Helz

Nemnok's Cloak: Just don't forget to take it off after it saves a life, until you've rested. A Whale of a Wand: The charm effect has saved me from a wipe more than once. Thundercrack Pistol: One shot will cause a delayed barrel explosion, which can be useful. Scourge of Bezzello: 3 projectiles mean that every shot is almost guaranteed to interrupt.

It was drastic. True, NWN and FO3 set a low bar, but its still rare for the sequel/spinoff to have the better story. Twice in a row suggests good leadership to me. Sawyer has been lead-developer for 3 of my all-time favorites, including both Pillars games. So I am happy he's in charge of a new project.

I worked at a computer store that opened at midnight to celebrate the release of Windows: Millennium Edition To no one's surprise, nobody showed. At launch Vista was unstable, and on the average system it chugged because the minimum system requirements weren't high enough for the default settings. Turning off Aero eye-candy made it responsive on most systems. It took a year or two, but Vista eventually reached a good place. Which is more than can be said for ME.

I don't agree with that. Lead Designer for NWN2 and Fallout NV, and both have drastically better narratives than the games that immediately preceded them. I have my own criticisms with the Pillars' main narrative, but they're still top shelf. Keep up the good work, Josh!

In addition, fights will get longer and longer. It might take a bunch of rounds to chip away his health. Positioning matters too. Big guys tend to have AoE attacks so grouping up like that isn't going to help. Pay attention to Defenses as well. He's got a high Fortitude, so don't bother with attacks that target it. Instead hit him where it hurts, Deflection and Will. Also, pay attention to resistances and immunities. Resistances only drop afflictions by 1 tier, so they are sometimes worth casting, but immunities make spells completely useless.

This is really useful. I went in knowing that he has a ridiculous amount of HP, but between his super-high evasion and the fact that debuffs only last about 4 seconds on him, I just said screw it.

I'd like to see that too. Here is Aloth's Legendary armor. -------- I hope the maniac would reach resonance before then.

I saw the whole island as a haven for wild things. Yes, there's a gladiator arena, but the people fighting in there choose to do so. In return the animals and wild creatures absorb some of their soul essence and get stronger. Everywhere else, nature is being destroyed, so I felt like preserving this was the right thing to do.

I'd remove immunities from food bonuses. Captain's Banquet and Shark Soup are ridiculous.

I kept forgetting while I was playing. It hurts to open a grimoire and half of it is grayed out. edit: Yes, One Dozen Stood is heroic.

You couldn't use it though, Essential Phantom is a Conjuration spell. I played with a Spellblade-Illusionist hireling and I agree that losing out on Enchanting and Conjuration really hurts. I do think there's something fun about playing with flawed characters. For Illusionists, the Eye of Wael is amazing. I figured since I gave up so much for Illusion, I'd lean into it as much as I could. For most of the game, she wore the Effigy's Husk. It looks scary and the general idea was that she appears squishy but she's really hard to hit, and when something does touch her, she has a bunch of 'contingencies' that protect her and hurt them. In late game, she wore the Spider Silk robes against anyone that can be poisoned, because Nannasin's Cobra Strike is lethal. Her most used spells were Arkemyr's Dazzling Lights, Wizard's Double, Llengrath's Displaced Image, Nannasin's, and Concelhaut's Crushing Doom.

I'm surprised, a permanent -25% weapon damage seems like a lot. The affliction lasts long enough that I felt expected to toggle. That's true, it does expire sometimes, but I err on the side of keeping it on. You're right, not landing the spell is worse than extra damage per swing.

Oops, I was thinking about battleaxes, but apply what I said to the morningstar or club modals instead. Incidentally, I didn't know that the bleed would tick on every new application, that's nasty.

I'm the same way, I like to discover games by playing them. Around level 10 I gave in and looked up the weapon lists because they're all scattered across an immense, open world. Overall, I think the unique weapons and enchantments are quite good and numerous, but the right combination for a class, build, and weapon proficiency can be very specific. It also sucks that certain weapon types have so few unique options. Nevermind unique weapons, I was cussing when I'd looted my seventh exceptional greatsword, and my MC still had a plain battleaxe. Then it hit me, I need to buy some weapons. I'm so used to hammers and axes falling from the sky... edit: I don't love those either. I also don't like the implementation of the better weapon modals that apply an affliction like bleeding over time. It's annoying that you can leave the modal on and just keep reapplying the non-stacking affliction and getting -20% damage. That is horribly inefficient, so I have to micro the modal on and off 'every 40 seconds' (but not really, because pauses). I'm guaranteed to forget. This is the main thing I'd use party AI for, except I like to turn it off, so I'm constantly screwing this up.

Sorry, doublepost

I think it works because they can be improved. The subtle change in appearance as gear gets upgraded is something else that I love about this game.

Generally, I liked the smaller dungeons in PoE2. The ones in PoE were so long that they began to feel oppressive. Some of the PoE2 dungeons are quite extensive, but generally only if they are on the main path. I agree it wouldn't have hurt to mix in a few longer ones among the random islands. I agree that autoscaling keeps you slightly under leveled, but not to the point of being unfair. Maybe half of the enemies in an encounter will have red skulls. Around level 8 I facerolled about 3 encounters in a row, so I turned autoscaling on and it kept the game tough the rest of the way through.

I doubt they'd waste much time doing either. RTwP is a hybrid of RTS and TB, and you can play as turn-based as you like (pause more). Party AI is optional. It ranges from great to off. I play RTwP with party AI off. I have more fun that way, but good custom scripts still impress me.

@speedy Nice review, I agree with you on many things. You changed my mind about turn-based. I felt like adding it so late in development was a waste, but if that's the difference between people playing or not then I'm glad they made it. I play RTwP, with autopause when a character finishes an action. The autopausing options are nice. The scripting system is also really good, but like you, I turn the party AI off and play in puppet mode. This sticks in my craw a little. My first time through, I played Veteran upscaled and it varied from challenging to barely possible. I'm curious about your party and tactics.

Brute is better against multiple targets. Single attack damage is so-so. Even with Boeroer's method, you are chaining lots of 'weaker' hits, and its more efficient to aim them at the crowd. You won't get one big number, you'll get a sea of red.

Yeah, it happens to my characters occasionally. I think of it as the 'divine' look. I'm not playing with any mods.

Its not just damage immune enemies, but almost every enemy has 1 damage type that they weakest against. So I want a weapon set for each damage type. If you split damage types in a set, then half of your attacks will be less effective. Within a weapon set of the same damage type, the benefit of using different types of weapons is access to 2 modals instead of 1. Dual wielding triggers more 'chance on hit' effects, 2-handed has better penetration.

I made an Illusionist Rogue that I thought was cool. Illusionists miss out on some really useful spells though. If I'd known how good Enchanting and Conjuration were, I probably wouldn't have done it.

Thanks for the feedback! Good questions, I wrestled a bit with Spirit Tornado. Ultimately, I went with it because it is the upgrade to Spirit Frenzy and I hoped it works at a higher power level or something. In practice, the terrify turned out to be good. As for Blood Thirst, I probably overlooked it. I invested a lot in recovery reduction skills and equipment and figured dropping recovery to 0 for 10 seconds wouldn’t make a huge difference. About Savage Defiance, it costs 3 rage. That’s 3 frenzies! Fhorn is very resource limited and I felt like everything he has needs to be used for offense. I love Sprint. Its max range is greater than Leap’s. Fhorn can go all over the place before it runs out. If the route is blocked then Leap has the advantage, but there’s usually a way around or there’s always Clear Out if he really has to break through. Plus, Sprint gives immunity to engagement and it counters DEX afflictions. And the DEX inspiration is good for offense too. The Lion’s Sprint upgrade isn’t quite as essential, but +15 Accuracy means the first swing always lands and it usually crits. All this and its only 1 rage, half the cost of Leap. It was a coincidence that I made a brute, but I learned about the Willbreaker from you and that’s when I realized how great the Morningstar is.

Yes, I play on an older system with an SSD and the load times aren't bad. The longest one is at startup, which is about 30 seconds to get to the start screen. Loading a save is 10-15 seconds. Loading an area in-game is less than 10 seconds. It only gets a little annoying when I need to enter/exit a location several times in a row. Yeah, supply is supposedly improving, but we'll see. It was time for me to upgrade a year ago, but my GPU is still limping along.