Wormerine

I think they are just generic ships to make the map feel less empty and give you something to raid if ya want.

Ship combat is in this awkward spot we’re enough work has been put into it to make it its own system with some interesting ideas, but not enough work to make it rewarding. Though my experience is rather the opposite - enemies get to rarely do anything essentially stunlocked by unmissable damage done very by yours truly. Essencially stop before every shot and move when your enemy is shooting. Ammo doesn’t change chances to hit. Enemy shot from a broad side is easier to hit, while ship from bow/stern are more difficult to hit, but hits do raking damage (2x).

With refund policy in place for Epic Store I finally felt secure enough to dip into another store front and give Hades a try. Not something I was thrilled much, as I liked Supergiants games for being unique and interesting and they got more and more unusual with every release. Hades did seem to me like a couple-years-late-to-a-party-project. For the most part I didn't change my mind - Rogue Light games is something I lost interest quite a while ago, and unless you do something very interesting gameplay wise (Invisible Inc!) I ususally skip them by now. Hades does seem like something that should follow up Bastion. Gameplay is fairly similar. Right now the game is light on content, in length, enemy variety, skill/gameplay variety, but the game already feels polished and is quite enjoyable to play. For a first early access build it's very promising. However, what took me by surprise and what makes me look forward to more of the title is Supergiant's signiture, which I didn't expect to see here - yes, visuals, music and voiceacting is excellent as usual, but the story is really well done as well! In a procedurally generated rogue-light game! Don't want to spoil much, but the game has already a decent number of characters with whom you get to interact on a regular basis - both in a home area were you go after each death, and in dungeon. The game even had a little bit to say once I reached the end of current dungeon: Hey, tomorrow is first big update. Hoping for something meaty.

As mentioned above some weapons/buffs apply to proficient weapons. So yeah, it generally smart to pick a modal for a weapon you will be likely to use. You never know when you will need +2 pen.

I really can't say. Played through with both imported and created save and I didn't notice any major or minor gap in reactivity. If there is an missing reactivity it's either very niche or very minor.

To be honest, if I could shape water into animated statues at will, I would probably start doing it seconds into every conversation instead of just zoning out. You can't rest on streets because of Baldur's Gate. However PoE straight up doesn't allow you rest instead of being interupted by a guard.

My 2nd PotD playthrough sort of stopped due to a bug which made it impossible for me to continue progress Beast of Winter. I started working on other DLCs meantime, but I get such bad framerate in SSS arena that it discourages fighting my way through it for the 2nd time (and I don't have cipher to cheese my way through it by mindcontrolling half of the enemies). Still have some megabosses to tackle.

I doubt there is much opposition - it would just take work. Considering the stash is shared there is fairly little need for access to "unused party members". I think it would be nice to have as if you do want to transfer a weapon equipped by non-active party member it is slighly inconvenient to do. Still, I would describe it as a niche quality of life feature.

Here's my answer: Because these games are mainly designed as escapist power fantasy for an incredibly conservative male audience who want precisely that and would get royally angry if it were any other way. Because many game rely on positive feedback loop - you do well, you a get reward. Of course, it evntually creates an issue of good players being rewarded for being good and making it easier to be good in the future. What you mention is negative feedback loop, which punishes player (albiet equipping the ring is optional, making it an optional negative feedback loop?) for doing well keeping the challenge more even. What? I am smart? Nah, I just watched Gamemaker's Toolkit on the subject:

Those boss fights are for people who want to respec, specialize and min-max their characters. The base game suffered from the lack of tough opponents. I would prefer if they were intergrated into the game in the first place, and they were part of the larger quests - fighting Adra Dragon was exciting becuase of the buildup. Fighting just a monster without context isn't as exciting. In addition Adra Dragon or any other challenge boss in PoE worked better as there was always another way to "solve" them. Unfortunately, due to the complete overhaul of how Deadfire combat works devs had to rething how epic bosses play out - making fight last much much longer was one of the obvious needed changes considering abundancy of resources available to characters. As it is, those mega-bosses are there for those who want challenge and provide little else beyond satisfaction of beating them. If that's not your cup of tea, really don't worry, and just ignore them. They weren't in the game in the first place, there is nothing that special to be gained by beating them. I had fun with the first two megabosses, didn't yet try out the other ones.

On some basic level I somewhat agree with you - I don’t think Deadfire handled grand universe changing story well. More time is given to a conflict in the Deadfire - it’s more fleshed out, characters in game care more about it. The destruction of the wheel is somewhat damaging as it makes the central conflict of the game somewhat irrelevant. Now, what I just say is not quite true - conflict in the Deadfire ties to ways you can influence Eothas. But I don’t think it works as well as it could/should have. I disagree strongly that PoE should drop the grand ideas and be just a fantasy adventure. PoE1 showed what great universe it can be. Even though it’s heavily flawed I find Deadfire far more interesting than most IE of old (except Planescape) or something fun but incoherent like Divinities. It might be a matter of taste, but if anything I wish for any future PoEs (if they happen) to explore its ideas further. I think that not being able to stop Eothas is not an issue - not being given enough space to process, understand and react to it (and have the world react to it) is. PoE companions and world well resonated with the reveal. Deadfire god content feels a bit too much like lore, and not enough like a story.

Errrr... ok. At least he will be looking good casting Minoletta’s Minir Missile while the actual spell will be eaten by enemy armor, because they don’t happen to be vulnerable to crush/corrode. Sure, with varied repertoire you might have a spell or two per fight to cast, but I feel it’s not enough to justify wizards presence in the party. Wizards flexibility to adapt to every encounter (not a big fan of wizard’s subclasses) is their best strength, IMO. @Boeroer you make we want to try multi-classed wizard, I was thinking about making a wiz as my 3rd character.

It’s actually not. Though while I found Dragon Age: Origins to be a slog after the battle of Ostagar, it wasn’t until Dragon Age2 ended that I fully realised it was a dud. There is something appealing in not knowing where the game is going, and something very disappointing in discovering it was going anywhere in the first place.

Maybe if there is a handful spells you are interesting in using. Can’t imagine playing pure Wizard without Grimoires. You put couple of those in your quick-switch tab and you have entire spell repertoire. Stick to just what you picked during leveling up and you will be casting inappropriate spells a majority of time.

Tis gut. Really nice dungeon, enjoyable narrative, some cool locations, bosses and lore drops.

@Fredward when you put it like that... Eothas smashing the wheel and killing bunch of stuff in the process does seem like a noble thing to do... he doesn’t really get to benefit from it at all.

Quite a long time ago. I started my 2nd playthrough after one of the early major PotD rebalances, and there have been several released after that.

At level 8 you will not encounter XP creep yet. However, the base game has been rebalanced couple times since I last played it so it is quite possible that it is at much better state. I found DLCs on veteran just right, and I am a bit scared how I will handle them with my PotD 2nd character, even though I found base game to be quite unchallenging. However, I still think Deadfire is a bit more consistant that PoE1 was, though before the addition of Megabosses it didn't have proper late game challenges like Adra Dragon.

man, like, i dont expect everyone to know - or care - about the history of the genre but... wizardry was kind of a big deal, to the point where it spawned *every* jrpg. it must have worked well on some level to have all those kids. Hell yeah. The only Wizardry game I played was the last one: Wizardry8, and it was an absolutely fantastic title. It ain’t matter if its FF, TP, bird eye or isometric. If a game is good, it’s good. All have their advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantages can become advantages if systems are designed with them in mind. I do agree that FP turn based game isn’t the most intuitive fit but is it that way because it simply isn’t, but because there aren’t many games that do that?

I prefer new protagonists for my RPG (fallouts1&2 did it so well). I wouldn’t mind playing as a new protagonist, while continuing the Watcher story, or rather exploring the aftermath of Eothas’ actions - one could still get reactivity based on previous games. I didn’t think that bringing the Watcher to Deadfire worked - for the majority of the game we are Herald of Berath anyway, and I really didn’t feel like watchers skills were essncial until DLCs. A new character who’s on his way to Deadfire to make his fortune falls as a victim to Eothas attack and the ship he/she has been traveling on crashes near Port Maje. Berath offers one of the victims chance to return to life in exchange of chasing Eothas. Then we get the same story, possibly Eder and Aloth have a reason to be there, revealing the new guy fine details about their adventures and revelations.

From a roleplaying reason - sure. Your party didnt detect it, and therefore doesn't know that it is there. However, traps are already designed in a way, that the player can't spot them and avoid them, even if the party cannot. So there is a break in "immersion" or: there is already discrepancy between what characters know, and what the player knows. Traps could only appear visually on the map, if they were detected. As such, I can see a benefit of allowing the player to disable those traps as well rewarding player interaction with the level (aka. spotting the trap "manually"). Counter argument that as RPG traps should be detectable and disableable by player if charcters can't see them is valid, and I won't argue with that, but if that is the design then traps should also be concealed from the player if not detected.

Llengrath in PoE1 was pretty much the toughest fight for in the game, added with WM part 2. Killing her was more out of desire for “completion” that necessity. If you want to know the conflict it’s:

I don’t know - if you put side to side WM and Deadfire’s DLC I prefer White March - a longer story arc and essentially a smaller, self contained campaign makes for a more satisfying adventure. But DLCs integrate really well with Deadfire and I think it was a right choice. Of course, I would happily pay for a standalone adventure. Beast of Winter has been my favourite with a dive into a new culture and exploration of some important lore. It’s has also a benefit of being a first one and it caught be off guard by how enjoyable it was. I did enjoy SSS a lot - more than I anticipated. I don’t mind a nice arena in an RPG and it was really well designed one, with interesting encounters, good story and even some unique encounters per-playthrough. As mentioned above - this area runs significantly worse than anything else in the game, which makes it especially painful considering it’s a combat heavy content. Forgotten Sanctum impressed me the least - maybe it’s because it didn’t surprise me in any major way - it provides a nice mix of storytelling and encounters, but doesnt excel in one or the other like previous DLCs did. Still, a highly enjoyable dungeon. Really nothing to complain except that there is nothing more to look forward to.

Well, the autoattack is done with a weapon a character is holding. If the weapon he is holding is a melee weapon he will run up to enemy and mack them in a face. Give him ranged weapon if you want him to keep a distance. I don't use AI much at all, but I don't think it's possible to two AI behaviours to one character. He is either aggressive (seeks targets out) or cautious (fights back).if you created two presets you will use one at a time. There is not such thing as "spellbook autoattack" though character can be scripted to use his abilities (in this case cast spells). You can fine tune when you want the abilities to be used by editing each ability in AI editor. I imagine it is possible to program a character to cast spells non stop before using melee attacks but it will take some tinkering.

-Neketaka and a pretty awesome “freelancing” feel of getting into town, grabbing some assignments and heading out to adventure, coming back, getting some cash, spending it, getting new jobs. I wish map were more reactive and system as the farther you get into the game, the emptier and less exciting it becomes, not other way around. -companion system - hear me out. I am not 100% sure if the attempt at the relationship system really paid of and the openness of the game makes it really tough for coherent character arcs to come through. However, every once in while, companions will critique/praise my character for things that fit and are the result of my role playing or they will have a very cool interjection during a conversation with NPC and are recognised by said NPC and when it happens it is really really cool. If PoE3 does happen I hope they will aim to polish, expand and improve the system. -multitude of ways to resolve some of the quests, varied and meaningful conversation options.