rounded source is actually more effective than someone running with silliness set to 11 the whole time. Compare the humour found in something like The Office to the humour found in a kids' TV show. I've laughed more at Indiana Jones movies than I have at Adam Sandler movies. But really I'm posting just to say it's nice to see so many others that are thinking along similar lines here. I've found it quite surprising how many people love Minsc online; not something I've found "IRL".