Stun

It's called Feedback. Complicated concept to grasp, I know, but lets roll with it anyway.

The IE games also had a solution to the stalemate problem for NON-magic battles. They use the D20 system, where 1 is always a miss and And a 20 is always a hit. Personally, though, I've come to terms with the Miss--Graze---Hit--Crit system that PoE uses. I like it. My only issue with it is how....universal it is. It applies to everything. Which means we'll never see those dramatic high level magic battle moments from BG2 and IWD2 where a heated, intense battle could end suddenly in a nail-biting moment due to, say, a Finger of Death, or a Wail of the Banshee. After all, what's the point of scoring a critical hit with your death spell? or a Graze with your Destruction spell?

You mean Save or else. Because Hard counters aren't based on luck. They're the opposite of luck. They're spells that guarantee immunity to the effect that the enemy is trying to afflict you with.

You are under-stating the absurdity and hilarious irony of this. There are 2 major gameplay philosophies that Josh Sawyer voiced and made crystal clear to everyone before developing PoE's combat systems: 1) Save or else - will not be in the game because it is a dreadfully Non-fun, non-tactical, binary gameplay hangover from the IE games and should die by fire. 2) Hard counters and pre-buffs - will not be in the game because they are apocalyptic designs that promote metagaming, instead of reaction based tactical gameplay Now Fast forward to the finished product of PoE. What did we end up getting? Yeah, Rule #1.... violated right off the bat. We have Whole races of monsters spamming the exact same Save-or else effects from BG1 against your party. But unlike BG1, we're not given any tools to tactically counter such attacks because they decided to hold fast to rule #2....for no reason. Because they ended up giving us spells that still require metagaming in order to be even marginally useful against these Save Or else attacks. (the entire line of "Prayer against ____" spells that priests get. They all have two effects: 1. to increase your saves against the Save or else" effects, and, 2. to reduce the duration of those afflictions if you fail your saves. But how are you going to benefit from the save bonus of those effects without metagaming and casting that spell before you get hit by the effect? Answer: You don't. Because you can't. (no pre-buffing). So basically the only legit function of those spells is to reduce the duration of the "Save-or-Else" effects after they've already afflicted your party. This, of course, assumes you got lucky and it wasn't your priest who got nailed with those effects, because if he has, then you can't cast that spell. Not until the effect wears off, at least... But by then, casting it will be pointless since the fight will either be over, or the enemy will have already exhausted its per encounter instances of those Save or Else attacks. Absurd.

Yes. If you wish, We can run down the classes and all possible implemented advantages of each of the stats if you wish. And we can do so under the context of extreme powergaming. But as long as you willfully ignore the fact that the game lets you freely add and subtract from those Dice rolls, your claim will Always be false, both mechanically and statistically. You didn't claim that the class system was complex and opaque. You claimed it was byzantine and cumbersome and that it had feats. You claimed there was no in game motivation to deal with the iron crisis. And while one can conceivably not be motivated to roleplay their own character's chosen class in a role playing game, it doesn't change the fact that the developers placed real, in game, mechanical consequences to the crisis, *forcing* a motivation from a gameplay standpoint. (some companions desert you if you choose not to pursue it. Your weapons break. bandits ambush you on the roads....etc.) You claimed it was inventory tetris. This is literally a false claim as it necessitates a grid system. Which BG1 does not use. I did not respond to your opinions about the early story, as they were exactly that: opinions. You did not claim they were underpowered. You claimed they could only do exactly 2 things once their spells ran out. This is a false claim. I cited 4 things they could do before even getting to level 2.

Part 1 of the Making-of-PoE documentary suggests otherwise.

Well first off, you're no ordinary Druid. You're a Druid who grew up in Candlekeep. Second, because of the Iron Shortage, the most common species in the forests of the sword coast happens to be Bandits. And from the point of view of a Neutral druid, this shouldn't be. It is a tangible upset to the Balance. Third, of all the classes in the game, a Druid has a biggest stake in stopping the Iron Throne Operations. The Shadow Druids of the Cloakwood should have explained that one to you.

Or maybe some of us have 100% fire resistance to your silly straw man? Again, you made factual errors in your review. Show me one of those from the Codex review. Otherwise, you're not making a point, you're just lurching out in a butt hurt rage.

I'm doing no such thing. My post focusses almost exclusively on pointing out the factually erroneous claims that are being made.

Yay! an 'in depth' Bg1 discussion. haven't had one of those in quite a while. Hey, just read your post. Nope, Sorry. You've failed to accurately apply the Codex review methodology to Baldur's Gate, since unlike the Codex review, you've resorted to False claims instead of just sticking with pronouncements of personal taste. It is neither crucial, nor is obsessive re-rolling required. Not even for Powergaming. Maybe you should stick to the REAL gripe people have with character creation in BG1: That all classes only have 1 or 2 crucial stats, while all the rest can be completely dumped to 3 with no ill effect. But of course, if you DO say this, then you can no longer complain about needing to re-roll over and over, Since there will never come a time when you can't max out your class's 1 or 2 vital stats....using just your first dice roll. Indeed. Fighters can use any weapon and wear any armor. And they have exactly zero special abilities to choose from. Their combat effectiveness improves automatically when they level up. How unthinkably Cumbersome and Byantine! Never seen anything more convoluted. In BG1? What in the world are you talking about? BG1 has no feats. Gorion has a great voice! Oh wait, you're talking about Imoen. Sorry, not seeing the difference in VA quality between Imoen and Calisca. Well, except the fact that the former sounds like she's acting, while the latter sounds like she's just cold-reading from a script. False. You can cast spells, you can perform archery, You can engage in melee, you can use imoen's wand, you can use a potion of invisibility. You can use Algernon's cloak. And you can do all of this at level 1 False. In BG1, You cannot rest in the middle of a fight. And you can't rest without consequence After a fight, either, since there will always be a chance of a random encounter. False. Unlike the casual-gamer's mechanic implemented in POE, Resting for the night in BG1 does NOT instantly restore all your health. What? Are you under the false impression that BG1 has a grid based inventory system? Because the weapons you're using are Breaking?

You're a rare species, but you ain't the only one, no. From a strictly general standpoint, people who prefer BG1 over BG2 will cite things like better exploration, more open world, its low level campaign and even its art style as better than BG2. Plus, BG1 has Durlag's tower, the single greatest dungeon experience of all the IE games.

No, I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of what happened here. It's more like: Me: Please bake me a cake. Obsidian: Ok. Batch of cookies coming right up! enjoy!

^this is not an excuse. In fact, it's the opposite of an excuse. It's a cited development advantage. During the Kickstarter, Tim Cain assured us that creating the world and its ruleset from scratch would be easier than having to implement an existing world and ruleset from another medium. He even used that silly Cake analogy ("If you show me a picture of a cake, I can bake one like it, but it'd be much easier if you simply told me to bake you a cake then let me make one however I wished")

And BG1 was f*cking awesome. It did not suffer the "Pilot Episode" syndrome, or "teething trouble" or whatever quaint dismissal-of-flaws that people here are assigning to PoE. Instead, it barged in and changed the Genre. It caused a 'new Era". As decent and praiseworthy as PoE is, it is on a different wavelength entirely. It's good but not great. It's refreshing but not revolutionary. etc. Of course you can. But that would necessitate that such a review be opinionated in nature. A criticism, is, by definition, an Opinion. And in your example, it would be an opinion leveled at the game's mechanics or story.

Which makes it no different than any other review, ever. In order to be objective, a review must not contain anything but a straight forward description of the game's features. Which would make it a completely sterile, worthless read. It'd look something like this: Pillars of Eternity is the latest title assigned to the Role Playing Genre by Obsidian Entertainment. It features a top down, Isometric viewpoint with hand drawn 2d environments and 3d character models. The Player controls a party of up to 6 characters, can choose from 7 races and 11 classes. It has leveling, and a main plot as well as several sub-quests of various degrees of complexity. Gameplay options include Exploration of specifically developed areas in the "Eora" game world, and boasts an unspecified number of hours of gameplay. It is a PC exclusive funded by a kickstarter campaign that occurred in the fall of 2012. It can be purchased through Steam, GoG, and assorted participating affiliates of Paradox Interactive. The end.

That's.... a good point. He either didn't think things through, or he still sees the incline but didn't want to admit it because it would clash with the review's message, or else he sees PoE as neither incline nor decline, but rather, a title that's just treading water within the movement.

<edit> Never mind.

is not a criticism o' mc, 'cause you are at least consistent. however, some o' the folks that find fault in poe for taking itself too serious seem to have forgotten their posts and opinions regarding ps:t, a game that could descend to a state o' lugubrious camp. HA! Good Fun! Indeed. I've always swam against the tide in finding Planescape inpenetrable (and admitting it on this forum). Still, there's a ton of humor in PS:T. I don't think the comparison is apt. Maybe if Eder was a talking skull that tried to get into a female wicht's pants....or maybe if Sagani was a modron cube who's viewpoints were 'Logikal', we'd have something there to put up as a "gotcha" to people who loved PS:T's syrupy drama but hated PoE's.

Why in the world would you bring up "unforeseeable immunities and defenses", when discussing trolls in the IE games? ... slow it is. *washes hands* HA! Good Fun! Just as I thought. You have no answer.

I'm pretty sure there are no such contractually binding rules. Kickstarter pledges are glorified donations. In fact, Larian didn't hesitate to scrap the 10+ level megadungeon they promised their backers in a reached stretch goal the moment they discovered that taking the immense time and money to put it in the game would cause them to have to cut corners and half-ass everything else. That stuff happens. Intelligent project managers simply take it on the chin, learn from it, and then do what's best for the game, even if it means they'll have to suffer a few whiners complaining about broken promises later on.

Why in the world would you bring up "unforeseeable immunities and defenses", when discussing trolls in the IE games?

What is this tripe? If keeping loot balanced means you have to make it all generic and soulless, then F*ck itemization balance. I don't judge a game by how balanced it is. I judge it on how *creative*, and *fun* and *memorable* it is. So yeah, I'll take BG2's gloriously imbalanced loot itemization over PoE's Level-playing-field-at-all-costs system. Because it's better. And more rewarding. And more creative. And more memorable.

You can? I haven't touched enchanting in a while, but I was under the impression that you can't add stuff like speed or dt penetration. Outside of Fine/Superb/Exceptional qualities, you can't add speed or DR penetration. All Esocs have DR penetration, so the Blade of the endless paths isn't offering anything special in that regard. The only thing it does give you is the +1.2 speed modifier and the marking quality, both of which are common magical properties shared by many other weapons you can find in this game (including another Esoc you can find in Act 1). They were uninspired, here, and they dropped the ball. By contrast, Durlag's tower gave you Keil's Helmet, Keil's Buckler, The Flame Tongue Sword, Bala's Axe, and the Staff of striking. All of them Unique items with unique properties you won't find anywhere else in the game.

So? In the case of BG2's chapter 5, does it matter that they 'walled you off' from the surface world, if they, instead, gave you a massive New cavernous area you can explore with a village *and* a city, and 3 fairly large and unique inner caves and about a bajillion new quests?

Plus, PoE shades aren't like BG1 Ankhegs because you can't take "shade shells" to a smithy and have him make "shade plate" out of it.