demeisen

I was thinking about going that route for my 2nd play-through, but I'm finding some of the boss fights just about right for me even on Hard. With Trial of Iron in the mix, I'm not sure I want to go PoTD for the hardest handful of fights, although I would like that combo for the run of the mill fights, which otherwise can be rather boring. But then, I'm playing a bit casual right now, so I dunno. Maybe it'd work out. Just could see getting 60+ hours into a PoTD + Trial of Iron run and wiping when something didn't go quite right

I'm playing on Hard mode. At its hardest - like some of the boss or even miniboss fights - it's a satisfying level of difficulty, IMHO. For the majority of the game though, the general consensus is that it's a very easy game. I agree with that: you can stomp through 95% of the encounters without using most of your abilities or needing to know how the game mechanics work. Auto attack + invulnerable tanks = win. Then every once in a while, you find a nice, fun, difficult fight. So it's a mixed bag I'd say. It's quite good at its best, but a lumpy sort of thing where a lot of the game you play for the story / atmosphere /etc, not the fights, because the fights pose no real risk or challenge. And the atmosphere is really good in this game. You want to play just to see what the next area will hold. Highly recommended game, but for a variety of reasons beyond pure combat.

Some magazines report that Skyrim sales on all platforms have reached 20m. Even assuming PoE should reach 1m after a few years, which I feel is optimistic... something about that ratio is terribly depressing . It often seems that the worse the game, the better the sales.

Do you think those things are mutually exclusive? I don't. I love the game and intend to back and/or buy anything else they make in this franchise Plus, I just want to this model succeed of not having middlemen breathing down their necks and forcing them to cater to the masses who want Yet Another First Person Action-RPG. I also think the difficulty is too easy for about 90% of the game (and just right for the other 10%). Both those things are true at once. Having a handful of things I'd like to see improved doesn't mean I can't still love the game. I'm psyched about this return to real party tactical RPGs, especially one done as well as PoE is in so many ways. *Edit* not to mention, it's their IP! They can improve it as they want, with nobody lording over them and telling them they can't. There's a lot to be said for that, even if I don't 100% agree with each and every choice they make.

The more I play, I'm realizing that hard is about right for me at its hardest, so I don't really want to up the difficulty of the nastiest fights. However, it's much too easy in the most common cases, such as through most of the main plot. That makes PoD not a good fit for me. I want the floor raised, but the ceiling left alone.

<homer>Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.</homer> I'd actually really like to see a future game in the PoE series with some of those dynamics. I believe that might sort of rock. Unfortunately, it would also probably alienate too many gamers raised on hand-holding games to be commercially viable as a default. But oh how I'd like for it to be there as an option...

I have this too (found this thread via forum search), and I believe I had the same or at least a very or a similar sequence of events to TreebeardTheEnt. I used "Suppress Affliction" in a one recent fight, and while I can't pin the onset of the stuck icon to that fight with certainty, it was surely close to that time. Details: game = v1.0.3.0530, GOG version, OS = Linux Ubuntu 14.10 (Brief aside to the devs: thanks so much for making this game. Best RPG in ages.)

Oh, there's humor. It's just a dryer sort than the "in your face" humor of some games. Eder has some very funny things to say at certain points in the game, and some of the dialog between him and other characters is pretty funny too. That's not even to mention something I find wryly amusing: there's this black and white cat (in-game pet) following me around. And no matter what happens... huge battles with 20 armed men, drakes throwing fire around and ogre priests casting huge elemental storm spells with lightning, the cat is utterly unphased by any of this. It's just like, "<yawn> ... when you are all done there human, we can get moving again."

Also endolex, one thing I've found helpful is to not use the spells for a few initial moments of battle until the lines "stabilize", which outside of some particular enemies such as the teleporting ones, they usually tend to do. Once the lines become more solid, you can wander over with a wizard and start lobbing CC and damage AOEs. Every once in a while, I've intentionally landed a CC AOE on one of my own guys, as a tactical choice that it was better to land one of my guys prone for a bit than to keep getting hammered by 15 bad guys. But it was a conscious choice to trade off hitting more enemies in exchange for one of my own.

Once you get a little practice under your belt, it isn't too hard with the two-distance spells to nail a whole bunch of grouped enemies while still not obliterating your own guys. Also you have a few geometries to use: circles (with an inner radius that hits anything, outer only enemies), fans (ditto), and lines. You can use whichever is most appropriate for the situation. I've almost never found a fight where I couldn't use those spells to good effect. It's part and parcel of learning to play tactical RPGs. Often you can hit 10 or 15 enemies while not hitting a single one of your own party, which makes them very effective at dishing out damage. It does require moving your wizard around and using some good tactics and positioning of tanks, but that's part of the fun, no? If it was just a console-style "fire away without thinking", it wouldn't be as much fun.

In PoE, I most often play zoomed in as far as possible... just because everything looks so amazingly beautiful. I'm not sure how they pulled that off with their limited budget. OK, yeah, 2.5D instead of 3D, but even so, somebody has to make the huge diversity of scenery in the game. And make it look good at night and in the day, if it's outdoors.

While I wouldn't mind if people who want "unlimited resting" get a mod for that, because hey single player game, I also think that's not how the game was designed to be played (nor PnP for that matter, where DMs usually won't let you cheese it out). You aren't supposed to spam all your per-rest abilities every fight. The mechanic is supposed to make it annoying to play that way. Anyway, doing that makes an already very easy game even easier. I'm playing on Hard (max 2 camps) and find I almost never use the resting supplies I carry. I often find more of them in dungeons and leave them behind because I'm already carrying my limit of two and haven't needed those to get through the dungeon... and my PC is a wizard. The intent is to use abilities on an as-needed basis to ensure you win without too much damage or risk - more strategic playing - rather than to unleash hell itself on every tiny little group of trash mobs.

Nice review. It aligns very well with my impressions so far at about 2/3 of the way through. Sometimes it seems like how good this game is gets lost in all the negativity around. My only point of difference with your opinion would be I think combat ranges from extremely fun to rather boring just depending on where you are in the game and how your level compares to what you're fighting. At its best, it is an incredibly good time, when you have to use everything at your disposal to win. It's not always like that though. It's a hard problem to solve, in an open ended world with no auto-leveling monsters, so I can appreciate the difficulty they face in doing this well. But the overall game, yeah, it's brilliant.

Ladies and gents - I've managed to find some nicely hard combat in and it's been great! I've had to use spells, class abilities, good tactics, some items, etc to survive. Some of them were hard-won fights! I didn't feel over-leveled or over-powered for it at all. It has been almost exactly how I'd want "hard" to be: "you can survive, but be on top of your game." This makes me really optimistic that tuned appropriately, with some tweaks and modest AI improvements here and there, and with level-appropriate things to fight, this combat system could be just fantastic.

I have no clue what it does either, but I equipped it on Sagani, because hey...Stalker's Torc!

The further I get into this game, the more I'm in awe of just how fantastic it looks. For example , which is amazing to behold.

No: many (most?) of us who think Hard is waaaaay too easy have not done any bounties. I haven't done a single one, and I'd like there to be at least some challenge to Hard after the first few character levels. There isn't right now, because Eder is invulnerable, and the enemy AI is weak. We're not asking to make Easy/Normal any harder. I realize there are people who prefer easier game play, and that's fine: you've got easy and normal modes. It makes no sense to insist that "Hard" also be an easy mode. Let those of us who prefer some challenge have Hard and PoD be actually hard and path-of-the-damned. Stick with easy, if you want an easy play through. I don't want an impossible time, but I do want challenge and risk when going into dangerous places, and the necessity to use good tactics, spells, and abilities. I'd be happy with some mid/late enemy balance, probably. The start of the game is great, as are some boss fights, but if the mid/late game enemies got tweaked so they were actually dangerous to your party, and were a bit smarter, that'd be great. That's really my only major wish for PoE. I'm delighted with most other aspects of the game. I think they've done a fantastic job. Especially the artwork and overall atmosphere, which is phenomenally awesome.

I'm enjoying the game, in spite thinking combat is much, much too easy. There are enough other strengths to make up for that flaw. Everything else is great. The art is as good as any I've ever seen in a computer game, exploration is awesome, music is good, voice acting is good, and I like many of the dark little micro-stories in the side quests. I even like the humor: it's a dryer sort than Minsc and Boo perhaps, but is all the better for being understated if you ask me. There are some genuinely funny moments in this game. I wouldn't say the game is quite up to BGII standards, but that's a very high bar, and not reaching it still leaves a wonderful game. This is their first attempt out of the gate, and it's not perfect, but it's both fun and has got a lot of potential for the future. I'm happy they're bringing back this style of game play, and hope we'll see more where this came from.

Agreed. I think there are actually many nice improvements to this system compared to the BGII combat system. I like the endurance/health mechanic, the limited resting, and so on. The underpinnings are good, probably better than they were in the IE games. But as you say, invulnerable tanks and constantly decreasing difficulty as you progress through the game don't make for fun play, so if some of that can get ironed out, we'll be in good shape. Hopefully they can make the mid/late parts of the game harder without making the first parts utterly impossible. The hardest fights I've had have really been a lot of fun, and the first few character levels were a blast too.

Well, yeah, thing is I'm pretty far along and don't want to restart. If I could drag the slider up there I would. Honestly though, I'm not sure that'd even really fix it. I've actually started a parallel PoD game, though it's not too far along since I want to finish my main one first. But I suspect if I get as far as I am now in that play, it'd still be too easy except for the boss fights maybe. I think the things that are bothering me aren't fixed just by PoD. I so very much want combat to be awesome. And to be fair,I've had a few awesome fights in this play through. They were all much earlier though. It's been several levels since I had one of those, and even then they were rare. But at its' best? It's great! Just needs to be like that.... more of the time.

For what it's worth, I haven't done a single bounty. Not even sure how. Still the further I go into the game the easier it has become, to the point where there's simply not the slightest challenge any more. Even in boss fights. The first few character levels were not like that though! I dunno, maybe if I was 13 and wanted to feel "uber" and blast everything to bits without trying, I'd dig it. But I'm not, and I don't. I want challenge and risk and barely surviving dangerous places by the skin of my teeth. I want to have to pull out all the stops when the going gets hard. But the going is getting easier and easier.

My chanter just got this song (I'm on the 1.03 patch if that matters) I dunno... I think I won't use it, which feels bad to me. I don't like playing with one hand tied behind my back. My story-NPC-only party was already absurdly overpowered, even before I got Dragon Thrashed - no challenge to 99% of fights, no risk, no need to use spells, items, or healing. Now suddenly I've got this enchanter AOE damage that (1) doesn't hit friendlies, (2) has a large radius, (3) repeats as long as the battle is going on, (4) doesn't stop the chanter from fighting with weapons at the same time, and (5) can be used each and every fight, rather than a few times per rest. That destroys anything my per-rest-spell wizard PC can dish out. And I wasn't even using my wizard (or priest for that matter) because I don't need him. I probably haven't cast a wizard or priest spell in the last 2 or 3 character levels. I haul the priest along for story reasons and because I like the voice actor's work, and my wizard since he's my main, but neither is needed for fights. Ever. I love this game: the art, the music, the voice acting, the story, the atmosphere, the return to a real RPG system, the obvious craftsmanship and love they've put into it, and many of the design choices such as the endurance vs health dynamic. I wished I'd backed it at a higher KS level than I did, because there's that much goodness here. But sadly, the one facet I can't say I'm enjoying is the combat :-/. I've tried to like it, I really have... but I'm just not. Enemy AI needs improvement, balance feels wrong, invulnerable tanks take the fun and danger away, and no matter which difficulty level you pick, the first few char levels are nice but by mid levels it's gotten stupid-easy. (Can't speak to the end-game yet). I think there's a good underlying combat system, and with some refinement, it could rock. But when 3 of my party just tag along for the ride, my tank is indestructible, and I'm purposefully avoiding abilities on the characters I do use, something just feels off.

True enough, this game looks amazing. I remember seeing an early mock-up screen in the early KS days and thinking, "well, that looks great, but I'm sure that's their best foot forward, and most areas will be more bland and copy/pasted". Then I start playing the game and I'm thinking, "holy tomatoes, it ALL looks that good!" It really makes exploring the game world a pleasure. You want to see what that next area will look like. Hopefully the artists who worked on the game will get the feedback somehow: they knocked this thing out of the park.

I think it was abandoned because consoles. Neither console hardware nor the typical console player was suited to the genre.

I think it could help too (not as a cure, but as another factor in the mix) to up the detection range for enemies. Like if you started a fight with your chokehold strategy, maybe some enemies in a different nearby room hear the commotion and come running over... from another direction down a different hall, and suddenly you have a two or three front fight on your hands. In general, battles taking unexpected directions would be good. They are most often very predictable right now, and the enemies are dumb. They'll endlessly try to hit the totally invulnerable fighter, and ignore everybody else. But I do think Eder being invulnerable leads to part of the problem. He's just, as you say, immortal. There's no real fun in that.