Gromnir

personally, da dwarves don't remind us much o' klingons. sure, the dour militirism is similar. am not sure if klingons is having a rigid caste system... that could enhance similarities for those trekies in-the-know. even so, Gromnir did have a couple of klingon=dwarf moments. dwarves in da occasional mention Honor as some sorta cultural gestalt. also, the way the folks in the dwarf kingdom drops the occasional dwarf phrase into normal speech is soooooo star trek klingon. whatever money that the biowarians/ea used on their linguist were wasted resources. HA! Good Fun!

Egad. Well that pretty much drives home my decision to tell all of the NPCs who express an interest to go take a cold shower. I don't want to risk losing the smug sense of superiority I get when mocking the primetime network dramas my wife enjoys so much. crpg romances leaves Grominir with feelings ranging from mild to extreme revulsion. is an inherent creepy quality in romancing a digital character, but the manner in which such romances is implemented in crpgs thus far is making us believe that developers/gamers is all Big Fans o' Dawson's Creek and 90210 given the implementation and approval o' similarly juvenile and bizarre romance situations. HA! Good Fun!

having played many hours, we has run into 4 noticeable glitches. we had a couple o' crashes... one was ctd and the other resulted in computer restart. am running windows 7 professional (64). we has also had 2 occurrences o' a strange game stopping bug. we seeming kill an enemy, but he stays standing and is effective immortal, immune to damage. this results in an inability to end combat mode... so our dead/downed party members stays dead. most annoying, but seems very rare. we got a phenom and am not noticing the memory leak. we did notice that the game insists that we is single-core cpu, but as we is running smooth, we not care. HA! Good Fun!

Gromnir is an "every point counts" kinda guy. the forced stealing skill for level 1 rogue is wasted. also, we played the first 5 minutes o' the dwarven rogue commoner origin. were kinda... thick. bio writers has not yet figured out that writing text that is read is a different skill than is writing for live (or digital) actors. dialogue that seem ok on paper may become sappy, maudlin or excessive when given voice and actor talents. however, we does agree that the dwarven caste system seems far more interesting from the commoner pov. our first rogue play will be dwarf. origin material impact not seem great or significant past the origin material, but we does see potential for both dwarf commoner and noble. HA! Good Fun!

observation: please note that Gromnir ain't calling the da rogue "useless". we played through origin and osterwhatzitz with rogue and it seemed perfect viable... but the rogue concept in da is kinda wacky and seeming illogical. is either an archer or two-fisted fighter that gots access to stealth and lockpicking... though oddly 'nuff, any character, regardless of class, can choose trap making or picking of pockets. as irrational as the d&d ranger was (inspired by some nightmarish amalgam of drizz't and aragorn), bioware's rogue makes even less sense. also, as bio has chosen to hide the rules o' the game from view, it is difficult to figure out how to build such a character... especially as the info we has concerning the mechanics o' daggers and bows is current wrong as such stuff is bugged. we know that cunning is important for rogue, but is not easy to see exactly why based on in-game descriptions. am simply not seeing a point for rogue, and with rules hidden and mechanics broken it is difficult to approach character building rationally. is not that rogues is useless... 'cause they ain't useless. rogues IS wacky. warrior-lite with potential for lockpicking and a couple extra skill points? why? why make such a class? we wanna play a rogue, cause they ain't necessary useless... and 'cause the two rogue jnpcs is useless. am sick and tired of returning to maps after combat to disarm traps and 1007 chests. once bio figures out problems with daggers and bows... once somebody unravels actual mechanics o' da rulez... once Gromnir gets finished with our first play through... *shrug* is not that da rogues is useless... is that their usefulness seems forced and awkward. HA! Good Fun!

mages is artillery. am not surprised that people is impressed by the power o' mages, but am not seeing as unbalanced. mages and warriors each fulfill a role. if there is a problem it is that there is a small number o' busted spells... relative too powerful. lack o' stamina potions ain't needed neither. our 2-h warrior, without using mighty blow and scoring criticals, is doing base +50 points o' damage per hit and we ain't more than a little over 1/2 through game. if warriors were getting stamina potions, balance would be serious broken. wotc spent years playtesting d&d 3.0. am always wondering how certain spells managed to make it into final release. harm? even the recent pathfinder rpg went through some significant revisions 'tween the beta and final release. we were expecting some busted spells... is more than we expected, but game is still fun. now rogues, on the other hand, is the bastard child o' crpg preconceptions and some bad number crunching by bio. the developers felt like they needed a third class, so they gimp a warrior, and give it some thiefy and sneaky abilities. is no point to be making a rogue class for da... wanna make a dex-based combatant with high skills? why not allow a warrior to do that stuff? Gromnir genuine wanna play a rogue on our next playthrough, but there were no reason for bio to make such a class... 'specially as it is now. btw, with our warrior we ain't point dumping str and con. am putting a good number o' points into willpower and dex too... for stamina and defense. is perhaps a bad build, but it seems to work well enough. HA! Good Fun!

am not sure why the "poultice" language were adopted, but if they had actually spent man-hours animating more appropriate they woulda' been deserving o' a swift kick to the temple. haven't looked close enough at the icon to see if it looks like a salve/balm/goo kinda thing... am recollecting that the icon picture is kinda a cube thing as 'posed to a flask. HA! Good Fun! edit: icon shows a little pot-thingie for poultice. could arguably be the goo that comprises active ingredients in a poultice... is simply hard to imagine the appropriate manner to apply during combat.

"Sorry, you're missing the point. An ogre fight consists of sitting there, waiting for the ogre to finish spamming his skills so I can use 2 skills on 'im. Everything else is waiting for the golem to slowly get up (fun fact: enemies get up faster from knockdowns than you, a fireball and a melee group hug kindly demonstrated it to me) just to be knocked down again. Boring and unfair. Besides, the drawback of the golem is weakness against magic. You couldn't even beat the ogre without the golem morph, so it's not like you have a choice." Gromnir beat ogres straight up (as a golem) multiple times... also beat with other shapes and combos. we read just fine. your failures (reading and otherwise) is not our problem. again, 'cause you seem to need spelled out in detail... if your golem were as quick as ogre there would be no need for tactics. is balanced and reasonable. besides which, we recall 3 skills/abilities of golem: a ranged attack, an area effect stunning attack, and a melee slam when in close and personal. can't figure out how to use right? ... 'cause we not wanna double-post... has anybody genuine figured out how bows and daggers is current implemented in this game? short bows seems overpowered compared to longbows... which seems odd. am also not sure what is up with daggers: str, dex and cunning all seems to figure into the puzzle, but sometimes the numbers not seem to make much sense to Gromnir. *shrug* am having fun, but is some... oddities. inventory is still annoying, but we now have 'nuff gold to buy additional inventory. claudia black's character turned out to be a useful caster, but we chose far too many lame spells for wynne. the dog in da is similar to dog in fo3 in that it will find stuff for you. too bad for Gromnir we once discovered a tier 4 staff this way. now, after we clear an area, we go back through everyplace covered with the bard chick (to open chests and disarm traps we has already gotten past) and dog (to find us helmets, dirty pantaloons and soggy cake). am suspecting that 'tween inventory silliness and our semi-auto retracing, we is adding 10% empty hours to gameplay total. HA! Good Fun!

I guess reading comprehension is a difficult skill to acquire. no, we read just fine. as a golem (or another shape as you can change on the fly) the ogres rarely touched Gromnir. you misuse skills o' golem and other shapes is not a flaw in game. HA! Good Fun! ps getting into serious spoiler stuff.

eh? am thinking you miss the point. am imagining that golems is 'posed to look clumsy. furthermore, golems has gotta have some drawback or there wouldn't be no challenge at all. have your golem spring up off the mat like some chinese gymnast would not only look silly, but it would be unfair. just as the big 2-h weapons is ponderous/ridiculous slow, so too is your golem. *shrug* HA! Good Fun! Sorry, you're missing the point. An ogre fight consists of sitting there, waiting for the ogre to finish spamming his skills so I can use 2 skills on 'im. your inability to use golem and other shapes is not Gromnir's problem. regardless, the speed with which the golem moves is not only reasonable in context of the game, it is balanced. HA! Good Fun!

eh? am thinking you miss the point. am imagining that golems is 'posed to look clumsy. furthermore, golems has gotta have some drawback or there wouldn't be no challenge at all. have your golem spring up off the mat like some chinese gymnast would not only look silly, but it would be unfair. just as the big 2-h weapons is ponderous/ridiculous slow, so too is your golem. *shrug* HA! Good Fun!

"Just to be clear, are you saying that you're getting an invincible character that doesn't attack you either, keeping you combat indefinitely?" yes

am thinking that we has gotten more use from cone of cold than any other spell thus far... combine with our big damage warrior using mighty blow, and we gots shattered enemies littering dungeon floors all across felderan (sp?). line up right and we typically freeze 3-4 bad guys at once. is odd, but 'cause enemy ai seems prioritize targets based on armour worn, lightly armoured mages seems to be able to move relative unmolested 'bout the battlefield. HA! Good Fun!

None of which I have, despite being level ~11. I think it's silly not to have the exact effects of spells and abilities available in-game (or in the manual) - you just have to read the description then guess at exactly how potent they are. i.e. I wasn't to know that crushing prison in fact deals quite a lot of damage, not 'token damage' while incapacitating. am gonna second tig's observation. we chose a couple of lame spells for the two npc casters but am not gonna replay half game so we can fix after the fact. a gorlock emissary hits us with curse o' mortality or crushing prison and then we begins to realize that such spells is relative efficacious? can't figure out from the spell description. we did choose sleep/walking nightmare for claudia black... cast horror on sleeping critter does do good damage. only drawback o' walking nightmare is that 1/2 of those affected turn hostile and begin attacking us anyways... and you gotta have a pretty good internal clock to time your casting o' walking nightmare just before sleep expires. is good anti-mob spells, but is not so good v. any critter who gots yellow lettering. also, we got a weird bug with walking nightmare that has popped up a couple times (2x). is rare, but sometimes when we kill a critter who is under effects o' walking nightmare, he don't go down... health bar complete empties and the critter won't attack, but it won't complete die neither.... which is somewhat irritating if we have a downed party member, 'cause combat persists. Gromnir uses lots o' cone of cold and mighty blow combos to create shatters, so am not sure if that is part of the problem. we took earthquake and have found it to be useful, but you gotta use geography and additional area effect damage spells. d&d equivalent would be grease spell... but covering more area. slow the baddies down and disrupt archers, etc. HA! Good Fun!

hmmm will test and see what happens. thanks HA! Good Fun!

the most valuable single item we got is some verwhatzitz plate that we can sell for 'round two gold sovereigns. what kinda balance nonsense is this? 10 backpack slots costs more money than we had accumulated during first 10 hours o' gameplay? lothering and ostagar is no longer options, but we will check out the dwarf. HA! Good Fun!

inventory annoyance. ... have run into 4 different levels o' each potion type (mana & health). have two types o' healing kits for persistent injuries following "death" (mabari crunch makes 3... as we now use dog more often). is seeming more than a dozen different protective balms, stones and crystals. is always deathroot and elfroot in our inventory, and typical we got a few flasks. have also discovered a bunch o' items tagged as possible gifts that we not wanna deal with til we finish current quest portion and return to camp... 'cause giving the french trollop flowers not seem appropriate when you is 'bout to fight a dragon. before even considering special ammo, armour and weapons, a high % of our total inventory is filled with... stuff. ... we bought the immediate backpack upgrade at a store and now have 80 inventory slots, and that ain't nowhere near 'nuff. is getting annoying having to make numerous trips back to merchant X to sell stuff... and in certain portions o' game we has had to resort to destroying stuff. am recalling that there were a merchant we met that had an additional upgrade, but we couldn't afford at the time, and we believe that the merchant in question is now... toast. is Gromnir missing something? is there a place we can store extra 1007? you cannot possibly be telling us that the item limit never were questioned during QA. HA! Good Fun!

So you actually WANT to spend time on constantly shuffling potions and healing spells even outside of combat? Or the even more retarded option of going to sleep in the middle of a bloody zombie-infested dungeon?!! I just dont get some people. I miss the rpg-atmosphere. Roll, create and develop each character. Explore, sustain wounds, set up camp at the end of the day, boil - prepare - and ingest herbs, have the cleric use first aid and heal some wounds. J. that is d&d atmosphere, not necessarily rpg atmosphere. HA! Good Fun!

eh? so what? lord knows there has been about a thousand times we wished we could buy only 2 eggs 'stead 'o a dozen... and some o' the "options" we has gotten sold with cars in past has been irksome 'cause we were certain that the shortage o' particular models were contrived. even so, why is "new" significant? don't want it? don't pay for it. is not limiting you or compelling you... is no pressure involved and is not as if da only works if you buy their extra widget. you want cheese on your burger? that will be extra. HA! Good Fun!

looks nifty, but takes 3 levels to get... After we take heal. the frost stuff looks nice with the potential for shatter. ... raises an interesting question. why does developers feel the need to gimp jnpc casters with such frequency. give 'em stoopid powers or spells that no player would voluntarily choose. sometimes such stuff makes sense within the context of game... but too often it feels as if developers is purpose making jnpc casters lame so that a player caster will feels better 'bout themselves... or to give player a reason to play a caster. am recalling edwin in the original bg. no doubt his presence in party emasculated more than a few would-be bg spellcasters. HA! Good Fun!

am not seeing the problem. don't like it? don't pay. am not judging the game based on the dlc. am not particularly bothered by the camp shtick either. if in nwn2 some character in crossroads keep had offered tangential dlc, Gromnir wouldn't have seen problem. same thing if we were in ebon hawk or similar camp location. 'course, if we were in severed hand and character bars our way to top level o' tower w/o paying dlc toll, then we would be perturbed. similarly, if we were on telos, and that blocked off portion o' the underground base were accessible through additional pay, then we would be unhappy... "this door will open if you pay $5.99 now!" is nothing unethical 'bout it... and am not genuinely getting the "jarring" criticism either. we were slightly amused, and a little impressed, by ea's mercenary approach. if game is woeful short, then we will wonder at failure to include in core game, and will criticize ea for their greed, but until we play game we simply see the chuckle value... and if we likes game enough, we may end up giving ea their bonus quid to play a little more da. HA! Good Fun!

Give Morrigan a healing spell. duh. as soon as she levels we will, but even so, morggain not have no area effect damage spell yet neither. will keep her mostly offensive, but yeah, at least one heal spell is essential. HA! Good Fun!

me dialogue is retarded. is a resource saving feature and nothing more. 'cause shepard has full vo, bio had to find some way to multiply his responses... typically not matter what dialogue wheel choice you make, 'cause shepard is gonna have 1 or 2 responses. wheel gives player the illusion o' choice. dialogue wheel interface may have more graphic appeal, but only fools and game reviewers see as innovative or neato. btw, Gromnir purchased yesterday afternoon and played pretty much non-stop through the night. played entirety of human noble origin and osterwhatzitz with a warrior specializing in 2h weapons... skill in combat and coercion. we also played through the dwarf noble origin with a dw rogue. normal difficulty (no patch). a few observations. writing were over-the-top in human noble origin. maybe were ok on paper, but with vo it just became tedious and sad. terrible. dwarf noble weren't so bad, but were not all that inspired neither. for the most part, the vo has been excellent. only have access to the following jnpcs: allister, morrigan (sp?) the french chick and sten. sten is a solid combatant, but the bard sucks... weak combatant and boring. sten is a bore too, but at least he not stink up the joint once combat begins. the problem with sten is that he is a 2h warrior, just like Gromnir. am not having much of a place for him in our party. for a sword and board guy, allister is a potion sink, but the banter 'tween him and other party members is moderate fun. did we mention that we really need a healer. seems wacky that there is only one in game. combat in origins were ez... less so afterward. Gromnir needs a party healer... stat. we had more than a handful o' reloads, and we used potions frequent. the rogue class is pointless (shoulda' had skills tied to stats and done away with the unnecessary class bloat) but our rogue seemed relative okie dokie in combat... we only played the origin an a little of the wilds with the rogue, so am not sure if we have enough experience to make accurate judgment 'bout combat or rogue efficacy. archery sucks. thus far, Gromnir has used more healing potions in DA than we did in bg and totsc combined. did we mention that we need a healer? graphics: no complaints thus far. game says we is only having a single core, but nevertheless, everything looks nice enough to Gromnir. btw, first thing we did after loading game were were to disable persistent blood spatter. am hopeful that there is more coercion options later in game. so far there has been almost none. feedback on this board suggests that there is good coercion options later, so we will keep hope alive. am hating when developers use persuasion to simply avoid fights. better be more/better options. the only thing we has spent money 'pon in game is flasks and potions. everything worth buying is current too expensive or not nearly as good as what we already got. combat tactics as a skill? is possibly the single dumbest thing we has seen so far. possibly the second most ridiculous aspect is wolves with overwhelm. get attacked by 8 wolves and 3 of them manage overwhelm at same time. reload. wolves? more thoughts later. gonna take a nap now. HA! Good Fun!

"sounds like gromnir is developing a bit of a crush on a certain young hot n manly college boy... " no... but admitting that we feels a great deal of envy for those folks who enjoyed their 4-5 liberal arts education/vacation. sounds critical, but isn't. honest, if we could do all over again, we woulda' taken advantage o' those college years to do more than study, work, and play ball. to stay on-topic, Gromnir rarely understands the graphics wh0res who dissect screen shots. silly big weapons is... silly. *shug* is hardly something that is gonna discourage us from playing or enjoying. is a couple o' fantasy crpgs that don't use over-sized weapons, and they suck. Gromnir dealt with wacky big weapons in ps:t, bg, nwn2 and a host o' other crpgs we did like. am too tired to be bothered by big weapons, particularly as da does not appear to have reached the excessive anime standard for such things. excessive blood spatter is also a bit cheezy, but the persistent blood can be disabled, no? HA! Good Fun!

I played my first 24 hours on normal and found it very comfortable. There are a number of people who find the game HARD, and think that people who are having an easy time of it are bragging douches. It's a very strange place to be in as I don't consider myself l33t and I dislike combat heavy games. Telling others that the game isn't that bad and that they (sigh) need to learn to play isn't an expeirence I'm used to. I really have no idea how people are stuggling so much with it. I will say that around 2am last night, I bumped the game down to easy. I'm running into a 'random' encounter whenever I travel, and they annoy me. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the loading times. ... am not sure if we would call you a "bragging douche" (charming), but although Gromnir ain't played the game, we might be tempted to deride your observation 'bout combat difficulty. after all, in the other thread you referenced a portion o' the game as being something o' a deathtrap, with those evil biowarians leading you into a portion o' game that were far too difficult for you when you first encountered. no doubt you see the seeming contradiction. as we said, Gromnir ain't played yet-- we waits for feedback... and typical we hold-off til the first patch. unfortunately, am looking at some scheduling issues in a couple o' weeks that may result in Gromnir choosing to forgo our patched-first policy and ignore good sense. feedback from folks sounds mostly positive. if we is real curious we can head down to best buy and watch while some 20-something slacker plays the xbox version they got on display... guy was playing on tuesday and when we stopped by yesterday he was there again... probably a liberal arts major at local university. HA! Good Fun!