Slowtrain

There's so much new stuff that it was like learning the game all over again when I started playing the 1.13. The Call Reinforcements thing took me a while to get used to. I would always fail to accoutn for the option that when attacking the first sector of a town I might be facing as many as 50-60 soldiers if I wasn't careful. Now its second nature,but it was whole new wrinkle to think about. I love the mobile mlitia. I love the way all the militia and soldiers hop up on roofs. I love the Look option when using scopes. One of the toughest things I find is getting snipers down off roofs: when there are three or four or more of them up there and they are all peering through their scopes in every direction, they are a damn hard nut to crack. Happily, the mortar is very useful in this situation! Of course, I got Raven and my IMP killed in one campaign when they were up on a roof sniping and the AI mortared them! Bastards. That ended that game real quick. High angle Grenade launching is awesome, too. MAkes those launchers tactically useful. I love the weapon rebalancing and that sniper scopes are now only for sniper rifles. The combined arms approach is mow much more important rather than just loading up your whole team with C7s as in regular Jag 2 and Jag2 gold. Totally awesome mod.

lol. No its not really an issue now. It rarely happens and combat is pretty lethal so if somebody gets shot enough to blow off attribute points they are usually dead. My biggest cause of attribute loss is my snipers shooting their squadmates in the backof the head and knocking off wisdom points. Gotta keep those lines of fire clear! lol.

1.13 is the best mod ever to any game. I've never seen a mod add so much, change so much, enhance so much, yet still keep the flavor of the original so intact. ANd yeah, a lot of the features are unbalancing, but they are yours to use as you see fit. I like to play on expert with Bobby Ray's set to Normal, Drop All off, High Angle GLing on, elite troop bonus set to 50%, Deidranna set to agressive and queens forces unlimited. Then I gi ve myself $900,000 buy up some mercs and play a campaign until my IMP is killed then start aall over again. Greatest game ever; greatest mod ever.

This is what I was hoping for. I just expected better graphics. Not neccessarily Oblivion-level graphics, but not too far off that curve. WHat I am seeing here are graphics that would have looked good several years ago. Its true that in the past crpgs were always cut some slack graphic-wise when compared to sports games or shooters, due to their longer dev cycle and generally more complex gameplay and world-building requirements. WHich meant less time so spend on graphics, more graphics that needed to be done, and generally an older engine to boot. I'm still looking forward to G3, I was just disappointed to see what is essentially the final look of the game. I'm sure once I get playing it I won't even notice the graphics. Also I can't tell the quality oif the animations from static screenies. As several of you have pointed out animations are pretty important, especially in a non first person game, where you are going to spend the whole game watching your character move.

Yes, exactly. Everything mushes together. Nothing is crisp. Plus the avatars are all somewhat misproportioned and the creature graphics look like they were drawn by a three year old. ALso the use of color seems rather monotnous. None of this is an engine problem, obviously. But there's defintely an art problem going on here. Shades of Troika's crappy art. Sorry, but I like my fantasy somewhat pleasing to look at; it shouldn't make my eyes bleed. Assumign the game gets good word of mouth, I'll probably stilll buy it though.

Compromise! Wait 3-6 days to make sure, the game is in mostly playable shape and that intial feedback is positive, at which time you camn make an informed consumer decision and purchase the game with confidence and joy!

Actually, I never really liked Might and Magic. I always preferred Wizardry. For some reason I always lump those two series together. I think its because they paralleled each other so much. After a few years everything starts to run together into one giant mess of memory. At least for me.

Good jaysus! Faith, lad? You always had a good heart, didn't you. Ah well, its probably a decent bet in this case. Still I think the world of the the software consumer would be a brigher, happier place if we made game companies prove they had a mostly bugfree and feature-intact product before we gave them our money.

Sargy is working up a new pc again. I think the stress of burn-in has gone to his head.

I disagree. Might and Magic has always been the superior franchise. edit: well franchise probably isn't the right word. But yo know what I means. Its TEH BEST!

I don't think pre-ordering software is generally a real smart thing to do. What you are told you are getting and what you actually get are often 2 completely different things. But if you don't mind waiting for the patches and are OK with missing features and insipid AI, then be my guest. Nothing personal there, Sargy.

On a side note, gaming boards have been having the same arguments that nobody ever agrees on over and over again for the last 20 years. The human race thrives on unresolvable conflict.

yes?

Go jumping puzzles! Go! Maybe we can wrap ourselves in some kind of gummy velcro-like thing and just stick to everything we touch. No more falling! Ever! All devs who put jumping puzzles in their FPS should be forced to play Witchhaven a thousand times.

No you're not. HL has a total crap story. Dimensional Rip, Monsters come through, Hero gets guns and goes nuts, suspicious guy with a briefcase shows up peridoically. Its a story that could have been written by a retard. Of course, it was written by Marc Laidlaw who is a really good writer, so obviously he had some chains attached to his creativity by Valve. But that's OK. HL had a lot of great things going for it. The fact the story was mongoloid fodder was completely irrelevant. More hurtful to the quality of the gameplay was the large number of jumping puzzles. *jump* *miss* *fall* *die* *reload* Yay. Now this is freaking awesome gameplay right here! HL was a pretty good game though. At least for the first few "levels".

The faces in Oblivion entirely depend on your skill as a face maker. My faces look great. Obviously the ingame faces for the most part look like ass. I guess its ok since most of them are suppose do be "average" downtrodden serfs and downtrodden serfs are always butt ugly. Still, I think there should be more stylishly pretty npcs in Oblivion then there are. But whatever. They still look better than Morrowind.

Those graphics are ass. WHat did they do, draw them with crayons? They don't look a whole hell of a lot better than Gothic 2. Very disappointed.

Sounds good, but what game doesn't during the hype stage. Then it comes out and its not what everyone thought it would and pissed off gamers gather in the forums and whine like bitches. I wish I had a few hundred dollars for every gamer that raved about how awesome a new game was going to be than whined like an arse on the forums when the game was released. The proof is in the pudding, not in the cookbook.

I'm just pointing out there is as much validity in saying that an original IP is not a good thing for Fergie and Obsidian as there is in saying its a good thing. Based on precedent, in fact, more weight is carried by the former than the latter. Fergie admits as much in the interview. Prove that you can learn from history, great, I hope so.

Wasn't Torn an original IP? Didn't Uncle Fergie nuke it of its misery after months and months of crippling pain? Sounds like the kiss of death to me.

Yep, follow the link in Majek's first post in the Lair thread to the 1.13 mod which makes a lot of changes. Pete is playing it right now. He just got his ass kicked. lolol.

Majek and Pete have started a new Jag 2 thread at Missy's which they seem to do once a year. They love the game and love talking about it with anyone. I'm sure they'd love others to join in if they see fit to do so. http://www.community.mistresslair.net/showthread.php?t=10106

Well, its not a crpg as such, so the interaction is more limited. The mercs make comments about things that happen and situations they get into. Some of them won't work with others. They all have pretty strong personailities. I think its superior to Wiz 8 (which is also one of my fave games). There's a lot of dialogue in the game with NPC. A lot for a non-crpg that is. Probably equivalent in a lot of ways to the dialogue in Oblivion. Excpet you can't have question and answer sessions. Other than the occasional yes or no kidn of answer. But they do have a lot to say. There are quests and your characters level and what not. The core of the game though it is a sophistictaed tactical combat system (Don't even try to compare it to Fallout) and a fairly complex strategic management portion as well. WIzardry and Jagged ALliance were both develope by Sir TEch

That was XCOM: Apocalypse, which was good but its not in the class of the first two. ALso I wouldn't say it was based on diplomacy. Other than the fact you could bribe them off for huge sums of money if you wiped out their building with incendiary rounds and explosives. uh, sorry about that. I saw an alien. :D