Keyrock

As far as I'm concerned, there could have been zero combat in PS:T and it would still be the best RPG I've ever played. In fact, it would have been an even better game had there not been any combat at all. Of course, I'm a story first gamer. Great writing can keep me playing in the face of even horrible mechanics, hence why I am still able to play and enjoy The Secret World.

I can't compare to Bladedancer, or any dual wielding class (having not played any), for that matter, but Hunter is flat out awesome. Probably can't dish out the sheer volume of damage a Bladedancer can, especially taking into account the Bladedancer, once promoted, damaging multiple targets at once, but the Hunter can still do beefy amounts of damage and is arguably an even better character defensively than offensively. The only thing they really lack defensively is heavy armor. Spear sort of makes up for lack of shield in the blocking department, they're physically tough, and they can evade and resist spells with the best of them. My Marauder is becoming nearly untouchable by enemies. They just flat out can't hit her, not with physical attacks and not with spells (not for very much, anyway). I just did the Crystal Spider fight, That was fun, probably my favorite boss fight so far. With the fire shard in hand I'm off to cure Crag Hack (Edit: or not ) and then to the forge for the second to last blessing (still need the dark shard).

Interestingly, I'm the only one so far that has any jRPGs on their list.

Denied by the NDA.

Strictly RPG: 1) Planescape: Torment 2) Baldur's Gate 2 3) The Witcher 2 4) Final Fantasy 6 5) Fallout: New Vegas 6) Chrono Trigger 7) Ultima VII (I'm lumping them together into one giant game, if I have to choose a favorite then it's The Serpent Isle) 8] TES3: Morrowind 9) Deus Ex 10) Fallout 2

Mamushi is very difficult to melee because he blocks a lot and retaliates on all melee strikes (blocked or otherwise). He's one boss that's significantly easier with a magic-heavy party. At this point in the game my melee characters (Marauder and Shield Dwarf) are by far my main damage dealers, but a lot of that is enhanced by my spellcasters. My casters are mostly there to heal, buff, and protect my party, and to debuff and purge the enemies, though the cumulative damage from poisoning the enemies with Poison Cloud is significant. Edit: I was thinking of an all-hybrid party also, but I still think that will become relatively easy once I get past act 1. Maybe I'll go all might? I dunno, I got a some time left to think about it as I won't do that until I finish this playthrough.

LOL, that's almost as much fun as when newscaster have to say "grape drank" or "sizzurp".

That was pretty fantastic... for everyone not named Darren Monahan. One of my favorite D&D holy **** moments was luckily of the positive variety. It was at the yearly shindig our high school Latin class went to and there was a Roman themed game of D&D that I participated in. I played a Priest of Bacchus (clearly the most awesome of the gods) and my character got st00pid drunk when camping for the night, as one does when worshipping the god of wine, madness, and ecstasy. As you can imagine, my character had a ruthless hangover the next morning (complete with significant stat penalties) so I prayed to Bacchus and rolled a natural 20 (I still fondly remember everyone's eyes going wide as the die stopped on 20). The DM granted me a daily "Remove Hangover" power. If only such things existed in real life. The closest I've found is ginger ale.

Man, that course for slopestyle is beefy. They put some monster jumps in there.

I have a hard time going back to KotOR 1/2 at all. While there is a lot to like about those games, the combat system is so atrocious that I almost have to physically force myself to keep playing, at which point the thought comes up "why do this to myself?" and I stop. While I was going through the games the first time and discovering things, that was enough to keep me going. Now that I've finished them before, going back is just not worth it.

On the plus side, if they do go with the same ending with 36 different color explosions, they'll likely get a bunch of cupcakes mailed to them with different color frosting. It will also be a challenge to the both the developers and the cupcake bakers to find that many different hues of explosions/frosting that you could still tell apart easily.

I agree. I first took out the dangerous cave Cyclops with a level 15 party, and it was pretty hard (for my party, at least). Then one or two levels later I met two in a certain warfare challenge, and they seemed much harder. I meant the named (I forget his name, starts with a "D") cyclops for the shield guard promotion in the cave near the broken down caravan in the mountain range. I found him to be easier to kill than the regular cyclopses (cyclopi) simply called "Cyclops". I'm certainly not changing any values on my first playthrough, with the exception of things that are obviously broken (spear not getting crit bonus from two-handed master). I want my first playthrough to be "vanilla". Not even my mages tend to stay stunned 5 turns, they usually break out of it within 2 or 3 turns. My Shield Guard is virtually unstunnable. When he gets stunned he breaks out of it immediately 95% of the time so that by the time my turn rolls around he's already back to normal. Edit: Oh yeah, and I found the spear relic. It's in a dangerous cave on the Menthil Coast with a shaman dude inside it (his name starts with "M") In a future playthrough I'll definitely have to play a much more unorthodox and "suboptimal" party, because Warrior difficulty has gotten too easy. I mean, it's not exactly a cakewalk, but it's not that challenging either. I think I assembled my party too well (/pats self on back) and I wasn't particularly trying to min-max. If with an unorthodox/unbalanced party I still get to a point where it's not that challenging, then I'll think about messing around with the config files to create a "Nightmare Difficulty".

Woot! Promoted my Shaman to Bloodcaller. He's almost never going to need to drink a mana potion again.

I've actually played the vast majority of those titles.

The boss cyclops was such a chump. I think he only managed to hit any of my characters once and Celestial Armor just laughed at that. I hit him up with poison cloud, acid splash, shatter, and agony, then just ripped him to shreds. At one point late in the fight he stone skinned himself. I must laughed at him as I purged the effect off him. Purge is such a great spell.

Supposedly The Witcher 3 will have 36 different endings, though just how different each of those endings is remains to be seen. It would be pretty hilarious if it was just essentially the same ending with 36 different color explosions.

I got my Shield Guard promotion. Cyclopses (Cyclopi?) are laughably easy at level 24. I pretty much crushed them beneath my boot. Is it just me, or is the boss Cyclops actually easier than the regular ones? He barely put a scratch on me.

Man, that Heat/Clips game last night was freakin' awesome. That was really entertaining.

Ubisoft's utterly gorgeous metroidvania-ish, JRPG-ish Child of Light has a release date (April 30th) and a price ($15), and a release trailer: It's coming to a smorgasbord of platforms too.

Here is an update on that dystopian steampunk golf game in the sky you've always wanted: This one is definitely on my radar.

That's been the biggest kick to the crotch I've gotten in a long time. Bigger than the kick to the crotch I got from Torture Porn Raider. (Torture Porn Raider is actually a pretty good game, it's just absolutely not the game I wanted to play or it to be. X: Rebirth is just a really really really bad game.) On a positive note, I'm really itching to play Shadowrun Dragonfall.

The Iorveth path is my "canon" path. It has a more fun Act 2 also. Edit: My "canon" path: TW1: Scoiatel, Adda lives TW2: Iorveth, spare Aryan LaValette, spare Saskia, spare Letho. I'm probably being far too lenient sparing all these people.

Most people want a "cool game" but I wouldn't be surprised if there's no majority (i.e. 50%+1) consensus on what is essential for a cool game. I'm sure many of the people that "just want a cool game" are perfectly okay with many of the things that the various minorities want, because ultimately it doesn't affect them. In my opinion, the only legitimate reason to be upset at someone asking or suggesting something like this is if you think that it'll ultimately deliver a less than satisfactory experience. To me, this means that you're either upset at the specific content request, or at the perceived opportunity cost of implementing the request (i.e. it'll take away from something else you consider more important). The problem I have with the defense of "people just want a cool game" is that, if that's the case, then really should it not matter at all with respect to whether or not you can play as a female player character, or what have you? Or would the inclusion be something that makes the setting unsatisfying for you? If so, what exactly does that say? In the world of RPGs there's definitely that group of people that want the "edgy and mature" topics with things like rape and all those dark things to make the world more vicious and seem more real. These threads inevitably popped up on DAI forums, and I responded with an idea of "Okay, how about the notion that the player character gets captured at one point, and if the player is male he gets raped by the homosexual jailer." The response was that that would just be a clear attempt at being subversive and would be frankly, lame. So to that poster, it wasn't just the inclusion of rape he wanted, it was an inclusion of rape of a specific nature (i.e. of a woman). Whatever his reasons are for doing that, I do find it an interesting point that for that person, having a woman get raped would be perfectly acceptable while having a man get raped would be out of the question. There's no real definition of what it means to "have a cool game" and for some people, adding something like this is just something that makes the game that much cooler. My problem isn't with people making suggestions and questioning aspects of a crowdfunded game, as long as the suggestions are done in a constructive, non-pushy manner. My problem is with people that feel their pledge gives them a right to dictate the direction of a project, make demands, and kick and scream because something isn't exactly to their liking, and threaten to remove their pledge or whatever else (if you want to remove your pledge, just do it, no need to make a spectacle of it). I also have a problem with the people that get too aggressive and extreme with their backlash against those types of people, that's not helping anybody. The moderate majority, providing polite, reasonable, and constructive criticism are fine, in fact they're contributing to a healthy somewhat open development process. It's the people on the extreme ends that **** everything up, as they generally do in all manner of things.

Snare is so awesome. I don't get to use it that often because you need at least 2 squares between yourself and the enemy to make it work, but when I do get a chance it makes me smile. My favorite thing to do in those situations is to drop a snare, back up a square, have my Shaman drop a Poison Cloud over the square with the snare on it just before the enemies get there, then the next turn the enemies move into the square, get poisoned, take earth damage, the snare goes off, does usually about 180 damage to the poor saps, and reduces their number of attacks by one. Good times. I wonder if I can get harpoon and snare to work together. Drop a snare on the ground then harpoon a mage into it (as a bonus, a mage would likely take more damage from the snare because less armor). The only problem with that is that the round spent dropping the snare at my feet might be better spent moving a square over, around the corner of something to get out of the line of fire. If I had 2 Marauders then I could do it all in one round. Maybe this is something to consider if I wind up making an all orc party. Or I could do 2 snares at the same time. Good gravy, that would be awesome.

To be honest, she's that great at being a dragon either.