alanschu

The only real issue I have with the game are some interface issues, as well as AI (but you'll hear me criticize virtually every game for its AI, so meh). I don't even care that the attack animation for Cleave doesn't show up (making Great Cleave with a powerful character a particularly humourous site).

If you'd prefer, they could have Khelgar or Bishop as the romance option.

I love the fact that spells are no longer annoying to cast. There are interface quirks (inventory, left-clicking to target teammates), but I don't mind the interface. The radial menu was a neat idea, but I felt it was layered too deep that it made some things difficult to find and use quickly (like spells).

Yeah, I got the mage just fine too. AFAIK, the only one I missed was Guyven.

I'll admit that I did shift to the Normal difficulty after a bit, but it wasn't because I was finding Hardcore too difficult, but rather because I didn't feel like micromanaging my spell casters with puppet mode, and the fact that I actually wanted to see what these cool spell effects looked like.

Assuming there is anyone next. I know she suggests different people later in the game though. She probably would suggest Deekin (since I never had Deekin for a suggestion). Furthermore, she doesn't need to suggest anyone for you to actually acquire them, so if you're that willing to fill up your keep, just go around to the different areas.

I doubt you're coming anywhere close to unlocking most of the dialogue options in a single playthrough. I was getting dialogue options with the Tumble skill. I bet there's also dialogue options with the Perform skill, which your fighter won't have. It seems almost every skill at one point had a dialogue option attached to it. Not to mention the attribute related dialogue options, which likely need a value of around 14 to get (this is the Intelligence/Wisdom stuff). The theives skills such as spot are also used.

I remember getting to a point where he says something along the lines of "No more adventuring for me" before Crossroad Keep, so that's probably what happened, and why I couldn't find him either.

Errr, if you're not using puppet mode, wouldn't that mean you ARE using the AI?

Not above maximum though. Just keep it in mind. I find the difficulty decreases exponentially with each additional character to boot, but meh. Though you would probably get more party interactions. If you want to try it though, give it a whirl yourself.

does this mean that you can get 5 NPCs in your team? And does that happen late in the game? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I don't know if there's a part where you get 5, but I know there's parts where you get 4. And while I don't know if there's a part where you get specifically FIVE, there are parts where you get everyone. Taking into effect some other areas, I have had up to 8 other people in my party, not including summoned creatures, in my party (9 if you count the PC). Keep in mind that raising it earlier will make the game even easier.

Not true! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Odd. Then why couldn't I select Shadow Thief of Amn (nor any other prestige class) after I became an assassin? I'll have to double check this...I remember wanting to be a Shadow Thief of Amn, but not being able to choose it (and yes, I did have the feat). EDIT: Aha, it seems as though I did not have the required bluff skills. As for every other prestige class, it turns out I just didn't have the prerequisites for them, except for Shadow Dancer, which is right below the base classes so I didn't notice it. Me = dumb. And IMO, while Bishop may be an arrogant sexist pig, he's probably one of the more interesting NPCs I have seen. I agree with Volo that he is well written. Just because someone is arrogant and sexist doesn't mean that they are poorly written. I rather like the fact that there is an arrogant jerk in the game because, not too surprisingly, they DO exist in actual reality. I'm not sure what the Forgotten Realms should be a happy happy place where things like that don't exist.

The party limit count in the game slowly increases by default anyways, so meh.

Define "taking your time?" I didn't exactly rush through the game, I just played it a lot. There were some stuff I didn't do, mostly because I didn't really know about it. And in any case, Bishop's character is cold and ruthless, but I think he is very well written. He's also quite useful.

I love the fact that NPCs aren't autonomous drones that follow me around and are essentially pack mules that do my every bidding. Still, I never found inventory to be a big issue. Things like crafting items I never picked up, since I couldn't craft items. I gave them to the people that could craft items instead. No point in hoarding all of those scrolls, since I couldn't use them, so I gave them to other people that could. Given the fact that the game really isn't all that hard, there was only one time I found myself going "Doh!" when I realized a weapon was on a party member I didn't have on me.

You're only allowed one prestige class anyways.

I'm pretty ambivalent. The one bad thing about the historical monarchs, is that it lets you plan for the future, which is a big problem with the Paradox games IMO. I love playing HOI2, but in a MP game, it's almost pointless. Because if I'm Germany and you're the UK, you're going to be doing as big of a militarization as you can since you KNOW that war will be coming, and precisely which date as well. It's a Catch-22.

I'm not too active at the moment. I posted mostly in the HOI2 boards though, as well as a little bit in Vicky. I haven't been following EU3 too closely, but the bit I have seen looks cool. What parts have you concerned?

I didn't really have a problem with the QUANTITY of inventory. I'd suggest having other people pick stuff up to help keep it simple. I did this because finding stuff in the inventory can be rather difficult. But even then, it was mostly just split between Khelgar and myself. Though I'm not one to pick up every single item.

Ahem. If not for me, they'd still be hesitant about those games!!!!!!1212312 I have sunk a whole shwack of time into HOI2, and played many a MP game in EU2.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I really enjoyed the entire game. While I finished it in a "short" amount of time, it was mostly due to some rather lengthy game sessions on a weekend where I had not too much planned. Plus, my work (a bunch of geeks at University) all decided to play it on Friday as well. I'm playing through as a Human Paladin this time, going more as a good guy (I was an exploitative Tiefling Rogue my first playthrough).

I finished the game with most people being level 19 as well (I was a level 18 Tiefling). There were some things at Crossroad Keep that I didn't finish though, so I may have been able to get more. As for content, I really enjoyed the game in its entirety. It had good pacing, and I found the Crossroad Keep stuff very entertaining. I also really liked every single NPC. I thought they had good dialogue, and excellent banter with each other. As for the quest prestige classes, you can get Shadow Thief of Amn significantly earlier than the Neverwinter Nine one. Though I didn't pick it because I had already picked Assassin.

That's not the problem. The problem is the people that get all uppity when a white person does make an ethnic joke.

Setzer, since you insist on saying he was trying to change what he said, I went back and looked at the original posts, and I noticed something rather important: When he was talking about your monitor, he was talking about video quality, not performance. Since the performance was subpar at the high resolutions, you tried dropping it down but then complained that the game looked horrible. At no point did he say that your monitor was causing poor performance in this post that you mention. If anything, I think you just misinterpretted his post, and then continued onwards. He said the large LCD monitors can be poor for gaming because their native resolution is excessively high, and can outstrip the performance of a video card very easily if you want to play in the native resolution (i.e. the best quality). He never said it was the cause of poor performance. You misread his post, and then continued on an argument with him with that misinterpretation, which naturally made him defensive. Unfortunately, even when you went back to look at his post, you failed to look at the post directly above his post that was yours, where you made a comment about how the image quality was poor. In essence, you took his quote out of context, and incorrectly assumed (again) that he was talking about your monitor being the cause for the performance problem. To reiterate, the comment about the monitor was referring to the poor image quality at lower resolutions.