Suggestions for CRPGs like PoE

[thelee]

4 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

appears to have the NWN-flavored 3D approach, though.

I seem to remember that DA:I did a pretty decent job making each area have a distinct feel. I didn’t play a lot of P:K but there it felt like “forest tile set, underground tileset, etc” whereas in DA:I there was more of a sense (at least in the outdoor environments) of a crafted world. 
 

But I did say “nearly.” It has a very MMO-y design (lots of mining, open fields full of identical enemies, etc) nothing’s perfect 

[xzar_monty]

9 minutes ago, thelee said:

I didn’t play a lot of P:K but there it felt like “forest tile set, underground tileset, etc” whereas in DA:I there was more of a sense (at least in the outdoor environments) of a crafted world.

Ok, fair enough. I agree that P:K is not that great visually. It is also not that great in some other respects, either, but I still finished it. Even if - heck - the whole of the last chapter was just a mess. The encounter design was so unnecessarily cruel that you wouldn't believe it. (I switched to story mode, i.e. the easiest difficulty you can get, anything else wouldn't have sense for me.)

[kanisatha]

24 minutes ago, thelee said:

FWIW, dragon age inquisition very nearly checks off all the crpg boxes for me; it's literally class-based party-based rtwp. so clearly there is some sort of mainstream market for it. (the system is a little simplified compared to games like P:K or deadfire, but maybe that's why it has mainstream appeal, and combos add some tactical depth that P:K and deadfire don't have) whenever the next dragon age comes around, i'll be looking for it and for anyone who's looking and hasn't tried it DA:I can be up your alley.

Yeah I enjoyed DA:I despite what critics had to say about it. I especially liked the story and the companions, and I love the Thedas setting and lore.

26 minutes ago, thelee said:

cities: skylines!

For some reason I can't seem to get into contemporary city builders. I seem to prefer either medieval or space. So I'm currently playing a lot of Surviving Mars and Dawn of Man. Looking forward to Kingdoms Reborn and Medieval Dynasty exiting EA as I don't care to play games that are in EA.

[Boeroer]

While I liked Dragon Age Origins I really didn't like Inquisition.

[Helz]

20 hours ago, Boeroer said:

While I liked Dragon Age Origins I really didn't like Inquisition.

I like Dragon Age Origins too. I never touched another DA after Dragon Age 2.

I recommend Wasteland 2. It's much uglier than PoE, but the writing isn't bad and the combat is good. I haven't played WL3 yet.

 

 

 

[thelee]

4 hours ago, Helz said:

I recommend Wasteland 2. It's much uglier than PoE, but the writing isn't bad and the combat is good. I haven't played WL3 yet.

wasteland 3 was alright. i personally thought the story was pretty dumb, and the mechanics are pretty facile compared to the typical rtwp crpg, but a decent enough way to spend some hours.

[asnjas]

On 1/3/2021 at 1:26 AM, omgFIREBALLS said:

I gave it a try after reading your post. It has its good and bad sides, and while overall a nice game I wouldn't compare it to Pillars - in terms of design, not quality. It's a dungeon crawler, not much of a RPG. It's been hours since I tried to care about the plot because the devs couldn't afford voicing almost anything, so I skip through dialogue. It seems proofreading was another thing that had to be cut, because the language errors are too many. Speaking of dialogue and errors, when I was still paying attention to it, the characters sometimes talked a little too much like the animated stat sheets they are. The combat discussions weren't entirely immersive. Also, if a game has one elf, that elf apparently has to be a hippie.

The art is good and I feel a lot of love and thought went into the combat system, so those can be reasons to play. But for story - there might be a good story in there, but it's not well delivered.

It aint the game if a lack of voice acting prevents you from getting into the story. Va is as over rated as achieves. Books dont have voice acting or achievements and we still read them. 

[juanval]

There is a new game that is going to be released this year. Very simillar to Infinity Engine and Pillars games:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grapeocean/black-geyser-couriers-of-darkness?lang=es

Edited January 9, 2021 by juanval

[xzar_monty]

Yeah. Looks modest, but I'm going to try it.

[Desmodeus]

I still love good old Neverwinter Nights 2 despite all its flaws like it being buggy as hell. PrC system there is really robust and to this day its fun to mess around in community made character builder module and run them though arena. MotB addon is really well written even though it is a bit too much Planescape: Torment in some places. Storm of Zehir is kinda like deadfire overworld game in low level setting(I thin without extensive grinding just by finishing miningful content you will hit lvl 13 on non level penalty race with non penilised class combo. Its a pain in ass to learn system though, partially because of bugs (like skills not working as written) or even hidden "goodies" (warlock use only half of its class level to overcome spell resistance however eldritch blast 10+ ignore spell immunity despite being spell xD)

[ArnoldRimmer]

Black Geyser looks a lot like pillar but the combat needs work, all the creatures attack at the same time... might keep an eye on this

[ArnoldRimmer]

It's a shame that Obsidian don't license their engine... everyone keeps re-making the wheel. I'd be happy if PoE3 was just new rendered BGs and items for the current deadfire game - I don't need a completely new engine every version.

[juanval]

8 minutes ago, ArnoldRimmer said:

Black Geyser looks a lot like pillar but the combat needs work, all the creatures attack at the same time... might keep an eye on this

What do you mean by attacking at the same time?

[ArnoldRimmer]

All the animations at happened at the same time, like everything swings it sword at the same time

[the_dog_days]

RPGs with real-time-with-pause combat

Old:

The Baldur's Gate series

The Icewind Dales series

The Neverwinter Nights series

Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Dragon Age series

Star Wars the Knights of the Old Republic series

 

Recent:

Pathfinder Kingmaker

Serpent in the Stanglands

Ember

Towers of Time

Kenshi

Greedfall

Sword Coast Legend (no longer available digitally)

Edited January 10, 2021 by the_dog_days

[omgFIREBALLS]

On 1/6/2021 at 11:15 PM, asnjas said:

It aint the game if a lack of voice acting prevents you from getting into the story. Va is as over rated as achieves. Books dont have voice acting or achievements and we still read them. 

I like books, but I don't play a video game for a book experience. Video and audio are tools at the developers' disposal to immerse me in their story. Use them.

[Boeroer]

I agree to the general statement - but Full VO for RPGs is extremely overrated given its immense costs* which makes it a bad choice for games with small and mediocre budgets. The increased immersion (and that's debatable, too) almost never outweighs the drawbacks (a lot less money for other things that would do the game good).

Also, while CRPGs certainly aren't books - they come pretty close in comparison with other video game genres. Adventures, too. 

Same as TTRPGs which are a bit like interactive books. While I like the DM to put on some fitting music and try to speak with different voices it's not really needed for immersion. Makes it easier of course - but often the ton of work required from the DM to pull that off doesn't warrant the outcome (even if it's nicer than without no doubt).

)* If done professionally. And you def. don't want to do amateurish VO.

[omgFIREBALLS]

The problem with ToT is that I find the dialogue to be too frequent for none of it to be VOd. Also what you said about DMs, even if they don't do different voices they can still do different tones and inflections. This can convey happiness, impatience, and so on and so forth.

[Boeroer]

Sure, but that doesn't take a lot of effort or preparation. My point was that often the work (or money) you have to invest to doesn't pay off. 

[xzar_monty]

3 hours ago, Boeroer said:

I agree to the general statement - but Full VO for RPGs is extremely overrated given its immense costs* which makes it a bad choice for games with small and mediocre budgets. The increased immersion (and that's debatable, too) almost never outweighs the drawbacks (a lot less money for other things that would do the game good).

I think Baldur's Gate 2 is still an excellent example. There's quite a lot of voice acting there, but there's also an awful lot of dialogue without voice. And it works extremely well. The combination is just great. You get all the immersion you need, but the costs were kept relatively low.

[Boeroer]

True - my argument was more about Full VO, not VO in general. It's cool (and not very costly) to hear NPCs talk a few times in order to get an impression. I mean Full VO is cool as well, don't get me wrong. It's just so complicated, expensive and time consuming - and you can only do it once the whole text is locked - which often leads to extreme stress during late development. And if you have to rewrite dialogue you also have to redo the VO and so on and so forth. I understand why Josh Sawyer doesn't like it.

[xzar_monty]

My biggest problem with full VO is precisely what you describe: all text has to be locked before you can do it. It makes rewriting a huge hassle. Rewriting should be a possibility right until the end, just like it is in publishing.

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

My biggest problem with full VO is precisely what you describe: all text has to be locked before you can do it. It makes rewriting a huge hassle. Rewriting should be a possibility right until the end, just like it is in publishing.

Rewriting should be possible even after release, imo.

[Boeroer]

I agree. And without Full VO it's easy. With Full VO it's a PITA.

[thelee]

On 1/10/2021 at 6:07 AM, xzar_monty said:

I think Baldur's Gate 2 is still an excellent example. There's quite a lot of voice acting there, but there's also an awful lot of dialogue without voice. And it works extremely well. The combination is just great. You get all the immersion you need, but the costs were kept relatively low.

For historical reminder, this is what PoE1 did. Mostly text, with some key voiced dialogue. As I probably mentioned elsewhere, when Deadfire announced full VO I was pretty ambivalent about it, since I generally read faster than voice actors talk, and having voice actors talk interferes with my ability to read.

As a general rule of thumb, I assume that any game with full VO had to sacrifice a lot in terms of dialogue reactivity depth. Generally I've been correct, and Deadfire is probably the first real time I've ever seen full VO *and* extensive dialogue reactivity. Not only was the VO expensive, it was probably disproportionately expensive compared to their budget as a result.

Fortunately, the success of Disco Elysium tells me that Josh Sawyer's big concern has not materialized: that OBS had contributed to escalating the indie RPG cost by making it minimum stakes to have full VO for RPGs. I don't think many people complained that Disco Elysium was missing full VO.

Edited January 11, 2021 by thelee