cyanidhogg

Look, guys, I appreciate what you're saying about the combat. I imagine it is a lot of fun for a lot of people. I'm not saying the combat is bad, I'm saying I'm really not having fun with it. Probably a matter of personal preference than anything else. That's not going to stop me from trying a bit more. Worst comes to worst, I might head into the dark realm of console cheats. Sleazebag: Thanks for the tips. Duly noted.

Hiya! I've currently sunk about five hours each in two different builds. I am having some serious problems enjoying this game at all, which breaks my heart. The writing is stellar, and I'm enjoying the exploration (ish) so far. This makes it all the more harrowing that I find the game to be unplayable for me. There are two main reasons why. 1. The combat. Playing this game the right way seems to require a lot of combat micromanagement. So far, the combat has frustrated me to no end. My head hurts from all the detail, managing every party member every few seconds, trying to figure out what all the special abilities do. The lack of companion AI makes combat impossible for me to enjoy. Before anyone asks, I'm on easy difficulty. I find that if I play combat the way I'd prefer, charging in and attacking, occasionally using a few special abilities, I get absolutely slaughtered in encounters of any reasonable level of challenge. Given that combat is a very large part of this game, this makes the game difficult for me. I'm not prepared to get good at the management, because I'm just not having fun. As a result, given Obsidians roots in Black Isle, and given the talk during design about any build being viable, I was hoping an alternative playstyle would work for me. I made a rogue with extremely high Dex, Per, Int and Resolve, hoping to stealth/talk my way through the game. Which leads me to problem no. 2: 2. Non-combat playstyles aren't really viable. Having whipped up my talky, sneaky rogue, I started playing the game again. This lead to disappointment when I realized that this doesn't seem to work. The level design is full of bottlenecks making sneaking past enemies hard to impossible in pretty much any major quest. A lot of the more important quests seem to have situations (read: bosses and the like) that don't have any solution past combat (since this is a spoiler-free forum, I won't go into detail). In general, I have the impression that stealth and conversation-based skill can only supplement your play. In other words, I have a strong impression it would be impossible for me to play through the game without a lot of the combat I'd rather not deal with. Sorry for the rant. I get that this game is more of a spiritual successor to games like Baldur's Gate (where playing through the game with a minimum of combat was out the window) rather than Fallout 2 (where you could practically not fight a single enemy if you wanted), I just didn't expect the level of methodical patience the game demands of me on the easiest of difficulty settings. If I'm wrong, I'd love to be told so (and ideally, being told what I could do differently to get a low-combat experience that'd get me through the game). If not, well, I'm glad a lot of other people are enjoying what seems to be a masterpiece from the five hours I got into it. Also, if you feel like commenting about how I'm **** at the game (which would be a correct observation), there would be no need. At the very least, I've gotten a bit of frustration off my chest. Thanks for your time, everyone who bothered reading this.

I'm from Oslo. Every so often I'm reminded that we're apparently the capital of some country called Norway.

This. Tropes aren't bad in and of themselves, but stereotypical characters tend to bore my pants off. And if there's one stereotype I absolutely hate, it's the fantasy dwarf. Monk ambitions or no, I hated Khelgar from minute one. Dragon Age's Oghren was much, much, much worse.

Is purdy. Want.

Wow. I just had a 25 minute conversation about Project Eternity with a friend. During that period, the total pledge has increased by well over 30 grand. When I realized there was only four hours left to go, I kind of panicked. Doubled my pledge and convinced three others to join in.

Generic? I'm sure many will end up calling it that. I'm not worried about generic. Avellone is writing it. He's the master of deconstruction, and can turn anything plain into something completely fresh. I'm guessing the creativity will come bottom-up from the details, not top-down from the overall setting.

I agree with OP on one thing; my trust in Obsidian is absolute. They've shown time and time again what marvelous games they can put out. With that said, I'm getting the vibe that the dev team wants feedback. Which means we'd do them a disservice not to criticize whatever doesn't ring well with our sensibilities. Of course, fanboy squealing is also in order.