alanschu

For the record, I don't know where you got this. I thought it was quite clear at this stage that you're more than able to attempt to solo the game (save a few points here and there). When people say "mandatory NPC" they are not talking about that NPC taking up one of your 4 party slots.

Maybe you're the one not getting it. Cheers.

I think it's being overstated how bad it actually is.

As far as I know you can't kill every party member but one. You just don't need to let everyone that comes along into your party. Sure, this is common in every game, including BioWare's older games. The thing about your example is that it still applies to a game like Dragon Age. Because that tactic is going to result in a wipe for the entire party in Dragon Age, just like it is in D&D. However, when you have a really good, fun, very close battle where at the very end your guy gets critically hit for just enough to kill him by the last enemy remaining, you aren't forced to reload the game (as you would be in Baldur's Gate).

What does it mean by "arbitrary?" Given you admittedly know next to nothing about the party members, you're hardly qualified to state why something is arbitrary regarding party members. However, if you want to get technical and go specifically by the definition, everything in every video game is arbitrary.

You have a lot of money!

Haha taking the island by force with that group. THough I guess the "logic" behind it is that it's supposed to be a smaller scale operation and not a full fledged war?

Or simply be luckier. Have a big spell not get resisted, etc. Especially if we're talking a single character vs an entire party wipe. A character can go down because of poor luck. I had a formulaic approach to the BG2 mage fights, and sometimes it would work, other times it wouldn't. Who do you think it might be?

Heatley isn't a particularly good defensive player, but he outscores the competition, which is all that matters. Like Jagr or (perhaps perfectly) Gretzky, they put up significant plus values not because they were defensive dynamos, but because they were so offensively powerful the other team didn't get many opportunities to score on them.

Are you serious? haha

I don't have much experience with archers. Early game they didn't seem to be as effective as outright damage, but they do have the advantage of avoiding a lot of damage, and there were some fights where I found myself opting to use a bow (with no talents in archery) with my dual-weapon specialized rogue because it made some sequences easier. I have heard that higher level archers can deal out a significant chunk of damage. They also have some handy (and exceptionally annoying when they happen to you) crowd controlling abilities. Though you'll likely go bows then. Crossbows are a strength based weapon IIRC, and typically suited for a warrior class' alternate weapon.

I didn't really notice that during my playthrough. I most definitely got progressively better as the game went on. Early in the game I died a lot, with full party wipes. Then I'd get more of the tense moments where my last player character left standing would defeat the last hostile with 2% health left. As time went on and I learned my abilities and effective ways to keep the rest of my party alive. When you have a character that has 6 different injuries on them because they've fallen in the last 6 fights, you'll start to be a bit more careful, especially at the beginning of the game when the injuries are their most debilitating. This doesn't hold up as in Dragon Age you can easily refuse party members. I'm not sure precisely of its motivations, but I know in Baldur's Gate 1/2 if someone died, I'd just automatically reload the game, and use my new knowledge of the encounter to metagame it so that I don't lose anyone. The automatic revival does make the game easier, but in my opinion, it also makes it more fun because I'm less worried about constant reloading the game. Instead of loading up on a lot of scrolls of resurrection, I'm loading up on injury kits. But I'm not fubared and forced to replay an encounter endlessly because it's a tough one, simply because a couple party members die.

Is there any that you recommend? And more importantly, would it require me to restart?

Unfortunately my computer didn't like Stalker Complete. Is there a way for me to repair items in the main game? I have a handy PSO-1 scope on my Okoban and would like to keep this gun probably close to forever

THey tried their best to lose the game tonight though hahah. Up until the end of the second period it seemed like Edmonton was in control, and then there Montreal seized the initiative. SOme close posts by O'Sullivan and Hemsky that would have put the game on ice though.

I loved Blood Money! Personally I liked it because it wasn't an exercise in saving/loading like the other ones were. They toned the difficulty down just a smidge and let you do a lot of cool things.

It's not. At the same time, I wouldn't be surprised if people occasionally wipe there, especially on harder difficulties. There are some fights that are significantly more difficult and some of them even earlier in the game than the point shown in the game. I think that there will be an adjustment period for a lot of people because they'll go into it KOTOR or Mass Effect style where death is pretty much impossible. It's not uncommon to have people drop in battle throughout the game though, and permanent death would mean a lot of reloading for people.

I don't have a 64 bit OS at the moment. But I am still on XP and not Vista, so that saves me some memory haha. And yeah, I figure any upgrade now will tide me over until I am ready and able to properly upgrade. The only concern is that the CPU is a bit old, but my impression is that it's the graphics cards today that are the biggest bottlenecks.

I'd love to see some people progress through this game with permadeath

Hmmm, I don't think so, but to be honest I never tried. I think after a while you'll just look past them anyways.

A lot of crazy tech people say to get XFX and stay away from Sapphire. At least, that's what I soaked up over on Hardforum.com recently. But in the end they're all based on the reference boards. The main difference usually lies in length of warranty and quality of customer support. I had heard rumours about Sapphire cards way back before ATI was purchased by AMD. I tend to be an AMD (and to a lesser extent ATI) fanboy so that's likely the choice I will go with. This is likely going to be a pretty cheap card though, as I'm definitely not looking for something long term. I'm hoping that when I get my debt situation sorted out, and get more permanent employment, to do a wholesale upgrade of my computer. It looks like pretty much anything is a large upgrade over what I have haha.

HAHA

/me grumbles as he drives home in a snowstorm.

The game is pretty challenging to start. I had a hard time at first with my rogue build to start. Mages can be very powerful at the beginning, but it comes with an understanding of the character and abilities.

That's a lot of gold!