kanisatha

Way to go, Obsidian!! Not my game, but extremely happy for them.

I'm now far enough into playing Solasta that I can provide a first report. Personally, I'm loving playing this game. It's finally a game that sincerely scratches my D&D itch. I've also come to appreciate 5e a whole lot more because of this game. I think I will always like 3.5e the most, just because that was my personal prime D&D-playing years edition. But 5e is definitely second-best. The game is extremely faithful to 5e rules, and even such things as held actions and reactions are done beautifully. For a TB game, combat goes by pretty quickly. You have a good amount of options available to you in each turn of combat. The tutorial explains everything very well. The game includes character backgrounds that actually matter, and passive skills and spellcasting outside of combat are used extensively. Verticality and movement in 3D is awesome, including flying, spider climbing, etc. And yes, TA did this first. Larian copied TA for BG3. All in all, a truely delightful gem of a game. For negatives, a very superficial one would of course be that the graphics and character models are not very fancy and sometimes look a bit odd. For some people this may be a big issue. For me, I couldn't care less. It is good enough. The voice acting is fine, though both written and spoken lines could use some more polish in places. The main criticisms I'd offer are party size of only four, no multi-classing, level cap not all the way up to 20, and the game needing more content to explore. For the first issue, this may be the one game where this is okay, because they often attach critical NPCs to the party for certain quests. Early in the game we even get two such NPCs attached, effectively forming a party of six. As for the other three issues, I feel they all will become moot after we get the next DLC or two. TA's approach for this game appears to be to provide the core game plus a complete campaign first, and then release new DLCs every so often with a completely new, standalone, full-sized campaign. The DLC they're working on for a March release is exactly such a DLC. So TA seems to be doing what NwN was originally supposed to be, with TA's terminology being "campaign" in place of "module." You also have available to play user-created campaigns made with the "Dungeon Maker" toolset they have created and included with the core game. These are available in Steam Workshop and can be very easily added to your game. More to come.

Yeah I barely made it through watching the entire first season, and have zero interest in going back for anymore of it.

For me, this is as it should be. Your class choices should be irreversible. Respecing should only be for changing your choices of abilities, skills, spells and the like, if that. Whatever happened to the concept of living with the choices you make? Isn't that at the heart of roleplaying?

The truth is out there!!!

You're welcome. I love playing TOAW4. I do get tired of it after a while, so I play a couple of scenraios, take a break from it, then go back to it again later. Kinda' like how I play Civilization. And if you are into old-school hex-based WW II naval/carrier battles, Carrier Battles 4: Guadalcanal (also on Steam).

Matrix Games' The Operational Art of War IV (available on Steam) has the most up-to-date gaming system of all those old operational-level wargames, and it comes with some nice WW II scenarios to play. Some nice WW I and pre-WW I scenarios as well.

I'm starting Solasta today. Have to admit to being a little bit excited about diving into 5e D&D. I've been playing in 5e games through Roll20 with a group of friends, but playing just my own limited PC hasn't given me a true exposure to all of 5e.

Awesome! Fast jets never get old with me. Not sure if modern jets can dump and burn. I get to see MANG (Massachusetts Air National Guard) F-15Cs low over my house quite often. No use of burners though.

I also finished the game on Friday. And I agree with you very closely. I think I successfully did almost all of the small side things while solving the case and finishing with no loose-ends left. My ending was quite perfect and very satisfactory, having refused to get on the airship, averted the bloodbath, and a perfect outcome to the shootout with the mercs (though without the spirit bomb). Finding that giant bug was a sweet bonus. My Harry was 4, 4, 2, 2. What was yours?

Prolly an early NGAD demonstrator. Looks very cool.

I watched La Brea. I was initially skeptical, and the some of the early episodes pushed me towards dropping the show (all the infidelity and who's sleeping with whom crap). But the last few episodes salvaged it, and now I am looking forward to its return for season 2.

Haha, as soon as I read KP's post I was going to post exactly this! You beat me to it.

This is ultimately what it comes down to, and I wonder when I may get to that point. About $215 is what I'm paying per month right now for my Xfinity service, though this includes my high-speed Internet and cable phone services. But the problem with letting go of cable is that I like vegging in front of my TV for an hour or two before going to bed, just watching reruns of some old sitcom or shows like Ancient Aliens. The Game Show Netwok is probably the channel I watch the most these days. Anyway, wasn't meaning to derail this thread.

You have a good point. And I'm not blaming the companies entirely. Yes indeed my own preferences as well as my choices re. what to spend my free time on have certainly evolved with age. But TV shows is where I can clearly see a definite pattern of fewer and fewer shows to watch with each passing season. Granted this is significantly affected by my unwillingness, thus far, to subscribe to streaming services, and that quite a few shows I would watch are locked behind those paywalls. A great example is the CBS show "SEAL Team," which for years was my #1 drama show on TV. But this year they moved it into Paramount+, and so I have lost my favorite show as I won't be subscribing to Paramount+ just for that show.

^This. As I've gotten older, I'm getting more and more pushed into a small minority with respect to my preferences in all forms of entertainment: movies, TV shows, and most sadly even video games. And of course corporations are always going to just keep making the same thing again and again that fits the preferences of the majority, rather than cater to the tastes of minority preferences.

I'm in "Day 5" of my Disco Elysium playthrough, my first time playing the game. My inate need in my RPGs to be the world-saving hero who fixes everything is taking a beating in this game. Seems like the game provides for many different outcomes in Harry's life and in side quests. But when it comes to the overall main story, all paths lead to one outcome:

@BruceVC, @bugarupsays it pretty well here. This is how I largely feel as well. Furthermore, I would say that because of how the Pf games are made, which is to say they are directly made from Pf TT game modules, you get only a micro-level exposure to the Pf world (Golarion), unlike the PoE games which give you a much better immersion into the world (Eora) overall.

Agreed. But I haven't yet heard anything on it. I do distinctly remember reading a post here in this forum from an Obsidian dev stating exactly what you say, that although they would've liked and preferred to have included a TP option in TOW1, they couldn't because of their limited budget. So now that ought not be an issue, for both Avowed and TOW2.

Acceptable only if there's a third-person option.

Is this because you are unfamiliar with/new to D&D 3.5e?

I'll second what others have already said to this. Especially with the DLCs added in, the game is fantastic in most ways. Only the gameplay mechanics, especially wrt combat, can be confusing and opaque. For me, once I just accepted that I didn't really want to know how anything worked and would simply accept the results/outcomes at face value, i.e. when I stopped worrying about those pesky details, I had a blast playing it. Ditto for the second game, which has the added awesomeness of multi-classing.

This is what I'm saying. And I don't think this makes you a casual gamer at all. It is quite reasonable. And I say this as someone who loves that Sawyer did NOT just slap on the D20 system into PoE because I utterly dislike the D20 system. So kudos to Obsidian for creating a new, better system. But at the same time, it is very obtuse and difficult to figure out, confusing, and sometimes quite frustrating. So it can be a chore for many people, myself included. I think a lot of people bought and played PoE1 expecting a "D&D-like" game, a game that would at least have the D20 system. They found out this was not the case, and this frustrated them and turned them off to even trying the second game.

I also agree it cannot be the iso perspective or being party-based. Many other contemporary projects have shown the cRPG format still has plenty of draw. My personal theory on PoE2, which I have mentioned many times before and stand by, is that the very complex and opaque mechanics of PoE1&2 is what was a turn-off for many of today's gamers. For a cRPG to be popular today, its mechanics have to be either: (1) simple and easy to understand (i.e. the D:OS games), or (2) be based on the D20 system, because that's been around for 50 years and people are very familiar with it (i.e. the Pathfinder games).

Okay, very helpful feedback guys. Going further, I have accounts in both Steam and GOG, but all my games are in Steam and none in GOG. And I like having everything in one place. So, what are the odds of either of those games coming to Steam in the foreseable future? In fact, anyone know why they are not currently in Steam? It would be especially awesome if someone from Obsidian happens to see this and provides a response re. NwN2 and Steam.