No more GM sucker punches, and the gameplay challenges thereof

[Cubiq]

He gives you general info about the area and you should follow his info, instead you explored and payed the price.

No, no he does NOT, stop making **** up, since you clearly haven't even read the conversation.

When you ask him to tell you about the area, he just tells you that he gets along with most of the people in the area, but i might be different for the player.

That's it.

The only information he tells you is that saw the mage and the vampire near the Drow city.

He does NOT tell you where the drow city is or in which direction.

And he even encourages you to explore and find a better way to get in to the city.

I personally never had the issues you encountered, nor have I heard anyone complain about the Beholder area, in fact I have heard people complain about the Illithid more.

Ohh my god

Who even cares how "hard" the the area is???

The point of the discussion was that you should be forewarned before getting teleported in to the attack range of a monster that can 1 hit kill you.

 

Also if you used auto-pause you could have easily backtracked out of the area. I don't think you really get what a sucker punch is.

Hahaha the desperation.

Somehow i should have gone to the options to enable autopause just for this occasions, even though it's off by default. Because i should predict that at 1 point in the game i'm going to get 1shotted 1 second after the loading screen? Are you shi**ing me?

 

That is the price of non-linearity and speeding through without information.

It's pretty clear you don't know a thing about the game and your best argument is that i should somehow know telepathically that i should have gone North instead of East at one of the crossroads.

And you also proved you don't even know what the quest choice were, since you couldn't even name the 3 options correctly you have to complete it.

Maybe you should take your own advice and actually read the conversations instead if trying to tell others how they are "speeding" through it.

 

[Jarrakul]

Speaking of someone who's had a LOT of experience with Baldur's Gate, and has no significant problem beating anything the game can throw at me... yeah, that first room of the beholder lair is blatantly unfair, and the only reliable way to beat it is to be blatantly unfair back. That's kind of the whole shtick with beholders, really, but that first room with an elder orb and another beholder right after a party-required area transition is just pointlessly mean. After all, normally you'd just send one party member in with the Shield of Balduran or something, but here you have to know the battle is coming (and even if you know that area has beholders, you don't know that you're going to be transported right next to two of them with no warning) and prepare accordingly with Protection from Magic scrolls and similar. And even most preparations don't work very well, because of the beholders' anti-magic ray. To be totally honest, if I were doing a hardcore playthrough, I wouldn't set foot in there. The rest of the dungeon is fine, with proper preparation (although the fact that "proper preparation" requires buying an item in the chapter before and can't be accessed from the Underdark makes it quite the sucker-punch anyway), but that first room is just stupid.

 

And as for mind flayers being worse than beholders... mind flayers don't dispel the millions of effects that make you immune to their crowd control. Beholders do. To counter them, you really need either the Shield of Balduran (which isn't available from the Underdark) or the Cloak of Mirroring (which is a missable drop in an area that you can easily skip accidentally). Yes, if you have either of those items, you can mop up, but if you don't, or if your whole party is forced into the fight at once for reasons that don't actually make sense, you're pretty much at the mercy of luck.

[Sarex]

@Cubiq

 

It is really no ones fault that you are bad at the game, auto-pause on encounter is there for a reason, use it. The beholder lair is not a sucker punch, it's just you being unprepared. As for me not remembering every single dialogue in the game, well so what, you had the game installed and still had to go back and check it, and by the look of things you are still in the underdark area. You can wine and be rude all you want, I showed you that you can avoid the conflict, that you don't know how to use the features of the game is no ones fault but your own.

 

 

Speaking of someone who's had a LOT of experience with Baldur's Gate, and has no significant problem beating anything the game can throw at me... yeah, that first room of the beholder lair is blatantly unfair, and the only reliable way to beat it is to be blatantly unfair back. That's kind of the whole shtick with beholders, really, but that first room with an elder orb and another beholder right after a party-required area transition is just pointlessly mean. After all, normally you'd just send one party member in with the Shield of Balduran or something, but here you have to know the battle is coming (and even if you know that area has beholders, you don't know that you're going to be transported right next to two of them with no warning) and prepare accordingly with Protection from Magic scrolls and similar. And even most preparations don't work very well, because of the beholders' anti-magic ray. To be totally honest, if I were doing a hardcore playthrough, I wouldn't set foot in there. The rest of the dungeon is fine, with proper preparation (although the fact that "proper preparation" requires buying an item in the chapter before and can't be accessed from the Underdark makes it quite the sucker-punch anyway), but that first room is just stupid.

 

And as for mind flayers being worse than beholders... mind flayers don't dispel the millions of effects that make you immune to their crowd control. Beholders do. To counter them, you really need either the Shield of Balduran (which isn't available from the Underdark) or the Cloak of Mirroring (which is a missable drop in an area that you can easily skip accidentally). Yes, if you have either of those items, you can mop up, but if you don't, or if your whole party is forced into the fight at once for reasons that don't actually make sense, you're pretty much at the mercy of luck.

 

On my first play through I didn't even have the shield of Baldurian, I just summoned elementals and let them aggro the Beholders. As for the first room it's not that bad, especially if you auto-pause. Not to mention that you can cast mass invisibility and just go to the main chamber and kill the Boss Beholder, thus avoiding most of the conflict if you want, but who would want to miss all that xp.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Sarex

[Mr. Magniloquent]

A suckerpunch happens when you don't see what the hell you could have done differently, you have no way of figuring it out without consulting a guide, and you can't come back to it later for whatever reason.

 

I'll give an example that happened to me in BG1 (TOTSC, to be exact): the fight with Karoug in Balduran's ship. It is bulls**t, and the reasons why are legion......

......And you have to beat him to complete the questline, even though the writers could easily have provided you with a perfectly acceptable nonviolent solution. And you have to complete the questline to get off the island.

 

That's a suckerpunch.

 

I'll definitely agree with you on the "and you have to complete the quest-line to get off the island" bit. I will likewise agree about the traps in the Captain's Cabin, but everything else...I felt like those were appropriate. The quest is designed for higher level characters, any +2 weapon can harm Karroug. This includes the "Spiritual Hammer" spell. You should have at least one of these by then. If not, there is the Silver Dagger. It's known that the monsters live on the ship, so it's reasonable to expect their leader makes it den there. Karroug is a "Loup Garou"--very powerful Werewolf, his abilities are reflective of this. He's difficult for sure, but he's supposed to be.

 

Your points are reasonable and persuasive though. I may be just an apologist of sorts, but I'm overall OK with that quest. To me, there perhaps.....5 sucker punches in the BG Saga. There are probably others, but these are the ones which stand-out in my mind the most.

 

1. Durlag's Tower Chess Game. The chess board is both incredibly damaging and broken while the AI is unaffected by it. You cannot scout, nor do you have any prior indication that this battle is coming. You cannot walk away from it. One moment you're going down stairs, the next you are stuck in a broken murder puzzle.
2. The Twisted Rune. Woe be undo you if you have a Rogue Stone in your pack. Inescapable death trap with epic level foes accessible early in game with no prior warning or scouting ability.
3. The two Beholder "greeters" in the Beholder City. True, you can leave immediately. However, given each Beholder's ability to take 6 powerful actions per round...that's not a good enough excuse.
4. Inn Lich of BG2. Walk through a hidden door in an early part of the game, find a Lich in a tiny tiny space. Time Stop, Meteor Swarm, Gate.....dead party of level 9 adventurers.
5. The almighty Kangaxx. "Trap the Soul" ability. We've all experienced it. That being said, it was supposed to be a tongue-and-cheek tribute to Mr. Gygax. In the grand scope of things, it is forgivable. As towards game play--not forgivable.

 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

 

So when you played the game you were walking around the Underdark with every possible buff in the game, while sacrificing all your offensive spells, even though you could easily encounter something that you can only hurt with magic, or something with enough regeneration that requires you to focus purely on offense, like the Kuo-Toa boss you face in the western cave?

 

I doubt you did, and your expectancy of others to do that is unrealistic.

 

 

Hehe, you got me there!

 

You see, back in the day, when playing the IE games, I played them very slowly and methodically (while later, in games like NWN1 & 2, I rarely used pause at all). I buffed very systematically and dished it out with variation. It was sometimes boring as hell, but I did. My hours invested in BG 1 & 2 are hundreds and hundreds. So let me dispel that doubt. However, I don't expect people to play that way. I just expect them to be wary and expect dangerous situations when they enter the Underdark. Mind you, my relative success in playing that kind of CRPGs is also reliant on my having been a D&D buff for decades, so my meta-knowledge is absurdly huge. I enter those games with an enormous advantage, and that is unfair all by itself. That's why I look forward to PE being new in all respects - setting-wise, rule-wise, tactics-wise.

Edited April 4, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Jarrakul]

*snip*

The quest is designed for higher level characters, any +2 weapon can harm Karroug.

 

I dunno what mods you're playing with, but that's not true in the base game. Karoug can only be hurt by the silver dagger, the Sword of Balduran, the Flame Brand, and I think the bastard sword +1/+3 vs. shapechangers. It's possible there's one or two more, but I can't think of them. And spells, which admittedly is a big category.

 

 Sarex said:

 

On my first play through I didn't even have the shield of Baldurian, I just summoned elementals and let them aggro the Beholders. As for the first room it's not that bad, especially if you auto-pause. Not to mention that you can cast mass invisibility and just go to the main chamber and kill the Boss Beholder, thus avoiding most of the conflict if you want, but who would want to miss all that xp.

 

See, when you say things like this, I question how well you remember that part of the game. The boss beholder was one of the two in that first room. There was another one in the dungeon, but the one that dropped the eye was at the very start. You don't sneak past anything. And I'll admit I'm not 100% certain, but I think I remember him casting True Seeing if you try to sneak past him.

 

As for summons, I'll admit that I forgot about that. Of course, it only works because beholders won't use their eye rays on summons for no apparent reason, which seems like a pretty clear exploit to me. But hey, fight unfairness with unfairness if you want. Just don't design games that way.

[Sarex]

See, when you say things like this, I question how well you remember that part of the game. The boss beholder was one of the two in that first room. There was another one in the dungeon, but the one that dropped the eye was at the very start. You don't sneak past anything. And I'll admit I'm not 100% certain, but I think I remember him casting True Seeing if you try to sneak past him.

 

As for summons, I'll admit that I forgot about that. Of course, it only works because beholders won't use their eye rays on summons for no apparent reason, which seems like a pretty clear exploit to me. But hey, fight unfairness with unfairness if you want. Just don't design games that way.

 

 Damn you are right, I mixed it up with this http://mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate2/maps/ar0205.html(talk about reusing areas http://mikesrpgcenter.com/bgate2/maps/ar2101.html). You could bypass the whole thing with mass invisibility. As for the summons, they are a lesser cheese to me then the shield of the Baldurian, but I guess it is a kind of reward for investing in to the shield early game without previous knowledge.

Edited April 4, 2014 by Sarex

[Cubiq]

 I showed you that you can avoid the conflict,

And i showed you that it is completely based on luck.

As is the autopause button since there is no prior indication for you to enable it just for such an occasion.

Thus the definition of a suckerpunch.

 

I'm not even going to bother going in to the rest of the post where you've been making stuff up in every post and then calling me bad at the game....

[Jarrakul]

As for summons, I'll admit that I forgot about that. Of course, it only works because beholders won't use their eye rays on summons for no apparent reason, which seems like a pretty clear exploit to me. But hey, fight unfairness with unfairness if you want. Just don't design games that way.

 

Make no mistake, I don't really advocate the Shield of Balduran as a game design choice either. But as cheesy as it is, it's very clearly working as intended. I'm pretty sure the summons aren't. Hence, while I'll call them both cheese (which, imo, should be removed whenever possible), only the summoning one is an actual exploit.

 

Also, summoning to kill beholders definitely requires either luck (you cast summons for normal reasons and then noticed beholders didn't eye-ray them) or prior knowledge of something totally unintuitive (you go in there knowing that beholders don't eye-ray summons, even though nothing in the game tells you that and it doesn't make sense). Which, if no more natural options are presented, does meet the definition I've put forth for sucker-punchery.

[Cubiq]

I remember someone mention that you can also use shapeshifting spell to turn in to a jelly which has 100% magic resistance, but i don't know how strong your attack is. Would that be cheesing?

[Sarex]

Make no mistake, I don't really advocate the Shield of Balduran as a game design choice either. But as cheesy as it is, it's very clearly working as intended. I'm pretty sure the summons aren't. Hence, while I'll call them both cheese (which, imo, should be removed whenever possible), only the summoning one is an actual exploit.

 

Also, summoning to kill beholders definitely requires either luck (you cast summons for normal reasons and then noticed beholders didn't eye-ray them) or prior knowledge of something totally unintuitive (you go in there knowing that beholders don't eye-ray summons, even though nothing in the game tells you that and it doesn't make sense). Which, if no more natural options are presented, does meet the definition I've put forth for sucker-punchery.

 

 

Tbh I never noticed it, I just now found out that is the case from you. But even if it did work as intended I would just spam summons and kill them, rest and repeat. Plus my paladin had Carsomyr which helped immensely.

[ReyVagabond]

Ok Back to topic, Suckerpunchs are not cool man! like farting in someone balls! Not Cool!

[Yonjuro]

(Some of ) this discussion is pretty interesting. I'd like to pose a question for any of you who would like to offer your opinion (I'll do a follow-up post where I put some of my own answers):

 

Of the encounters that people have brought up as sucker punches (or bring up a new encounter if you want),

 

a. If you agree that one of the encounters that has been mentioned is a sucker punch, what could have been changed to make it not a sucker punch?

 

Or,

 

b. If you disagree that it is a sucker punch, how would change the encounter to make it into a sucker punch?

 

Another way of saying this is:  When is an encounter a sucker punch vs. just a challenging encounter? 

[Yonjuro]

And, one of my answers to this:

 

 

Of the encounters that people have brought up as sucker punches (or bring up a new encounter if you want),

 

a. If you agree that one of the encounters that has been mentioned is a sucker punch, what could have been changed to make it not a sucker punch?

 

 

 I agree that the Karoug encounter was a sucker punch, but I didn't notice because: 

 

 - I had Khalid in my party (who is specialized in bastard swords when he joins)

 - I saved Aldeth from the Druids in cloakwood which opened up his quest in Baldur's Gate

 - I did Aldeth's quest in Baldur's Gate and got the bastard sword +1/+3 vs. shapeshifters which I kept because it was better than the +1 bastard sword that Khalid had equipped before that (BTW, I think that was done by the designers on purpose). 

 

 If you didn't get lucky and do all of the above, you could have a problem. One way to fix that would have been to put the sword of Balduran in, say,  Dradeel's cabin instead of in a trapped chest that you might reasonably not think of opening until the encounter was over. A second way would have been to have other encounters throughout the game that taught you to open things during combat to get items that improved your chances of winning. (If anything, Durlag's Tower taught you not to mess with traps at the wrong time.)

 

 It could have been more of a sucker punch if Khalid already had a Bastard Sword +2 which might have caused me to sell the +1/+3 sword (you know, how often do you meet a shapeshifter anyway, and how difficult are they really?)

 

 That said, I liked the werewolf island because it was an interesting story and difficult in other ways (mainly that the werewolves hit harder than almost anything you've seen up until then). So, apart from the sucker punch, it was an encounter that I liked. (As I mentioned, I happened to get lucky and not get sucker punched, so I just liked the whole encounter).

 

When is an encounter a sucker punch vs. just a challenging encounter? 

 

 I'll put it this way: In theory, it should be possible to beat the game without reloading (even though in practice that will be very very unlikely). Since there are three people who will misunderstand what I just wrote, I will attempt to clarify it (and they will misunderstand anyway, but I get a warm feeling inside for having tried). My point is not that the game should be easy - I want it to be very challenging. My point is that it shouldn't be necessary to fail an encounter to get the information you need to beat it.

 

To show the contrast - I don't know any way to discover that Kangaxx can imprison from a distance and can't be hit by less than a +4 weapon other than by reloading once (and, if you reloaded more than once to destroy Kangaxx, you just don't know how to play these games ).

 

On the other hand, a dungeon in IWD Trials of the Luremaster had undead spellcasters that would randomly teleport your party members to very remote parts of the dungeon - that made the encounter difficult and destroyed most strategies that players would be using but it didn't require you to reload, go buy something that you didn't know you needed, and start again. Challenging, but not a sucker punch.

[Yonjuro]

 

 

Also, summoning to kill beholders definitely requires either luck (you cast summons for normal reasons and then noticed beholders didn't eye-ray them) or prior knowledge of something totally unintuitive (you go in there knowing that beholders don't eye-ray summons, even though nothing in the game tells you that and it doesn't make sense). Which, if no more natural options are presented, does meet the definition I've put forth for sucker-punchery.

 

 

Tbh I never noticed it, I just now found out that is the case from you. But even if it did work as intended I would just spam summons and kill them, rest and repeat. 

 

 

So, if the beholders had more death spells than you had summons and they replenished them whenever you rested, would this encounter become a sucker punch for you?

[Lephys]

TBH, the beholder encounter sounds like a suckerpunch if for no other reason than you are forced to basically stumble into them by intended game-loadery. If it were a PnP campaign, you wouldn't be confronted with an "area transition," past which you couldn't see and couldn't scout with only one person. The DM wouldn't be all "No, your WHOLE party must RUSH into the next room, immediately, and cannot react to anything until they're standing in the presence of beholders, and have blatantly been spotted!"

 

Sucker-punchery is much more about the execution, as someone already pointed out, than it is about some raw difficulty/treacherousness of a given creature or encounter. Meta-gaming (trial-and-error via saving/reloading) can be a way to figure out how to handle an encounter, but it should never be the way to do it. That goes for "you can technically, optionally, be forewarned about the presence and nature of these creatures if you happen to go talk to Bill the InfoSmith before you actually make your way to the creatures, even though he's not someone you just like run past on the way to them."

 

As someone else pointed out, there are a lot of subtle ways to foreshadow things, without someone even just telling you about them: If something uses petrification, you can have broken bits of "statue-people" around, and or whole forms. Clues, if you will. You don't need to always know ahead of time exactly when and where you're going to face something deadly, but you need to either be able to find out general info about said deadly things (so that clues can allow you to ready yourself to some degree for what leaps upon you), and/or be able to adapt on the fly to a significant enough degree to take the fight from "This is REAL bad!" to "Okay, this is slightly less bad, and possibly manageable, though still really, really tricky, thanks to my usage of knowledge and skill as the player of this game."

 

It's not really a specific recipe. You don't need to know that a dragon specifically has a fire breath attack, with a range of X feet, that deals X damage to everyone in the arc. You should know enough to think "okay, this thing's probably going to have some really damaging breath attack that's going to easily hit a lot of people, and I'm going to need to be ready to figure out how that works and avoid it or mitigate it somehow." Caution handles that. Not-being cautious and getting roasted isn't a suckerpunch.

 

Basically, voluntary caution on the player's part should always have its place. Anything that completely screws you over (even if only in a way), and that only hindsight will allow you to affect in any significant way, is pretty crappy.

[Yonjuro]

Basically, voluntary caution on the player's part should always have its place. Anything that completely screws you over (even if only in a way), and that only hindsight will allow you to affect in any significant way, is pretty crappy.

 

 This sounds about right.

 

 Hindsight shouldn't  be the only way to find out things that you need to know to beat an encounter and, conversely, hindsight shouldn't make encounters trivial. 

 

TBH, the beholder encounter sounds like a suckerpunch if for no other reason than you are forced to basically stumble into them by intended game-loadery. If it were a PnP campaign, you wouldn't be confronted with an "area transition," past which you couldn't see and couldn't scout with only one person. The DM wouldn't be all "No, your WHOLE party must RUSH into the next room, immediately, and cannot react to anything until they're standing in the presence of beholders, and have blatantly been spotted!"

 

 

 The beholder area is kind of a borderline case for me - the first time I went in there (err, and every other time since then) my whole party was invisible (using pixie dust; my favorite spell along with invis. 10' radius) and then, immediately, the elder orb started casting a spell which I assumed was true sight (it was). So, you have a chance to leave or move further into the tunnel before the casting finishes  (I had Minsc go berserk and beat it to death as the rest of my party headed for the hills).

 

 That said, if sticking an elder orb in the entryway of an area transition isn't a sucker punch, it's certainly very close to being one because imprison cast on the PC is game over. It would absolutely be a sucker punch if you couldn't leave without killing the elder orb.

[Sarex]

So, if the beholders had more death spells than you had summons and they replenished them whenever you rested, would this encounter become a sucker punch for you?

 

I don't think that would be possible, but to answer your hypothetical, no it wouldn't I would just need to find another way to kill them. I would probably use spell turning+spell shield+spell immunity and set most of my characters to ranged attack.

[Hassat Hunter]

You should know enough to think "okay, this thing's probably going to have some really damaging breath attack that's going to easily hit a lot of people, and I'm going to need to be ready to figure out how that works and avoid it or mitigate it somehow."

IT's A DRAGON!

 

That's like saying 'You should totally warn people that necromancer has undead followers!, 'you should totally warn people a giant will do massive damage' or 'you should totally warn people a banana is yellow!'

[Yonjuro]

 

So, if the beholders had more death spells than you had summons and they replenished them whenever you rested, would this encounter become a sucker punch for you?

 

I don't think that would be possible, but to answer your hypothetical, no it wouldn't I would just need to find another way to kill them. I would probably use spell turning+spell shield+spell immunity and set most of my characters to ranged attack.

 

 

 

Exactly; this is a completely hypothetical question. So, in my other post, I posed the question, if this encounter is not a sucker punch, what would turn it into one?

 

 For example, putting this area in BG1, say, in Candlekeep in place of Shank or Carbos (the two very lame assassins who try to kill you in the tutorial level) would qualify, but maybe you can think of a less ridiculous example that you would consider a sucker punch.

[Karkarov]

IT's A DRAGON!

That's like saying 'You should totally warn people that necromancer has undead followers!, 'you should totally warn people a giant will do massive damage' or 'you should totally warn people a banana is yellow!'

Hey man I am playing Green Lantern for my RP character, you better warn me if something is yellow cause that is definitely a sucker punch!

 

 

Ok Back to topic, Suckerpunchs are not cool man! like farting in someone balls! Not Cool!

Don't get crazy now, no one is suggesting it is okay to break the gentleman's rule.

[Sarex]

Exactly; this is a completely hypothetical question. So, in my other post, I posed the question, if this encounter is not a sucker punch, what would turn it into one?

 

 For example, putting this area in BG1, say, in Candlekeep in place of Shank or Carbos (the two very lame assassins who try to kill you in the tutorial level) would qualify, but maybe you can think of a less ridiculous example that you would consider a sucker punch.

 

To be honest it would have to be something ridiculously over the top. Kangaxx would have been a sucker punch for me if you just entered the room and he was there without dialog or a quest (collecting the body parts), but he wasn't. You had to collect all the body parts some of which were in the middle of a hard quests, you knew that when you put the body together nothing nice was going to happen. I can only hope that PoE will have a fight like that.

 

What people don't seem to understand is that games have to be unfair to be challenging, AI's are dumb and I don't see them getting smarter anytime soon.

[Ffordesoon]

What people don't seem to understand is that games have to be unfair to be challenging,

Pfftahahahahaha! Either you're the greatest player ever or this is some kind of weird Stockholm Syndrome thing.

 

Ever play Dark Souls? Etrian Odyssey? Tactics Ogre? Thief? Deus Ex on Realistic? A mainline Shin Megami Tensei game? Hell, even Halo on Legendary? Or any one of the other countless games that play fair and are still pretty darn tough?

 

"Games have to be unfair." Wow. Gimme a break, man.

 

 

You should know enough to think "okay, this thing's probably going to have some really damaging breath attack that's going to easily hit a lot of people, and I'm going to need to be ready to figure out how that works and avoid it or mitigate it somehow."

IT's A DRAGON!That's like saying 'You should totally warn people that necromancer has undead followers!, 'you should totally warn people a giant will do massive damage' or 'you should totally warn people a banana is yellow!'

You misread what he was saying. His point was that, because it is a dragon, players' assumptions about how dragons work should be taken into account and "pay off" in some way, as opposed to, "Ha ha, you thought a dragon would breathe fire, didn't you? But this dragon has basilisk powers! Enjoy getting turned to stone and dying in a way you couldn't have reasonably anticipated, suckers!"

 

Whereas, if there are a bunch of dudes turned to stone near the dragon's lair but before you get to the dragon, that would clue you in that it's not a typical dragon without holding your hand.

[Sarex]

Pfftahahahahaha! Either you're the greatest player ever or this is some kind of weird Stockholm Syndrome thing.

 

Ever play Dark Souls? Etrian Odyssey? Tactics Ogre? Thief? Deus Ex on Realistic? A mainline Shin Megami Tensei game? Hell, even Halo on Legendary? Or any one of the other countless games that play fair and are still pretty darn tough?

 

"Games have to be unfair." Wow. Gimme a break, man.

 

Your point? I really don't understand what you tried to say here. None of those games are fair, the computer gets an advantage in each one of them (deals more damage, takes less, has more health). Dark souls being the prime example, the only hard thing is to get used to the sluggish controls and to memorize the AI movements.

 

Heart of Fury mode in IWD2 is harder then any of those games in any difficulty and it's still fun to play. It does this by giving you stronger weapons and much stronger enemies. As I say you can't really make a smart AI, so in order to make him challenging you have to give him an unfair advantage.

Edited April 5, 2014 by Sarex

[Ffordesoon]

Ah, well, I misunderstood what you meant by "fair." Which may mean you're misunderstanding what some of us mean by "unfair." What I mean by "fair" in Dark Souls' case is not that every enemy is the same as the player. My point is that the game never sucker punches the player. Once you know The Rules, they're consistently applied in every case. They're very unforgiving rules, it's true, but there is no point at which a player's strategic and tactical choices aren't respected. Even in the most extreme case, there's never a moment where you feel like the game put one over on you.