kanisatha

Finally completed my first (Angel) run through Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous yesterday. Successfully completed the full secret ending. All in all a fun, great experience with the game. I more than got my money's worth, including money spent on the two DLC season passes. Looking forward to Azata, Aeon, and Legend runs in the future. Trying to decide what I should play next. Maybe go back to Solasta to the play the last DLC. I'm surely going to be buying Starfield, but I won't be able to actually play the game anytime soon. Like @BruceVC, I also have the rule of not playing a new game, especially a big new game, for several months until major patching is done (and possibly even the release of some DLCs). But in Starfield's case there's also the issue of needing to buy a new gaming computer because my current machine is 8 years old and won't handle it. I want to be able to spend a good amount of money on a really good new machine maxed out on processor, memory, graphics, and SSD. So I want to take my time and shop for a good deal/sale prices.

Finally completed my first (Angel) run through the game yesterday. Successfully completed the full secret ending. I liked the story very much. Sure, their writing could use some work, perhaps even a lot of work, but the story itself I found to be both interesting and compelling. It was a good story. I also liked most of our companions and generated the best endings for all of them except of course Camellia and Wenduag. And even those two ended up only with incomplete endings and not "bad" endings. And even the NPCs with ending slides all came out really well. I found the crusade management side of the game to be quite fine when using the lowest difficulty setting. It was even fun to build up my armies and then go around smashing demon armies. And with respect to spellcasting and buffing, those late-game feats that extend the duration of spells to 24 hours are *perfect*. I made sure all my casters got those feats, and once they were in place buffing became a breeze. Just one round of buffing casting was sufficient all the way to the next resting. All in all a fun, great experience with the game. I more than got my money's worth, including money spent on the two DLC season passes. Looking forward to Azata, Aeon, and Legend runs in the future.

Well, I happen to like reading/learning about things in the world around me. So I would advocate for some form of happy medium, and would point out that for those who don't want to read/learn about stuff, they have the freedom in the game to simply avoid it all. So what the game should do is be very clear in separating things that are necessary (for quests, story, etc.) from things that are there for flavor.

Thanks for sharing. The hype is strong in me.

Hey @BruceVC, have you ever been to Mossel Bay? Shark Week, going on right now, is my absolute favorite time of the year for TV-watching, and I especially love the leaping great whites of Mossel Bay, the thing I'd love to travel to SA for some day. Seeing Colossus come 15 feet out of the water with a squirming seal in its jaws is f---ing awesome! That's 18 feet and 4,000 lbs of fantastic seal-ripping fury!!

Hey thanks for posting these, specifically for me the last video on powergaming. I very much agree with everything JES had to say in it. It's a lot of the same critiques I have of DnD systems and how RPGs, including very much BG3, push us towards powergaming rather than roleplaying. I especially loved that he outed DnD for what it truly is: a war game more so than a roleplaying game.

Sorry, wasn't intending to cause a kerfuffle. I love PoE mechanics and can't stand D&D mechanics. Just my two cents. And I completely agree with the sentiment of "different strokes for different folks." That said, I do feel strongly that there is a problem, in that people generally, and ironically gamers especially, are very resistent to change. Therefore, a mechanics system that's been around for ~40 years is ingrained in a lot of gamers regardless of its merits/lack there of, and many of those same gamers won't give a new system a fair chance. Thus, for better or worse, we're stuck with the old way of doing things and with no equivalent alternatives ('equivalent' being operative here for me because shallow, superficial systems like the D:OS system don't count).

Yeah this has been my own assessment as well, because I believe the Russsians actually going on the offensive recently in the Kar'kiv and Donetsk regions is their desperate attempt to draw Ukrainian forces away from the southern front.

More sterile and less fun than D&D gameplay? That's saying a lot to me because I consider D&D gameplay mechanics to be the worst. And by contrast I love the PoE mechanics, especially all the passive abilities, no pre-buffing, and the downgrading of random chance.

Yeah the massive pre-buffing needed for many encounters is what got me also choosing the 'drop difficulty all the way down' option instead. But playing Angel, there are several Angel spells whereby with one click you cast multiple buffs on the whole party. I've been using those spells a lot. My only complaint there is that 'Death Ward' is not available in a 'communal' form anywhere. What gives? That is the most useful buff of all, yet no party-cast version of it? Really sucks.

Yes. And that's why they're being cleared for export, as massive amounts of Russian mining in their frontline areas is what is accounting for 90% of Ukrainian hardship in advancing into those areas. Russian troops are no obstacle; those mines are a huge obstacle. Also, not all cluster munitions are the same. US cluster munitions, as employed in ATACMS and cruise missiles, are very advanced compared with Russian cluster munitions, and include auto-deactivation whereby they deactivate themselves after they've been sitting around undetonated on the ground for a little while.

Biden green-lighting new F-16s for Turkey in the face of congressional opposition.

I watched that video when it was posted in the Larian forum and it did not change my mind. It pretty much has the same things in it that are already well discussed in that forum. Right now, my biggest issue with BG3 is how poor the cast of companion characters is. They're heavily skewed towards the evil side (and relatedly, Larian seems to have intentionally created the game to favor and preferance the evil side over the good side), and are all in one way or another hipster edgelords with ridiculously super-powerful backstories. It is very obvious playing your own custom-created PC is the option Larian least cares about and which a player is not supposed to do, but where for me it is my ONLY option in playing a D&D RPG.

Sorry, Bruce, but I consider Dark Urge to be the absolute worst thing (among many bad things) Larian has managed to come up with in that game. It is the psychopath option in the game, with the "you can resist it if you want" claim being a pathetic attempt to spin what it really is.

It's like we're twins here. I'm in exactly the same situation. The game I want to play, in terms of their genre, I can't stand their TB combat; the games that have a combat system I would enjoy are games I'm not too interested in playing, genre-wise. Yes, this^. I've been able to stomach TB in Solasta, for example, but Larian's approach (to many aspects of RPG design) really, really grate on my nerves.

And very clunky TB combat at that, in my opinion (from what I've seen in streams). And there's zero chance of anything changing in this regard in BG3. TB combat just really sucks. In WotR that one battle that you are forced to fight TB is easily the most annoying and frustrating part of that game for me.

I assumed they were the demon slaves I freed when I killed the slave traders in the slave market area of the demon city.

How do you "lock" the crusade morale?

Critical condition? Not dead? See, now they'll have to put a pillow over his face in his hospital bed. Man, Putin cannot even off his political enemies competently anymore. What's Russia coming to?!

So here's a question about the so-called 'secret ending': it is my understanding that you have to enter Threshold on specifc dates that are in the fourth month. In Act 5 I am now in the ninth month. If I were to keep skipping days to get to the fourth month there is no way I can stretch out capturing forts and killing demon armies for that long. So am I screwed on crusade morale once I have no more enemies to defeat?

I also saw these reports this morning. Classic Putin. Prig is such a complete idiot (and soon to be a dead idiot).

Whenever Billy Idol's Rebel Yell comes on the Oldies radio station I have on in my car, I have to pull over out of traffic so I can go nuts.

What a disappointment. I was so excited about the prospect of political chaos in Russia. I suspect Prig learned that as much as generals in the Russian military may dislike/disagree with Putin, they were surely not going to throw their lot in with him. But I do feel this increases the odds that someone within the regime/military with more credibility and standing will look to dipose Putin in the near future. Prig has been gutted like a fish here, but Putin has also been exposed as being weak and vulnerable.

Interesting. If true then Prigozhin could have himeself an airforce now. Milerovo is home to a full regiment of Su-30s, and Voronezh has a regiment of Su-34 bombers.

My favorite ABBA song