Idleray

Yea, I would say Priests are the one class that you absolutely need to succeed in POTD. Actually playing through POTD without a Priest would be real hard mode to me... and it's something i'm gonna try next play through

Exactly. This is what the writer's adage "show not tell" is all about.

I went and ordered 3 copies of POE2 the moment it was announced on fig. I am excited for the sequel, having completed the original twice in short succession, however I must say that the reason I did so was because of the game's excellent combat and class design. I am confident that POE2 will make improvements on combat mechanics compared to POE. However I am not so confident about the narrative design. Let me elaborate: The plot of POE was not necessarily bad, but I did not like the way it was delivered - through massive lore-dumps, continuous and incessant name-dropping of terms like Waidwen's Legacy, War of the Black Trees, Godhammer Bomb etc and obtuse/uninteresting characters. Take Durance for example. The events he partakes in and his potential change of world-view regarding his God make for some very interesting thematic material. However, none of these events made any impressions on me because I didn't care for him as a character. I didn't care for the cryptic way he spoke, and the fact that he was basically deranged. I appreciated the originality of it - here's a character you have to dig deeper to figure out what he's saying! - but it didn't work. During key moments of character development I had trouble figuring out what he was even trying to say. Any potential emotional impact = lost. Then there are characters like Kana and Sagani. All I can tell you about them is that one is some kind of Scholar and the other is a snow dwarf with a husband and 5(?) kids at home. What were they doing in the game? How did their stories bear any significance to the Watcher? Err... Who knows? It's a big shame because the VO was consistently excellent throughout the game, but the material they had to work with was soooooo... uninteresting. Eder is the only one who left an impression on me personally, and interestingly enough his background lore is the most simple - He's a good-natured Farmer having a crisis of faith, desperately clinging on in the face of adversity. He's a simple character with simple emotional notes in his character arc - but it works - I really want to see what happens to him in POE2. On the other hand - there was Grieving Mother. To this day I don't remember what exactly she's about. I remember that the writing for her described imaginative and lush scenes, but as a character she was dead. She was basically a vehicle for an idea. There was no personality. Her guilt towards the end of her arc came out of nowhere and felt forced precisely BECAUSE prior to this there was little hint of any personality in her. I appreciate the writing team's attempt to create original/realistic characters, and a detailed backstory for their world filled with lore. However, I feel that one game is enough world-building, and I'd like to see something emotionally compelling in POE2. The personal connection should be established before you can get people interested in your characters and your setting. Towards that end I'd love to see some assurance from the writing team that they've absorbed player feedback on the story for the first game and will try to make the journey more satisfying in the sequel.

And it is completely un-noteworthy because the manner it was done was as a ret-connable choose-your-own-adventure backstory for a long-dead ghost which lasts for 5 minutes during the last legs of the game. She could be your sister, your lover, your senior that you looked up to, someone you betrayed etc. This for me had no emotional impact.

That would just be sex/using sex appeal, which is rather mundane and not what makes romances compelling.

I'd just like to jump in and say I enjoy romances, and I definitely think including it will help Obsidian sell more copies. Obsidian as far as I can tell is not really in healthy financial straits right now so they pretty much need all the help they can get. People seem to have this wrong-headed idea that including romance = fan service. It doesn't even need to be a romance between the player and an NPC. It could be cross-NPC romance. It could be a romance that never gets consummated. It could be a series-spanning relationship that gradually evolves with romantic overtures. GET CREATIVE! Basically speaking; romance sells. Sex sells. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It all depends on how you do it. For the record I thought the story in POE was incredibly dull until the last part where you got to speak with the Gods. So was BG & BG 2 for that matter had there not been romances in them. The things that always attracted me to the DND universe were its Gods and larger-than-life characters, like Drizzt. These things are themselves arguably "romantic" aspects that lend interest to a world and allow someone to immerse themselves and become attached to the fantasy setting. Histories and customs of fantasy nations do not interest me personally, and so no amount of exposition on what kind of pantaloons the nobles in Old Vailia wear will interest me. Give me a Hero(a named one), a God, an epic adventure with all the adjunct emotional colours which necessarily include love/bonding. POE fell short on this regard. I was really interested in Eder's story and the story of the dead God who we will see in POE2, while all the other characters felt flat (Kana and dwarf chick were the worst offenders). The 'oddball' characters like Grieving Mother and Durance had promise but got weighed down with cryptic and often wanky blathering that tried it's hardest to showcase originality instead of compelling character development. I want Obsidian to give us a character we can really bond with, and I consider Dakkon from PS:T the absolute pinnacle of character writing in a Bioware/Black Isle RPG. Dakkon wasn't even a romance option and yet I would consider his story "romantic". The bond you developed with him and his growth under your tutelage was profound and moving (and moved me to tears). edit: TL;DR, I guess what I'm saying is that I want a story to MOVE me, and romance is one of the most straightforward options to make this happen. If a story doesn't emotionally affect me, then there's literally nothing to care about and so you are much less likely follow up on it/buy the next installment. There doesn't NEED to be a boy/girl romance in POE2, but there NEEDS to be deep and meaningful character INTERACTION in POE2 for me to give a **** about the character and remember their names. Like I literally cannot remember Dwarf Chicks name right now but I remember her fox is itumaak

step 1: Bring a Cipher step 2: Take Mental Binding step 3: ??? step 4: instant easy mode!

Look. If you're using spells and ranged weapons you're using a power build.

I'm just wondering here with many of the posts complaining about the quality of the physical goods, is this something we really should care about that much? I mean sure it was promised during the KS, but I think it was naive of OS and naive of the backers to think that this kind of thing could be done on budget and on time in high quality. It would have cost a fortune and detracted from resources that could go into the game... and all for a bunch of quaint trinkets that wouldn't count for much anyway if the game hadn't been good. The game's good enough, so what's a few pieces of cloth and cardboard boxes really matter other than clogging up your bookshelf?

I said it before and I'll say it again: I do not expect to be loading this much in an isometric rpg when I load other first person 3d games much faster. If they can make things load faster with conventional 3d environments rather than the hand-drawn ones then I say toss out the hand drawn environments. No matter how pretty they are it's not worth the loading time hassle. Or maybe a compromise if there exists some way to turn down graphics settings.

why do you think this is a bug? Wouldn't a dominated party member logically switch to the best weapon to turn on you with? If it was me and I wanted to avoid charmed/dominated party members turning on me I'd equip them with nothing but fists before the fight

I finished the game triple crown on less than 10 rests with a party that included a cipher. Why don't you get back to me when you've done the same? Ciphers dominate on potd and you can pretty much fight on critical fatigue because the accuracy penalties count for nothing when you land mental binding. Please finish the game first before you make laughable assumptions on what difficulty other people play on.

I had similar mis-forgivings about how vague Durance's (and Grieving Mother's) writing was. I'd chalk the inconsistencies about souls to the writers not thinking about the whole thing through, especially the ending. It sounds like "souls" is just a magical stop-gap that creates and solves plot problems. It probably doesn't help to think about it too much. Adra is material that holds souls... that much I gathered.

1 per encounter. If you proc it on a bunch of debuffed enemies it's gonna crit all of them and insta-gib. Cloudpiercer is also awesome for this reason. bonus: I have heard about, but not tried the bugged way in which this proc apparently interacts with the Barbarian's carnage passive, allowing each of the 3 procs of Jolt to trigger Carnage. P.S. CONFIRMED Azurewith's Stiletto and Carnage probably not interacting as intended. Interacts in the same way that Kakaloth's minor blights and Blast does (i.e. each instance of an aoe attack triggers its own aoe attack)

The short answer is there is none. They're all good, and it's best to have each of your party members have a different one (there are 6 weapon specs, conveniently). There is at least one extremely powerful weapon for every single weapon type to be found somewhere in the game. Weapon specialisation is good. +6 Accuracy is effectively like +20% damage for your average starting level character with 30 Accuracy. Accuracy is also a very hard thing to buff. No stats affect it directly, and you only get it from leveling up and a handful of buffs which don't necessarily stack with one another. A hunting bow you can find on level 4 from the Endless Paths of Od Nua (Persistence) has extremely good stats for how early you get it. Put it on a rogue with sneak attacks since Rogues get a damage bonus most of the time with their Sneak Attack and you've got a ranged killing machine. A stiletto that you can get from the weapons merchant in the starting Village (Azurewiths Stiletto) casts Jolting Touch whenever you crit with it, which effectively does about 150-250 damage spread across 3 enemies. Think about that.