Dranoel

Oh and if combat is too quick just keep hitting pause every 5 seconds. You can then pause to work out who is hitting who, for how much and in what way. The spacebar is your friend!

That thing is so repetitive with such a sneering voice - how the hell can u like it? You don't even get a decent price on it Seriously though getting into BG and BG2 requires no previous knowledge of D&D rules. I've completed all 5 of the BGs IWDs and PS:T and still know **** all about the various editions of D&D rules. The only thing you need to realise is that you should max out the attributes most important to you. Keep rerolling until you get a good score then max out strength if you are a fighter or intelligence, charisma or wisdom (whichever is applicable to your class if you are a casters) personally I then bung anything else in dexterity and constitution (only exceptions really being charisma if you are a paladin, or dexterity followed by strength then con for a thief or charisma & dex followed by strength and con for a bard). The monk is similar to a fighter with a wisdom bonus if I remember correctly. Anyway just read the descriptions and you should be able to work out the most important attributes for your character. Knowledge of spells and spell selection can be gleaned from their descriptions listed on the scrolls or book or just by observing how the enemy use them. Just experiment - everything can be learnt through trial and error!

Yeah to a ridculous level. From what I noticed they would only ever suffer the effects of a spell from reflex, will or fortitude only if they rolled a natural one (regardless of the unit and their inherent weaknesses etc). This effectively ruined HoF cos it limited you to only the one tactic cos their was no way you could rely on them rolling a 1 evertime you tried a spell. In normal mode I always used shroud of fire to kill the treants whilst I danced around them with a monk. In HoF mode I relied upon summons, ranged, area of effect (at least they don't have bloody IE) and twelve paces same as every other fight from chapter 2 onwards!

Hell it's not even a fps! The melee combat mode is so poor it defies belief - most of the time I can't tell where I'm aiming at (or where on the screen I'm meant to be) cos the camera suddenly adjusts to a really bad angle simply cos you are (one of the following): 1. Near a wall 2. crouched down 3. In a confined space (sewer pipe etc) 4. Trying to adjust the camera angle for a better view before the slow arsed character has finished an action - feeding, attacking or looking like a pillock. 5. The enemy has used one of those cheesy knock down moves 6. You are in the warrens and the game designers decided to make this the worst level(s) imaginable! 7. Cos the game feels like it! Seriously this game would definitely rule if they fixed the remaining playability issues, made it more atmospheric and mildly mundane rather than combat orientated and removed the following levels: 1. The warrens 2. The bloody long journey through Meng Xiao's temple filled with constantly respawning enemies. 3. The warrens. 4. Ventrue Tower filled with constantly respawning bad guys. 5. The warrens. 6. Society of Leopold. 7. The warrens. 8. Hollowbrook Hotel. 9. The warrens. Honestly by the end of the game there can be no masquerade left. They must be piling bodies up to the rafters in the local morgue, noting the various ribbons cut out of them, blood drained from others and general lack of any casualties on the other side and then wondering what the hell went on! Meng Xiao and LaCroix both sacrifice ridiculous numbers of humans so there could be no doubt something ridiculous happened! :ph34r: :ph34r:

Funny - I tried that in HoF mode (even chromatic orb requires a will save!) It didn't work! Back to mass summons, ranged weapons and twelve paces!

Those set battles and cutsequences are a pain in the arse (don't believe me? - try HoF mode fairy boy!) The numerous ambushes where you enter maps to find yourself facing an already arrayed force, whilst your own units are too often arranged in a random and ridiculous order - anyone else who has entered the orc ambush on the shaengarne or entered the orc stronghold proper with your mages positioned at the front of your party for no explicable reason, should understand what I mean. The more times you play through the game the more enemies you seem to face. The first time I played through chapter 1 there weren't too many enemies. The third or fourth time when I went through there seemed to be twice the numbers against me and when I tried HoF mode the numbers were ridiculous! BG1 is frustrating cos your party is so crap but if you stick to the main roads down to Nashkel you should servive relatively unscathed. If you choose the right dialogue responses you can even dispose of Bassilus ridiculously easily and net yourself an easy 5K. BG2 has some hard encounters. Mages are always a problem for me mainly cos I never could understand which spell dispelled what protection. Ultimately though I would just charge in with swords swinging, vaguely cast a dispel, pierce magic and/or breach in the general direction and let the melee characters remove any stoneskin, mirror images etc with the pointy bits of their swords - it seemed to work. The only real problems I ever seemed to have were against the dragons who just seemed designed to wind me up anyway. I just used to dispose of Firkraag, the black dragon and the Shadow dragon with the wands of cloud kill trick most of the time (until the ToB supplement changed their response from docile to bastard vs this tactic!)

Talking of BIS and Troika. Anyone who has V:TMB just needs to check out the microphone stand in the Asylum. There might be a no flaming policy about other companies on this forum, yet employees of Troika do not seem to apply the same approach when making their games. I think the BIS and Interplay disintegration left many developers nursing a great deal of anger. I think you may all require counselling and I am happy to help for a considerable nominal fee of course! (perhaps it should instead be spelt "CONselling")

Yeah I tried to replay BG1 recently. I dislike the graphics and resolution now adays and get frustrated by the random encounters - the Cloakwood random encounters vs Ettercaps, spiders and wyverns take the piss however you look at them, particularly as I often travelled not on full health and not having rested to relearn the spells from the previous map. The biggest concern though is the fact that level 1 characters attack so slowly (1 attack per round = long nap times in between each swing) and when they do swing they can't hit a barndoor let alone those annoying blue Svibnerf things that attack you with such irritating battle cries! Personally I prefer playing BG1 and then installing TotSC. You get to exploit all the bugs that way - oooh nice swords Dribble (or is it Drizzt - I never can remember :ph34r: ) I'll take both. And nice 2nd tome of wisdom High priestess of Umberlee - I'll just kill u and take it back! BG2 requires the same approach in my opinion. I hate the opening dungeon (Irenicus' base in Athkatla) and dislike intensely some of the changes caused by the ToB add-on. The cloak of reflection is rendered almost completely useless but then they negate this anyway by putting in the shield of Balduran (what is the point of pruning one item to give all its advantages to another!) Bugs in ToB require a patch or else seem really ridiculous. (my first playthrough involved me encountering and defeating three seperate version of the same lich - the one in the bar in the gate section of Athkatla. Every time he tried to cast a spell I would retreat to prevent it effecting my party - I did this twice, retreating into the main section of the pub and then again out into the street - he followed me each time and when I killed him I headed back in to find clones waiting for me in both the pub and the crypt! - I got 3x very useful wands though!) I wanted to replay BG2 again recently but the first file needed from CD3 (on all three types of installation) is corrupted (there are almost minute scratches on the disk) and I cannot complete the installation. Maybe if Phospur isn't interested enough to replay BG2 he might want to give me his CD3 ~hint hint~

Well u seem to have survived OK - maybe cos when everyone else was fighting you were lingering at the back (taking screenshots) like a nancyboy!

Probably PS1 which was my first console (though gameboy original should by rights be a close second) Metal Gear Solid Syphon Filter (allowed me to take out any frustrations from MGS) FF7 FF8(ish) Fallout & BG on PC Resident Evil 1&2 (rest were ****!) Quite a few funky racers (rollcage etc.)

Such a short game though -

Oh don't get me wrong - FF8 is a great game particularly the first disk where it is still very story driven. It's a bit like FF9 - first disk is entertaining but then gets bogged down and loses a lot of its direction. G-district prison and the return to garden scenarios begin to weigh it down on disk 2. If you played and completed the demo - up to the completion of the first SeeD mission and didn't like it maybe you should put it on the back burner for a while. You're probably right to go for Fallout, but then again u liked FF7 and there is a lot in common with FF8!

Really? does George Bush get one too cos he is not just like a president - he is one (pouring shame on all the Yanks out there!)

U know - I think I would be well suited to that job. Fancy relocating your entire operation to the south coast of England so i can fill the vacancy? :ph34r: :ph34r:

The New Zealand Dairy Farmers will win - mark my words! Go En Zee Dee Ef

Well i guess that makes two of us!

I know Interplay went bust but isn't this kinda like plagiarism when you actively promote the use of art work that I would assume remains the property of the employer at whose offices and in whose paid employment (assuming they were still up to date with wages at that time) they were created? :ph34r:

A bug ridden pile o' crap that was released prematurely, lacked originality (after Fallout it claimed so much and delivered less than the first), had no storyline or cohesion (can anyone really say that they gave a f*ck about the villagers after they got abducted?) and was just shallow as hell. I felt no sense of association or loyalty at all to any of the towns (though Reno was pretty fun with the Bishop women...). Even BG2 was mildly disappointing as it had a far weaker storyline than the first and far less exploration and freedom too. BG ranks as one of my favourite games cos you could get sidetracked, explore vast open areas, dungeon maps like Firewine and generally achieve far greater flexibility. There were more varied party members available too who despite their dialogue shortcomings were nevertheless able to provide an interesting variety of personality and loyalty variables. When they started importing all the characters haphazardly into BG2 they forgot my favourite - what the hell happened to Shar' Teel? I suppose another one that deserves special mention is B&W. I had such high hopes for this one and on the first island I thought it rocked. After that though it all went downhill and became frustrating as hell - on one map I got so irritated with a village that I levelled it entirely - I could never get my influence anywhere near high enough to reach any of the villages beyond despite everything I tried! As for the final level and the battle against Nemesis - they screw your creature give you bollox all resources and generally leave you stranded in a position from which expansion is near impossible - I gave up after 30mins started deleting the save files left, right and centre (within the game not the directory) - those that survived were all corrupted so regardless of map my creature was the evil knee high midget he becomes on the final map - the game is f*cked. Nevertheless, I am hoping that B&W2 will be much better without the bloody limits to influence - I'm hoping that only enemy towns might be off limits giving far greater god like flexibility in movement alone. I have high hopes for B&W2. Watch this space - if I am disappointed it will likely receive a torrent of abuse on this thread!

Really? I got my first +5 weapon straight after the goblin assault on the docks. You're obviously just doing it wrong!

It's been a while but i got the impression that the TNO had fought in the Blood War as a full time mercenary before. Speaking to the Abishai (in the pub - was it called the Burning Man?) and the tutor in the hall of sensates gave me the distinct impression he had already been heavily involved! Is there some way of improvng the graphical quality - bumping the game to 1024x768 like in IWD2? I tried to play again recently - got as far as Pharod and had to give up cos of the graphics.

Squall is a self-obsessed arse. I like the game but his constant self reflection etc. makes it a real pain plus long side tracks to dialogue and background - I hate Trabia Garden above all others . Unfortunately all three are very dated graphically now (though FF8 cutscenes particularly the dual with Seifer at the beginning are still awesome - one of best scene setters yet - liked Tidus and Blitzball too - shame they listen to Rammstein in Blitzball stadiums though!). Personally I recommend Fallout 1. Omega Weapon in FF8 is a cinch

Finish Powerball Two-in-One detergent and cleaner! How can u guys be such rabid fanboys! Tell u what... you try HoF modeand I guarantee u that by chapter 4 you will have realised how boring and repetitive the damn thing is!

I used to play UT2004 online - biggest bunny hopping game ever made. V amusing cos noone stays on the ground for more than 1 sec. But I got fed up with it so I'm sticking to singleplayer games on the whole. I occasionally still play War3 when I want to connect to the over-competitive cheating Barstuds out there

Personally I dislike IWD2 primarily for the fact that it feels like you are entering a series of ambushes one after another. This I felt most acutely during the first chapter on the way to shaengarne ford and the Goblin base. Of course it would make sense that there are guards standing vigil over various strategic points but it doesn't add to playability imo. I actively question the use of Wilderness lore in the game cos in pretty much every map except fellwood it is useless. If you want to know what units you are going to face on the stage you just need to pause the game after the loading screen and look at all the units already arrayed against you. Furthermore it did feel just like a hack 'n' slash with little or no respite and limited variation. Having played HoF mode up to the destruction of Viscermera (or whatever it's called) in the underdark I can say that there is no improvement in that mode. It wasn't particularly hard (though the ambushes and 'cutscenes' deserve special mention as some of the most malicious manifestations of bastardly behaviour displayed by the BI team!) as the same startegy fitted every encounter - summnos out front - a few high level spells, bows and twelve paces did the rest! Personally I felt that Isair and Madae were a bit ****e as enemies and the whole setup proved very predictable and missable. IMO if you don't already have IWD2 but like BG, BG2 and/or PS:T you should give this a miss cos the advantages of 3ed rules and 1024x768 display fade v. fast! IWD2 = a bit **** really imo!