IndiraLightfoot

@Starwars Totally agree.

Yeah, I have such high hopes for Gathering Storm - heck, I even preordered it, and I've watched Ed Beach's introductory vids with the new civs and features with whetted appetite.

As a huge fan of the Civilization series, where I have played each iteration almost religiously, I approve of this analysis.

I've never done anything like that. It sounds pretty cool.

I caved in and bought two games at the very end: Into the Breach and Undertale.

I really like it, and I play as Kassandra as well. And like you, I've used Exploration mode, exclusively, in fact. It still feels like Skyrim, but whatever, the game is overall huge and often great fun.

On your recommendation, Fenixp, I went ahead and bought it with 1.5h to spare on the Steam Winter Sale. It looks pretty sleek.

@Manveru123 It's a matter of taste, and I can definitely see where you are coming from. Like you, I've actually replayed RTwP CRPGs much more often than turn-based ones. My craziest one is NWN2 OC+MotB (I'm on over 30 playhtroughs), and for BG1 (I'm beyond a dozen). BG2, however, still takes oodles of time with the expansion (the base game is more manageable: I have like 8 playthroughs on that one.) Then again, I have thousands upon thousands of hours on Civilization games - my record game, if I bundle them up as one. EDIT: Let's just hope that Hurlshot never reads your comment about Jagged Alliance.

Heh, I meant tactical board games with figurines, like Warhammer or Panzer General, and RPGs using figurines. I can only take my older kids, and then look at my cousins' younger kids today. Most of them nerdy, and hardly anyone touch these games anymore. In the 1970s through the roaring 1980s well into the 1990s, such games were the sh*t! All that I'm saying is that computer games and cell phone apps are dominating their lives hard. Still, MtG and simpler board games are still played physically at tables here and there. But this is just my experience, and I'm happy to hear of revivals or thriving tabletop communities elsewhere. Still, I doubt it that they will be as studious and religious as way back then. I reckon these heydays have passed. My point is that turn-based combat and RTwP combat are two solutions to combat in computer RPGs, and the former came earlier, and the latter, clearly a RTS-inspired compromise, came later. I actually love them both when well implemented and the games they are used in are good, but they can be hideous if implemented poorly. Sure, turn-based is more time-consuming, but load up the stratagem mod for BG2 and watch hilariously long battles unfold, because your enemies are just as prebuffed as you are. And they keep on rebuffing. Also, RTwP can get Benny Hill end scene very quickly - and I'd say PoE1, early on, at least, suffered from this bum rush chaos problem. I'm not a turn-based fanatic in any shape or form, but it can make for sweet games when done right. Like you said, Civ is entirely based around turns, so Civ combat alone would be pretty boring, that's for sure. But as a turn-based game, everything included, it's usually a great joy for me to play.

We are just having fun and debating. I don't sense any hostility, do you? You misunderstood me. I was simply supporting you guys in underlining that they were all pretty darn bad. I never interpreted you as aggro in any way. I wanted to congratulate you both as winners in this pretty interesting debate.

The Fade as well as big chunks of the Dwarven caverns are well at par with the orcs, and the docks, and the dreadful meandering to bugbear caves and back again. I have to say that you both have found bad cases, so why try to decide a winner? They both were disappointing, yeah?

I mean, most young people today wouldn't play board games with figurines, and quite apparently, turn-based combat tries to emulate that, whereas RTwP offers the embryo of the illusion of real living characters fighting in real time (at least in theory). But games and graphics and other technology have evolved so much, like Triple A Foxy Lad wrote elsewhere (Found it: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/107561-bg2-and-poe2-not-what-you-think/?p=2128003), that RTwP feels old-fashioned and weird for other reasons.

I can understand why some peeps feel that turn-based is immersive breaking and unnaturally clunky and rigid, but to me, having played board games and tabletop RPGs for years and years, nothing beats turn-based. In a way, you could say that I have more immersion in a turn-based game, because I'm so used to my mind/fantasy accepting this clunkiness and filling in the gaps with my "sitting around the table, taking my time, munching on something yummy, and strategizing, and simply having lots of fun"-vibes. RTwP, on the other hand, feels much more like a RTS computer game *duh, obviously* (and in part, even worse, it feels like the game plays itself, pianola gaming,) and in games like this I really love to see each turn unfold, considering all the numbers and options, well, yeah, guess why I love Civilization so much.

I want it all, I want much more of the Forgotten Realms, and I'd love to get more of all the settings Keyrock listed, and more. I can't believe how underused Dark Sun and Ravenloft is, and I agree that Forgotten Realms have so much more to offer. The Rashemen setting of NWN2 Mask of the Betrayer just showed a glimpse of what you can do, and that wasn't even very exotic, Faerun is huge.

And, may I add, the lore and the Forgotten Realms feelz, the lot, it's all there, and it's quite enjoyable for what it is.

I'd go this far: The campaign is probably better than the one in the NWN OC, and the one in NWN2 Storm of Zehir. It's like a shorter version of the NWN2 OC in quality, minus the stronghold, and there are less companions to choose from. Sometimes, you have henchmen tagging along in your party for a while too. I'm having great fun. If, and that's a big if, you can look past the skill tree D&D system, you'll have great fun and enjoyment playing it. EDIT: Oh, the game's servers have been taken down, so there are no mods or anything for the game. My main is an archer (no animal companion, so not really a ranger. She's never used a non-ranged weapon). Then I have a caster, Hommet, and he works really well. Perhaps you are "building" him wrong. What I do is a hard focus on the cantrips, and then magical items enhancing the damage from them, so he's a beast (basically, no cooldowns - constant super-fast painful spamming). And he doesn't wear any armor - just a neat cantrip robe. I have Illydia, she always uses a bow, and then Jarhild, the fighter, which I have made a sword and board build, with lots of buffing shouts. All in all, my party is far from melee, and I'm having a blast!

But, but… Microsoft is paying now.

Images from my last playthrough of Dishonored, where I got the platinum for the base game. My last saves from that game were from fall 2013, and having played it extensively yet again. I have just one word for it all: masterpiece. It was all made using the Unreal 4 engine, so Obsidian certainly has something to get inspired by, now that they use the same engine for Outer Worlds. I mean, this is an in-game image, from a 6 year old game!!! Yet another crazy good in-game screenie! These whaler-masks are so cool! This was a gory evil playthrough,and I managed to do a horrid quest I had deliberately skipped in my three earlier playthroughs. And I managed to get all the paintings, thanks to this mad maniac playthrough! Yep! Even Samuel hates my guts. He'll soon signal my presence at Kingsparrow Island, and then I went ahead and disable five security systems while killing each and every enemy on the map. One of the crazy Dunwall Trials challenges. I went at it for like an hour, ended up with 550,000 points, and just stopped, since I had RL things to do. Then I took a peek at the highest score on Steam for this challenge: 200,000,000!!! People must have taken turns.

Well, I still have Pathfinder: Kingmaker on the backburner (I'm waiting for an even more stable version, and I have all the time in the world *cough* NOT!), and I've suspended my playthrough of "Deadfire Complete", just for the reason that I want to save that little gem for laterz. So, after having played mostly Assassin's Creed this autumn (you know that game that never ends), and I still really like it, I needed some true comfort games, and turned to Dishonored and Dungeons & Dragons - and this time, I picked a game that you can't even buy on Steam anymore: Sword Coast Legends. I had played like Act 1, and now, when I've kept going, I must say that except for the pretty boring skill tree system, the game itself is pretty good. Inon Zur's music is excellent, the graphics scream 2000s and are nostalgic to me, the VO is pretty neat, mostly British accent of various kinds (you know the drill Scottish dwarves, etc). I like the pacing of it, and a few dungeons are really meaty (more hefty than I had expected, especially after having gotten used to Deadfire's dungeon lites, and full of nice little puzzles and secrets, and plenty of easter eggs and allusions/throwbacks to earlier D&D CRPGs). And returning to the Sword Coast and the Forgotten Realms still works for me. It really warms my heart. In short, Sword Coast Legends is far better than its reputation, and I believe it's received much unfair flak, to be honest. Well, then we have my beloved Dishonored. As I have reported earlier, I managed to get all the achievements for Dishonored 2 and Death of the Outsider, so now I set out to get them all for Dishonored. Said and done. I played through the entire game for a fourth time, and I maxed out all the settings, and enjoyed every minute of it. One of the best computer games of all time, no doubt! I managed to get all the achievements for the base game, and I already had all cheevos for Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches. Afterwards, I even got the mad idea to get most of the Dunwall Trials achievements as well, but I soon realized that I'm too old. Some of them are so hard that not even a 15 year old controller freak wouldn't stand a chance. I managed to get all those marked with a brain, and some marked with a shooting weapon, but the one that said "speed" - forget it.

Speaking of ad buys, yesterday I wasted two precious holiday hours, watching like 4 Fallout 76 debacle videos, and in two of them, the bought ads were for Outer Worlds with the full-on trailer! So clever. For once, Obsidian will perhaps get proper marketing for one of their new IPs.

I notice a few neat deals, but thing is: None of them really spoke to me. This may be one of the first Steam sales, where I won't buy any game. In fact, I went ahead and prepurchased the only thing I was sure I wanted: Gathering Storm for Civ6 (and was met with red sentences from Valve: "This purchase does not grant any bonus trading cards…" I didn't care, haha!

Jolly holidays, dear Obsidz! "Good things come to those who wait, and the merriest things don't go up in smoke, but get bagged and wrapped, only to go down the chimney and into mantelpiece stockings." Lucas A. Nast

Josh has revealed that he prefers turn-based, and he really dig Battle Brothers, and he backed Realms Beyond really generously, so I hope that he's behind this and that he gets to be the mastermind behind the system tweaks needed for this mode. I love both turn-based and RTwP - actually, the quality of the game decides whether it's good, mediocre or bad. Just this being worked and then hopefully later included will probably encourage me to play the game all the way through a third time.

Surely, there is a consensus around here that the following isn't exactly welcome (as these things stir the forums like a stick in a hornet nest, while clogging them up): -Starting Clickbait threads -Starting threads with Obsidian-negative titles that turns out be whatever, but usually devoid of substance and direction -Starting such thread repeatedly even after have been kindly advised by other forum members and mods not to do so -Spamming long gaming Youtube clips, almost as if a bot had randomly selected them And if this still keeps on occurring, we should all heed Amentep's reporting instructions.

Deadfire not selling well is sorely disappointing. It's the kind of game that really fits CRPG veterans and CRPG greenhorns alike. Fingers crossed that it's some kind of tardy sleeper hit game, late bloomer, and all that. Perhaps Outer Worlds will bring in relevant gamers that try out this title, I know that they are in for a pleasant surprise. PCGamer's RPG of the Year 2018 and all!