Nick_i_am

The problem is that 'real' romance has very little to do with 'actual' dialogue which makes any 'roleplay' romance seem completely pointless to me. Pick the right options, screen fades to black, hurrah! No amount of good writing can even come close to a real interpersonal relationship, on any level really, and I wouldn't mind if it was a film, or even cutscenes (that is to say, I can buy it if the game isn't trying to pretend that the guy in the game is me), but it's literally just romance boiled down to a 'pick the right option minigame' with zero attention paid to any factors outside of that conversation save for the 'how much she likes you' stat. Better romance for me wouldn't have anything do with better writing as much as better scripting of the whole process. Should I be able to hit on a chick while I have a gaping flesh wound in the middle of a smelly swamp surrounded by dead orks? Should I still be hated by a girl that I just took 3 arrows for while still having time to heal her? Sure you can come up with excuses both ways, but it doesn't matter because the game doesn't even take things like mood and environment into account and pretty much makes the whole thing into an adult edition of 'chose your own adventure' which can be activated at any damn time in which you can talk to the wench. And yeah, I know BG2 had the other party initiate it instead, but I hardly consider that a step up. So romance in CRPGs has everything do with actual romance as 'chose your own adventure' has to do with actual roleplaying and i'll start caring when this stops being the case. Go play a dating game or somthing.

Not that the NWN2 OC romances were even slightly better.

Basically in the new addons you got a 'strategy map', Risk style, when you attacked other provinces it would literally put you in a skirmish game, unless they were a special province (one with a strategic bonus or HQ). The non-liniar metagame (you could fortify areas, upgrade your armies and equip your commander) was interesting, but was taken down several notches by repetative skirmish battles.

Doesn't it suck?

Yeah, looks that way, I thought they comfirmed that Orcs would be playable in coop along with SMs but that might have been crazy dev talk.

Orc campain has been confirmed hasn't it?

Yeah, Force Unleashed was pretty cool.

In terms of gameplay? No, Dawn of War 2 uses a squad mechanic combined with zero base building, limited RU management and a small number of units to produce a game that's mostly tactical in nature (although, still an RTS). In terms of backstory? Much of Starcrafts design and visual asthetic was 'borrowed' from 40k, but their relationship pretty much ends there.

So rage, bad controls, awful camera, poor dev choises and yet...additct mode? I'm one of those weird people who was genuinely interested in this game, both in gameplay and themes and really hoped it would turn out godly, so anything at this point is a disappointment, but I

Can you justify its dual analogue controls?

NWN2 already reuses music from a mess of other composers, so I don't really share that concern.

A mess with coop which is slightly better than a chatroom!

Haha, i'm not touching that crap. Let us know if it's better than The Darkness!

Lly bought a PS3!

Because we hate you.

Mount and Braid?

Yeah, nice combat.

There have been a lot of arcade games, both original and ports, which have justified their purchase way more than most full-price titles.

shut up, nerd.

You make Dark Revan cry Morgoth.

I hope nobody shows her a video of the new Resident Evil.

CASTLE CRASHERS IS RACIST! http://www.gametrailers.com/player/14029.html

I wouldn't know about the BEST MMORPG because I refuse to pass that kind of judgment on something I've never played... But I can, without a doubt, state which is the WORST MMORPG. Yes, worse than Star Wars Galaxies. In fact, this game is probably the worst game in the entire history of the world. It's worse than State of Emergency. It's worse than Deer Hunter 10. FINAL FANTASY XI Final Fantasy XI is one of the most party-based MMORPGs in the market right now. Oh wait, scratch that, FFXI is one of the most party-INHIBITIVE MMORPGs in the market right now. For a game that forces you to work with other people in order to do *any* sort of progression, it sure does do a great job of making you want to kill said other people, curl up into a little ball and live the rest of your life as a hermit, isolated from the outside world, severed of all contact from the bad nasty wicked men. The game pigeonholes you into having at least one member of one single class, multiplied by four. You can predict at least half of the composition of 90% of all parties currently active in the game. WHM/BLM/RDM/PLD. This means that all of the other classes will probably spend a large majority (hours) of their game time doing nothing but sitting in town sending tells looking for groups. Hell, even the characters who are in the “wanted jobs” may spend hours constructing a party due to the fact that sometimes, there just might not be a White Mage online at the moment. This is because all party members must all be within one level of each other or at least one person will be screwed of XP. Yes, that means that if just ONE person levels up while you are grinding, you will need to break the party and go back to looking for a group. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there is absolutely NO gameplay NOR skill in this game. You are given a set of abilities and spells- and you are expected to follow them in a prescribed manner set by others to the bone. You just hit your rows of macros in succession, maybe you might time one or two for a skill chain, but the game is literally just hitting Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3 at the right times in the right order, again, and again and again. If you thought that was tedious, monotonous and boring, then you need to see what you actually fight in this game. There are approximately forty five different monsters in this game, and all the areas you fight in are just basically full of variations of these forty five monsters. By variations, I mean they have more hit points and damage based on what level they are. That’s right- you can fight a level one crab at level one, and you could fight a level seventy five crab at level seventy five, and they will BOTH use the same exact bubble blast attack. Oh wait, except the level seventy five one has a larger number attached to that bubble blast attack. But see, the thing is, certain of these monster “types” have some really painful special attacks, and therefore no one ever fights them for exp since it’s akin to suicide. This means that when grinding for exp, the only monsters you ever fight are usually creatures who are so cute you wouldn’t mind buying a plushie toy version of them. You fight crabs, caterpillars, flies, worms (that’s right, you’re killing BUGS for exp), onions (no joke), birds, more crabs and if you’re REALLY daring, maybe fish. Oh and rabbits and bees. Oh wait, no, scratch that, rabbits are too hard because they have a spin kick attack that does too much damage, and bees are also too hard because they have a kamikaze bee sting attack that also does too much damage. Yes, your brave hero cowers in fear from rabbits and bees. The former you could look at as a monty python in joke if you want. What’s also funny is the fact that these innocent wildlife creatures are just that- innocent. There is absolutely no reason why you would want to kill them in the first place. It’s not like these crabs are mauling random citizens, there is absolutely no incentive for you to be committing acts of massive, merciless, efficient genocide towards them. Hell, only one class even eats them anyways (only paladins really need the effects of boiled crab meat). Meanwhile, for monsters that actually are evil, and are pillaging the innocent citizens, and are spreading decay and darkness throughout the world, most players would prefer casting invisible on themselves and sneaking past them. You think that’s bad? Then you need to know about the items. There is no such thing as rare or powerful items, at least not until you’re at the highest level at which point it doesn’t even matter anymore. It is expected, even required, for you to have the best possible items for your level to even be given a party invite. Don’t have that second sniper ring? Go farm. These items are not cheap either. Said sniper ring is considered a necessity for all melee classes, and it costs approximately 500,000 gil for each one. And the prices are rising because of farmers who sell their gil on IGE.com. In fact, in a majority of the game, you will look exactly like every single other character in your level range, in terms of clothing. It’s like a uniform. This applies until you get your artifact armors; in which case, you will now look exactly like every single other character of your class and level range. You only get the extremely rare items after you defeat highly notorious monsters, which require you to be maxed out at level 75 with a group of 18 other level 75 players just to take down. Oh and you need to wait for twenty four hours camping this monster’s spawn point, and there are so few of these highly notorious monsters that you also have to fight several other groups of level 75 players for the pull. Oh and the drop rates for the items you do want are also extremely rare. And ninety percent of the time, the items that DO drop from these bastages are actually crafting materials required for the item you DO want, so even if you manage to get said item you need to find an extremely high level crafter to actually make anything out of it. And the crafting system in this game is so horrifically tedious that if you actually can find a good enough crafter to do this for you, they will probably inflate the price to astronomical insanity due to the fact that they have total market dominance. And the monster can only be killed by extremely cheap kiting tactics. And if you are a melee character, you get to pride yourself in the fact that you contribute absolutely nothing to the fight. Fun! Then there’s dynamis, in which you need to gather a group of nearly a hundred level 75 characters, get them to all meet at one time, then pay one million gil so you could fight a horde of stuff that are each individually tougher than anything else, just so that you can each (all 75 of you) throw a lot on one of twenty components that you require to put together your “ultimate weapon”. To this date, not one single person has even come close to making that ultimate weapon. Let’s talk about artifact armors, because they are part of a quest. Hell, let’s talk about quests and “missions” in general. 90% of the time, you either can get an extremely high level person to complete these quests for you, or you can group up with six other people and all fight for that one item you need to complete the quest. There is a series of quests called “Genkai” which you need to complete in order to advance past a certain level. One of these quests requires you to gather three items, each with extremely rare drops, in three separate extremely difficult areas that would require a party of at least six. Which means you need to get at least SIX of said extremely rare, emphasis on the word rare, item before you’ll get to complete the quest, unless you’re lucky and you were the first ones to win the draw on the drop. What usually happens is that this person is crucial to the party (for example the healer) and he decides to leave the party since he already got his item and doesn’t want to “waste time” helping the rest of the party to get their items, even though they helped him. This is the point where you add yet another soul onto the list of souls whom you desperately wish to slide off this mortal coil. The PvP in this game is a joke. It’s called “Ballista” and it’s supposed to be a freaking sport where you grab a ball called a “petra” and throw it through a “rook” to score points. Welcome to stupidity! Whatever happened to plain old killing? Not only that, but the actual combat in “Ballista” sucks- first of all, everyone who even plays Ballista needs to have their sub job set as ninja because without the ninjas incredibly broken and cheap method of completely dodging attacks through “blink”, then you will easily get your butt raped to the back of your teeth. So what this basically ends up being is a fight to see who can get rid of each other’s blinks fast enough. In hasty, half-assed conclusion, don’t buy nor play Final Fantasy XI. It sucks.

Holy freaking sweet. Or just PR spin.

Because it's pretty average, that's actually the first time i've heard anyone praise it outright.