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Pining for a BG3? Blackguards review and nitpicks

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IncendiaryDevice

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I've just finished marathoning Blackguards Special Edition (including the DLC) and Blackguards 2 for the first time, and the experience has been such a joy I can't help but express this in as many words as possible and inevitably pine for the lack of a BG3. Enjoy. Or not.

Blackguards (special edition and DLC purchased from Gog a year or two back) version 1.6 English Language edition:

I didn't really have any idea what to expect from this game, I'd kept myself from spoilers as much as possible and was never a contributor to the kickstarter nor a player of any alpha versions. I bought it on Gog during a sale a year or two back while looking for a new game. I had recently completed Drakensang: The River of Time and the combination of Dark Eye rules combined with now turn based combat with interactive environments had me as sold as I can be. What I was unsure about was whether it was an RPG in the traditional sense, always having it in my mind's eye as a tactics game rather than an RPG. I never found out for sure, however, as my old machine wouldn't run it. I now have a machine that can run it comfortably at its recommended settings and I decided to christen this new machine with Blackguards. And, boy, was I delighted with the result. This is not just a tactics game but is indeed a full-on RPG, albeit with some concessions to irregularity of expectation, though these are soon adapted to.

I'll review and score the game simultaneously, the same as I did with Drakensang: The River of Time, by selecting the 10 most prominent features of the game and assessing each out of 10 and then adding them all together to provide a grand total.

Ambiance/Atmosphere/Immersion etc

I found the overall combination of music, colours, setting & art design to be a perfect cohesion that not once took me out of the world nor ever made me feel like the game was suddenly in a different universe nor that any particular area was more shabbily put together than another. Those areas that felt in any way out of place I later discovered were, of course, the DLC parts.

Its one of those games where you can leave it running idle while you think about building your character and find yourself simply marvelling at the delightfully designed backdrops, the myriad of details that vary in every pixel, both static and sprite, while at the same time wallowing in its other-worldy fantasy rhythms where even the greys and browns which permeate the scenes feel alive and vibrant.

blackguards-town.jpg


With each town and battlemap being individually painted and crafted for a sole and single use. I like to believe, and the game does nothing to dissuade this belief, that such excellent variety with a single style is born from genuine passion. What makes blackguards unusual here is also its strength as each of these scenes are merely screensavers with minor animations playing here and there. It was made by developers who primarily make adventure games and they've converted the screensaver nature of an adventure game into a full blown RPG. So you'll never see your characters run around any maps (aside from battle maps), instead they teleport around the world from screensaver to screensaver via the world map. While this seems very odd and jarring at first, it's amazing just how quickly one adapts and completely forgets that this is even a thing which makes the game odd or unconventional. One could even argue its genius if one so desired.

This category was the first aspect to grab me about the game, both because it was odd and because it was still great and felt natural, as if that's how RPGs had always been, and my enthusiasm for it did not dwindle for the entirety of my adventure, only increased and, for this reason I have no choice but to provide a maximum score for this part 10/10 - no complaints and overwhelmingly pleasantly surprised.

Voice Acting/Dialogues/Graphics etc

Similar to the above category, but more so, I fell for the voice actors immediately. I can't speak for the male lead as I chose to play a female (more of that later*) and from the moment she spoke, I thought, hey, what a surprisingly not-in-the-slightest-irritating voice, I'll be able to listen to this for hours! Then the Dwarf spoke. And he was a Yorkshireman. Not Scottish as most generic Dwarves are, but a Yorkshireman, and I was floored. Then the mage character spoke and I was in heaven. I could adventure with these three for eternity: https://youtu.be/7lS4q9qhAXU?t=21m11s each one making masterful use of intonation and subtlety to perfectly convey their meaning and personality. Throughout you get to hear comedy, tragedy, sarcasm and sincerity and none of it ever feels out of place but always on the nail. "If I did this quest I'd probably die" an NPC will say "And what a tragic shame that would be..." comes one of your reply options (paraphrasing, not exact dialogue).

If the game ever offered me a choice to kill any of these three, I'd reject it out of hand and regardless of any role-playing. In that respect I guess you could argue it's too good for its own good. Where the voices are let down slightly is in the fact that the animations don't talk very accurately while the voice actor is talking, they just stand there like mouth-wobbling manequins, but on this point I honestly didn't give a shit, but shall deduct half a point because it is a genuine criticism, just one I personally never really noticed much.

The dialogues throughout the game are all pretty much very enjoyable and I very rarely found myself skipping any text scenes. Even when someone's talking complete bollocks about a topic I have no interest in and couldn't even understand the point of I still found myself fascinated by the choice of accent or choice of words used and nothing ever felt like padding chatter or someone's fanfiction self-flagellation. The course of the game manages to straggle that line between light humour and dark gritty to almost perfection.

In terms of graphics I was not offended by anything (other than during character creation, but more of that later*) and I have nothing to say about this other than this and what I've already said about character animations while talking. In terms of spell effects and combat actions effects, again, the game walks the perfect line between underwhelming and overblown where each effect is both easily distinguishable from another and each looks as meaningful as another and each has its own unique and easily recognisable sound effect. All making it a sheer joy to perform any actions during battle. In fact, one of the game's most formidable memories is of the Dwarf shouting "BY ANGROSH" (sp) as his axe boom-crunches into an enemy, which, later in the game, is even more satisfying when its a one-shot kill.

I'm going to knock off another half a point from the general graphics score because of the graphics during character creation, but I shall discuss that in the nitpicks section for ease of reading, leaving this section with a formidable 9/10.

Character Creation

It's worth nothing here that on many of the YouTube videos of this game the players are choosing between three different character builds when they start the game: a mage, a warrior, a hunter, but in the current version that I played there is in fact only a choice of two with the hunter class having been removed at some point.

Character creation is one of the really strong points of the Dark Eye universe and this game is no exception. You could spend literally hours deciding what character to play and how to start off building them and then never get bored of building that character throughout the game. No complaints here other than those detailed later in the nitpick section. Nothing does great character building quite like a good p&p conversion and this is a pretty damn good attempt and a major hook throughout. I'll take half a point off for the nitpicks and award a confident 9.5/10.

Combat

It is turn-based combat which takes place in an enclosed hex-based combat arena. Things can go wrong even with this descriptive perfection, such as it being a huge drag waiting for your turn while the masses of enemies take their turn or waiting for endless animations to go through their motions. In this game these are rarely noticeable issues. I think I can only remember maybe two battles where there were simply too many enemies and I never got impatient at any of the animations, even in battles where I'd shamefully had to perform multiple reloads. One battle involving too many enemies did make the screen stutter in agony however, though this could have been due to background programs running rather than it being the game's fault and as such I shan't immediately condemn that encounter as a flaw at this point in time.

The combat screens are also the puzzle screens in Blackguards. And here, again, the game shines brighter than many of its peers. There are levers everywhere during combat, cunningly hidden treasure chests, all kinds of foul traps, but also all kinds of foul traps that you can use to your advantage as well, doors to other sections of the battlemap, bridges to draw, webs to hack away, chandeliers to drop, gates to open, fumes to ignite, poison to explode, quicksand to avoid, stalagmites to dodge, and I'm only mentioning some of it all. Some battle screens don't even require you to fight as much as they require you to either just sneak or, more brashly, make a dash for it. Sometimes you can be relieved when you get nothing more than a straight kill everything and nothing else battle, just to break it all up a bit and let loose some BY ANGROSHes.

The AI is also not at all bad, often, but not always, having a penchant for your weakest characters, using all the special moves at its disposal, looking for the best placement available on the map and spellcasters that aren't afraid to tear you a new one. Though one thing I did notice is that there is an element of random involved in the well intention and sometimes a reload with a very mild change in approach can result in completely different approaches from the opposition, especially with line-of-sight being a crucial aspect for every archer or spellcaster.

There's also a huge variety of methods to go about achieving your aims in any battlemap, from choosing to poison your weapon, through three different healing systems, a variety of elixirs to help you out and all kinds of traps and random throwing weapons to compliment whatever your character build is already performing.

I looked forward to every battle screen while at the same time having a sense of trepidation of readiness throughout. There's a few nitpicks but I can't fault barely any of it in a serious game-faulting way so, again am going for a confident 9.5/10.

Questing Generally

Nothing in life is perfect, alas, and this is the first category where Blackguards is indeed a bit weaker than some grand RPGs that make a point of having side-quests.

This isn't to say BG lacks side-quests, it most certainly doesn't. In fact, chapter 3, which is the main meal of the entire game is almost entirely made up of side-quests, dozens of hours worth. It's that the quests aren't really that long or overly-engaging. In that its not so much an adventure to go and hunt the dragon as it is a case of "if you want to fight the dragon then go to that place on the world map and fight the dragon". There's very little sense of really delving into any dungeons or being on the trail of anything. New quests simply open up as you do other quests and re-talk to people, but the new quests are as easy to get to as the last, even if the combat screen is 5x harder than the previous one.

Happily though, its not an MMO case of merely quantity over quality, as each of the little quests are fully fleshed out battlemaps with often much more complex content than the main quest, and none of the quests are those collect 10 shark eyebrows from each corner of the map or that kind of thing. It's just a shame that they all feel small in scope and that dungeon crawling is only rarely encountered in favour of lots of overland darting about between towns with quick one-off cool battles/puzzles.

The game has a food system, whereby you can rest outside of towns by using one portion of food, a meaty leg of some beast, nicely roasted being one portion. And these rations weigh a lot, so you can't carry loads of them about without incurring an encumbrance penalty. You also start the game crawling out a dungeon, where these rations are useful. However, the number of times the rations are useful throughout the entire game is sadly barely ever and most dungeons can be exited from as easily as they are entered, meaning that something clearly went wrong with the design somewhere in this regard and its kinda telling how the food rations were one of the things quickly expelled from the game in the sequel.

So this is a difficult one to score as the quality of the quests was still great, its just that the quests never really felt like "quests", if that makes sense. Its more just stuff that you can do if you want. But, yes, you want to do that stuff. So, erm, dunno really, 7/10 ?

The Main Plot

I can't say I cared too much for the plot of this game. Its standard murder mystery fare which is neither horrible nor outstanding. Someone's been murdered, you get the blame, your memory's been wiped, you go find out what happened until you end up fighting the bad guy. The twists are mostly telegraphed and its a lot of going through the motions and its quite easy to forget why you're even doing everything you're doing. Could care less when XYZ emotional hook in the plot shows itself and I got a greater sense of plot-fulfilment when Frogrim, oops, I mean Naurim, the dwarf finally gets to kill his dragon in an optional side-quest.

Its all just an excuse really, and in that regard its ideal for this kind of game. Blah blah blah until the next battle/puzzlemap. I mean, its not all bad, I'm exaggerating a bit here, but its a bit like any open world game, the general idea is to avoid the main plot for as long as possible anyway, so bitching about a perfectly serviceable main plot is a bit unfair, truth be told. One aspect of the main plot which was nice, however, is that it gave you the occasional memory scene where you'd be transported to the time before your imprisonment and before the murder and play-out some interesting scenarios without any of your usual companions, which was actually very enjoyable and refreshing.

There's one incident in the main plot involving a third companion you meet in your journey which rubs pretty much everyone the wrong way, and I was no exception. Not sure if its a flaw or not, but for the sake of my review it will be, a whole point's worth. The ending is also kinda underwhelming, but I was expecting that so I had no whelm to be undered by. All in all, probably a 6.5/10. Its certainly no Planescape or Dues Ex, but then I don't think it ever wanted to be or was meant to be. There's plenty there for a storyfag, just not maybe as juicy as the tasty legs of meat you might be more used to.

Itemisation

Itemisation is good. Better than average. There's always a reason to browse shops for new items or to look through won loot and there's plenty of named items and item variety generally to keep you interested and possibly in indecision about what weapon/item to use for the next fight. Its not perfect though as there's no things like amulets or rings, you literally cannot equip the ring in this game, and virtually no armour has any unique stats beyond being a part of a set, but the weapons and assorted general items are all in a vast abundance of variety and flavour.

Its no surprise the sequel put a bit more effort into the armour variety and actually did decide to include amulet-like items, though the sequel still didn't really "get it" in this regard, so it seems possibly to be something endemic to either the devs or the Dark Eye system or Germans generally. 8/10. p.s. don't forget to always double-check what kind of damage your weapon deals (more on that in nitpicks).

Bugs and other problems

As far as I could tell, none really to speak of. At least none that I could confidently argue had nothing to do with programmes running in the background. I thought I noticed something that could be a bug every now and then, but I could never be sure and nothing stood out as anything one would mention. 10/10. I always had my own unique save games aside from all the autosaves, but I don't think I ever needed to.

Game Length

Blackguards is a deceptively huge game. I don't know why, but I was always under the impression it was quite a small game around the time of its release, so I was pleasantly surprised when it just kept going, and going, and going. I think I probably burned around a hundred hours on it including all the character creation and character building think time combined with all the dithering around shops and inventory on top of all the content, which I tried to be as completionist as possible. I've no doubt a quick, main-plot targeted min/maxed confident barge through would take a lot less, but who wants to do that! The game provides waaay too much and still left me wanting more, much more. 10/10. Does not outstay its welcome.

Monster/Enemy Variety

Its not all humans, not by a long shot. Even similar to humanoid enemies, such as lizardmen or goblins have their own unique aspect. Pretty much every map will provide a different angle to what you encounter and how you counter it. There's plenty of human enemies, possibly slightly too many, but there's more than enough alternate beasts to provide enough of a sense of variety to gameplay, including, Ents, Kid Kongs, dire wolves, tigers, lizardmen, goblins, dragons, plants, wisps, chimps, golems, mad mages, shamen, giants, insects, etc to name a good selection. Though the main stock of your enemies will be the humans, which, again, seems to be something more akin to Dark Eye or German devs generally, or, rather, what they like to term "low fantasy", which is probably some kind of code word for non-gay gay shit, etc etc or whatever the reason it. Anyway, could have been better, but it was a lot better than some even attempt, a slightly above average 7.5/10.

Total score

8.7/10



Nitpicks

Weapon Talents: Its very difficult to imagine putting use to many of these talents as the only character who's really open to much variety is your own and so the variety is there more just for you to make a decision about at the beginning of the game rather than be anything to consider throughout. It could have been simpler to simply ask the player to pick two types of weapon at the start and forgo so much wasted screen space (and then made the weapon master talent only require two weapons specialisations).

But the biggest oddity among the weapon talents is Throwing Weapons. What an odd place for this. You could just imagine some guy somewhere picking Throwing Weapons as their only proficient weapon during creation and then discovering there aren't any throwing weapons, just one-off consumable belt-items that are called throwing weapon. Lol at them having 1 javelin and then nothing for hours of gameplay. I honestly don't know what they were thinking with this, why a belt-item has a weapon proficiency at all. If it's a weapon it should be a permanent item equipped in the weapon slot. Also, the tutorial really should have made more of a deal about the weapon sliders, something like that is too big to be left to manual hunters.

Talents: There's quite clearly too many dump-talents here and I really can't see anyone going big on many of them before the end-game was already upon them and they had nothing else to do with their points, to which, even then, some of them are a pointless drain beyond all the others.

Warcraft is made useful only by maximising it and getting the free weapon change action. Wouldn't it have been more useful to have had a talent tree that also consisted of a free-action to use a belt-item as well. One of the reasons I barely ever used belt items was because you barely ever get a moment to waste in a battlescreen, and you don't want to be applying your 2 turn poison on the first round (the most likely round to leave you nothing else to do).

Special abilities: There's also quite a lot of pointless special abilities, such as defensive stance and the fact that, for example, spearmen only get three special moves, whereas a swordsman has loads.

The dual wielding feat claims it reduces the penalty for dual wielding, but forgets to tell you what that penalty is. Same with a lot of descriptions for feats. Like the attack of opportunity feats which claim "Enemies suffer a penalty on Attacks of Opportunity when the hero moves past them", to which, what is their current chance and how much does this reduce their chance? Me? I'm just getting these for the initiative... etc. The Marksman feat is even worse as the wording says "May cause a wound" where as the details of the feat state "wounds 1", but neither say what that chance is nor how its derived.

The old "missing when it said I had a 95% chance" is a notable issue with this game's communication. Its no wonder some people rage about this as its highly misleading, because it only shows the to-hit chance, and forgets to take into account all the other factors around scoring damage, like dodge, parry, armour and etc, but then the game should be telling the player exactly why they missed without them going to the battlelog, such as a brief floating text of "hit but dodged" or "hit for zero damage" etc.

Base attributes: Still can't get my head around magic resistance. I get how it works, I just don't get what it's use is in this particular game. As in, whether its worth hundreds of APs, and should the game be clearer about this, etc. The strength stat states it "can increase the damage done by the hero" and there's no damage display and no means to verify how your damage is increased by increasing strength, and why does is say it can increase damage rather than it does increase damage, how is the strength modifier random.

Spells: A mage can be a warrior but a warrior can't be a mage.

Armour: Why does the stat always say zero but have the real numbers in brackets, why doesn't armour do much considering the vast cost and punishments of heavier clothing. Or does it. Where are the details about the penalties for wearing heavier armour. What exactly is ordinary damage and who wields it. What is the mental image of infantry damage.

Nowhere to stash any items.

Not enough weapon slots for given weapon choice/requirements. For example: Bow + Hunting arrow or war arrow or fire arrow or blunt arrow or sinew cutter arrow - five choices for three slots and you have no idea what the next encounter will require. Likewise with weapons, regular damage, infantry damage, fire damage and magic damage - 4 types for three slots and no idea which will be needed. increased as an annoyance by the cost of a turn to swap weapons.

Not enough slots on belts to accommodate 1 bandage, 1 astral potion, 1 poison = 1 throwing weapon. And then there's healing potions and elixirs to consider and you have no idea what the next battle requires.

All the male portraits are shit. I had to go with a female purely because all the males are shit:

83EreoQ.jpg


Why do all the blokes have beards. no baldies, chin or head. three the same, 1 ridiculous Mohican and a blonde... ponytail. Oh come on. The girls are only marginally better, but at least they have 2 blonds to choose from instead of one which is some kind of variant at least. I mean, for such a huge game, this is it? Can't even cope with skin colour changes? Or facial hair tweaking? Or a decent stack of wigs? I mean, like... really? What was causing the individualisation blockage here?


Pining for BG3?

BG2 was such a completely different kettle of fish its hard to imagine a BG3 even being a BG1 worthy successor. While it would be nice to see a BG3, its hard to imagine the devs have the wherewithal to make it and not fuck it up. Would they make an improvement on the 8.7, or would they swing even weirder with a reworked BG2?

I'm not sure. I would like to encourage a BG3 but at the same time BG1 is just fine as is and the parts where its not are not parts that these developers seem to understand anything about anyway, so it's unlikely there'd ever be any improvement over what already exists.

Another BG1 but called BG3 would be ok. Its been long enough for more of the same not to feel too much like more of the same.
 
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Mustawd

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Nice review of BG1. Very informative.

But, am I missing something or were you not going to review BG2 as well?
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Nice review of BG1. Very informative.

But, am I missing something or were you not going to review BG2 as well?

I was, but I ran out of steam. I'll do BG2 as a separate post in the thread (or edit it into the OP) when I've recovered and have the spare time again (ie: next week some time, I expect).
 

CryptRat

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Good review, but I can only disagree with that part :
It was made by developers who primarily make adventure games and they've converted the screensaver nature of an adventure game into a full blown RPG. So you'll never see your characters run around any maps (aside from battle maps), instead they teleport around the world from screensaver to screensaver via the world map. While this seems very odd and jarring at first, it's amazing just how quickly one adapts and completely forgets that this is even a thing which makes the game odd or unconventional. One could even argue its genius if one so desired.

This category was the first aspect to grab me about the game, both because it was odd and because it was still great and felt natural, as if that's how RPGs had always been, and my enthusiasm for it did not dwindle for the entirety of my adventure, only increased and, for this reason I have no choice but to provide a maximum score for this part 10/10 - no complaints and overwhelmingly pleasantly surprised.
Although at least the game makes profit of that aspect by having particulary good crafted battlefield I still consider the lack of proper exploration as a bad thing. I agree that overall Blackguards is a real RPG unlike most other ones but this trend of making mission-based games instead of just making normal turn-based RPGs kind of pisses me off although I would play them any day (and that's what I do) rather than any action RPG.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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All I say is: Vengeance for Niam!

- magic resistance is useless, first it doesn't work on all spells, second it merely reduces their to-hit-percentage, e.g. an enemy spellcaster will cast with 100% efficiency, if you have a guy with 10% MR his efficiency will be 90%, and his spell will hit you anyway (90% of the time)
- armor resistances are also one of the instances where they tried to "improve" on the PnP system and failed
I wrote some stuff about my gripes in that regard way back in the content forum:
1) Itemization, there just wasn't enough stuff. the only characters who were somewhat ok-ish equipment-wise were the warriors, but all the casters, incl. main char, were fucked. I mean, seriously, everyone has the same leather armor, without any special properties, and to add insult to injury, the armor was completely crap protection- wise. How hard can it be to make a mages robe, or a fancy wizard's head, or several of those, with some special properties, astral regen, +1 IN or something similar? (see Drakensang games) Take Zurb for instance, as my primary caster, he needed as much astral regen as I could possibly muster, so he held the obsidian dagger (+3) and the mages rapier (+2) in the offhand. Of course he didn't actually hit stuff with that (no skill points in those weapons), he just needed the regen. So when he didn't cast, he stood there waiting for his mana to recharge and couldn't even contribute some minor damage with his crossbow because changing weapons he'd lose the mana regeneration. Why? Because no other items with (decent) mana-regen were there. (there were stave(s) with +1, kinda contra-productive) I have a hard time remembering any cRPG I've played with such a drought in items.

2) I've gathered from the pieces Roxor and Felipe wrote, that the game had too many adventure points. Can't say I had the same impression. I've always felt starved for AP especially in the first 2/3 of the game. Sure, at the very end you'll probably have anything you've wanted for your char, but that applies only for pure warriors without any spellcasting and only near the end of the game. The reason for that is, imo, how they've designed the spell's and other abilities point requirements (e.g. you need 18 points in the spell to cast the tier 4 variant, 13 points to cast the tier 3 variant etc.) Take the Armatrutz (Fasteness of Body in english version) spell for instance. To cast it with a modifier of 4 you need 8 points in the spell (as per actual rules), not 18. The difference between spending 8 points and 18 is one metric fuckton of AP, AP you will lack elsewhere. Of course, the effect of the spell (in comparison to the resistances armor provides) and the duration are so minor, that every point you spend on it is a wasted point anyway. Same problem with most of the other spells. With such a system in place your mage(s) will seriously lack spells, and thus combat options, since it is so expensive to raise the casting ability, and most likely will end up with 3-4 spells they use the entire time. Lame.
...
I know everyone can just pick the overpowered stuff (Axxeleatus trololol) and spam that shit the entire game. I just think that's bad design. Why do I need to put 18 points in an ability when I shouldn't have to (to cast it tier 4)? With those points I could learn several other spells (more options) or increase my statistics by several points, which would help the char with everything. There's more problems with the half-assed translation of the PnP rules:

- missing stamina rules, which causes all non-spell abilities to be kinda OP, because they can be used without limit
- no armor zones and instead of using damage reduction values for the armor they use resistance-percentages against certain types of damage. For one, that makes it kinda confusing to assess the quality of your armor in a given situation, secondly it makes armatrutz all but useless. Of course the damage you deal, as well as the damage you receive is completely out the wazoo for DSA purposes, so I guess a couple points of damage reduction don't matter anyway. Bonus points for making the heavy armor so fucking heavy you can't realistically use it.
- they do not follow the PnP rules for spells (probably thought they can do it better) which results in grave imbalances, with certain spells being utterly useless and others being mind-boggingly OP (again Axxeleratus for instance)
- OP warrior abilities like 130 dmg hammerblows (dafaq?) and newly invented triple shot
- no flanking bonuses, and attacks from behind (which should not be possible to parry) don't seem to work
- magic resistance doesn't seem to do anything (even fairly high values)
- possibility to change attack/parry values at will - no planning required

Still, BG1 and 2 both are excellent games, it's a pity the devs seem to have given up on cRPGs.

I had recently completed Drakensang: The River of Time
If you liked River of Time you should try the original Drakensang as well, odds are you won't be disappointed, people might argue RoT is better but if it is so then not by much.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Blackguards 2

Was the sequel doomed to fail from being rushed out the door or did it all turn out fine regardless?

Character Creation

The first thing that becomes apparent from starting BG2 is that there is no longer any character creation at all as you are automatically playing a specific character, the central character of the plot. This is quite hard to accept at first and goes against the grain of the first game. However, you are still able to skill this character out however you want, just more gradually over time rather than all at once. And, most importantly, a huge change for the sequel is that you can now be literally anything you want to be with the new skill of armour adaptation allowing spellcasters to cast spells while wearing any armour. I, obviously, took the opportunity to test out a two-handed bashing weapon warrior mage. So, while at first glance, the sequel appears more limiting, it could be argued it has even more character creation options. Some new skills are added, some are taken away and the numbers and costs have changed, but the theory-building remains very much the same, a very enjoyable process.

The most jarring change was the complete removal of primary stats, and it does feel odd to have an RPG with zero primary stats, but then the primary stats were the least well explained aspect of the first game and, to be honest, they're not greatly missed. The next big change was the introduction of endurance (stamina meter) for your active warrior skills (a.k.a warrior mana), so any action points saved from not having to invest in primary stats just gets transferred to the new sub-section of endurance. Levelling up does feel a lot more straight forward with less dithering involved, but the variety of builds available does seem to have increased, making this difficult to score in comparison to the first game. For all that's take away, the new adequately replaces it, so I'll give it the same score for this as BG1, 9.5/10.

Ambiance/Atmosphere/Immersion etc

The next aspect to grab one is the other-worldly setting, an altogether "and now for something completely different". Again, you start the game in prison, but this time you're on your own and you have to battle both your own insanity and the insanity of the prison labyrinth's dungeons. It takes a moment or two to get used to, but once one used to it then it works, and works well. Unfortunately, we are soon back onto the familiar map from the first game and most of the ingenuity of the setting is lost amongst the re-treading of familiar territory. The familiar territory is not a bad thing, its why someone would play a part 2, because they enjoyed the setting, but aside from the opening the game has little new to offer the world it shares with the first game.

Instead of waddling around the countryside with a posse of adventurers, we're now marching around our territories as part of a small army, securing land like in a colour-painting strategy game. The combat is still on a small scale of the group of adventurers but the atmosphere is that of an army on the march. The enemy AI will occasionally try to regain territory as you munch it up, but it's no strategy-game-like AI thing, it's just another excuse for a fun battlemap and some action points every now and then. More so than the first one, the sequel feels much more like a game than an immersive adventure, its repetitive nature doing little to make one feel like one is anywhere in particular and therefore completely fails to elicit the idea that we're somewhere imaginative and engrossing.

Too choppy and too repetitive to ever get a specific hold on anything in this category. 6.5/10.

Voice Acting/Dialogues/Graphics etc

Similarly, the voice acting and dialogues follow the same path, starting out fantastic and utterly top-drawer, but then start to fall apart really quite dramatically once in the overland map and the game gets going proper. This was probably the most obvious part of the game which screams of a rushed-out sequel and one can't help but wonder if they didn't even bother with second-takes on some voice recordings. It almost felt as though if one of the actors had started coughing mid-sentence they'd have probably left it in.

The three main companions from the first game are back, but you'd hardly recognise one of them, and the other two fell much more like spare parts than integral components of the adventure. Much more than the first game, I found myself not even taking any notice of a lot of the conversations, mostly from being so let down by the last set of sentences. Blah, blah, blah, click, click, click, onto the next battle quicker please, etc. The companions are allowed optional romances in this one, even if you are not. The graphics are fine and are as fine as the previous game. Even the big-bad guy, who was mostly comic relief, didn't even have that many decent lines: 6/10.

Combat

This is what this game's all about. It's a wham-bam combat RPG. With the first game I spent approximately 50% of my time in non-combat time-consumption, in this sequel combat is easily up there in the 80% of time-consumption. There's really not that much to do other than apply your action points and move onto the next battlemap. My main character specialised in a speed build and, combined with the frenetic and constant combat of the game itself, all led to a sort of cocaine-like caffeine buzz of a mindset, a Jason Statham RPG, stop zooming from battlemap to battlemap and your heart will stop working.

But this is a thing, something that's really quite unique and interesting as a game concept, and in providing this in the way it does BG2 does not let-up and maintains an awesomely consistent pace throughout. One might even argue this a game which flatly and without hesitation proves beyond doubt that turn-based tactical games do not need to be slow affairs. An action-turn-based game, no less. All the battlemaps continue the theme of the first game of providing a huge variety of things going on and means to approach each battlemap. 10/10.

Questing Generally

I can only remember one side-quest in the entire game, and I think it even related to the main quest. It's a main-quest game. It is possible to argue that a lot of the territories you take in the game are unnecessary, that taking unnecessary territories is akin to side-quests, and, from this perspective, yes, they are. I have no idea how few territories you even need to take to complete the game as, since it was my first time in the game, I took them all, but I suspect you could complete the main quest with maybe only 50% of them. In this regard, all the spare territories were as interesting as the main quest, though, unusually for RPGs, the main quest is actually a lot harder than the side-quests. 7/10 ?

The Main Plot

Wonderful idea, not so great execution. It's supposed to have loads of C&C buried within its many brief dialogues and non-combat choices. Who to execute, who to release, who to pillage, who to reward, etc, etc. What choice of ending slides do you desire? etc. Throughout the game you'll hear a gong being struck as if some godly scribe is ticking off your route to destiny. I'm not a huge fan of C&C generally, mainly because it still never tends to provide what I imagine are good character paths and this game was no exception. I decided to play a lunatic, because the main character does have dialogue options to allow you to pick a lunatic path, but, unfortunately, the ending slides are just about how good/evil you are, making any kind of middle-path provide a coin-flip of an either-way disappointing ending set of slides. This is just my bias though. The game does have a lot more C&C than the first, something that will probably please quite a few round here.

Other than that, the main plot is an unironic (but possibly an in-joke?) power fantasy. You're after revenge and power for the sake of revenge and power. Not a lot else to it really. 6/10.

Itemisation

Following on from the criticism of the weak armour itemisation of the first game, BG2 does indeed up the quantity of variety of armour sets and provide a few more bits and pieces of interest, but there still wasn't that much to separate it from the first game and most of the quality items are just carbon copies from the first game. Again, this added to the speedy nature of the game's atmosphere as less time is required um'ing and ar'ing about what to equip. Same score as the first game, 8/10.

Bugs and other problems

None, as far as I could tell, though I do remember some things being a bit odd, nothing that stuck in my mind too much though. Same as the first game 10/10.

Game Length

I would say its about 40% the size and scope of the first game. Possibly more expansion-sized than sequel sized. It certainly doesn't follow the traditional inclination of sequels to be "bigger, better, louder" etc. Again, wham-bam, thank-you ma'am. Good for what it is, but not an adequate sequel-sized RPG marathon. Everything feels too quick and frenetic for a traditional RPG. 7/10.

Monster/Enemy Variety

More of the same but with the added bonus of three new enemy types, all of which add a bit more of the high-fantasy touch that the first game lacked. The most common new addition, however, the flying insect-men, are over-used and become really old really quick. Their special ability is that they can fly to any area on the map... so... so much for tactics, right... and, yup, in all the 'hard' battles there's just tons of these 'cheating' bastards. Still, possibly better than the first game in this regard as some sense of originality had to be imagined in order to come up with the new beings, something that was clearly lacking in the first game 8.5/10.

Total Score (in comparison to the first game, as a sequel to the first game)

7.85/10

As it's own game distinct from the BG franchise and judged by different criteria? Probably a similar score.

So in rushing out a sequel to BG, they listened to the criticisms about BG1 but provided improvements in a completely different game where those improvements are less relevant by default. I rushing out a sequel to BG they inadvertently created a choose you're own adventure battle-tactics quasi-strategy action-turn-based game. Bonus points for originality? Or points deducted for WTF is this... ? Myself? I personally thought it was a bit of a bait and switch, but one I actually didn't mind falling for, and even quite enjoyed.

Nitpicks

They ditched a lot of the weapon-types. More a case of giving up rather than improving. Or, streamlining instead of increasing variety.

The new talents are mostly shite. I really can't imagine anyone being motivated to drop loads of points into the 2 lore categories of the first game, let alone three in the sequel. I'm sure no-one asked for this.

Still no stash for items.

Still too many drawbacks for heavy armour with too few benefits.

Would have liked to see more lunatic dialogue options as the game progressed instead of less.

In the big battle they shoved a stone in the gateway, deliberately making your Ogre useless for the one battle where it was the whole point of getting him.

Having to get the magical creatures into the circle while you played the tune was a micromanagement detail too much. Probably converted maybe two all game. Almost pointless considering the vast amount of work put into that aspect of the game.

Would have preferred completely new companions instead of train-wrecking the original posse.

Those stupid cheating winged insect-men. By the end I was at the "oh just fuck off already" every time they appeared phase. The game ended just in time to prevent me rage-quitting out of boredom of them.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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Still, BG1 and 2 both are excellent games, it's a pity the devs seem to have given up on cRPGs. If you liked River of Time you should try the original Drakensang as well, odds are you won't be disappointed, people might argue RoT is better but if it is so then not by much.

I agree with all of your nitpicks. The only one I'd re-nitpick is the one about endurance. The first game didn't need it because you couldn't just spam the abilities as you don't get enough attack value naturally to do so, some encounters drop hammerblow down to as low as 5%, for example, and knockdown even stops knocking high level enemies down, and they become much more tactical-related skills, to be used sparingly and at the right moment.

I'd like to try the first Drakensang at some point, but I've heard its just average at best, so it's way down my priorities list. Discovering Daedelic as made me more interested in investigating their other Dark Eye games though, even if they aren't RPGs. & yeah, really weird how they suddenly popped up and made a full-on RPG, which was very successful and profitable, and then just stopped, even for the sequel. No idea what happened there, would love to have been a fly on the wall in the months after BG's release.

BG2 is crap, BG1 gets too repetitive. Play Drakensang instead.

There's nothing repetitive about BG1 that can't be applied to every RPG ever. BG2 isn't crap, it's good for what it is, it just isn't really BG2, it's more BG-Tactics. I have played Drakensang, learn to read. Oh yeah, I also reviewed River of Time at 7.5/10 ish.
 

circ

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I disagree. BG1 is more repetitive than a lot of other rpgs. And let's list some reasons.

Too few weapons that work. I did a dagger/rapier guy once. Big mistake. For example, I was killing some mob, the other two warriors were already on their third. Sure dagger has init bonus? Rapier parry? But neither of those two really matter. In PnP they do. In many other rpgs you can go with anything you like, find unique applications sometimes, although there's always one or two weapons that gimp you to varying degrees. Not half of them though.

Maps are repetitive and don't use size to their full potential. There are a few larger maps, but the only reason for their size is for you to walk across it.

Sneak is pointless. There's a single map where sneak matters, and even then you can just ignore it. Some maps have burning obstacles, some poison, some a specific order to kill mobiles in but it all turns into the same jello after a while.

One/two-trick magic. You only need one spell, two if you feel like it. You could spam fireball or firespray or whatever, but magic regens so slow you'll shoot yourself in the foot.

Really bad itemization. Especially for mages. Think this was mentioned earlier too.

No rewarding combat. Except APs, and with the dull skills it adds to repetitiveness.
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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I honestly don't know what planet you're on sometimes circ. Whether you're being hyper-negative because you're genuinely disgruntled by something or because you're addicted to forum shenanigans or maybe because you're some kind of manic depressive naturally, but you're points are either complete bullshit or hyper-exaggerated nitpicks. I'll nip through them:

I disagree. BG1 is more repetitive than a lot of other rpgs. And let's list some reasons.

Too few weapons that work. I did a dagger/rapier guy once. Big mistake. For example, I was killing some mob, the other two warriors were already on their third. Sure dagger has init bonus? Rapier parry? But neither of those two really matter. In PnP they do. In many other rpgs you can go with anything you like, find unique applications sometimes, although there's always one or two weapons that gimp you to varying degrees. Not half of them though.

Where to start here?

How many other RPGs would you play where you select daggers for you're warrior? Daggers are primarily a mage weapon in this game, as they are for a lot of traditional RPGs. Because mages have a hard time gaining natural or melee initiative bonuses then the initiative bonus from daggers is their primary route to increased initiative, which is crucial in a lot of encounters. Daggers can be made viable as a warrior class by dual wielding and in this regard they are weaker than other builds, generally, but do have their advantages, such as getting a weapon that automatically poisons the enemy for the entire battle, and there are enemies where this build will be more effective than any other class in your party as you can also get the natural attack value so high that the dual wielding dagger fighter will always have the best % chance to hit, which, again, can be crucial in some battles. Further, having a 'weaker' warrior is useful for distracting the AI which likes to target weaker characters first, thereby distracting fire from your mages. All-in-all, plenty here to make daggers interesting, as long as you "git gud", of course.

Fencing weapons and Throwing weapons are the only oddities and for different reasons, to which fencing weapons are the only stand-out weaker weapon class, and, as I said, they were removed as a distinct class in the sequel. Also, the game provides enough action points to specialise in at least 3 different weapon types, so you're not even saddled with anything if you're not digging it, unlike most traditional RPGs. Also, fencing weapons does not equal "half of them".

Maps are repetitive and don't use size to their full potential. There are a few larger maps, but the only reason for their size is for you to walk across it.

Maps are not repetitive, not in the slightest. This point is a big ol' case of pure horseshit. Oh right, you wanted bigger maps? Why? Bigger than what? I can think of loads of 'bigger' maps and loads of 'smaller' maps that are so jammed with interesting 'stuff' that they feel huge.

Sneak is pointless. There's a single map where sneak matters, and even then you can just ignore it. Some maps have burning obstacles, some poison, some a specific order to kill mobiles in but it all turns into the same jello after a while.

There is no sneak as a character class or ability, so what's there to be pointless about? There are some maps which add the variety of enabling you to sneak past enemies, just for the fun of variety, not as an overall game mechanic, which is obviously contradicting your last point. Kinda verging on you being a bit of a dumbfuck/village idiot now tbh.

One/two-trick magic. You only need one spell, two if you feel like it. You could spam fireball or firespray or whatever, but magic regens so slow you'll shoot yourself in the foot.

You completely contradict yourself in the same sentences here. How can magic be a one/two-trick pony and then self-explain how doing so will shoot yourself in the foot? The spell options are one of the game's greatest achievements and every single one of them is both useful and interesting aside from perhaps literally one or two. And what has 'needing' spells got to do with the price of fish? You can complete most traditional RPGs without any spell-casters, and people consider that a good thing, not 'needing' spellcasters is a positive thing, not a negative, but if you do choose spellcasting then there's tons there that is both helpful and useful. Again, you're verging on the dumbfuck/village idiot here.

Really bad itemization. Especially for mages. Think this was mentioned earlier too.

Not really. Itemisation generally is slightly weaker than a lot of traditional RPGs, but there is still enough to be interesting. For mages there's mainly a choice between staves and daggers, both of which have quite a few varieties of each. Your use of the phrase "really bad" is a vast over-exaggeration of "slightly disappointing". ie: Hyperbole.

No rewarding combat. Except APs, and with the dull skills it adds to repetitiveness.

You're off your todger. the rewarding combat is the game's primary feature. It feels great to complete a battlemap and you get gold, items and exp for battles, which is what you get in most RPGs.

Also:

I did a dagger/rapier guy once.

So you've played it more than once then.
 

abnaxus

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In the end I enjoyed Demonicon more than Blackguards. Sure it's a braindead action popamole but the devs actually adapted Dark Eye ruleset quite ingeniously. Plus from a lore viewpoint it's even better than both Drakensangs.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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The first game didn't need it because you couldn't just spam the abilities as you don't get enough attack value naturally to do so, some encounters drop hammerblow down to as low as 5%, for example, and knockdown even stops knocking high level enemies down, and they become much more tactical-related skills, to be used sparingly and at the right moment.
re-nitpick: It was easy to make hammerblow and triple shot recklessly spammable, standfast catlike 4, hawkeye, cold shock 4, lightning find you 4, plus debuffing wounds by Takate's spear
A lot of enemies weren't that hard to hit, some were but there were plenty of ways to increase your own THC as well, melee mastery, high base attack value (courage/agility/strength), leveling stuff that gives you bonuses or rather gives penalties in parry/dodge to enemies, like warcraft.

It felt overpowered but OF COURSE: as Bubbles said in his review... whether it's better to spam special abilities each round or to spam your standard attack each round, which deals exactly 7 points of damage each and every strike, while you wait for your endurance to regenerate, is anybody's guess... I'd choose the former if given the choice and go and BY ANGROSH a few more mobs with a big ass two handed axe.

I'd like to try the first Drakensang at some point, but I've heard its just average at best, so it's way down my priorities list.
It's not much worse than River of Time, in fact on the German cRPG sites the prevailing opinion is that the first one is better than the second one. In my opinion they deserve roughly the same rating.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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In the end I enjoyed Demonicon more than Blackguards. Sure it's a braindead action popamole but the devs actually adapted Dark Eye ruleset quite ingeniously. Plus from a lore viewpoint it's even better than both Drakensangs.
I will try it out, thanks for the tip, there are not enough dark eye games, I wish there were more.
 

Teut Busnet

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Codex Year of the Donut
Blackguards 90% off
Blackguards 2 85 % off

on STEAM until the 19th. The first one was one of the last boxed games I got and I never played the second because I heard only negative things about it. I'll get them both.

Edit: There is a bundle for Deluxe BG 1 + BG 2 that only shows up on the page for BG 2 where you can save a couple more cents, should you want to buy both.
 
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Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
In the end I enjoyed Demonicon more than Blackguards. Sure it's a braindead action popamole but the devs actually adapted Dark Eye ruleset quite ingeniously. Plus from a lore viewpoint it's even better than both Drakensangs.
I will try it out, thanks for the tip, there are not enough dark eye games, I wish there were more.

There was a wave of Dark Eye games a few years ago. It seemed for a while that they were going to whore out the license the same way Games Workshop is doing with Warhammer. But then they stopped. What happened?
 
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vivec

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In BG2 you can't develop the character or can you?
 
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Codex Year of the Donut
In the end I enjoyed Demonicon more than Blackguards. Sure it's a braindead action popamole but the devs actually adapted Dark Eye ruleset quite ingeniously. Plus from a lore viewpoint it's even better than both Drakensangs.
I will try it out, thanks for the tip, there are not enough dark eye games, I wish there were more.

There was a wave of Dark Eye games a few years ago. It seemed for a while that they were going to whore out the license the same way Games Workshop is doing with Warhammer. But then they stopped. What happened?
probably because most of them were pretty mediocre or bad and likely sold poorly
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
In the end I enjoyed Demonicon more than Blackguards. Sure it's a braindead action popamole but the devs actually adapted Dark Eye ruleset quite ingeniously. Plus from a lore viewpoint it's even better than both Drakensangs.
I will try it out, thanks for the tip, there are not enough dark eye games, I wish there were more.

There was a wave of Dark Eye games a few years ago. It seemed for a while that they were going to whore out the license the same way Games Workshop is doing with Warhammer. But then they stopped. What happened?
probably because most of them were pretty mediocre or bad and likely sold poorly

Most of the Warhammer games are pretty garbo as well but that hasn't stopped them. Could be developers are less interested because it's a (much) less famous license, but I'm not sure that can explain the sudden and complete disappearance of Dark Eye games after 2015 (except for Realms of Arkania: Star Trail HD).

Visualization of the 2012-2015 Dark Eye wave on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Eye#Video_games

x85m8GN.png


(lol at all the Realms of Arkania HD DLC though)
 
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IncendiaryDevice

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The first game didn't need it because you couldn't just spam the abilities as you don't get enough attack value naturally to do so, some encounters drop hammerblow down to as low as 5%, for example, and knockdown even stops knocking high level enemies down, and they become much more tactical-related skills, to be used sparingly and at the right moment.
re-nitpick: It was easy to make hammerblow and triple shot recklessly spammable, standfast catlike 4, hawkeye, cold shock 4, lightning find you 4, plus debuffing wounds by Takate's spear
A lot of enemies weren't that hard to hit, some were but there were plenty of ways to increase your own THC as well, melee mastery, high base attack value (courage/agility/strength), leveling stuff that gives you bonuses or rather gives penalties in parry/dodge to enemies, like warcraft.

It felt overpowered but OF COURSE: as Bubbles said in his review... whether it's better to spam special abilities each round or to spam your standard attack each round, which deals exactly 7 points of damage each and every strike, while you wait for your endurance to regenerate, is anybody's guess... I'd choose the former if given the choice and go and BY ANGROSH a few more mobs with a big ass two handed axe.

Well, what you're doing here is building your entire battles around maximising attack value, which is what I meant by having the special moves like hammerblow be situation specific. If you build to maximise hammerblow, of course you're going to be spamming hammerblow. Isn't that like nitpicking that certain IE games are just fireball spam games? Sure, if you build for it and base all your tactics round it, but it's not doing all the other options justice and not really an always win-all. Further, even if you do go the hammerblow spam route, its still one of the most satisfying spam abilities I've ever seen in a game that doesn't get old quickly.
 

VentilatorOfDoom

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There was a wave of Dark Eye games a few years ago. It seemed for a while that they were going to whore out the license the same way Games Workshop is doing with Warhammer. But then they stopped. What happened?
I wouldn't call it a wave. All I'm seeing here (of value) is the 2 Drakensang games in 2008 and 2010 resulting in Radon Labs going insolvent, the IP (and some of the team I guess) transferred to BigPoint, then making that Drakensang Online browser game, which is still going btw.
Then you have Daedalic's adventure games which apparently did well enough for them to try expanding into the cRPG market, with the known outcome. What happened?
"Too much success."

TDE isn't a widely known system like DnD or even Warhammer and yes, it does have a learning curve and it takes time until you start to get a grasp on the system, so, mismanagement like in the case of Daedalic - just remember how the game didn't even have a manual and Felipepe had to write a guide explaining the combat mechanics... - will have additional negative effects on sales. Plus, pretty much shit marketing especially outside Germany. I seem to remember RoT didn't even have an English release note when it came out in NA. Or was it Phileasson's Secret? At that point Radon Labs already knew they were done and didn't give a fuck anymore I presume.

VaultDweller's theory "don't do sequels" probably is more spot on than most would believe.

Regarding Daedalic, I've read complaints on their forums about how they no longer had German voice overs for their newest adventure games, and a developer post was explaining that given the cost of the voice overs and the sales numbers in Germany, German VO is no longer feasible. So it's either stop making games or focus on the one market that still sells enough to justify VO, i.e. English. Pretty disheartening stuff.

I shoud make a "What happened to TDE games" interview with these guys, former Radon Labs & Daedalic.

Well, what you're doing here is building your entire battles around maximising attack value, which is what I meant by having the special moves like hammerblow be situation specific. If you build to maximise hammerblow, of course you're going to be spamming hammerblow.
I'm not maximising hammer blow, but yes I am maximizing attack value (i.e. DPS OUTPUT), an approach that concerns every attack. Why would you not maximise your THC in a game where your THC is a decisive factor in your damage output?
 

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