bugarup

200% agree. Cities are where's fun at, down with pastoral Ruritanias! My absolute favourite would be Arcanum's Tarant. When I start the game I might wince a little at UI, at scrolling, speed, turn based vs real time shenanigans etc, but as soon as I arrive in Tarant, every nuisance fades away, imagination takes over and I find myself immersed in the living, breathing, 3D city with sounds and smells and people and everything...it's magical. Other favourites would be Fallout 2's New Reno (so! many! things! to! do!!!) and hub of Bloodlines (ambience, atmo, muzik...mmm)

I'd prefer something less EPIC, but hey. Better than nothing at all.

These have their own name, you know -- arrpg.

Bah, they could fleece and flay those multiplayahs for all I care; it's because of them we cannot have good things (aka normal single player games without motherloving multiplayer component tacked on) anymore.

Amen, bruh! City bird here too and lack (or even total absence. Looking at you, Kingmaker, or should I call you "Village Elder Maker"?)of cities is detrimental to any RPG.

Yeah, we seem to come from different schools of RPG Enjoyment, don't we. For me, going back to the initial state after the fight is a huge pro. Veni, vidi, vici, ite domum, that's my motto. Lingering annoyances only mean I will have to make time for something I don't want to do in the middle of my game session and that means "There goes muh immersion". Clearing vampirey debuff (aka hauling your ass to a temple through locations and loading screens if you didn't fork over for scrolls and then forced rest because this one scroll is very tiring to cast? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) is as scary as, say, the cat barfing on the bed while I play. Not anything serious, still I have to drop the game for a couple of minutes of something vaguely unpleasant. There's this other thing -- as most things in Baldur's Gate, vampires have something that trivializes them. Give the mace of disruption to Beefcake A, amulet of level drain immunity to Beefcake B, plug the corridor with them, summon a skellie or two between them and your ranged line if you want to be better safe than sorry, park a Sanctuaried cleric nearby to spook them if your rangeds shoot fast -- voila, you just defanged those suckers. Now those Deadire's toothy schmucks on the reef and in the cave, they don't have a "Lolcurbstomp or trip to a cleric" situation. They're nasty and wiped the floor with me more than once. So I was rather happy when I finally did them in and was psyched to push on, but had I trek all the way back to the boat, sail across half the world to cough up some hard earned cash to some priest -- that would absolutely have killed the momentum for me.

...wow. And here I thought those screaming goats in Wasteland 2 was an Easter Egg, like, some dude just screaming and not even pretending he's a goat. Anyway. Prebuffing. Am I so glad this ghastly thing ain't present in PoE series and I'm with Algroth re: Kingmaker. The game before I got informed that "Protection from poison" , a) has a really long duration, b) has a mass version, c) protects from a wide array of extremely annoying grievances (like attribute drain. F†ck drain!!!!!!!!! ) and after that was almost like two different games, and that's just one case. The good thing about those buffs is that they last longer and are measured in real time instead of something like turns or rounds or some other nonsense, the bad thing -- you still have to put them all on when you enter the location or thing a fight is about to happen, and its a chore. They might be less annoying in BG series, where you put on a few long lasting ones and then if situation demands cast those things that last rounds, but by ToB they also pretty much become a necessity. Anyway², playing BG series made me appreciate even more just how many grievances (prebuffing, slow movement, inventory limit, nonsensical alignments, F†CKING LEVEL DRAIN!!!!! ) PoE series got rid of. Really thankful here, me.

I'm still loitering about Baldur's Gate 2, making new parties just to abandon them in a short while. Surprisingly enough, Chateau Irenicus does not annoy me enough to get Dungeon-be-gone, but I'm in dire need for a "Quaffs a couple of thievery potions and steals all the scrolls in Waukeen promenade" mod.

Feeling kinda cthulhy today.

You know, this is exactly why CA's recent grog icon status baffles me. I mean, his Opus Magnum Planescape Torment is famous for being "That game with fantastic story and crap combat". Grogs don't give a toss about stories, but combat is god (only if exactly like in BG2, but still). Why then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Fallout 2. Great game. Also, stylized pulpy sci-fi with its own turn=based system that looks and feels exactly like BG2 not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ KOTOR2. Great game, combat isn't very BG2, plus it was released on those filthy consoles for filthy casuals. All the other stuff is very much products of collaboration. Right now, the only plausible hypothesis I have is that Avellone's friction with Obsidian made public approximately around the same time codex types faced dawning realization that Obsidian, in fact, does not exactly strive to cater to their tastes up to tiniest details; ol' Chris just got picked up as a flag...in which case, dude gotta beware, because grogs are fickle mistresses -- like, weren't they praying at Sawyer's altar once too?

"Dude argues numbers and calculations with Thelee and Boeroer, congratulates himself for winning all the arguments"

Yeah, that. The subset of grogs with BG2 as their supreme deity who also are eager to blow Avellone in the narrow alley next to the dumpster anytime cannot be that big. Contrary to what the codex might think, game devs <> Hollywood A listers and their names aren't a bankable asset. ...well, save for some of guys from Japan, I guess, who do stuff like "So and so's The Game: the Electric Hullabaloo". But Japan is weird like that.

I'm playing "Return of the Obra Dinn", multiple murder mystery in the ever delightful ghost ship setting. it makes me feel blind, unobservant, mentally deficient and very invested. I even willingly make scribbles in actual paper notebook! Which is funny because I resent when RPGs want me to do that (I be like, "C'mon computer, if you can throw dice and do other math for me, you can bloody well keep geography pointers and quest giver locations too, you daft thing "), but Obra Dinn is willing to meet me halfway there by also having its own in-game book to fill and somehow it makes keeping paper notes fun instead of annoying.

I don't normally play RPGs fresh out of the oven either, but I keep hearing how initial sales is Very Important Thing, and this is new independent studio that went for something more original than high fantasy cliche salad with mild Tolkien dressing No 112, so I made an informed decision to give them my money and then wait.

These puny traps is but a road bump for someone who can trek back to the Copper Coronet from Spellhold all by herself.

There is a quest that gives you access to the Old City without making the Undercroft hostile. The easiest way is to accept prince Aruihi's quest about watershapers in the Gullet and then talk to the merchant involved in "Harsh Medicine", but I think if you gain some minor reputation around the Gullet you'll get an invitation regardless of Aruihi's quest.

Psssssst. You might want to let Devil of Caroc die, though.

So, which part of my opinion you do not agree with? Stupid writing? Unfriendly to newbies? Bugs? Unfinishable?

*looks them up in the market* So, um...you not on Satele Shan, right? If so, mind if I undercut you for a wee bit o'time? Ol' me kinda temporarily poor here, after all the unlocking of crafting and additional cargo bays for the Hoard and if there is so much money in need to part with its fools...

I share your theory. You know that "Cat proximity" thing of XKCD? Like, the closer a human gets to a cat the stupider things they say? There has to be this "Baldur's Gate 2 proximity" that works on grogs, where the more the game apes BG2, the bigger the chance of blind day 0 purchase and flowery praises regardless of poor writing, obtuse system that offers bupkis help to newbies, designed-by-axe UI, having more bugs than a garbage truck stop in a tropical forest and being impossible to bloody finish for months after release, and I'm saying this as someone as who liked P:K quite a bit. Personally I blame Tolkien. Dude made his elves-dwarves-Brits-and-tea fantasyland so alive nobody ever dares to stray away from it, neither creators nor consumers.

Still blundering about BG2 with several different party configurations. Gotta say the game is too big for the current me and I'm so burnt out with the party that finally reached the elf city I only want to Diabloclick through. On a sligthly related note, I cannot take a monster seriously if it looks like a cat in a beret.

Have Aloth and Tekehu in one party and crack jokes all the time. Tekehu is needed because I'm certain the very presence of him in the party makes Aloth hate you, that fast I get him to -2 without even actively trying.

So, day of the dead, eh?

Oh, Irenicus is the evil butler from "Titanic"? Cool. If only whiny Jony was 10% as cool as the badass butler.