marelooke

Minigames should go die in a fire imho, the lockpicking in TES/F3 is probably one of the least bad examples (which might be why it's brought up constantly?) and I can actually live with it most of the time (there's areas where locks are so many it really gets annoying though, picking 4 master locks and a few others in a row isn't my idea of "fun"). But that's the exception, many minigames are just annoying for multiple reasons, the infamous hacking minigame in AP comes to mind. But worse are the kind of minigames like they're found in the second Witcher game, obviously designed for controllers and just horribly annoying for kb/mouse players (though everything in that game was clunky for kb/mouse players, but I digress). And even worse are ones like the ME2 hacking minigame, which heavily depended on matching coloured blocks, pure awesomeness for the ~8% of the male population that suffers form some form of colourblindness (good thing it's actually source code, so one can match on structure, but that requires some coding experience). Or the bomb arming/disarming I saw in some other game (red and green wires...awesome...trial and error here I come...). Honestly I feel most minigames add nothing to the experience as the majority isn't even anywhere close to being realistic, usually they just detract and annoy especially if they can't be bypassed. I mean come on, raise hands, how many of you "cheated" on the Fallout 3 hacking minigame by just starting over instead of actually solving the puzzle the proper way every time? And how many just reloaded in NV for the very same reason? (though hacking was, thankfully less omnipresent in NV) That said I'm all for adding puzzles and riddles but those have the nice property of actually adding variety and not usually being all over the place unlike "regular" minigames.

Tbh it depends on the kind of events. I think this is exactly what they were aiming for in Alpha Protocol with the timed dialogues and savepoints, forcing a fast decision that you're then stuck with. Personally I hated it and I shelved the game over it (I like to think decisions through, especially dialogue responses, but that's another subject) For other things it really depends, I've often found it annoying when things just depended on randomness, like lockpicking. I think it's fair game that if your thief cannot pick the lock and you try to force it there's a chance you'll break stuff in there. It still beats just not being able to access the chest in my book. But I dislike it when things stay random even if you have the skills for them. Case in point, in BG2 you could fail at picking a lock, but if your thief had the skills to pick said lock you could try again and eventually succeed, you can argue that having to keep trying is annoying, but this I could live with. Now assuming my thief has a maxed out lockpicking skill and due to randomness he fails picking a low level lock I'd be mighty annoyed if that would lock me out of said chest forever. Now I would be way less annoyed if I knowingly tried to pick (or force) a lock I didn't have the skills for and I could get behind that locking you out of said chest forever in that playthrough. I have pretty much the same feeling about social skills, if you don't quite have the skills and you try and fail it should lock you out, but if you did invest enough in said skill you should just succeed. Maybe I missed something and that's what you're aiming for, in which case I hope I at least clarified things for others reading the thread

Thats true, for many the DA series has become a paradigm of how not to produce an RPG Which is in some ways a bit of a shame as DA:O had more than a few strong points and overall was decent. It was DA2 (and DA3 doesn't seem to be shaping up any better) that really brought out all the hate for the franchise and makes DA:O seem bad by association. To be fair DA 2 wasn't that bad, While I didnt like it as much as origins, I think the real problem is the fact that the game and main character looked like Bioware wanted to create backup Shepard While they'd been promising us all the time it wouldn't turn into Dragon Effect, which is exactly what it turned out to be: from the combat to the dialogues. It just was the final nail in the coffin containing BioWare's credibility, DA2 just embodies that fact which is why it is so vehemently hated. As for immersion: the constant spawning of enemies, wave after wave seemingly out of nowhere really killed that for me, turning an altready one dimensional combat system into a real chore. Suffice to say I've never finished my second playthrough. There is just nothing to suck you into the world, because as the OP points out: it's static, it's lifeless and there really is nothing to explore or experience outside of the main quest. Oh, and recycling the same dungeon twenty times didn't exactly help immersion either (and tbh, I'm not even sure whether that's an exaggeration). DA:O shares a lot of the issues with DA2, but at least the combat system worked, and there were some actually challenging and fun bossfights (Broodmother anyone?). But here also, not enough to do if you want a break from the main quest without starting another game, no areas to explore, no big sidequests (think Umar Hills style, for you BG2 veterans), nothing.

Jedi didn't capture my attention early on. I loved the first chapter of the smuggler arc and am loving Imperial Agent. Though I only have gotten to the part you get your ship. The smuggler arc seriously disappointed me later on by not being able to make me care about the villain. Act 3 picked back up, but it just wasn't the same anymore. Now I am a bit worried about the Agent arc Worst part about any story that isnt female smuggler? They aren't voiced by Kathy Soucie. Jedi Knight starts out really weak imho, with very "petty" dark side choices (and the light side wasn't much better) gave up on that pretty quickly. Inquisitor was good fun though, the amount of stupid evil wasn't even that excessive. Agent starts out strong but I've heard complaints about the later parts. As for myself, managed to finally pick up NV again and finished Old World Blues. Them scorpions, I still don't have a proper tactic for them (unless spamming stimpacks and abusing the AI getting stuck counts as a "tactic"), they don't seem to have a really weak spot that I can hit reliably and there's only so many pulse grenades I had access to...

XP is very valuably I'd think. Something like (thinking really black-white for a second, just go with it, okay?) the good guy goes to hell and back, so gets loads of XP (cause he went through loads of effort) while getting relatively small rewards from the questgiver; while the bad guy just murders the questgiver and takes his stuff so he gets more gold and items but much less XP. That said, the more grey the moral choices are the better, I think KotOR2 made an interesting attempt in that direction. That's where the story comes in I'd think

I got Divinity 2 in a Steam sale, then somehow ended up on the founder of Larian Studio's blog. It's a company that obviously does what they do because they love doing what they do, they've been through some seriously rough times it seems and from what I've read it's half a miracle they're still around. I never actually played Divine Divinity, it's bug ridden reputation always put me off, but that apparently is mostly a thing of the past as it seems these guys keep on supporting their games well after release (sounds like a certain company that tends to bring out "enhanced editions" of their games...for free even, wth? ). What I had seen of D2 and what I had read about the company made me shell out for the Anthology (them being countrymen sort of helped too I'll admit) and what struck me most is this passage by their founder (literally last sentence of the Preface): This sounds quite like a certain company we know (*hint* the name starts with an "O") and alas, unlike another company we also know (name starts with a "B") As for the quality of the games, I'm pleasantly surprised by Divinity 2 so far, combat can be quite frustrating at times but overall it's good fun, wouldn't put the stamp "great" on it, but "good" definately. There's some interesting mechanics to the game (giving up XP to read people's minds for one) and flying around as a dragon is great fun (but like the Larian guys I'm a sucker for dragons so ymmv)

Since there's a pretty big shortage of modern titles I'm really enjoying (unless I missed something somewhere) I've started going through my backlog (there's some on there that I won't even admit to not having played ). Having some fun being a dragon currently: Though I'm playing them in reverse order, apparently Divine Divinity is isometric and pretty good now that most of the bugs have been ironed out.

I would probably vote "no" if I were to vote, but I won't as it's no for me to decide what people should like (or what Obsidian should make), though "Would you buy AP2?" would be a definite "no". The AP concept was nice, the story and characters no doubt were (it is Obsidian after all). But the gameplay was seriously broken as far as I'm concerned. I've tried getting into AP numerous times but I just couldn't get past the gameplay issues (and some, imho of course, bad design decisions). In fact, I've never given up on a game this early in (that I can remember anyway) and certainly not one that I KNEW had a good story. But between the clunky controls, the savepoint system, the terrible minigames (I hate them in general and the AP ones were especially bad, though I can't right now recall why. Color based maybe?) and the timed dialogues (this pretty much was a total dealbreaker, unfortunately I didn't know before purchase) it was really hard to find a reason to keep playing. Maybe I ought to give the game another try but judging by the general reception I doubt much has been fixed since the original release so I dunno.

I never said Fallout 3 was a bad game, but it is a bad Fallout game for reasons already mentioned. I've never encountered that companion, and of the NPCs I encountered in Skyrim were hollow shells compared to hundreds of other RPGs. So they were able to create one NPC that actually had some depth to it? Excuse me if I don't break out in applause. Serana was added in the Dawnguard DLC (who's main story isn't exactly stellar even though it does contain interesting tidbits). Same as Katria. They are probably the two most interesting NPCs in Skyrim. They're nowhere near the level of a Viconia or Kreia (or insert some of your other favourite NPCs here) but they're pretty good for a Bethesda game (insofar I know, Oblivion, F3 and Skyrim are the only ones I've played). While they lack the depth I'd like you can actually care about them. If they keep iterating on this they might actually start creating characters that have a soul. That is, once they manage to upgrade their AI to a level that makes them actually useful to have around (or at least not a total hindrance). I have mixed feelings about F3/NV, I like the F3 *world* better, the feeling when you enter some ruin that it has history, hell, history is all over the place. I sort of missed that feeling in NV, of course the setting is a big part of it, the capital wasteland is still at a standstill while New Vegas has actually started rebuilding a new world. On the other hand the characters in NV were loads better as were the quests. All imho, of course.

Wizard. I always start out as one (if they're an option). How long I'll stick with him depends on how well they're done though. In BG2 I didn't really play anything but a Wizard, in Skyrim I didn't last very long as pure caster on the other hand.

I usually reload,unless it's someone I'd want dead or really don't care much about (I remember Viconia thwapping Keldorn right after I obtained Carsomyr and I went "Meh, didn't like that git anyway"). Usually I do sort of get attached to my party members, at least if they're properly fleshed out. I mean, really, Minsc dies. You wouldn't reload...? I thought so Being able to ressurrect dead party members is rather nice, for me it often created the challenge of completing fights without anyone dying (or, even worse when sticking to BG series references: getting Imprisoned). But if I don't ressurrect them they should stay dead, none of that KotOR-style nonsense where they cheerfully get up again after battle.