toastification

Hit twice, Dodge, dodge, dodge. Repeat. It's tedious for the first half of her HP bar, but then she melts in about 15 seconds. All of her attacks are very dodgable and she uses them predictably fast after you get in range. Problem with Hardcore is that armor is completely worthless - bosses still kill you in 1-2 hits; assassin style characters still bring you down in 2-3 hits even if you pump it like mad. Every character needs to be built and played like a hit'n'run glass cannon (unless you are a real fan of block). If you didn't max out Heroic Charge's "Executioner's Charge" ASAP you are doing it wrong - it's Lucas's main claim to beating bosses fast. Her second form's main attacks are the little blue explosions and that array of homing missiles - you can still dodge them, but you can't stand still, ever.

Nope. It's a touchy subject as to whenever Obsidian's Dungeon Siege format should have it, though. I am leaning towards no. This isn't Diablo or any of its offspring, it has a particular style of gameplay that is best compared, in principle, to a hybrid game like Mass Effect. As such, I think Obsidian should focus on making the core experience as strong as possible with no distractions outside of it such as a well balanced and designed NG+ mode.

Reinheart's armor sucks, but that's because his higher tier belts are nifty and his weapons look super cool.

Offensively for Lucas, Will/Attack are the best. He has 2 passives that boost their efficiencies. Agility sounds nice because of his massive crit bonus passive, but in reality, Blade Dash and Heroic Charge already produce crits out of the wazoo on their own. Rest is probably best allocated in Armor/Stamina/Doom. For Reinheart, keep at least a 20% crit rate. Crits ---> Power Orb conversion passive is absurdly good, and his Agility > Ability DPS conversion pretty much makes his spells hit very hard for point with agility. Especially if you get a decent doom stat going, an Empowered Geometry of Annihilation melts armies while fully refreshing all your power orbs multiple times over.. Retribution is a damage return. Every time you get hit you return damage.

Not gonna lie, this is quite possibly the longest boss fight I saw in this genre. So many stages!

DS3's is a hybrid. It between a game like Darksiders and a game like Diablo. Just for that angle alone the game should survive and Obsidian should be allowed to expand on it with a stronger statistical system (more varied item attributes, more passives, etc.) It doesn't really have much re-playability value, given what I am seeing in character builds, every character seems to have 2 distinct flavors as to how to build them. Overall, I would say that as far ARPG combat gameplay goes, it is fundamentally more deep/involved than a game like Diablo's; but as far as character building goes it is vastly inferior to those. Item variety late game is pretty much what you saw in the demo, just with higher attributes, some uniques, and prettier looks. Don't get this game if you want a Diablo/Torchlight/TitanQuest/etc. type. It is not, it doesn't try to be those. Don't get it if you are one of the mythical DS1/2 fanboys, you are going to be offended at how this is different from them. View this game is an experiment; a hybrid between classic console action games, Dungeon Siege 2, and a story centric RPG. Hopefully, should the next offering from Obsidian come, it will continue to grow along the pathway of intertwining the three game concepts. Incidentally, this game gives a good taste of the resource ideas embedded in Diablo 3's Monk and Barbarian; as well as non-health potion spamming combat. Personally, I like it, and it confirms my belief that Blizzard did the right thing by nuking mana for most classes and health pots. It's probably not quite an analogue because of the console action combat component, but I can see how the idea of Health Orbs, Fury, and Spirit (of the D3 stuff) isn't fundamentally flawed. It just needs tight balance.

(playing on Hardcore) Reinhart Stuff Reinhart is godmode once you empower Geometry of Annihilation and get the passive that bless you with power for crits. It's ridiculously damaging, it stuns, and it fully refreshes all your power orbs multiple times through out its duration (if you take the duration upgrade). And I completely ignored the Enfeeble --> Life Leach line of passives which will probably keep you fully healed with a good Geometry placement. Empowered Mirror Leap with damage reflection is also very, very damn good. It distracts bosses, deals decent damage, and it seems to apply the "Charged" status if you took that passive. I love how it allowed me to effortlessly resurrect Anjali in boss fights. Perpetual Motion is fantastic and really helps you with Focus management as you bounce around - with the right evolution it almost fills up a focus bar by itself. Towards late game when you are literally getting Power Orbs at a much faster rate than focus, it is a godsend. His only weakness from what I had a brief comparison with other characters is single target damage and CQC - he isn't bad at it, but he doesn't seem to be the single target annihilator that is Lucas with his Executioner's Heroic Charge spam. At long range he is reliant on his little lightning sphere spell, which while does decent spike damage (I've had it critting for 1k-2k towards the end), has a ridiculous cast time that makes it risky to use against bosses who can one shot you back with their own moves (especially the spear tossing bastards). At close range he shoots Electrocute sith style, but it isn't that much stronger than the Entropic variant that is Empowered Destruction (which seems to hit only for a little less but also has bigger range and hits in AoE). Only advantage to Electrocute is its empowered version will stunlock a target for you. Special note for his trap spell - it's really useful early game to deal with melee (I went for damage, and isn't very useful compared to Geometry once Geometry is maxed. The empowered version was really awkward to use as most enemies detonated the pre-placed traps too soon. Overall, I like how Reinhard was designed. I built him as an AoE glass cannon and he did just that, eventually I could even use my AoE spells to deal with heavy single target opponents that charged me. I can also see how he can be built as a really tanky mage. My only regret for building him was evolving the trap - it was useful, but I think the healing spell evolutions would have ultimately served me better for kiting. I also see how he can be turned into a really nice tank with all those self-healing abilities he can stack. He works very, very well with agility due to the power granting passive and the agility into ability DPS conversion passive - I kept his crit rate at his entropic stance at least 20% through out the game and it really paid off - its weird for a mage, but I really think Agility is his main attribute due to those two abilities. Its just incredibly cost effective from both gear and point expenditure perspective. My only criticism of his design would be the Lightning Strike evolutions and Arc Lightning splash evolution. Lightning Strike Bolt evolutions are simply not very useful for any build style (the animation leaves him too vulnerable even with the stun, the bounce turns it into a half-arsed "maybe" AoE spell that will be, pound for pound, left in the dust by entropic AoE spells). Arc Lightning splash evolution looks like its basically a poor man's Creative Destruction. Playing Lucas now next. Despite all obsession with glass cannons, I am trying to see if I can build him legitimately (isn't forced to dodge dance) tanky. He definitely needs to stack up that armor, and he definitely can tank minibosses better thanks to spamming that Shield bash, but his survivability in groups seems to be completely dependent on the stagger/knockback from his twohander. On the bright side, despite focusing almost entirely on defensive gear, he hits much harder than Reinhart (albeit at lower AoE). His Will to Attack DPS conversion allows him to doubledip off Will attribute for boosting attack damage; and the ability to turn the Sword Dash and Execution Charge into naturally very high crit chance abilities completely removes the need for agility on him. He *destroys* bosses and groups with those two abilities alone, it's quite humorous to watch. He generates power very nicely thanks to getting hit all the time, his only weakness seems to be focus generation - you gotta swing that sword a lot. Perhaps the % to gain focus passives help significantly with that, but they are competing with heal/damage avoidance passives in my book. I'll decide later. Some other spoilerish observations/questions: 1. Companion order seems to be a victim of rushed game design. Anjali feels like she has the most central relation to the main storyline, and you always get her as your first companion. (If you play her, you get Lucas in the cage just like in the demo.) Katarina always seems to come after the bridge once you finish the first act. My only question is who comes instead of Katarina if you play as her - I hope it's Reinhart because otherwise he gets rather jipped on available spotlight time as a companion. I don't think it will even be possible to reach the final influence bonus deed with him if he always comes in as the last recruitable companion. 2. Heart of Naggog - is there any consequence to not destroying it other than missing quest XP? As it stands, blowing it up makes the Gunderic fight much harder (he becomes immune to regular attacks and hits much harder), but you can just destroy it after the fight which makes that particular decision completely pointless. Perhaps the choice with it that he drops better loot if killed in his "hard" mode? Hard to tell thanks to the random generator. 3. I salute the writers/voice actor on the Dapper Old Gent. His overall design and relevant plot decision are probably the best in the game - there was some real conflict between what you feel for the guy, his actions, and the ideals/practicality involved in both choices. Probably the greyest in terms of ambivalent morality character I've seen in an RPG for quite some time; I could have made very pragmatic arguments for either of his decisions, and on the emotional aspect I felt rather sorry him despite his decidedly unscrupulous behavior. Story has good basics behind it, but it felt rushed. The game feels like its missing a third act - the "first act" up to reaching Stonebridge feels nice, the Glitterdale/Stonebridge feel like they are halves of the same act, and then the game just jumps straight to the concluding area and final boss fight. IMO it really needed something between "gathering allies" phase and "END JAYNE KASSYNDER" phase; to pad out both the gameplay and inject some more story. Main 4 characters plots is another reason I say it felt rushed - Reinhart basically gets throwaway lines to him being a college man, Katarina mostly looks like she gets stuff only in the first act, Lucas I don't know yet but I suspect he got the full Reinhart treatment, Anjali's bits feel essentially central to the whole plot arc overall. An overall effect is that characters felt more one dimensional than they should have been - Anjali being the most developed and yet you can summarize her by "worships Odo, proud warrior-race lady version of justice/honor, and really wants to killi Jayne Kassynder." You can tell there is supposed to be more to her with a few comments she makes, but those are about the only angles that get emphasized on her as evidenced by her allotted influence gains. The "idealist vs. pragmatist" angle was a nice idea, I daresay more interesting than Mass Effect's Renegade/Paragon (which came down to mr. nice guy vs. being a complete and total **** for the sake of being a ****.) Like other story aspects, it simply needed more meat on its bones. Gameplay observations - based on one full play through and hints I am getting from starting the other one The basics behind combat are a highlight despite their simplicity, a good blend of typical brawler action games and Diablo-clones. After a while I felt the controls were perfectly fine with Keyboard-Mouse, the only issue through out the game was the camera - it zoomed it at the worst times, and its rotation is awkward; and I think it could have benefited from a slightly bigger zoom-out. Ability design felt top-notch - nearly every skill felt useful (though some evolutions/passives seem useless), characters (from looking over at their basics, haven't play tested it) all seem capable in combat with distinct feels between them. The major faults is that combat feels a bit too easy after you get used to it, item variety is atrocious (Chaos items seem like a nice idea, but I haven't felt any effect from equipping them and the prevalence of standard attribute items made most of them feel like filler) - the only trade off decisions are really if you want crits or not (perhaps this will change with Lucas and armor attribute). Late game, resource management seems to evaporate, but that might have been a pacing intention all along - you certainly feel tremendously powerful when you can fire off your strongest abilities non-stop; and this isn't exactly an ARPG that is designed to have an extended max level end-game. Blocking is pointless outside of early game where you use it to charge up your power orbs with better focus efficiency than abilities. Overall, combat has good basis of ideas and mostly good execution. There doesn't seem to be a reason to block when you can dodge (dodgerolls need nerfs, increasing ocoldown or something, it trivializes the difficulty once you get the rhythm of timing it) - you gain power spheres like candy later on, and sacrificing other useful attributes for raising block seems counter-productive. If this game ever gets a sequel, I hope it keeps expanding in that direction; no need to compete with Diablo likes between all the Diablo related games that are coming out; DS3 found a good niche here imo. I also highly suggest expanding enemy variety and boss variety - almost every boss follows a "telegraph, throw super high damage AoE, projectile, or charge" pattern. Item design needs work, probably. Not very varied, Chaos system is a cool concept, but it neither feels powerful nor is there any relevant feedback on the exact numbers of its abilities. UI wise - more number feedback. Some abilities flat out say what the do with zero numerical support behind them to help you judge the value of investment. Ditto for equipment stuff like Retribution, various stuns, all the chaos abilities. Now, I still gotta do about 2.5 more playthroughs, but I doubt my initial impressions will change that much. At most I might change my opinion on various item types. I do hope this game sells well enough to get a proper sequel to it with a stronger budget/time allocation to it. It had a ton of good ideas, with relatively good to great execution where it occurred, but it really needs more content/work overall to fully judge Obsidian's abilities in the genre. Oh, and P.S. - I haven't encountered a single bug. Jesus Christ, this game was well polished from the technical aspect. Not the prettiest looking, not the cleanest UI, but this game could practically set an industry standard on how to not ship games with bugs. P.P.S. - ok, this post came out way bigger than originally anticipated

Completely irrelevant to the point, but ok.

Well, I agree that the patches were "great" and changed the game for the better; I just don't agree that they solved the problem in question. The boring filler skills remained boring filler skills that now doubled as boring damage boosting passives. To truly fix it you need a redesign of the skills themselves.

Synergies were a poor fix. They jumbled the builds/balance quite a bit, made investment in lower skills worthwhile, even made a few lower level skills rather very powerful; but they didn't address the core problem.

The best part is where you compared Dungeon Siege to Lord of the Rings with a straight face.

High tier skills largely replacing replace lower tier skills. The worst offender was probably the Sorceress cold skills tree. One of the worst holdovers from RPG when it comes to the ARPG genre, IMO. I will grant though that Diablo 2 didn't suffer from this too much, especially after patches came out. Once the utility of many of the lower level skills was figured out, a lot were valuable as one point wonders; the massive imbalances of higher tier items and synergies allowed you to build a successful character around any skill. And ultimately the game was easy enough that you could beat the whole thing untwinked with a poison dagger necromancer. But... those are fringe scenarios for the very rich or for the people with a ton of time on their hands. I don't believe that you should waste development time on skills that are meant to be phased out because something cooler is on the way. Why did you bother designing the crappy skill in the first place, why even allow investing in it if a single point in Frozen Orb will make the 20 you put in Ice Bolt a complete and total waste? It might work as a pacing thing through Normal difficulty mode, but its downright toxic for a game that is meant to be replayed hundreds of times with a different character/build.

The relatively higher frequency of fun items in TQ was one of the main reasons I liked the game in the first place. Having drop rates that aren't 0.00001% is a refreshing change of pace from Diablo. The leveling wasn't particularly deep, it was just better made than Diablo 2's in terms of less redundant skill design, etc. The boredom thing... well, subjectivity is subjective. I found it fun. It's difficult to pinpoint what details make you find a game fun or unfun; from my perspective, TQ was mostly an improvement over Diablo 2 in most ways.

Titan Quest / Iron Lore should not have suffered the fate it did. Best Diablo style since Diablo. Though, I would have to disagree with that escapist posted rant; the game did suffer from a crippling technical design flaw that made many well maintained and above recommended specs PCs suffer from an annoying form of lag dubbed "rubber banding."

It's almost as if you didn't read my post and decided to stand on your soapbox instead of giving an insight to the question.

Good to hear. The demo seemed to have doors to two separate sidequest dungeons so many are clamoring for; why didn't they include that those .

Well, he does have access to that funky Will to Attack conversion passive. Sounds potentially fairly min-max friendly.

I found it significantly easier with Anjali. Burn Field + Pet + ability to go ranged at will combined with the industry's 34839438th overpowered implementation of the dodge roll means you can take out enemies faster and more safely than the warrior dude. The brunt of Lucas's power seems to lie in his two handed sword two AoE powers with high proficiency upgrades, which wasn't available in the demo. So we can max out 6 powers in upgrades and 6 passives. Cool. We eventually learn all 9 powers, right?

Is the total number of available points from leveling up known so that builds can be somewhat planned from the start?

Post-Paleolithic Era RPG mechanics design. Yay!

So it probably affects the shiny epilogue. Meh.

The ability to refuse the monetary reward for quest completion has me wondering - is this just a roleplay thing for people to feel good about themselves, or is there a deeper gameplay decision system behind it? Have the developers stated anything about there being a delayed reward for not accepting the money?