MrBrown

You're supposed to moan about how much things cost, isn't that the point? And, well, I should also mention design made to obfuscate the amount of money required to reach content, or design made to make psychologically weak people to spend more money. That's why lots of countries have gambling laws, after all.

Meanwhile... So, x Get money x Alienate your previous fanbase Mission successfull!

This is another level of stupid. Sven, or other people working on this, don't seem to understand the basic premises of RPGs. Players are never free to do literally anything they want, there's always a framework you're working in. If the GM is very good at making up things on the fly without preparation, the framework can be very large, like "you can do anything that sticks to the world of D&D, but nothing outside of it". If the GM is a mere mortal like 99.9% of people, they will have some kind of content prepared, and the framework will be smaller, like "your quest is this, your characters want to do this" or "you start at this situation, from it you can do anything you want". Going outside the framework will break the game, and generally make it impossible to play. For CRPGs, this basically means a GM that's huge on content preparation. That's just how it has to be, technically. If the framework for BG3 means that you have the box, then just force them to take the box. Don't belittle people on the some kind of illusion of choice if you don't want them to make that choice. You can't have it all up to the player in any case; Players will come up with thousands of decisions that would be rational and logical in some sections of BG3's story that they won't have coded in, so no reason to pretend they can do anything they want. It's wasted resources, and an insult to players. But here's the worst thing they can do: Force you to take the box, and then have a character say "You idiot! You kept the box!". Don't make negative-McGuffins.

https://www.reddit.com/user/Official_Paizo

BTW, if you happen to have phones, Diablo Immortal released today. There's also an open beta for the PC version. Played for 30mins, plays a lot like a simpler version of D3.

Bioware made non-announcement: https://blog.bioware.com/2022/06/02/our-next-adventure-dragon-age-dreadwolf/

Oh, Rogue Trader is by Owlcat. Not sure if this is good or bad news. Probably means it'll really be a old-style CRPG, but very buggy and with a bloated character generation.

Unfortunately, espionage is mostly useless. The "intel" part of it works fine, but the espionage actions are just woefully weak.

It's possible to play a 4-year old version of it, using the beta feature. Obviously still not original, but that's pretty far back.

https://www.fanbyte.com/news/activision-inexplicably-introduces-tool-to-rate-character-diversity-metrics/

I know some other games that could benefit from this. Path of Exile comes to mind.

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-enters-into-an-agreement-to-acquire-eidos-crystal-dynamics-and-square-enix-montreal-amongst-other-assets/

And Arena. https://www.pcgamer.com/some-of-bethesdas-classic-elder-scrolls-rpgs-are-now-free-on-steam/

In Lost Valley, I managed to ambush the enemies quite often, yet those encounter still end up with the enemies surrounding your party, you just get the surprise round. Kinda disappointing.

Random encounters are sort of balanced on the idea that you don't have to hold back at anything, since you're going to long rest anyway, so you can use anything you got on round 1. ...But, given that it's pretty easy to rest in the game anyway, you usually can take a long rest every 1 or 2 fights in any case.

Must have misread then.

Started Solasta: Lost Valley. With the classic team of half-elf Paladin, half-orc Rogue, and two half-orc Barbarians. Seems decent so far. One place had a big performance hit due to some graphics, not sure which, and one minor quest bugged out somehow, but mostly it's been good. Also seems like the warnings of "you can choose this skill/language for your character, but it's not used in Crown of the Magister" really do apply only to Crown of the Magister, and not to Lost Valley.

Playing Chrono Cross, released on steam a few days ago. Runs well and looks good. Lots of people on steam complaining about it, some people seem to have a problem running it, while some seems just annoyed it doesn't look better than some hugely modded version. *shrug*

https://en.cdprojektred.com/news/a-new-saga-begins/

Wonder how much it will cost. With the Barbarian/Druid DLC being 9.99...

I liked The Council well enough, I'll probably play that.

I never understood why people think Chrono Trigger is so great. I liked it, but didn't find it that much better than most of the other RPGs of the time. It and Chrono Cross are about equal in quality, IMO.

Also coming to PS, xbox, steam, supposedly https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/chrono-cross-the-radical-dreamers-edition-switch/