Tale

Would that be the first BG? Are you going to roll with SCS? Yes, first BG. There's nothing in SCS I care about to my knowledge. I am using Unfinished Business and the NPC Project, though.

Don't know, but Viconia can barely hit **** as it is with a regular +2 hammer. She helps out by having the highest lowest AC at -7 in my party. But only half the the health of Kagain.

Didn't know Albruin counted. I may not have sold it yet. It probably would have helped a lot, could have given Kagain it and he wouldn't have been stuck with the dagger.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have cheated at Baldur's Gate. I didn't want to, but I was reminded of why I always have to. It's the Greater Werewolf on the Isle of Balduran. The guy who is immune to all weapons below +4 in a game where there's only two weapons that have that bonus against him, one of which is in a chest behind him, the other is a stupid dagger. The guy who regenerates so much health that he goes from Badly Injured to Unharmed in a single round. I actually managed to kill him and win the fight legitimately. I had Safana, who is basically useless, run past to the chest and grab the second weapon. I gave that to Dorn, and then spammed all the Magic Missiles I could with everyone else. Of course, only my Sorcerer actually can Magic Missile worth a crap. He died! I cheered! I moved Safana! She stepped on a trap! She died! I... didn't have a quicksave between the two events. So I loaded it up, killed him with cheats, and just gave my party the XP. I was not doing it again.

I got my kindom destroyed, problem was just unlucky dice rolls. Latesr I was facing with problems with DC20 and advisor got bonus of +3, and as I was not save scumming problems just got worse and my advisors were unnable to succed on rolls Glad I got Baldur's Gate to hold me over. When the DLC for this comes out maybe I'll be back and hopefully they'll have it rebalanced. Or I'll just use invincible mode. I'm terrified of putting 30 or 40 hours into this game to get a game over I can't fix.

That's just auto-kingdom and the invincible mode. I'm more asking about reports I read where people would get rather suddenly destroyed or had no idea how to progress to avoid destruction. I'd like to be able to play it without turning on the cheat mode to win.

Are people able to reliably beat it yet without unexpected kingdom destruction or other game breaking issues?

Back to Baldur's Gate, and I've finally settled on making Sefana a mage. I've given her knock to make up for the temporary loss of lockpicking. I'll probably have someone memorize find traps as soon as I'm done on the werewolf island, too.

I've probably put over 10 hours into Assassin's Creed Odyssey and I can firmly say I don't care. Like, about anything. The game is just full of stuff to do and absolutely no reason to do any of it other than to get a checkmark. Leveling up? All the enemies level with you! Story? A complete snooze fest with bare minimum motivation! Loot? There's so much junk I'm already sick of going into the menu to compare it. Characters? Left them back on the first island, probably dead now, game does not care. Combat? It's been the same since I started. The war between Athens and Sparta? There's literally no reason to do it other than XP. Kick the spartans out of an area, the athenans take over. And then you can kick them out to bring the others back. Nothing changes except the color of your enemy's uniforms.

My main problem with Oblivion (and Fallout 3's level scaling) is they get ridiculous at points. Not that it can be abused. You'd eventually end up with enemies who could survive multiple X18 armor ignoring sneak attacks. Wasn't fun. Or how in high level Fallout 3, you could no longer go for a stroll without running into Albino Radscorpions and Deathclaws. Or Super Mutant Overlords who have armor ignoring attacks.

You can still run into Viscount Smoulderburn in a story area, can't you?

Level 7 is what I'm talking about. 30 hours in and even my main hasn't gotten 90,000 XP. Durlag's Tower actually has 95 detection traps. Which are undisarmable, so maybe that doesn't count. The standard Imoen dual class is level 7. That's what Shadows of Amn does to her.

C&C 5 had a progression system. It was a neat experimental RTS that should not have been a main series C&C.

Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition How can so many people tolerate Dual-Classing Imoen that it seems like standard practice? I just did it with Safana, but I just hit Durlag's tower! It will take 90,000 XP before she gets her thief skills back, but I'm 30 hours into my current playthrough and I haven't even got 90,000 XP on my main character. I'll be bleeding thiefless for another 30 hours unless I grind my levels over again on Ankhegs!

I tried a few times. I've got Stolen Throne for Dragon Age (I've heard around that Gaider admits it was accepted without any editting) and Arthas for World of Warcraft (I had to put it down when it started reading like a WoW RP session).

I'm not saying what they should and shouldn't do, just that I think they are wholly callous about continuity.

Well, XCOM 2 itself retconned XCOM: EU/EW. So it's about par for the course. They really don't care.

I miss Ensemble too. It was still probably the best time of my life. I'm not intimate on the details of its closing, but what I understood at the time does not have me fearing for Obsidian now should Microsoft buy them.

If streaming only is the future and they can't have FPS, it's a future that's still a ways off. Kids won't give up their COD and Fortnite so easily.

I've been a firm opponent of streaming games for a while. Not that I think it's a terrible idea, it's basically a timeshare rental of someone else's hardware. But I assumed the tech wasn't there to make it work well. Project Stream has me sold. The picture seems not as crisp as I would expect. The sound a bit flatter. I can't compare to if the game was running native, so maybe that's just how it is. But the controls are responsive and it's much better than I expected. Assassin's Creed Odyssey does not start with a hook, however. So I'm not thrilled by it yet.

Microsoft have been pretty decent with PC releases lately. They released 5 titles on Steam last month. Including Recore. I'm still amazed and delighted that they released Halo Wars on Steam last year. Then there's the support they continued to give Age of Empires II.

I got into the Google Stream beta! So I guess I'm going to be playing my first AC game since 3.

Bhaal was a dead middling god. Cyric is a trapped greater god. I think Cyric's ability to influence things is a bit higher at the moment than Bhaal's was in the original games. That said, my speculation of what they could do is bordering on fanfiction. Just trying to say there's storylines they could do that at least intersect with the Bhaalspawn saga or turn it in some way.

Bhaal's plan succeeded, Volourn. I think a Cyric v Bane and Bhaal conflict could be a decent basis for a new Bhaalspawn story. Bhaal got what he wanted, doesn't care, but Cyric finds some other generational or surviving descendents and starts pushing them around just to start problems. Or at least he starts spreading rumors and lies about it. Heck, Cyric's church were Sarevok's allies because Cyric really doesn't care about anything but causing chaos and Bhaalspawn were a way to do that. So that's just one angle to bring it back.

It seems unimplemented feature. All classes that can swap at level are unable. And it's been persistent through various hotfixes. Like Fighters are supposed to be able to change bonus feats. Inquisitors are supposed to swap spells. And I would think Bards could, too. Maybe they'll implement it eventually, but there's no word on them doing it too soon.