Tale

Powered through a lot of BG2: EE and still have so much left to do. I hit Haer'Dalis and Keldorn's introductions in particular and have to say that I miss the spectacle these games are giving me. Visiting other worlds and lost underground temples. What do the fancy 3D RPGs have? Long tunnels of the same texture? Blah I say!

I liked it up through Brotherhood.

I hate the planar sphere, but it's a love-hate thing. I simply love planehopping, visiting new and crazy worlds, with feral halflings and demons, fighting tough monsters. But you're locked inside and I have so many bad memories of running into enemies I don't have the equipment to defeat. Things are going better this time since I know to expect it, something I didn't the last two times. And the only character who is struggling to fight is Jaheira, because a +1 scimitar isn't cutting it, and +2 scimitars are rare as heck.

I'm doing quests in Baldur's Gate 2 simply in the order that will get them to stop griping at me. I think I'll grab Keldorn and do his little graveyard quest, the second I step out of the Copper Coronet, Minsc complains for the third time that I haven't investigated Umar Hills. And immediately after that, Keldorn who has only just joined the group so I could do his graveyard quest, complains that I'm not hunting down Valygar. Get off my back, people!

It's definitely not an issue of bisexuality, because the heterosexual Ashley in Mass Effect did that to me. I have to echo that it seems Bioware romances are treated as the default interactions, because when I finally managed to turn Ashley down, this somehow turned on the Liara romance, and when I turned that one down, it turned Ashley back on. The nuclear option was required.

Max finally came home yesterday and on a related note, $2,000 left home. He's loaded up on 8 medications, I'm not sure if that includes the prescription food or not. Some of which require three times a day so I have to take an hour off work in the middle of the day to give it to him. Which isn't really a problem for me. The scary thing is that if he hadn't been throwing up that one day, I never would have known anything was wrong. And unless he starts throwing up again, I still won't.

And that's why I never memorize lightning bolt. Ever.

The reasoning would be that they're basically right, because all of the mages in the game do turn out to be abominations or madmen. Except the sibling. In the attempt to make everyone seem like they had a good argument, they went too far in justifying their worst accusations.

There are weapons that can kill Karoug. A couple of Bastard Sword +1/+3 v Shapeshifters are in the game and the second one is in Ulgoth's Beard. Adding a second sword to the game with the expansion and placing it in Ulgoths Beard is basically saying, you need this sword. I did find it odd that there was a second sword since I already had it for one of my characters, but realised it might be useful against werewolves later on. Even if you didn't find the second one in Ulgoths Beard by raiding one of the houses, you should have picked up the first one earlier in the game (Cloakwood or Baldur's Gate City depending on who you sided with in Cloakwood). The name of the bastard sword gives you a hint it'll probably be effective against werewolves since it has a bonus against shapeshifters. The bastard sword in Ulgoth's Beard is in the room immediately after the Greater Werewolf fight. And I've never heard about there being another on the island. You can know the dagger can hurt him just fine and it's shortly before the fight, but that alone won't give you the DPS to beat him. Even three backup mages with magic missile can run out before it dies, especially if you use any on other werewolves with him. They need to update BG2:EE to 1.3, I find myself missing some features of BG:EE. The quickloot is slightly better, tabbing tells you the names of all visible characters so you don't have to hover over them individually, and learnable spells have a green hue.

It's unreasonable to expect anyone to be prepared for the Greater Werewolf fight at first shot without reading up on it. It regenerates too fast and is immune to anything but a small dagger from a previous room and a sword from the next one. Unless you've b0een stocking up on missile wands or explore connected rooms in the middle of fights, you won't have the DPS to outdo his regeneration. People will be lucky to even realize it's regenerating before they've wasted a good portion of their attack spells. The demon's a bit better, but if you let him respawn even once, it's pretty much over. And there's not much reason to realize he will do that.

It was a map that created a new game mode that evolved into a genre/subgenre. There's an interesting family tree you could draw up (I've always thought the convergent evolution that lead to Devil May Cry and Tomb Raider to be most interesting), but you don't name the parents after the children.

What was MOBA about Homeworld ? RTS have since grown categories, those that focus on online play(MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) E.G: StarCraft. Homeworld kind of skirted the line as your units carried over into the next mission but the focus were the battles as opposed to Grand Strategy were most encounters can be autoresolved and the determining factor in success is the campaign map. Basically I want more management, diplomacy and empire building than combat. I've never heard MOBA used that way. I'm familiar with it being the RTS off-shoot to which DOTA, League of Legends, and others belong.

And I spoke too soon. His fever is back up, his urine is dark, and his spleen is enlarged. He might come home tonight, but even if he does, he's going right back in tomorrow. They have ultrasounds scheduled.

If I were a betting man, it'd be The Witcher 3, but I'm not. Dragon Age: Origins is a modern classic for me, but Dragon Age 2 is something of the lazy underachiever of the RPG world. Could have been good, but didn't put forth the effort required, taking its own success as too assured. Both Witcher games are very good. So there is a consistent quality that makes it more reliable than Dragon Age.

It doesn't advertise it, and they would if it did.

Well crap. I was planning to do my first ever run of IWD after I finish BG2:EE. But if IWD:EE is coming out, I might end up waiting. I wonder if they're going to just be finishing old quests and carrying over the BGEE classes. IWD2's going to be interesting if they come to that. That'll be the first time for them using a new ruleset.

Max is probably coming home today, yay. They told me yesterday that his abdomen didn't seem as tender. So that's good news. With less pain and less fever that's a good sign of recovery.

I used to be a big Drizzt fan. I say big but I always saw flaws in it. Chapters would begin with Drizzt narrating some sort of diary and he was annoying for that couple of paragraphs. The actual adventure and stories were fine, but those little introspective pieces just made him stand out as bizarre. At one point, I think it was in the third trilogy, it was around the time of troubles, he ventures to Menzoberranzan and meets a unicorn. Well, he naturally thinks its an avatar for his god Mielikki. A book or two later, everyone starts meeting their gods because the time of troubles starts, the drow in particular, And in the journal entry preface to a chapter Drizzt just flatly rejects all godly avatars. That's not really Lolth, and he was mistaken about the unicorn. No, everyone who follows a god they can see is being foolish, because true gods are unseen. You have to have blind faith. And I sat there for a few minutes wondering why someone in Forgotten Realms was espousing Judeo-Christian philosophy. The series was pretty good up through The Orc King. Pirate King and Ghost King were absolutely dreadful. The first book of Neverwinter actually picked up a bit and removed the bitter taste Ghost King left in my mouth. Second book of Neverwinter is boring and haven't been able to make it through.

Finished Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition, onto BGII: EE. Like my recent play of PS:T, that was my first playthrough without cheating. Feels pretty good, but I still say some of the fights are cheap as heck, like the demon fight at the end of ToTSC and the Greater Werewolf fight. I like the idea that fights should be reasonably achievable on the first attempt. It's an immersion/RP perspective, my characters don't have the benefit of learning from reloads, why should I? But they work as trial/error fights and were nonetheless enjoyable. Sarevok was far more manageable than I remembered. I was playing around with fighting him and just sent Khalid into the room. Well, Semaj was cloudkilling his own people, so a confused Khalid managed to kill both him and Tazok by himself. I figured I could do better than that if everyone was in the room. A couple of early cloudkills of my own and Angelo was never seen. Sarevok was badly wounded before he even showed up and with a sensible sacrifice of Khalid, the demi-god was downed before Semaj could TK himself and Tazok.

Worried about my dog. He started throwing up yesterday, took him to the vet, and they say it's a serious case of pancreatitis. He's in lots of pain, on an IV and painkillers, but his fever is down.

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright has finally hit the states! I'm so excited I just can't hide it. Helping to justify my 3DS after most of a year of non-use. I'm also still playing Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition. Trying to finish up Baldur's Gate quests before I attack the Iron Throne.

I tried playing Bounty Hunter back in beta. The storyline and player agency were terrible. I quit the moment I was forced to partner with a bounty. He was annoying and deserved death.

I've gone mad with power! Three threads on this subject, good grief. I've merged two of them, hope it doesn't make following the discussion too hard.

Keep it to one thread. It would be a bit unwieldy if everyone creates a new thread just because they want a poll. Then just imagine when they want new polls for different options. Current active thread.

Closing superfluous threads. This is the current longest thread.