khalil

I'd like to create a Jewish Dwarf. I'd name him Samson.

1:While that is all very well and good in theory, IWD doesn't give any moments to roleplay or develop a character. 2:I liked the combat in TOEE, whereas I did not like it in IWD. Both have terrible plots, but I found the gameplay in TOEE to make up for it. If you don't like turn based but enjoy real time with pause, you'll probably find things to be the other way around.

Yeah, EE used BG2 as a base, so dealing with your archer's arrows became a lot less aggravating.

You can in BG2, PST, and IWD, but not in BG1. The game would unpause when you entered the inventory.

The stats are going to be point buy. I've got no clue about pallies or increases though.

What does this even mean? In Icewind Dale, The PLAYER is the one who creates those characters, remember? If they're boring then blame falls on the lazy player who 1) didn't try to role play those characters, 2) didn't take some time to write anything in the Biography section of those characters. But I get it. We've been seduced by Bioware-drama. Where characters aren't interesting unless you can romance them. And plots suck unless they're delivered via long cinematic cut scenes <gag> Assuming I understand what your post, you are claiming that a blank page is the best story ever because you can write anything on it, and if I find the blank paper boring it's my fault for not writing an interesting story on it. I don't buy a game so I can make up my own story, I can do that for free. (Also, as a side note, romance is not required to have an interesting character. I'll take Dak'kon over Aerie any day, and don't get me started on some of the mods out there. I saw a single screenshot of the Immoen one and it ended up costing me 2d12 SAN) I don't have a problem with micromanaging things, I just like being able to do them one at a time. I like being able to micromanage a fighter without worrying about the archer running out of arrows and needing for me to fetch some more from his inventory. I like doing things one character at a time. And I really hated how the mage would inevitably get killed by kobolds if I spent more than five seconds in the inventory screen, but that problem was BG1 exclusive. That's the default control setting for Wolfenstein 3D, the first FPS.(Although that depends on whether or not you count Catacomb 3-D, but that used the same control scheme, so the point is moot.)

I personally feel that having interesting side characters doesn't make up for the fact that the people IWD follows around are boring. If the other characters are more interesting, I'd like to have followed them around instead. While I don't mind the main characters not being important, I do mind them being boring. If the characters had some sort of personality, or story, or goal, or anything other than a collection of sound bites you chose during character creation, I might have cared a bit more.

There's the jewish hat, the sedge hat, the kalpak, and probably some others that A: have floppy brims and B: aren't from europe. Also, if we're going to get like this about cosmetic items, why don't we look at the armor in the game we've been shown so far, which has a distinctly western feel. EDIT: Also, I found another pointy hat associated with wizards: the Capirote. It's european, but comes from spain instead of the north.

In Shadowrun Returns (one of the best turn based games I've played in a while) the party members all go, then the enemies all go. I really liked that system, as it was simple, and at several points gave more options than the standard approach to turn based games.

Have you played the IE games? I never had less than 50 arrows at any one time.

Yes, and I don't trust the fighter to retreat in a sensible way. Perhaps this was just me, but I found that a lot of times the characters would go in some winding route that takes him halfway across the map and through huge packs of enemies when all I wanted was for him to move five feet to the left. You are right, perhaps I should go replay Icewind Dale to revisit the epic tale of PC cleric #2, and the tragic death of his lover PC mage #1. If there is a plot to icewind dale, then it fell into the same trap as FF12, in that the story follows some random pricks instead of whoever the story is really about. You saw an amazing story, I saw a string of cliches that existed only to drag me from dungeon to dungeon, ending with a boring twist that doesn't really change anything. You're misunderstanding. I know you pause the game to issue commands, but I dislike how the commands get followed. See above. Have you ever played Dwarf Fortress? It's not uncommon for the dwarves to kill themselves because they decided the best way to dissemble a scaffold would be to stand on top and remove the floor from beneath their own feet or something else equally stupid. Giving commands to the characters in IE games felt like that, except whereas in dwarf fortress you can have up to two hundred dwarves (so one dying of stupidity isn't that bad of a thing), IE games let you have six guys max, so a character dying due to pathing errors is a lot more important. One more, I'm referring to how my commands are often carried out very badly.

You did notice how I mentioned pointy hats appearing in almost every culture, right? Because they do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointed_hat

No. That's not how that works. Not even close. I'd ask if you'd played a RTwP game, but you have. Colour me confused, but I've always been in full control of all party members? Sure, but if I'm busy selecting a spell for my wizard to cast, I can't tell my fighter to retreat or whatever. Unless I just sucked and there's some way to manually select spells for your mages while also moving the rogue into place for a sneak attack. Sure, I can control everyone at once, but after giving everyone orders while paused, I have to just trust that the guys who I'm not micromanaging during gameplay will follow out my orders in a sensible manner.

Then stop criticizing Icewind Dale, because that's its point too. It didn't have a plot. That's the point of Baldur's Gate 2 too, and I don't criticize it for having fighting be the main method of advancing the plot because I was actually interested in what happened next. That's what allowed me to get through the combat, which I immensely disliked. Icewind Dale? Here's what I remember of the plot: Mayor: "Hello, walking cliches with less personality than the cast of TF2! Here, have a cliche. Now go kill some goblins." *Kills goblins* Mayor: "Now go guard some carts so you can have a fight again" Me: "Why do I care?" And that's a good question. I struggled through the dispelling contests and such in BG2 because I was interested in the conclusion, in what Irenicus's motives might be. Icewind Dale had no plot and no compelling characters. A good story can redeem bad gameplay (FF9 and Dreamfall to name a few), but IWD sucked at both.

I find that TB allows for more precise control of individual units without harming your control over other units. Meanwhile in RTwP, if I want to micromanage one guy I have to trust the AI for the other 5.

No, the point is going and fighting to advance the plot. The last FF game I played (9) had less grinding than Baldur's Gate did.

I don't recall grinding when I played FFT.

System and game quality are two separate things. A good game is good on any system, even the CDI.

YES. I hate having to choose between a good looking but underpowered hat or an op hat made out of clipping errors.

You are correct. Arrows are complex. They were still made by dark ages peasants who certainly couldn't afford anything nice. I haven't played cod, but I will say that the Cow Mangler 2000 doesn't make other rockets suck.

Care should be used so that said special change doesn't unbalance the npc though. Edwin was just better than any other wizard options out there.

I like the wizard, although it seems to be lacking in non-damaging spells such as grease or web. Is the inn located in Solace by any chance? Either way, I'll be on the lookout for dragonmen.

I think we should have whoever is the most qualified chose the third one. Given that I've written a novel (Dunces and Dragons! (No relation to the Spongebob episode)! Buy it now! Available wherever books are sold, as long as said books are being sold on Amazon!), that'd probably be me. Don't worry, I won't be so crass as to choose my entry. You can trust me. Really.

Yes! I loved overwatch in S:R, and the ability to make my sniper shoot the big guy with the huge gun instead of the 1hp mook they sent through first would have been great.

No, pointy hats are not indicative of a specific culture. Here, allow me to go into the history of the pointy hat. First, we have the association with wizards. The pointy hat's association with wizards originated in Norse Mythology, via Odin's guise as the wanderer, in which he wore a wide brimmed hat that hid his missing eye. He also wore a blue robe, and leaned on a staff. Odin was the norse god of magic (among other things), so the connection to wizards should be fairly obvious. Later on, European woodcuts would portray wizards, dwarfs, and witches as having pointy hats, thus leading to the modern association. Thus, while it does fall into modern culture's portrayal of wizards, it also falls into that of the norsemen, as well as 17th century fairy tales. As far as the hat itself, conical hats appear in a number of cultures due to the ease of manufacture. It's like saying pants are associated with a particular culture.