Gromnir

poison can do more than constitution damage, and cure disease during battle is not always so easy to pull off... nwn2 disease incubation periods seems to take rounds rather than hours or days. more than once we seen disease incubate while battle were still continuing. poison, disease and level drain is all a real pain for Gromnir, though level drain is worstest. elanee, the only priest available til more than mid-way through game, is a druid, not a cleric. as such she cannot cast full restoration. she gots access to lesser restoration and neutralize poison and cure disease, but those are all 3rd level spells... same level as call lightning. do you honestly load elanee up with cure disease, lesser restoration, and neutralize poison if you not know you is gonna need those spells? reload. btw, death ward is a 5th level druid spell. clerics get at 4th level. oh, and these boards ain't quite same as bio boards... yet. not really. 1 "sour-grapes" thread as they call it at bio... just 1. threads here get closed when they becomes flamefests, but derek french and chris priestly simply close such threads at bio as soon as they get started. in any event, auto-ressurect seriously nerfs game. whatever rationalizations roshan or spider wants to use, if you were playing bg1 or iwd2 or bg2 and half you party gots killed during battle, chances are you would reload and no doubt you would thinks battle had been tough. maybe you thinks that such death and raise from death rules is too burdensome for crpgs, but such rules does factor into CR and basic notions of relative difficulty of battles. take out such things and you gimps CRs. HA! Good Fun!

"Even if dire charm didnt wear off after the succubi died, it did wear of eventually, and the game didnt end when you were only left with only dire charmed characters. So the solution was always to simply let you dire charmed characters kill your uncharmed characters, and then wait till the dire charm wore off and all your characters resurrected." last thing. this kinda stuff is maybe the difference 'tween what Gromnir considers difficult and roshan's/spider's notions. if we lost party member(s) during a fight, then it werren't easy. auto-resurect made painless, but fight were not easy from our pov. sure, we had on highest difficulty setting, but based on our reading there not be much difference'tween hardcore and highest, not really. lose a party member in a d&d game is not an easy fight. we lost party memebers in the warehouse battle and the second warehous battle with githyanki and blade golem... as well as a half dozen or so other battles... more frequent deaths as game progressed. if you had been playing bg1, or any other d&d game you woulda' been replaying those battles numerous times, and they woulda' seemed hard 'cause of replays. oh, and 'cause we didn't craft, and we almost never used gith or warlock 'less we had to, the end portion o' gam,e were ridiculous... 'cause equipment makes the character. gith and warlock were pretty much butt naked after keep battles, and there were no opportunity to re-equip party before endgame section... and we weren't gonna replay whole keeps battles again just to re-equip. also, restoration AFTER a battle not so much help during battle. is the debilitating effects of poison, disease, life drain DURING battle that makes more difficult. gonna have to wait til after 5:00pm to get more from Gromnir. HA! Good Fun!

tough to read your post... but we notice where you claim we take some quote of yours out of context... 'course you editied in the "gameplay" bit after Gromnir were already in the process of responding to your post. *shrug* HA! Good Fun! edit: ah, you fixed... we will respond later. disagree with you on just 'bout everything though. go figure. will note quickly that we don't see how you can divorce critical path and story aspects as a whole with a game like bg2.

Just a small correction, but petrification is one of the effects of Prismatic Spray, and the only one triggering in the non-1.03b version of the game. Petrification, though, does go away similarly to death. I learned this when Neeshka failed a Will save vs. confusion, attacked Sand, and Sand hit her with Prismatic Spray. It's happened a couple of other times since then. The petrification effect seems to last longer than death, though I might have been kept in combat for a while and not known it. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> good to know. we never seen a baddie use any disitegrate or prismatic spray effects, so we assumed they were not in oc bag of baddie weapons. though it is kinda lame that petrification wears off, just as does death. btw, we would post more at bio regarding nwn2, but derek french and the mods there seems to have decided that people who simply wanna complain 'bout game bugginess or performance must needs do so in a specific thread. get locked otherwise. got nothing 'gainst lockage when a guy wants to spam board with "I HATE OBSIDIAN!" posts, but lock any thread started to complain 'bout game is somehow more than a little disturbing to Gromnir. am hopeful that obsidian not take a similar approach in this place. you can complain, but all complaints must be type-written and deposited in the round file next to josh's desk? that would be unfortunate. HA! Good Fun!

ps keep in mind that auto-resurrect also meant that some of the most horrible weapons of enemies were not available to the baddies in nwn2. no disintegrate or petrification effects 'cause those gots a duration that lasts beyond death. no wonder we not see no beholders. HA! Good Fun!

please point out the low level spell that makes you simultaneous immune to disease, poison and level drain? in any event, the great thing 'bout free crafting is that you can switch those items in your equipment slots to suit needs. fight undead? put amulet of health in slot. fight dragons? put in natural armour amulet. am not sure why you thinks that you needs keep in one amulet for always and ever. crafting gives us more opportiunities to tailor equipment. and there were more than just 2 tough fights in game...'less you used crafting. the entire end dungeon area were a pain in our arse, because of stoopid inventory issues and inability to rest. 'course if we had all the best possible equip it might have been easy. and succubi were not that easy the first time we encounterd. gotta reload and memorize 'nuff protection from evil spells to protect whole party form dire charm. got pretty easy afterwards, but the stoneskin scenario pretty much applies to a number of other potential enemies as well. and you far overstate the level 9 scenario. your party gets wiped out and chances are you never make it back to a temple... and even if you do get there you has had to spend loads of gold and time and resources to gets your party cleric raised so that he/she can then raise rest of party. ... in any event, you is kinda kooky. crafting ain't busted 'cause game is already too easy insofar as combats is concerned, but you is also in favor of auto ressurect, which cheapens pains of combat. but by same token you don't play the games for story anand character interaction. ... is simply a time filler or something? am agreeing that iwd had better story than bg1. is arguable 'bout bg2, but we thinks you overstate for effect. iwd had advantage of being one story rather than many and so it maybe seemed a little more cohesive. bg2 story were not simply critial path. there were all those sidequests and joinable npcs as well. so, sarevok were better because he were cliche and 1 dimensional? we thinks you again try too hard to make a point. irenicus needed more background development, but he were more than an evil laugh echoing from a suit of armour. sarevok/bg1 were actually kinda campy, but maybe you dig camp. btw, in nwn2 you not have to be good to make a holy weapon. hell you not even have to be evil to take evil domain. gith chick can make holy weapons, but again, you is kinda missing the point on this one as elanee is available much earlier and can also makes holy weapons. HA! Good Fun!

re: sarevok. ok, sarevok's seeming assumption that he would become a god if he were cause of mass death in region seems a bit... wacky. heck, the events of Throne of Bhall seems to suggest that sarevok's plan were a pretty bad way to makes himself the winner in the Child o' Bhall sweepstakes, but putting that aside for a second... what were point of artificial iron shortage again? sarevok gots his bandits raiding the sword coast for iron. they raid for iron 'cause of iron shortage caused by "tainted mines"... which were 'bout the most stoopid and unwieldy way to creates economic and military havoc on sword coast we could ever come up with. mines is dangerous already, so why not simply cause collapse of nashkel (and presumably other) mines. end up with same effect w/o leaving evidence and easy opportunity for uncovering tangled plot. but instead sarevok opts to hire an army of kobolds to run 'round corrupting individual ore deposits with evil green fluids? huh? in any event, the bandit raids were accomplishing similar results w/o wacky plot nonsense. bandits raiding major trade routes is somehow better if they is raiding for iron in particular? bio guys can come up with any one of a dozen reasons to be increasing bandit activity in region north of amn, but somehow james ohlen says to self that if they got iron throne, then somehow iron shortage makes sense? can go further if you want, but again, if you begin to looks at sarevok plan for even a moment or two you see just how insane it is. as to crafting and where we were going... we weren't really going nowhere, other than to point out just how powerful such crafting is. in a game already made easier than it needed to be 'cause of auto-ressurect, the ability to makes artifact-level weapons at relatively low levels w/o a corresponding xp hit makes game that much more of a cake walk. we avoided crafting in nwn2, but much as crafting in kotor 2 seemed more than a little unbalanced, so too does nwn2 crafting. HA! Good Fun!

"Yeah, but if we're only looking at the hard stats they really don't make that much difference. The best you can get in the way of weapons is a Cold Iron +5 weapon with two types of elemental damage tacked on (or one plus holy, although then you need to be a cleric yourself I think, unless Elanee has Bless?" you is joking, right? a succubi casts stoneskin and given goofy nwn2 dr rules you is stuck bashing her til stoneskin comes down.. that is unless you gots your nifty holy adamantine weapon, which hits everything and pretty much bypasses every kind of dr in the game. see, the cold iron that works so well 'gainst demons don't do nothing 'gainst stoneskin. what were the best greatsword in game? the golem blade were a +3 weapon that did additional slash damage and massive criticals, and that were found real close to end of game. you honestly think that such a weapon compares to a +5 holy silver greatsword with vampiric regeneration... or a +5 holy admantine weapon? you is kidding, no? could make our uber weapon much earlier too. +5 fortified mithril plate? there were such armour in game available? add +5 enchantment to an umber hulk tower shield? amulet of health makes wearer immune to level drain, poison, disease... and requires a 5th level caster. wow. some of the most devistating and common attack forms in nwn2, and you can gives multiple party members complete immunity. we thinks we found one of those in game, but we can make multiple if we so desire. wands is overlooked. craft wand to make for any 4th level or lower spell, right? any character with umd can use a wand. neeshka and ammon jerro and possibly your pc sudden becomes pretty damn effective buffers. and at high levels there still ain't no comparison 'tween found stuff and made. those +8 stat boosters not only get you extra spells for casters, but they improve your dc... which if you ain't figured out by now is pretty darn important. find any +8 stat boosting items in game? how many? a cleric with a belt of cloud giant strength and a peripat of wisdom +8? you found that stuff in game? outfit MULTIPLE party members with those items. and please do not overlook fact that you can make items that fit your characters. casavir were set up fromstart to wield a warhammer... so we could make whatever warhammer we wished for him. best warhammer in game were only usable by dwarves. tough luck for casavir, and tough luck for people who turned khelgar into a monk, eh? second best warhammer we found were that lost empire thing. pretty crappy compared to what we could make if we had wished to. instead we had casavir wielding the waking dragon falchion near end of game... monkey gripped. hardly optimal. btw, holy attribute requires cure critical wounds, which elanee gets pretty early.... and gith chick can cast. have elanee do armours and weapons, sand do wondrous items, and you can make most good stuff possible... early. "Computer games and PnP are not the same." exactly. THIS computer game took a serious strategic and tactical consideration present in pnp and OTHER d&d crpgs and complete nerfed it. oh, and not only were sarevok's plan complete rubish if you thinks 'bout it for even a moment (start with creating an iron shortage by tainting ore IN mines... another mine with a james bond self-destruct mechanism, etc) but he were so damned typical and uninspired that even the biowarians admit that he were pretty much a hole-punch baddie. he did have a good evil laugh though... so if you is impressed by such. irenicus at least had a story that should have been developed more, but compared to sarevok? sarevok were no different than any other bg1 npc: cliche and undeveloped. but sarevok shortcomings were just one item 'mongst the multitude. gonna honestly compare the deluge of bg1 fed-ex quest to stuff avialable in bg2? joinable npc interaction were comprable? character generation choices and in-game quest choices were in favor o' bg1? True Fans. what are you gonna do? HA! Good Fun!

Apparently, the guy who did the sci-fi review is the same guy who did the first (now removed) 1up review. His name is Matt Peckham and as far as I can tell, he mostly seems to dislike NWN2 for actually being a D&D game, which it claims to be, and not an Oblivion clone. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> thanks for the info. we didn't even bother looking at the reviewer's name. that being said, the current 1-up review ain't much better than the original. mr. green seemed to think that nwn2 were a pretty nice game, but found so unplayable 'cause of bugs... which makes us wonder if he played the original nwn. now THAT were a game with some serious stability issues. nwn were the last game we bought day 1, and for good reason(s.) didn't stop green and cgw from making nwn an editor's choice selection. HA! Good Fun!

we play crpgs. vol may not be aware of this, but more than a few crpgs has been d&d. duh. also, when Gromnir first started playing pnp rpgs, d&d were the only option. then came along games like tunnels and trolls and numerous pretenders. since the early days o' role-play we has played champions and rolemaster and gurps and a dozen other systems you probably not even familiar with. also, vol may not be aware o' this, but pnp is a group activity. not being a fan of d&d hardly prevents Gromnir from enjoying the occasional d&d rp session. as we has stated once or twice before, with role-play the rules is always secondary. our best gaming group ever were actually played with tunnels and trolls, which were a terrible system. we give far too much time and consideration to vol's recent comments. blather on if you must, but please try to raise level o' your nonsense so Gromnir and others not have to endure such silliness. 'least throw in a joke or two so we get some entertainment value from having to endure vol's brain farts come-to-life in post form. am thanksing you in advance for the future consideration. HA! Good Fun!

"The engine used in BG2 is vastly superior, but from a design perspective it's debatable which is the better game. I play both roughly once per year using the BG2 engine (tutu) and for me both are roughly the same in quality, but for different reasons." am gonna have to disagree with you here. bg 1 were nowhere near the game bg2 were. story and character development and settings and critters and everything else in bg2 were simply... better, but this is an old argument, and the True Fans will never be able to see clear with the glory o' bg blinding 'em. and as any serious pnp d&d player, at mid to higher levels, the equipment Makes the character. is one of the flaws of d&d. oh, and surviving a fight and win a fight is not the same thing, not in a party based game. in pnp if you survive at cost of have all your party mates wiped out and most potions/scrolls used, then you lost the battle for all intents and purposes. if cost of victory is too high, then you lost. "Oblivion may not be good, from a rules perspective, but at least its not something I've played thirty times already. And, like I said, D&D ain't real good either in a crpg setting either, so its not like we are comparing genius to idiocy" lord knows we ain't a defender of the wotc faith. Gromnir is not a fan of d&d and the way it has evolved recently. that being said, change for its own sake don't impress us neither. HA! Good Fun!

btw, while it has become popular to hate d&d of late, it is patently obvious to Gromnir that to come up with the ruleset for oblivion, the bethesda guys guys didn't get much help from seasoned rpg game developers. if Gromnir were 13 again, and we wanted to build our first rules system and we wanted to make it real kewl with lots of "boss" powers and freedom and "stuff," well then, we might have been able to come up with oblivion rules... if we were drunk at the time. is so many balance concerns and counter-intuitve results that we cannot figure out how anybody could sneer at d&d but welcome oblivion's attempt. d&d is broken in many ways, but it sure as hell ain't any worse than oblivion's wacky rules. reviewers who congratulate bethesda's efforts, but criticize obsidian for using tired old d&d shoulds be ashamed of selves. Gromnir is no big fan of d&d, but je and oblivion didn't exactly come up with a better mousetrap by any stretch o' the imagination. HA! Good Fun!

reviewers is 'posed to be fair and balanced. game developers and publishers is NOT in the business of being fair and balanced. developers and publishers is in the business of selling games... unles you worked for troika, and then your business were to see just how long you could manage to get a free ride based on reputation of fallout... or maybe you were in business to see just how many publishers you could alienate before going out of business yourself. congrats to troika on managing to get 3 strikes before being called out. btw, the reviewers is doing a pretty piss-poor job of being fair and balanced. repost: nwn2 has many problems. is more than a few technical issues. the inventory systsem is a nightmare. auto-resurrection kotors/nerfs combat. play different class or race seems to not have much impact on game. some of the npcs has very little to contribute as far as dialogues is concerned. etc. nevertheless, we is surprised at just how terrible some of the reviews is. 1) we suspect that more than a few reviewers gots some misplaced guilt 'bout nwn. anybody recall the nwn reviews? most was ridiculously good. we enjoyed nwn and we saw loads of potential, but the reviews from gamespot and cgw and other sources were a bit too good. we suspect that more than a few of those reviewers who made arses of selves with their 9/10 reviews is looking for a little misplaced payback this time 'round. "nobody is going to be able to to accuse me of being soft on NWN2, that is for damn sure." 2) the bg effect strikes again bg had a cliche story with a hole-punch bad guy (if vol weren't surprised by Ultimate Bad Guy for nwn2, then we wonders what level of contempt he had for sarevok.) the quests were almost all fed-ex, and the npcs added little more than a catchphrase and a stat sheet. most of those maps peoples loved to "explore" (HA!) had little actual game content on 'em save for a laughably shallow quest and maybe a hobgoblin ambush or two. nevertheless, bg were the first playable d&d game for quite some time, and peoples were so damned starved for crpgs just then... and for those looking for a little more rpg than were available in diablo, bg were a nice change. regardless, bg were a seriously flawed game that somehow managed to becomes embraced by fans in spite of shortcomings. bg2 comes out and improves on bg in almost every way imagined. sure, bg2 had problems, but it were a damned sight better than bg. 'course reality not match recollection of the True Fan. the hardcore bg fan somehow saw everything that were good 'bout bg w/o noticing flaws. to True Fans, bg2 were simply a pale reflection of bg, and an insult to the bg franchise to boot. we suspect that more than a few reviewers (and posters) gots same issues with nwn2 that many haters had with bg2. they is not reasonable or rational, but these folks is real familiar to Gromnir. can't reason with the True Fan... whether you be talking 'bout bg or fallout or nwn. btw, we ain't saying that nwn2 improves nwn to same degree that bg2 improved nwn... 'cause it don't. there is a kinda unfinished quality 'bout nwn2 that were not present with bg2. regardless, nwn2 does clearly improve 'pon nwn and even the suggestion o' that seems to offend some persons. 3) oblivion envy oblivion were popular. reviewers KNOW that oblivion were popular. some reviewers seems determined to compare & contrast oblivion and nwn2. Gromnir fully concedes that bushes and shrubs look much nicer in oblivion than in nwn2. that being said, there really weren't all that much diversity as far as oblivion environments were concerned... every dungeon had a terrible sameness 'bout 'em that only seemed to add to general monotony of the game. and lets us be honest, most of the "quests" in oblivion were fed-ex, and the ones that weren't were pretty uninspired... maybe that is 'cause they secretly hired tim cain to does the dialogue and level design work. oh, and don't even get us started on the bass ackwards rules system that rewarded folks for choosing skills they rarely used as their main skills. in any event, we not see many ways in which oblivion compares favorably to nwn2... other than size of gameplaying world. but reviewers sees different. reviewers sees oblivion as current benchmark... which is actually a pretty safe thing to be doing. by oblivion's standard nwn2 is smaller and has less pretty trees. open game world and non-d&d seems to be "in" at the moment. *shrug* dunno. we not think nwn2 deserves 9/10, but it sure as hell is better than a 6/10... and more important, many of the reasons being given for murdering nwn2 in reviews is qualities that seems to be acceptable or overlooked in any number o' other similar games. it simply seems to Gromnir that some reviewers is working real hard to give nwn2 a bad review. end repost we has seen reviews at sci-fi.com and 1-up that seemed to really be trying hard to dislike nwn2... and it ain't that hard to find reasons to dislike. is there far too few tangential side-quests in nwn2? yeah. hell yeah. you bet your arse that nwn2 is a lot more "linear" than Gromnir would like. obsidian were well on its way to replicating a tim cain organizational nightmare... almost had nwn2 become toee2. josh sawyer were brought in to fix nwn2 less than 6 months ago, and while he probaly did his bestest, there just weren't 'nuff time and resources to keep from having to cut out stuff that weren't essential. we gots a streamlined nwn2... 'least compared to game envisioned earlier this year. they got more content back in game 'cause of extended release date, but this is still a largely stripped down release... and there ain't no excuse for that. some of the joinable npcs also seemed to have needed a little more oven time before they got served for public consumption. many of the joinables appeared to have more to say, but never actually did so. too bad. this game also gots a host of technical and gameplay issues that drives us nuts. nwn2 inventory management were no doubt designed by some cold war era soviet burecrat... make as tedious, time consuming, and frustrating as possible were the goal? cogratufreakinglations to obsidian. also, while we get that auto-ressurect were deemed necessary for plot advancement, it seriously detracts from the otherwise huge improvement in tactical sophistication that we gots 'tween nwn and nwn2. (example: first time we fights a nwn2 dragon we got slaughtered... badly. second time we won, but only 1 party member survived, which in previous games woulda' pretty much demanded a reload, 'less we were lucky 'nuff to have the cleric be the survivor.) oh, and crafting w/o cost is as broken as were similar crafting in kotor2... when every party member can be armed with +3 (or better) adamantine flaming or shocking weapons by time you hit 12th level in a d&d game, then something is wrong. book o' instructions for making holy weapons we found 'round level 15... at which point it woulda' been pointless to continue game if we had bothered to use. but the stuff we mentions above is not the kinda stuff we sees as reasoning for killing nwn2 in reviews. we sees bugginess mentioned and we sees comparisons to oblivion. heck, we seen one reviewer who slammed nwn2 for story had seemed okie dokie with oblivion story-telling. huh? did oblivion have more tangential sidequest stuff than did nwn2? sure. nwn had more tangential side-quests too... makes people use the "non-linear" bs. but what folks seems to forget is just how boring the critical path were in nwn and oblivion. and whereas nwn at least had charwood and a couple other good tangential sidequests, oblivion were almost complete terrible. so if nwn2 gets killed for lack of sidequests, shouldn't oblivion and nwn have been judged even more harsh 'cause they screwed up the Critical Path? no? compelling characters? name one from oblivion. we can recall patrick stewart and that boromir guy from oblivion... and neither one of them is ever gonna make a Best CRPG NPC list any time soon. the success of oblivion has maybe proved josh right... maybe story is not all that important for a crpg... maybe compelling characters is secondary to providing a big world and loads of loot, but Gromnir not think character development is such a tertiary issue. oblivion woulda' been a far better game if the characters had been written better... nwn would have been better too. nwn2, for all its faults were, for the most part, wee better written than nwn or oblivion. ... slam nwn2 if you wish. there is 'nuff legit reasons to do so, but we wonders why on earth these objective and fair reviewers didn't destroy je for linearity or childishly easy combats... or oblivion for terrible story. HA! Good Fun!

nwn2 has many problems. is more than a few technical issues. the inventory systsem is a nightmare. auto-resurrection kotors/nerfs combat. play different class or race seems to not have much impact on game. some of the npcs has very little to contribute as far as dialogues is concerned. etc. nevertheless, we is surprised at just how terrible some of the reviews is. 1) we suspect that more than a few reviewers gots some misplaced guilt 'bout nwn. anybody recall the nwn reviews? most was ridiculously good. we enjoyed nwn and we saw loads of potential, but the reviews from gamespot and cgw and other sources were a bit too good. we suspect that more than a few of those reviewers who made arses of selves with their 9/10 reviews is looking for a little misplaced payback this time 'round. "nobody is going to be able to to accuse me of being soft on NWN2, that is for damn sure." 2) the bg effect strikes again bg had a cliche story with a hole-punch bad guy (if vol weren't surprised by Ultimate Bad Guy for nwn2, then we wonders what level of contempt he had for sarevok.) the quests were almost all fed-ex, and the npcs added little more than a catchphrase and a stat sheet. most of those maps peoples loved to "explore" (HA!) had little actual game content on 'em save for a laughably shallow quest and maybe a hobgoblin ambush or two. nevertheless, bg were the first playable d&d game for quite some time, and peoples were so damned starved for crpgs just then... and for those looking for a little more rpg than were available in diablo, bg were a nice change. regardless, bg were a seriously flawed game that somehow managed to becomes embraced by fans in spite of shortcomings. bg2 comes out and improves on bg in almost every way imagined. sure, bg2 had problems, but it were a damned sight better than bg. 'course reality not match recollection of the True Fan. the hardcore bg fan somehow saw everything that were good 'bout bg w/o noticing flaws. to True Fans, bg2 were simply a pale reflection of bg, and an insult to the bg franchise to boot. we suspect that more than a few reviewers (and posters) gots same issues with nwn2 that many haters had with bg2. they is not reasonable or rational, but these folks is real familiar to Gromnir. can't reason with the True Fan... whether you be talking 'bout bg or fallout or nwn. btw, we ain't saying that nwn2 improves nwn to same degree that bg2 improved nwn... 'cause it don't. there is a kinda unfinished quality 'bout nwn2 that were not present with bg2. regardless, nwn2 does clearly improve 'pon nwn and even the suggestion o' that seems to offend some persons. 3) oblivion envy oblivion were popular. reviewers KNOW that oblivion were popular. some reviewers seems determined to compare & contrast oblivion and nwn2. Gromnir fully concedes that bushes and shrubs look much nicer in oblivion than in nwn2. that being said, there really weren't all that much diversity as far as oblivion environments were concerned... every dungeon had a terrible sameness 'bout 'em that only seemed to add to general monotony of the game. and lets us be honest, most of the "quests" in oblivion were fed-ex, and the ones that weren't were pretty uninspired... maybe that is 'cause they secretly hired tim cain to does the dialogue and level design work. oh, and don't even get us started on the bass ackwards rules system that rewarded folks for choosing skills they rarely used as their main skills. in any event, we not see many ways in which oblivion compares favorably to nwn2... other than size of gameplaying world. but reviewers sees different. reviewers sees oblivion as current benchmark... which is actually a pretty safe thing to be doing. by oblivion's standard nwn2 is smaller and has less pretty trees. open game world and non-d&d seems to be "in" at the moment. *shrug* dunno. we not think nwn2 deserves 9/10, but it sure as hell is better than a 6/10... and more important, many of the reasons being given for murdering nwn2 in reviews is qualities that seems to be acceptable or overlooked in any number o' other similar games. it simply seems to Gromnir that some reviewers is working real hard to give nwn2 a bad review. HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* so for alan exception to be an actual exception to Gromnir general rule, you gotta have small number of folks and voice over analogous to roger wilco? you is working pretty hard here... and strategy games ain't really analogous to nwn d&d combats. again, interface gotta work for other than just alan situations. radial menu is terribly slow and unwieldy for virtually all mp situations (feel better?) so interface can't simply be designed for alan and vol. try not to lose sight of forest for some tree. HA! Good Fun!

your point? again, the interface gotta work for everybody, and that includes pws and mp of more than 3 persons not named alan. "It's not all that uncommon either. The Paradox games are real time, and they involve a multiplayer that allows pause" am guessing that we ain't talking 'bout d&d style combat, eh? in any event, as we ain't ever played the games you is talking 'bout, we cannot say. am trying to imagine everquest or wow with pause... or one of those shooter games. is a pretty damn unwieldy notion in small groups much less in larger ones. HA! Good Fun!

if you say so. we never been in a group where it worked. the more people you get and the more involved combats is, the more confusing and distracting the pause function becomes... and please try to imagine pws with more than a dozen folks on a server, not necessary in same location. interface gotta work for everybody. btw, http://forums.obsidianent.com/index.php?sh...50entry713150 looks like the problem ain't solely a Gromnir issue, eh? HA! Good Fun!

*chuckle* common sense and reason is considered wacky by vol? go figure. HA! Good Fun!

sorry vol, but it doesn't work... not with 6 or even 4 folks all able to stop game on a whim. makes us wonder if you ever played mp nwn. HA! Good Fun!

is not a matter of whether or not pause is possible in mp. no pw we plays on, nor any legit mp session has pausing. 6 different people (or dozens for pws) all able to initiate pause? idiotic. pause is not practical for mp. HA! Good Fun!

the more homogeneous your culture/society is, the easier it is to have democracy work smooth. HA! Good Fun!

you can't pause in mp. 'course, we not care how slick the reviewer thought the radial were for nwn, in mp you is using hotkeys and quickslots, not radial. HA! Good Fun!

"Blizzard games are visually appealing as well, and however "fantastic" the content, it never leaves the arena of what a person can relate to in terms of reality within the genre of fantasy." but lack o' underwear and arms and armour that is less ludicrous than typical stuff from wow shatters your fuzzy realism threshold? ... okie dokie. HA! Good Fun!

"You know what I mean, within this world or any RPG/Action game there needs to be some kind of semblence of reality (sans the spells or magical feats). That's why they strive for because that's why the gamer relates." pretty much every blizzard game exists as a stark denial of your position. reality and realism in blizzard games is stretched to amazing extremes w/o seeming to shatter the Average Gamer's ability to enjoy the game and game world. blizzard not strive for realism. wotc not strive for realism. lucas arts not strive for realism. is game internally coherent... is it rational within the context of the rules the world's creators put forth? THAT is a legit concern for developers, but you cannot simply dismiss spells and magic but get all torqued by underwear. is not realism that matters, but we suspect you just won't get that. HA! Good Fun!

how is Gromnir afraid of skin? we not particualar mind either way if avatars is naked w/o armour or not. is not the skin that bothers us but rather your tenacious defense of a 50 list that gots maybe 5 legit issues. YOU made skin an issue among 50, but you not seem to be able to take a stand on why you think it should be an issue. first it were realism. now... now it seems that it is something else. additionaly, it should be obvious by now that this is not a developer issue, but rather a wotc issue... so we not understand why you would continue to rail when not only has your realism issue re underwear has been pretty much destroyed, but given fact that it has been explained to you a half dozen or more times now that obsidian has little say-so in regards skin issues. "My interpretation of realism is realized and fufilled to my satisfaction in NWN1, but not in NWN2, for many reasons beyond the underwear issue." well then you is gonna have to do a much better job of explaining your concerns 'cause as we can all see by now, underwear not bolster realism, and arms and armour in nwn were as stylized and fantastical (aribeth's armour) as anything in nwn2. "realism" as a serious issue in a fantasy crpg is having a somewhat dubious foundation for legitimate gripeage, but we would be willing to at least consider if you were at least a little more competent insofar as explaining how nwn1 were more realistic than nwn2. underwear? underwear ain't helping your cause. again, we got no doubt that you has some legit concerns, but you put together in to a hyperbole laden list and it makes all your concerns seem that much less valid. Gromnir himself already made a post where we expressed some concerns (minor and major) 'bout nwn2, so we ain't adverse to scorching nwn2 or the developers o' said game, but if you wants your concerns to be taken serious we tends to think you is going 'bout it all wrong. is not skin that bothers Gromnir, but rather the hamfisted manner in which you attempts to gets your concerns addressed. HA! Good Fun!