Gromnir

rrod worked in our favor. had a clunky xbox 360 elite that were as noisy as a twin-engine cesna taxing down a runway. built date were late 2006. a month ago we get rrod and had to send console to mesquite, texas for repair. no repair o' our console... we got either a new or refurbished console (from somewheres in tennessee) that purrs like a kitten and were built in late 2009... only drawback were the 2.5 weeks we were without our xbox console. nextgen consoles will be coming out in 2011 or 2012 and now we got a newer/better machine with which to endure the wait. am having a hard time finding genuine cause to complain. does microsoft seems like a bunch o' dolts for screwing up so many o' their consoles? sure they do, but they is spending big money to fix the situation. no doubt other folks got nightmare stories to tell, but Gromnir is reasonably satisfied with the customer care we has received... and heck, at least there is games we actually want to play on the xbox360. HA! Good Fun!

tig is gonna be cheesed that you bring up once again. Gromnir's first two posts regarding da rogues http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?s=&am...st&p=990840 http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?s=&am...st&p=990931 so, put up or... HA! Good Fun!

makes much more sense than what occurred in the game. am not minding a misunderstood villain... but we have little patience for a stoopid villain. HA! Good Fun!

even if loghain had reason to believe that cailin were nuttier than a squirrel's nest in october, loghain's actions would still be perplexing. loghain gets firsthand knowledge that the blight is real, but he goes ahead and creates the conditions for a civil war regardless. have cailin murdered in his sleep by a wh0re from orlais? perhaps. heck, cailin, being an idiot, joins in the fighting firsthand. is pretty darn easy to "accidental" get killed on a battlefield. have not played rto, but even if loghain discovered that cailin wished to make fereldan a vassal state of orlais, we still cannot understand loghain's perplexing strategy at ostegar. rumors travel faster than a wildfire, and is no way that loghain could keeps it quiet that he abandoned cailin in the face of a blight. why makes cailin a victim, a martyr even? set up conditions for a civil war, and makes self looks like a villain in the process? what kinda bass ackwards strategy is that? ... maric's achievements is even more impressive in light of the fact that loghain were clearly a moron of epic proportions. HA! Good Fun!

The Deep Roads were too grindy. But to me, the grind was rewarded by the area also featuring the most entertaining boss fights of the game (gangster lady, spider queen, broodmother, the fight at the anvil). Can't say the same about the tedium at the endgame... I also enjoyed the Broken Circle. A nice blend of combat and puzzles with kewl art design and such. The stat bonuses were a mistake, though. They're essentially the way that the PC gets to be better than the JNPCs-- a signicant hunk of bonuses available only to he PC. Nothing wrong with that, generally-- the PC should feel special and giving him/her stat bonuses that the other JNPCs don't get is a reasonable way to do that. But the better way to include them is to add them at character creation, or to give the PC more bonuses at level-up than the NPCs get. By putting them in the tower quest, the game unnecessarily rewards players who do that quest early (and punishes those who don't). the stat boosts may have a second use other than just making the pc SUPERIOR. play sten or the french tart and see how long it takes before they becomes genuine contributing members o' your party. without stat boosts your pc would be in a similar situation. looking at the actual improvements, rogues benefits the most, no? there is some rogue builds that can be built pumping nothing but dex, but no doubt the play testers realized that the typical rogue player wanted to actual be able to disarm traps too. rogues is the hardest characters to build in da, and they is the ones that benefit most from the stat boosts. likewise, we thinks that warriors got useful boosts from the broken circle, particularly those builds that couldn't rely on total stat dump into one or two attributes. on the other hand, mages does not have to genuine worry 'bout boost anything save magic... and maybe some willpower. anybody notice that mages benefit least from mage tower boosting? is maybe a little ironic that mage tower is where the developers found a way to help out the more challenging classes and builds given that mages benefit least from such boosts. am thinking that mage tower attribute boosts exist in part to correct some o' the imbalances in the classes. is a wacky and bass ackwards approach, but it is a practical solution to the radical different burdens some classes/builds has as far as stat distribution is concerned. HA! Good Fun!

Do you know how long it took me to figure out that all you needed was the "Spell immunity: Abjuration" spell to deal with the latter form? Even then I had to pelt it with darts+5 and all sorts of other tricks. Tough bastard. http://www.baldurdash.org/kangaxx.html LOL, when DA gets poetry we can start talking whose better. is all kinda tricks. scrolls o' protection from undead gets you ignored. a berserker who is berserk can shrug off the imprisonment effect... give him/her the mace o' disruption and kangaxx is put back in the dead book right quick. am seeming to recollect that protection from magic scrolls were also effective-- a paladin with carsomyr would make short work of kangaxx if protected by scroll. there is a ring of the ram and traps strategy. regardless, ring of ram did good damage. am recalling a slayer strategy, but we always killed pre-slayer. *chuckle* got silly... after we played bg2 a couple times we developed a kinda system whereby we could kill kangaxx ridiculous fast, and then we would complete twisted rune immediate afterward so that we would still have some o' the protection scroll effects in place and active. two birds and one stone... so to speak. HA! Good Fun! ps tomb o' horrors were a stoopid d&d module and demi-lichs were a ridiculous end-boss. the tombs traps were typically lethal, and it weren't as if you were offered clues to puzzle out solutions. likewise, figuring out that an astral or ethereal mage casting power word kill on a demi lich were insta-win were a matter of well reasoned conjecture on the part o' the player... not. shatter, holy word and +5 weapons all did good damage, and there were a couple spells that would make skull descend without howling or sucking a soul. 'course, even with only approx. 50 hps, the original demi-lich were probable gonna waste your unprepared party. conversely, a party that knew it were facing a demi-lich could have correct spells, weapons and scrolls on hand to get through a demi-lich encounter without a scratch. silly. bg2 got demi-lich right... 'cause kangaxx were just as silly as the original.

then prove it. so far we hears claims, but no proofs. shows us your components solutions... though is kinda a wacky claim if you also believe there is no balance... would make the components aspect unnecessary. *shrug* whatever. am not concerned with decipher o' vol logic, but if you is gonna claim some superior knowledge o' how to makes spell components work in a crpg, in spite of fact that the vast majority o' developers has forgone or ignored such nonsense, then be our guest and expound. show us how is different than limited/rare ammo. HA! Good Fun!

Yeah, though he forgot to mention how powerful it was. Still even without it once you reach a certain level and have a lot of elemental magic at your disposal much of the combat becomes easy. I was killing enemies with earthquake+blizzard+lighting storm pretty successfully with a little work. Now even that little is gone being able to "see" your foes 'round corners and even beyond some closed doors significant increases the damage potential o' those area effect spells. is cheese, but am curious as to why the developers made such a nasty exploit possible. 'course, am recalling that in bg2 the folk who solo'd didn't see nothing wrong with triggering a mages defense spells... then run away beyond map transition. come back in 2 minutes and repeat as necessary until all of the mages defense spells is gone. bg1 were even worse with cheese tactics exploits... am suspecting that all games suffer from cheese. nevertheless, something were particular offensive 'bout being able to clear da areas simply by being 'round a corner and casting multiple area effect spells. is boring and slow, but is painless and... wrong. HA! Good Fun!

HA! Good Fun!

and you is an expert on how to do intelligently? expound. other than as a gold sink, components does little, and in a crpg you greatly increase the potential for frustration. missed the one guy who sells gauss rifle ammo/diamond dust? too bad. is stoopid... and if is balanced then such nonsense is unnecessary. am also not certain who you see claiming that high level mages were particular balanced in the bg series... not that such would change the imbalance o' da mages one bit. d&d high-level mages is overpowered. bioware creates their own rules from scratch and manages to achieve same flaw. congrats to the bioware developers. "as for SoC I was told how to do it by a friend" yeah, is what we thought. you not stumble into storm. HA! Good Fun!

yeah, it pretty much is... and is also a gold sink. cost 1 gold sovereign o' diamond dust to cast 4th tier spells. makes no less sense than 6 sovereigns for 10 backpack slots. d&d got wrong. fact that arch-magi were rare did not change fact that they were too powerful. why bioware replicated same mistakes is puzzling. most obvious problem: too many spells. the more spells you got, the tougher it is to balance. that should be obvious, but ain't. is not the majority o' spells that make d&d arch magi ultra-powerful, but is instead a small % of all such spells. and even if a spell initially seems balanced, is no way to predict how players will use in combination with the other thousand or so available spells in the d&d catalog. balance becomes functional impossible as you increase the number o' spells. also, the more spells you gots, the more likely the mage will be able to do... everything. high level d&d mages is combat typhoons who gots functional prescience through divination, can create or summon their own ultra-powerful defenders and can, if things get genuine tough, can heal self or transport to safety. fighters, on the other hand, can hack stuff to pieces. bio shoulda' reduced da spells or considerable reduced player access to spells from various schools... and shoulda' been smarter 'bout how they created and organized schools. dumb elemental crap is traditional, but is replicating same old mistakes as past. should look at spells as similar to any other combat power if you is wanting to keep balanced. HA! Good Fun!

is yet another example of how Gromnir were saying that the tactics o' da were overrated somewhat 'cause o' lack o' familiarity with rules. how many folk stumbled into storm o' the century their first time through game? need spell might, which gots two o' the most useless prerequisite spells in the game: mana drain and mana cleanse. spell might itself is largely a waste unless you use in combination with animate dead or blizzard + tempest. mana clash, on the other hand, is a very effective mage killer, but for most players it is a hard sell considering the largely ineffectual prereqs. am also recalling a whole bunch o' battles where the storm kinda spells were largely ineffectual-- flemmeth being the one boss battle exception. dunno if we would voluntarily build a mage as does boo, particularly playing nightmare, but we doubt most first-time players genuine pick the right spells for storm simply by reading in-game descriptions. as with the ie games, a large part of difficulty or ease is simply knowing which spells, equipment combinations, and character builds is the most efficacious. line between strategy and tactics is always a blurry one (and sometimes pointless) but for Gromnir at least, a second playthrough o' da were made easy not 'cause we knew what challenges lay ahead, but rather 'cause the mechanics o' da were less obscure with the benefit o' +50 hours o' trial and error. Gromnir's da guide: how to breeze through da on nightmare without even trying step 1) download the respec mod am not certain why the developers likes to build terrible joinable npcs, but wynne's 8-9 levels o' crap is easily fixable with the respec mod. a pc 2h warrior is an effective glass cannon, but npcs don't have the stats or abilities to be effective as such til late in game. with the benefits of respec, sten is a very effective sword and board or dual wielding warrior. wanna make the french chick or the poncey elf useful as rogues? respec. step 2) play as a mage mages is wacky overpowered, particular at high levels. the power imbalance becomes particularly noticeable to anybody who has played da more than once, as spell choices is less 'bout kewl and more 'bout power. according to feedback we got from biowarians, the toughest parties is 3 mages + 1 tank. you thinks that maybe that shoulda' clued the developers into the recognition of relative power o' mages compared to other classes? step 3) read any one o' the dozen or so faqs available that explain what builds is good, and which is bad. +50 hours o' trial and error is not the most time effective method for learning the intricacies of a rule system that is numbers dependent... but where the numbers is hidden from the player. figure out da weapon damage, attack frequency and likelihood o' hitting foe? for chrissakes, we have seen less complicated algorithms used to predict satellite trajectories on trips to one of saturn's moons than the numbers we has seen to explain da mechanics. d&d, for all it's faults, did not hide numbers from the player. before our ie sorcerer chose a fireball spell at level-up, we were knowing the range, damage potential, casting time and area effect o' a d&d fireball spell. no real mystery. da is different than da. petrify is more likely to "freeze" a foe than is cone of cold... and duration o' the petrification seems longer. force field works on even boss critters better than 50% o' time, even on nightmare, but crushing prison gets resisted far more frequent. ok, why? don't try and figure out da. save self time and read a faq that has high recommendations... mage faq being most important as mages have most choices available, and they will be your heavy-hitters. da system is strange. yeah, particularly if you rely on rogues and warriors, da requires considerable tactical sophistication to be successful... 'course you could have three mages and shale, all spamming area effect spells 'gainst foes you sees before they can sees you. HA! Good Fun!

am gonna apologize to Di and anybody else that we spoiled with our posts... am forgetting that many people have not played and our commentary is frequent spoilerish in nature. am genuine regretful that we has not been more careful.

Who are we to question? we has questioned many o' chrisA's choices and characters... why not this one? me2 would be an ideal place to do such a thing. a sequel is essentially guaranteed and your following is established. do at end of kotor2? perhaps not... especially in retrospect. without no kotor3 you would have eternal wails o' anguish. nevertheless, is there anybody that were honest satisfied with chrisA's kotor2 ending? horrible. maybe branding irons woulda' helped inspire something better than what we eventual got. HA! Good Fun! ps it is worth noting that chrisA's Winner ending didn't seem to help the franchise. no kotor3 in spite of somewhat silly ending.

Bingo. Seriously, it's what Bioware always has done. The fans just couldn't handle a depressing and devastating end. I know I couldn't. I don't play games to fail and die at the end. I'll leave that to real life. I play games to "do" things that matter in my little game universe, things that make me feel exhilarated, needed, valiant... and heroic. I don't want a game to mirror life; I want a game to give me an adventure I could never otherwise have, and I want the satisfaction of accomplishment when it's over. I'm glad BioWare doesn't do "emo" games. I'm well past the age where I want to wear black lipstick and get a skeleton tatooed on my ass. bio makes heroic stories for their games, and they is unapologetic 'bout it. they is also believing that the vast majority o' their customers want happily ever after. fine. even so, we thinks that bio missed a great opportunity with game 2. not only does we have less heroic sacrifice than in game 1, but there is no genuine cliff-hanger to build up anticipation for game 3. shepard always wins. virtual every hero story worth mentioning has the hero lose at some point, but not shepard... or any other crpg protagonist. is a flaw. end o' game 2 woulda' been the ideal spot to inject a little heroic failure into the mass effect epic, but bio predictably passed on such an option. *shrug* not need emo, but heroic ain't particular heroic if there ain't without obstacles and sacrifice. if the hero always wins the obstacles will seems small... and without sacrifice a hero is a bit cartoony, no? getting spaced and dying at the start o' the me2 story is a nice enough way to start, but the player ain't genuine part o' that, is he/she... is all happening remote and the emotional impact is relative small. have an empire strikes back ending for me2? why the heck not? the fans who not like such an ending would hardly boycott me3, and am betting you would get overwhelming positive critical feedback for breaking the typical crpg mold. in any event, is terrible that we see less sacrifice in me2 than we saw in me1... bio backsliding when they had an ideal opportunity to go to next step and possibly incorporate personal sacrifice. oh well. not need emo to be heroic... but heroic without loss and sacrifice? lame. HA! Good Fun! ps when we says "personal sacrifice" we ain't asking for player death. death is actual kinda easy. a minor but genuine personal disability v. permanent loss o' crew member? am betting that such a choice would makes more than a few folks stare blank at screen for a minute or two as they ponder the ramifications.

Yeah, I'm not saying all games should have those types of choices. I'm simply saying they're actually sensible things to invest resources into and for players to ask for - asking for the ability to forego the reason to play the main course isn't. agreed. as long as the initial motivation is plausible we not see a reason to quibble. honest, the jailbreak (for friendship or revenge) scenario for bg2 were more than a little wacky, but so what? da initial motivations did not include "I am moving to Kanada," but including would effective end the game. is reason why we don't get boo. to actual suggest that somehow bg2 is winning superiority points 'cause o' the initial motivation provided player seems... silly. HA! Good Fun!

we saw the image that supposed shows the illusive man on the collector base at end of game. *chuckle* utter nonsense. HA! Good Fun!

2 simple changes woulda' made me2 story much better. 1) you lose at the end of me2 imagine if after the fight with the hybrid thingie, you lose... "winning" simply gets you out of the collector base with your own arse, and most o' your team, intact. the reapers is on the way, and the collectors (or a reaper) manage to save the hybrid before you destroy it. am thinking that you would have created far more anticipation 'bout me3, and woulda' been a surprise ending for me2 such that people would talk 'bout for a Long time. 2) optimum success still requires sacrifice dunno. in me1 you gotta sacrifice kaiden or ashley, but the suicide mission v. collectors is ultimately w/o cost? what if choice were more significant in me2... 'least from a game pov? make shepard sacrifice self or crew member. to get his crew out of collector base shep chooses some minor, but real, permanent disability (health point loss or powhaz penalty or somesuch) that will carry over into me3, OR choose sacrifice o' crew member. would be very interested to see how many folks choose personal sacrifice over loss of teammate. regardless, add the aforementioned factors to end of me2 would go a long way towards increasing impact, no? HA! Good Fun!

"Arcanum allowed you to defy your own prophecy and join the bad guys. Fallout, too, allowed you to join the Master or defeat him." both o' the aforementioned games has strengths... story/writing weren't particular strong in either. you want story-driven And maximize player freedom/choice? okie dokie, but please keep in mind that play fantasy games and make fantasy games is different... unlike in games, there is no magic wands for developers/writers to achieve impossible results. "The BG games dont fall prey as much to pampering the PC, something (ab)used by Bio later. Yes you're special - but so are all your siblings." you is genuine making it difficult to take you serious. child o' a god... child o' DESTINY. sorry, am not even gonna go down that road with you. regardless, whether you likes silly bg2 motivation or not, am having a hard time seeing how you could argue that bg2 somehow gets points for the imoen jailbreak motivation when compared to da. am thinking that "personal" maybe ain't actually the word you is looking for, but in any event, da gives you a more adult and difficult starting point than does stock fantasy o' bg2. save the girl from the evil wizard? really? HA! Good Fun!

Jory did draw his sword first and lunges first. Greedo shot first! pre-edit, or after? when Gromnir were eight years o' age we were given some good advice by our grandfather regarding fights. some o' the white kids in town would give us a hard time... beat us up if adults weren't around. grandpa told us that waiting for some other kid to take the first swing didn't make us honorable... made us stoopid. "Hit them before they can hit you, and keep hitting until somebody forces you to stop. The guy who lands the first blow in a fist fight typically wins, but even if you do not land the first blow make sure you hurt the other guy as much as you can. Winning isn't as important as making sure that they never want to fight you again. Hurt the other guy a little and chances are he will leave you alone in the future, regardless of whether you won or lost the fight." have found that grandpa's advice is appropriate for more than just pre-teens getting into scrapes behind the A&P. HA! Good Fun!

am not having a problem with vinnie's review save that he is a bit of an idiot at times. he complains 'bout industry conventions, but he follows the review conventions 'don't he? *shrug* as with recent bioware games, da focuses a great deal o' developer and writer effort on character development. jnpc banter and stories and side-quests... critical path story in a bio crpg is frequent incidental. nevertheless, right or wrong, discuss characters not fit into one o' vinnie's pre-defined categories, so is hardly discussed. is scary that he don't seem to recognize that Plot does not equal Story... makes us a little wary o' his personal future efforts. am wondering if he played ps:t or motb... or any recent obsidian or bioware game. "And Oghren. Oghren?" haven't read the faq, but as much as we Loathe ohgren, we were hopeful to see him as a named returning jnpc for sequel or expansion. dwarf portions o' game were highlights, and have ohgren back is at least giving us hope for kal sharok or some other dwarven enclave. only thing better would be to have sten back, but the expansion does not seem like appropriate fodder for quinari. "Amen brother." see our response to wrath... works equal well. as mc notes, design o' bg2 were a bit o' a mess... and there were no way in hell we were gonna get bg2 scope for da. so, would you rather have had da force you down a single critical path sequence as did bg2? critical path were actual more linear than da... and we knows how you like to stay focused on critical path aspects. Gromnir is personally unimpressed with the non-sequential plot point approach, but compared to bg2 is an improvement. the difference is that bg2 had far more tangential and non-essential sub-quests for the player to "explore." however, if you do not such resources available... so, kotor replicates nwn design (kotor were hardly original) and many bio, obsidian and indie developers has likewise adopted the habit o' making plot points non-sequential so as to increase illusion o' freedom. 'course, if you has an alternative that don't include bg2 scope we is happy to listen. HA! Good Fun!

your blatant hypocrisy is... disturbing. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* depending on how much you choose to do before brynlaw, that is potential over 1/2 of the game. raison d'

am sorry, but anybody that thinks that the initial raison d'

"Why would you care about some vague Blight..." you did play through ostegar, right? is our recollection that you is pretty much compelled to complete ostegar... sees an ocean o' darkspawn overwhelm fellow grey wardens? learn immediately afterward that darkspawn can sense you. am knowing that folks confronted by a horrible reality can become willful obtuse, but your question pushes bounds o' plausibility. is nothing vague 'bought blight... not for the pc and allister. "Imoen is your closest friend. " says who? she were some annoying little brat that kept calling us buffleheaded right up until moment she were savagely killed by enormous spiders, gibberlings, wyverns, or a poorly aimed fireball... can't recall specifics other than that no matter how many times we played bg, imoen mysterious seemed to die immediately before we encountered quayle, coran, or alora. go figure. HA! Good Fun!