ShadowPaladin V1.0

Not bad, just mainstream which I see no reason to appologise for (w00t) Bit of a generalisation that. Message boards are not the best place for honesty because people dont like their gaming skillz doubted. Still there is no real need to do so when your primary market is already satisfied. You may not like it, but there is little reason to change anything about KOTOR when it sells like it does. The only proof there is that its a waste of time to try to balance the game for such people because they are more interested in doing it themselves. I dare say people will be equally disatisfied with some of the mods as well. Since I have long since given up on finding a challenging RPG as long as the combat dosnt bog the game down i'm happy. Never played D20 SW never wanted to. Still have every piece of material WEG produced.

Thing is I dont recall the original game being difficult either and I dont believe that had extreme stats. Like I said if I played it again I wouldnt upgrade anything which should sort most of that out. I dont really consider that a tactic. I just consider it common sense. :cool: Well I already said on another thread that a Jedi is like having a magic user cleric fighter without having to split the levels.

True, but the new rules have been written with allowance for these high stats. I call it Dragon Ball Z Syndrome. Probably not a lot tougher. None of my characters went to that extreme. Nor did I spam force powers except for fun (and one game I quit out of boredom of doing nothing but force storm). I've got my own solution to that, perhaps I will send it in one of these days. Depends on your knowledge really. Anti magic plus a solo character = dead liche with little effort. More places for people to make mistakes, but if your intended audience is mostly made up of inexperienced people that may well be the intent.

Empire Strikes Back. I was too young for the first one and I watched the second with my Dad.

I'm refering to the old days of CRPG,nothing to do with PnP. It depends who the difficulty settings are intended for so called "Hardcore" gamers, or different subsets of casual gamers. Would I waste the effort of a difficulty setting to placate the small % of people like me ? No , dont see much point in that. Take HOF , it's difficult in it's own way. But once you manipulate the difficulty to that extent, you now longer have D&D. You have something very different , that dosnt even play like D&D.

There are certainly exceptions, but the Final Fantasy series has already compromised in two of the four areas I mentioned in my post. First, Final Fantasy has console controls (obviously), and second the recent and known future Final Fantasy games have adopted real-time combat and abandoned turn based. I would also point out that the number of RPG's on this generation of consoles is less than what the original Playstation had alone on the last generation. Finally, even the console RPG's are beginning to reduce their length - case in point the recently released Xenosaga II, which at 25 hours is half or less of Xenosaga I just a few years ago. My argument is simple: big budget game development follows the money and the money is in consoles (80% of the market) and consoles are increasingly dominated by casual gamers who want shorter games. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Final Fantasy is a CONSOLE series so the idea it's compromised using console controls is just a bit laughable. It's also constantly messing around with different systems so just because the next one is using something different it's by no means an indicator. Just like FFX-2 went back to ATB after FFX being TB. I'd bet you were totally wrong there,this generations consoles has had a LOT of RPGs. I wouldnt call that a universal truth. Read the article on what do the Japanese look for in a game on gamespot. It's very interesting, it also explains why games like KOTOR dont have much impact over there.

Excuse me while I laugh Ah thats better. Once you dump your henchmen with the IQ of a rock NwN becomes rather easy. My advice for KOTOR II is simple dont use any upgrades. Just sticking to the base items makes the game more interesting. The bosses will actually have time to throw some force powers at you before they die.

Sorry but your wrong. In an RPG stats have always made up for player abilities, even in the "good old days" a party with 18's across the board could romp home where a party with 3's would almost certainly fail even in the hands of a very experienced player. Umm if you powergame your character the game will be easy. Thats hardly rocket science. If the game were created for only powergamed characters , well bye bye your chances of finishing the game without such a character. KOTOR is just so easy to powergame you can do it accidently. I havnt played a challenging RPG in years. I just gave up on the whole idea and play for the story.

That really only has ever applied to the bonus sections of the FF games. FF is just as easy to level yourself above the curve as most other games.

Thats the one my wife uses. Though she looks more like Rhionna from FFVIII.

I really enjoyed Freedom Fighter but I played the demo of this and found it rather boring. Probably rent it if I have time but not looking forward to it particularly.

Roleplaying games have always been easy. The idea of a roleplaying game is to have the character do the work and the player to go along for the ride. The characters stats and abilities are worth far more than how fast you can press X,Y,Z in the right combo. If your character is effective then you will "watch" a lot of the time. Thats the very nature of RPGs. If you want a challenge the only way to do it is to build a less effective, or even inefective character and thats getting less and less possible as designers strive to make the game playable for anyone, no previous experience required. Ninja Gaiden is the biggest challenge I can recall since 8 bit days. Not an RPG but if your looking for hard, you wont go far wrong with it. It is the designers job to balance the game. But it is not the designers job to balance the game for you, or me or any other individual. The people on the boards for the most part represent those with a long RPG background. Making a game "we" found hard would totally alienate the casual consumer through total frustration.

Well aside from your small sample of FF fans, the biggest and most obvious difference is that FF isnt made for the western market it's made for the Japanese market first and foremost and so is not subject to the same market forces as Western games. The new FF is a "bit" different but it's still recognisable. EA had a crack at the FF model with Middle Earth. But missed the point by using so many voiced over movie clips (lazy buggers). They also tried to emulate FireEmblem, but missed the point there as well. Although I enjoyed the game for its randomness which is missing in most games of that type.

You cant buy it until you know about the quest in a character way. If you just about it, it wont work.

Jedi, apathy rules I seriously doubt there are many Jedi especially on here because there is a distinct lack of patience and wanting quick results which is the path to the darkside.

If you finished it that fast you deserve your cluelessness.

Look at it from their perspective. The death of the force will kill billions of people. You have already survived without the force for 10 years, aside from your blaze of glory since your return to known space you have been without the force completely. Unfair to cut you off from the force if you are the Paragon of the Lightside then yes. But if you were really the paragon of the light you would understand that your loss was preferable to the deaths of billions of people wouldnt you think ? Doing the last couple of hours without force powers would have proved a rather interesting challenge at least.

Maybe the darkside acts like a drug for those things that people would rather not exist. That would account for it's addictive nature.

KOTOR II. The first one was good but the plot was obvious and ultimately boring. Worst part of KOTOR was having to play dumb and having companions who played dumb till the leviathan. KOTOR II was much deeper, more interesting and required some actual effort to work out the the plot. It was especially good as your perception of events would change depending on which NPCs you gained influence with and those whos ideals didnt match your own.

How do you define hard in an RPG? How many times you have to reload ? Whether it's possible to build a character that can't finish the game no matter what?

Looking forward to this one it looks like fun.

It's a failure screen so I doubt many people will see it

Yes the disciple talks about how sad it would be for "Jolees rimward adventures to be forgotten" which has all sorts of dubious possibilities.

Thats a hologram he's based on several popular holovids of villains. He tells you that no one took a droid seriously , especially when he had his old body.

You might want to check your history. Bows predate swords by a considerable time. Even if you meant to put firearms rather than bows, armour and firearms still coexisted for several 100 years and swords were still in use in the first and even second (Japanese) world war.