Starwars

I'm sure there will be darker moments in the game (the Blood Ties quest is certainly pretty dark) but this isn't the Witcher. This is in fact much more of a high fantasy universe from the looks of it and that's fine. Personally, I love the Witcher's atmosphere (not a huge fan of the actual games but the atmosphere and settings are really well done) but I'm getting pretty tired of the whole "grimdark" thing. I hope PoE will land somewhere in the middle.

I'm sure there's been topics about this but I figured we could use another one. A huge part of the forums is about discussing the mechanics (understandably so), so let's have this one for the other stuff. Overall, I'm very pleased with this part of the beta. I quite like the ratio of conversations for one thing. I like the "flow" of the town if that makes sense. I also like that you can "shortcut" your way into the Skaenite dungeon if you're persistant, I hope there's a lot of stuff like that in the full game. The Blood Ties quest is the best quest as is. Excellent writing overall which doesn't really feel "forced grimdark" even though it is very grim indeed. I've only played through the quest twice but it feels like there's a good amount of options there. I guess I would always like an "Attack option" from *all* nodes in the Skaenite conversation in the dungeon, though you can manually attack him outside of the convo. The quest with the Orlan in hiding is nice but it also feels really short. Hopefully there'll be some sort of follow-up in the full game, it doesn't really feel like you can "dive in" enough in the details of it. The pig quest has a boring premise but it's made interesting by the Ogre. Again, it's great that we can actually talk with it and come to an understanding if we wish. And I love that it kinda ties in with the Blood Ties quest (well, the currier tries to make it that way at least). The dragon egg quest is the most boring one I think, it's just not very exciting. I like the adventuring band near the cliff. I like that there's a scriped interaction there also, but I'm not quite sure what is needed to bring the egg down safely? Athletics and something else, or Survival? I managed it once but I don't remember what skills I had (or what character I used if I used a different one). I like that there's a Bard in the Inn to tell some lore, but it feels weird in that it's her *only* purpose. You can't ask her at all about the other stuff going on in town which I found pretty weird. Her conversation also feels odd in that it doesn't have much (if any?) descriptive text compared to other conversations.

Not a fan of Isolation personally. It is tense at times but being leashed to the alien gets old real fast.

Finished up Valiant Hearts. Overall, the one thing I feel when thinking about that game was "missed opportunity". Could've been much better overall. The ending was nice and sad though. Started up Child of Light just now. Certainly seems quite lovely so far.

Playing a bit of Valiant Hearts, bought it and Child of Light (maybe I'll play that next) 50% off. It's... alright. I dunno, the art is lovely and setting the story during WW1 is good. But the gameplay is just... not good. Would've been better as a straight up adventure game. And the story kinda goes "oh, and then a bad thing happened to our heroes, and then *another* bad thing, and then yet *another* bad thing". It's kinda weak. When the story works, it works really well. When it doesn't, it just grates. The gameplay kinda grates most of the time unfortunately.

Finished up Dragonfall: Director's Cut (had played the original Dragonfall once before). Simply fantastic. If one can accept the structure (the mission focus with no real open "exploration"), then it is just marvelous. Good story, *fantastic* writing, good gameplay and great graphics and audio. Took me 23 hours to complete according to STEAM. A few reloads in there, and some AFK time (maybe an hour all-together). Great value for the money I'd say. Sad that it never seemed to go far up the STEAM list. It's one of the best RPGs in recent memory, even in this day and age of RPGs coming out seemingly left and right.

My rulesystem can beat up your rulesystem!

Sucks as I really want to play the full game as soon as possible but if they feel it's worth it, then it's a no-brainer of course. The game deserves as much spit and polish it can get. I hope they find a good place to release so it won't get lost among other games.

Just chiming in also, no companion AI like that please.

Played around 9 hours in Dragonfall Director's Cut. Supremely entertaining. I enjoyed the original Dragonfall and this is just... Well, it's even better. Enjoy the mechanical upgrades a lot (though I still don't know how the hell the flanking system works), and the two new missions that I've tried so far were fun and different. Excellent stuff. If you guys haven't played this, it's a perfect time to do it with the Director's Cut.

Finished up WL2, which was pretty good but incredibly annoying in many ways. Also severely lacking in polish, especially in the second half of the game. Started up Dragonfall DC just now. Also gonna finish up the last of Storm of Zehir.

I'm happy with the changes. I'd rather they buff some of the other encounters more around in the map. Think it felt weird to have the most challenging fight in your face as you enter the area and then the others being a cakewalk in comparison. I think the sheer number of beetles really made the whole area feel cramped. But yeah, buff some of the other encounters instead to bring up the difficulty.

If there are helmets then there should be a bloody reason, mechanically speaking, to wear them in my opinion. It's not a freaking tie, helmets exist for a practical reason after all. It should do something.

Yeah, I'm in agreement there. I find the game is at its best when you're screwing around with the various settlements, when the game gives you the option to be creative. I don't find the combat itself to be horrible but there's so much of it and the combat just isn't good enough to support it all. It becomes way too much and it takes way too long. I'm playing on the difficulty option beneath the highest one (Ranger I think?) and there have been moments where I've been tempted to just lower the difficulty to be done faster with some encounters, and that's never a good sign in my book. The size and scope of the world is great in itself and makes it feel like you're part of something grand, but my god, this is one game I wish they could've sped up in various ways. It'd be interesting to see how many hours of those I've played that were watching the skill icon filling up (and sometimes again after failing the first one...) or running back and forth between locations.

Personally I haven't gotten around to using it a lot. I mean, I like the idea of it a lot and I could see myself maybe making use of it in some mega-fights that I'm sure we'll see in the full game. But yeah, it's like the others said. I think the game should be perfectly playable at normal speed, the slow mode shouldn't be a "crutch". The IE games, while I'm not that crazy about the combat in them, were pretty manageable at "normal speed" and I think PoE should strive for that as well. I think it's gotten better with each patch, a lot better actually, but it's not quite "there" yet. That said, I'm not against testing slow mode of course. It's a feature and one I'm very happy that they're including so...

I also found this beta version *way* easier than the others. I didn't keep track much of what was happening mechanically so I don't know if there's some bug in place but enemies went down *really* fast. Way too easy.

Was surprised at how much I enjoyed the gibs. Not something I'm generally crazy about but it did give an extra "oomph" to the combat, which it needs, and every bit helps. Footsteps, yay! Maybe a bit too loud on the Inn floor? Not sure. This was the one backer version where I'm actually starting to get really excited to play the final game. Can't wait.

Pathologic made its goal, weee! Here's hoping that they can do justice to the original, as well as elevate it beyond that.

One thing is clear though. We still need a feature where we open the bloody door to another area before zoning into it. I hate how we just transition into a house without opening the door first, gah!

I don't find the arrows intrusive either. I'm sure it can be improved but I'm digging the general idea.

I'll agree that the backer NPCs feel kinda... stand out in a bad way with both different coloring and the eye icon on them.

Walking into the Herbalist's house, there's a weird graphical glitch for me. The area kinda "vibrates" in a disconcerting way. Also, there is a backer NPC in there. When I exited the location, the "eye" icon that the backer NPCs have was "stuck" to my screen afterwards at the same space where the NPC had been. This is playing at 1920x1080 resolution with Vsync on.

That dance-move had me scratching my head when I was a kid, kind of a "loss of innocence" when I found out how they did it. Still hella cool though. Ahem, oh yes... Pillars of Eternity...

Would love it before the weekend!

Just in case anyone magically missed it since it's on this same page, but Pathologic remake... Come on! Let's get this made! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/pathologic