bugarup

My active (well, for given definition of "active". Right now I cannot muster enough enthusiasm to even decorate with stuff I won during the latest casino event, but I'll check that new expansion just to visit Onderon) ones are on Satele Shan, but I have presence on the Forge as well.

"Star Wars" is space fantasy.

What the statchoo said. I'm pretty certain that if the OP presented us with examples o' hooks, damn you, Gromnir, of hooks that worked on them there'll be people who go, "That is what you're calling a good hook? Pfffft, get out" (and I can start with "Baldur's Gate to strangeness is what Eiffel tower is to kangaroos, i.e. not related in any way whatsoever, and drop those stupid nostalgia-tinted specs already, they don't look good on you anyway"). Like, why I, superstar of New Reno, should care about some filthy tribe I left behind years ago, yeah, yeah, dead starter town, dead mentor, bog standard fantasy setting blahdy-blah, stop nagging me, pink-haired girl I don't care about, and why the game assumes I even want to be the King of boring mosquito-ridden swamp, show me the way to the next city that never sleeps (and has a whiskey bar). Guess what, not caring or even being mildly annoyed (looking at you, Kingmaker) about "the hook" did not prevent me from enjoying the listed games, possibly because I am not into sadomasochism and needn't to be hooked to have fun. Hooks are overrated anyway. Books? Do fine with or without hooks. Cinema and especially TV tend to lean on them too much and it's not always a good thing. Remember "Lost"? Fantastic hook. One of the best there is. Now remember its ending and show's descent to it. So what good did that awesome hook do, eh. Aaaand there's no point in wasting arguments anyway, 'cause I suspect the OP is just another of those "Baldur's Gate is THE unit of measurement of RPG genre" types who ran past to drop the usual "Waaaah Y U NO Baldurz gate, game?!" and never be seen again.

Numenera's setting is interesting indeed and that's why I eventually finished the game despite of abandoning it several times. Brain kinda erases memories of word vomit, non-entity protagonist, uninteresting story and weird for the sake of being weird but still dishwater dull companions and all that's left are impressions of really cool setting that you kind of want to explore moar. ...guess I'll do that ranking thing afer all. 1. Tyranny. Fantastic setting and the only other recent-ish game that had me this invested in the story is SOMA. Read all the cyclopedia after the first play-through and still remember random lore tidbits, like how ring-shaped jewelry is extremely tasteless because world's currency are rings. And after I got the hang of spell system combat became enjoyable too. 2-2.5. Deadfire/PoE. I like Deadfire better still because of multi-classing and being so very pretty, but PoE was the thing that made insta-preorder Deadfire because I wanted "moaaarrrr of this!". PoE is a place to go when I want some quality grimdark (and difiiculty. Getting thoroughly owned on PoE veteran after getting used to Deadfire veteran). 3. Kingmaker. You'd think I loved P:K to bits, given how many hundreds of hours GOG Galaxy counted. In truth, 30% of those hundreds is slowly crawling from point A to point B and another 30% is putting buffs on (or reloading and putting buffs on), this game is determined to waste your time like a subscription MMO. Still, despite that and oft rolling my eyes at writing I really liked it. Must be some sort of je ne sais quoi charm. 4. Wasteland 2. Nothing too awe inspiring, but post-apo setting (one of my favourite) is v. well developed and consistent, writing's competent and makes sense, shootin' was quite enjoyable and it all coalesces into good and nice sum of all parts (with additional effort to come up with personalities for my party members who initially have none) Somewhere down, down, downhill. Divinity: Original Sin. There's this one dude in "Neverwinter Nights 2", a guard in the mansion of some geezer Charname has to protect, and at some point he says this line in comically exaggerated rural accent, something like "Oi shenshe a fouuuwl shmell oin tha ayr, tha shmell oi. doyn't. loyk!" in D:OS, everyone is like that, and the story & performance are written and directed by the Pegleg Performers. I really like the combat system, I do, sank 20 hours before I just couldn't take it anymore. So mayhap one day. On mute with Rammstein in the background and reading nothing but combat log. (Really got to try those Shadowruns I keep hearing good things about from different people instead of "Deadfire turn-based now, lets make 5 new characters yay!")

No it is not. They offer a literally free service, and I use it. For free. As intended. Their hoping to rope me in for subscription with their free service does not oblige me to fulfill their expectations.

Nothing unethical about that. Down with the corporate brainwashee mentality!

There is a conversation with Aloth, who is pretty much scripted to hate Tekehu's guts with passion. No idea about Xoti though, never had her hate him.

Nope, doesn't matter. Even the PC's disposition towards them doesn't matter unless you're angling for romance or plan to use that brigandine you can get on Nemnok island. Oh, and Serafen gives you stuff twice if he likes you enough so that's that.

I don't have any DLCs, but think I read somewhere that dungeon comes in two modes -- one is no story thing purely for crawling, another is related to story somehow, with companions having quips in there and stuff.

Nah, it's just you getting old. I own an embarrassing quantity of games on GOG, but am gradually starting to fret less about never playing majority of them. Biiig -ing deal, it's just entertainment, I'll leave oodles of unread books, unseen films etc when I eventually kick the bucket, so a hundred or two or three unplayed games make no difference.

Binged on all 6 episodes of "Good Omens". Going in with low expectations certainly helped, but I would have loved it even without the boon. The cast was particularly perfect (including Dog), and while the book is of course better, it's light years better than any other Pterry's and Gaiman's adaptation I've seen. Dunno if Sir Pterry would've been proud, but at least not embarrassed.

Bought "Kenshi". The concept looks so very interesting, but 'fraid that this game will go into my "Play when retired" collection along with Crusader Kings, Rimworld, Stellaris and such because I simply do not yet have uninterrupted years required to learn playing those games.

They did, and he wrote one character, who turned out, well, nothing too special but good. And it's not all bad, I'm perhaps unfairly exaggerating a little, it's just when it's bad, it's eye-blistering bad.

Oh, that lady is a love interest, conversations with these are particularly cringy. Charname is a little better with the non-smoochables, but yeah, don't expect Obsidian's, Bioware's or even Bethesda's writing. If Owlcat makes a new Kickstarter, they should include the "Hire a proper writer instead of level designer's teenage daughter whose credentials is publishing in fanfiction.net" goal before all others.

Turn-based mode is slow and I would rather know beforehand what classes are just not fun to play. And it seems there aren't any posts with consolidated basic turn-based tips. Veteran difficulty. 0. Is resolve or dexterity more of a dump stat? I keep reading dex is kinda important for casters, but does that mean I should leave it at 10 instead of dropping all the way to minimum? Is resolve of any significant importance anywhere? 0.1 -- heavy armor for everyone, am I right? 1. Ancient druid. Chance to try that staff I always steal from Arkemyr's shop and never use. Seems like Resolve and Dex are dump stats, Intelligence then Might and Perception are important but I cannot quite figure out whether Might or Perception is more important of the two. I plan for utility and damage-over-time druid, so Might seems to be preferable? 2. Spellblade (Blood Mage/Debonaire). I see a lot of potential and I love mind-controlling enemies, seems to be fun. Now can I leave Con at 10 and again, what to do with Dex? 3. What makes for a better pyromaniac (like, efficiency and minmaxed highest level spells not important, what I want is the widest and most varied arsenal of tools to set things on fire) -- the Evoker Wizard, the priest of Magran or the combo of the two? 4. Seriously, is dexterity useful or not?

4 hour video?! Anyone has Cliffnotes of it? Anyway. Kingmaker now has an Extended Edition, bag of tricks and tools mod, turn-based mod, headcount & statistics mod and even buffbot mod, yet again proving how one should never ever rush to play a RPG at launch.

I'm alternating between TSL and SWTOR. TSL is as good as ever (although apparently I've grown intolerant to smug sense of superiority and excess whinge since I played last so cannot wait to wipe out those b...roads of Atris and how comes I never noticed before how whiny Atton was?), but Nar Shaddaa level is so, so ugly. Abysmally ugly. Like, Morrowind levels of ugly. Maybe uglier, just more concentrated ugly rather than stretched out. So I popped into SWTOR's colourful Nar Shaddaa for some palate cleansing, and lo behold, there is casino event going on this month, and so after succumbing to my gambling addiction for something like couple of hours in total I ended up with nice assorted collection of goodies and currencies to buy other goodies.

I keep hearing from quite a few trustworthy sources that Shadowrun Hong Kong is good, but I have a Witcher problem with it -- I want to do it chronologically, and the first Shadowrun is kind of boring so I keep restarting and stalling over and over. (Took a look at my GOG account to do that ranking thing, felt guilty about abysmal quantity of games unplayed while I do the umpteenth replay of New Vegas, Bloodlines or KOTOR2)

Question: can I eat mushrooms that grow around Chernobyl? Answer: sure, but they are not easy to catch.

All that SWTOR talk left me craving for Star Wars but good, so I reinstalled KOTOR2. Again. Look what you made me do, forum. Anyway, made me a girl, named her Lana B, too bad the game does not appreciate being neutral. Trying out Sentinel since, a) always only played Consulars before, 2)do not want to depend on dragging one of skill monkeys along all the time. Likely will attempt Guardian for the evil playthrough, dumb muscle kinda fits the concept. So far so good, no crashes (knocks on head), no mod conflicts. Also Kreia shines in different light now when I met Durance.

Vade retro satana! † Anyway, can you Obs guys plz also grab Tyranny rights from Paradox while you're at it, thanks!

Tanking sucks, it is always tank's fault when sh†t goes wrong but nobody notices their work when it goes right. Healing's much better, you can at least be sure that if you die it's because of your own incompetence. 'sides, if too drunk to play something involving cranial activity you can always troll in PvP. Granted, I never do operations. They look too much like a job, and I don't play games to have more job.

Whoopsydaisy. When you quoted it, it looks kinda ominous and dramatic indeed, instead of "I hate heat, f†ck climate change!!!!" which is exactly what it meant. Anyway, here's a positive, live celebrating song to compensate for that (parental advisory: kinda explicit content?):