Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
^ Personally I don't think it's true. I think D:OS does much more than "bring back CRPGs"; emergent gameplay is much more than a buzzword. But I hate repeating myself (too often), so whatever.
Or rather, it did "bring CRPGs back" in the sense that it proved that CRPGs are something more than just a thing of the past or a repetition thereof.
PoE is pretty nice too, though it is a bit too conservative for me to consider it a new classic; it does do a few interesting new things, too, however, like the Chanter or Cipher classes, and is just pretty fun overall.
D:OS defintely brought something new and unique to cRPGs, not denying that, but it is more of a... "tester" game if you follow me? That is the feeling I get. I think with what they learned with D:OS, we will see something truly "great" in their projects to come. They seem to really "want" it, they are "hungry", you can see it in their attitude and demeanor. I just don't get that feeling from the other studios. /shrug
Original Sin is the only one of the kickstarter old school cRPGs that actually took the genre forward in some ways.
The rest are struggling and failing to reach the high watermarks left by previous games.
I thought Larian had a good chance of actually doing something amazing in the next game, their legendary dream RPG... but instead of keeping the saftey net D:OS provided and doing that with everything they got... theyre going to make three studios and have three times the problems and be on the brink of going out of business again.
Which is idiotic and a gamble. So nothing certain can be claimed about Larian.
Well, unless Sven actually left some money aside to be the safety net, instead of going all in - again.
Maybe you could ask him about that Crooked Bee
D:OS defintely brought something new and unique to cRPGs, not denying that, but it is more of a... "tester" game if you follow me? That is the feeling I get.
I can definitely agree with that. However, that also seems to be a sort of perfectionist's perspective. I don't think any of the groundbreaking RPGs in the history of the genre have ever been well-rounded or perfect.
The entire RPG genre seems to always have been a sort of "testing ground." Which is also what makes it so exciting.
However, I am looking forward to seeing what Larian do with their next game(s). Hopefully they build on D:OS' strengths and take those further.
Original Sin is the only one of the kickstarter old school cRPGs that actually took the genre forward in some ways.
The rest are struggling and failing to reach the high watermarks left by previous games.
I thought Larian had a good chance of actually doing something amazing in the next game, their legendary dream RPG... but instead of keeping the saftey net D:OS provided and doing that with everything they got... theyre going to make three studios and have three times the problems and be on the brink of going out of business again. ... Maybe you could ask him about that Crooked Bee
Divinity was more original and interesting, with much better combat. Pillars maintained higher quality from beginning to end, and had a narrative that was actually worth paying attention to. So I guess it depends what you are looking for.
I asked you to ask him are they going full in again, or had he learned the lessons from the recent past of being on a brink of ruin.
I would ask him myself on his blog but i think that wont get an answer. No specifics are needed, just hearing him say something like "yeah, its not like that, we still have safety net and something to fall back onto even in the worst case" etc.
It would be nice to know that instead of assuming he just went nuts with glory.
D:OS writing is weak, but the novelty factor is over the top.
I never played a RPG where you can set up elemental combos so often that it's really the primary way of dealing effective damage. And creativity is rewarded. Where else in RPG can you cast invisibility on yourself, walk behind a group of enemies and drop 3 explosive kegs before gleefully detonating the group to initiate combat with massive advantage?
I instinctively tried to execute elemental combos in POE with the oil slicken and fan of flame spell but got nothing.
That disappointed me somewhat. POE is more old school with some attempts at rectifying/revamp the classic D&D stats but ultimately lead to 'min-maxing' being the most optimal build.
I honestly cannot see why ranged weapon had to hit so hard with the 'swap rifle' build bypassing the reload time and lead to people chaining 40-60 x 3 shots within seconds of starting combat.
I appreciate what POE is trying to do in bringing back more isometric RPG but I'm very disappointed to encounter less interesting setups and fights compared to Icewind Dale or even Baldur's Gate.
Many I've spoken to commented that most combat devolve into tank and spank and rightfully so.
When I enter a game like POE, I expect to see unique encounters in most of its maps, remember the assassins in Baldur's Gate or rival adventuring parties you can fight with? That was fun.
There was so few of that in POE, I entered a wilderness and had to deal with packs of copy pasta lions. I enter a ruin and had to deal with nothing but shades shades shades. I enter a cemetery and contend with 30 ghouls, 5 tougher guls and 2 skeleton wizard.
It all devolved into rote fighting where you spam the same per encounter abilities over and over. Cause why waste those precious per rest powers - or maybe why not? Since the rest is just 2 loading screens away or if you prefer, just spend a consumable and bam, you're topped up!
And worse of all is the crafting being able to mimic the so called 'unique items' provided you bothered to 'explore' and click on herb spots and slaughter lions, spiders for their legs.
Right click a mundane sword, click enchant. Spend resource +25% damage. +4 Accuracy. Yay. And all this is gated behind levels.
The fatigue system is also hilarious, if you ignore the Athletics skill, party will get hit with -10 accuracy penalty if they don't rest after a certain period of time. Being engaged in combat repeatedly also contribute to tedious 'stop not because you've depleted resource, but because fatigue has set in' I dunno about simulationist design, but what purpose does this serve? There's no monster that will spawn and ambush a resting party. Suppose you ran out of marshmellows to break over the camp, no big deal, I hope you enjoy 4 loading screen as you backtrack to the previous inn.
The good parts come in the promise of a reputation building and disposition your protagonist can reflect in his interactions with the world.
Aggressive, Rational, Stoic, Clever, etc. Paladins/Priest actually take more bonus if they stick to the tenets of their faith. And certain faction reputation favors certain Honest individuals more than most.
Let's just put it this way, if Obsidian can stop padding the content with more of the same quest mobs, and fill it more with meaningful interactions and skill usage, I'd be all over it and give this game a glowing recommendation despite its flawed character system.
As it stands right now, the combat is a chore and the motivation to finish has greatly diminished.
The writing in D:OS is inferior to PoE's, for sure. I read all of the dialogue I encountered in D:OS (out loud, taking turns with my co-op partner) and while there were a number of typos/odd sentence structures, the real downfall of the writing is that it's boring (enjoyable if you're okay with the mindlessness of it, but boring). I would have excused typos and awkwardness (in the English translation) if the story was interesting.
e.g. I thought Astarte might have been a betrayer again, or that she had some sort of scheme behind the scenes, but in reality it was exactly what it said on the tin. A bland retelling of Pandora. I also thought Arhu might have been a big bad, or had something more to his character beyond liking to bang literal pussies. Again, no, he really is just a wizard guy who prefers the company of cats.
There are no interesting twists or turns to keep you engaged, but D:OS makes up for it by allowing you to progress through the game in a number of ways (though it sometimes results in bugs/poor pacing if you don't follow the intended path).
I went to Hunter's Edge before Heiberheim and encountered a ton of dialogue that was just poorly placed/didn't make sense because I didn't do the areas in the "proper order." And then I ran into a brick wall requiring me to backtrack unless I wanted to murder some idiotic servants.
Suffice to say, by the end of D:OS I wanted to murder all the main players in the story and let the void consume the world. Unfortunately, despite the questionable moral integrity of the source hunters, they ended up saving the world.
D:OS is fun because it allows for freedom within the system, but the combat is NOT challenging or tactically engaging unless you place artificial limits on yourself or you have a poorly constructed character. My friend and I were a warrior and a mage, respectively. No companions. By mid-game he had 80% resistance to almost every element (after the patch that made it impossible to go over 100% without spells) and I had enough action points to put OP elemental shields on us every turn (that nearly no enemy can break through) while casting meteors and ice-storms or keeping enemies constantly-stunned (cast rain on top of them and shoot lightning at them every turn). There was no challenge, even from bosses, as far as combat was concerned. Nearly every enemy can be blinded or knocked down for the entire duration of the battle, and it only gets easier as higher level spells come in. Hell, even the final boss can be "knocked down."
PoE's writing has problems, but the universe is vastly superior to D:OS. I enjoyed reading about the Saint's War and the God Hammer (though I haven't finished PoE yet) and things like hollowborns/wichts are very interesting. As far as companions go, I also really liked Kana's description of Rauatai and his home city, the problems he sees with their foreign policy, and how he aims to rectify part of that problem by revealing more about the (possibly engwithan?) origin of their primary moral text. The other companions don't stick out as super interesting to me, yet, though the most praised around here (Durance) is a disjointed mess so far whose entire life seems to be an allegory. Maybe he comes into his own later/becomes less cryptic, but if all he does is keep rambling about how is staff is like a pillar holding up a temple, I might ditch him for someone else soon. Speaking obliquely/in metaphor =/= being a deep and interesting character. I will reserve my judgment on him until I find out the whole story or when things about him start making sense. Anyway, there's really no competition, in writing PoE >> D:OS.
As far as the combat system and encounters go, I'm a turn-based fan. My favorite RPGs are turn based. The first RPG I ever played (Shining Force) is turn based. But PoE offers more challenge than anything in D:OS. I play with engagement enabled and it works fine. It allows for more tactical positioning on the battle field in most cases, though there are some things that could be improved about it. For example, disengagement attacks are too harsh/lack player feedback. It can lead to slight movements triggering a bunch of opportunity attacks and lost endurance, followed by the player scanning the log to figure out what the hell happened. It'd be much better, I think, if engagement only really worked as a "battle field control" mechanic (no damage involved). So enemies focus on anyone engaging them, but the player is free to move around while being engaged. Field control + field mobility = more fun. Plus, that way teleporting shades are not such atrocious game design.
There is complexity in PoE, though; the system rewards tactical placement, targeting, and even using buffs for tough enemies/groups. For example, when I encounter something that looks difficult, I have Durance cast dire blessing (20% of hits converted to crits), blessing (+5 acc., 1.1x damage), and holy power (+9% damage) if I think it will help. Aloth mitigates some damage with curse of blackened sight (for melee), slicken (for mages), or fetid carass (for high-threat targets with low fortitude). My PC casts deleterious alacrity of motion (1.5x speed) and then throws out some high-powered necrotic lances/fans of flame, or kalakoth's minor blights for clumps of dangerous enemies/if there are enough alive after the initial onslaught. I think PoE has more interesting combat, even if it is not as reactive. I played D:OS for 118 hours over the course of 7 months, according to steam, and I quite enjoyed my journey through it, but there is no question for me: PoE has a more interesting world and more interesting combat.
It doesn't. It has an illusion of choice. But once you dig deeper you realize that it is just all a shallow sham. PoE didn't have a single truly interesting and memorable fight, only repetition and copy paste. AI is formulaic and boring: Shadows teleport to Aloth, vampires mind control GM.
PoE has many things but good combat is not one of them. "Yeah! Another identical fight with identical enemy composition, this is gonna b. great!"
99% (literally) of encounters in PoE boils down to either:
1) Stealth up to group of enemies, position your tankiest characters in front. Open fire. Enemies engage your tanks, you cast buffs, debuffs, and aoe the fuck out of the enemy line.
2) Stealh up to group of enemies, position your tankiest characters in front. Open fire. Enemies engage your tanks, some teleport to your weaker characters. You stun them, move them away; they engage your tanks and you cast buffs, debuffs, and aoe the fuck out of the enemy line.
I enjoyed the game in varying degrees all the way up to what I believe was called the phantom forest, enemies felt repetitive at that point, ghosts everywhere, HP bloat had now gone full retard where enemies had tens of thousands or more HP
The HP bloat really is the biggest sin (haha) that Original Sin commits. I agree that the end game was absolutely terrible in that regard, with the Void Dragon standing as the prime example of what you shouldn't do when you want to make the last boss battle challenging (it took 45 minutes to kill the thing which is absolutely fucking ridiculous). So yeah, that was shit.
Prior to Homestead the game looked like guys at Larian having a lot of good ideas for individual aspects of the game but lacking overarching plot that would bind the game together in an interesting fashion and build its atmosphere (despite Kirill's efforts and brilliance).
Mechanically the game is, maybe not maxed out, but still very strong, so if the rift story threads goes anywhere interesting and/or atmospheric I'm set
It doesn't. This really isn't a game you should play for its story or themes. Unfortunately. Because I agree whole heartedly that the soundtrack adds wonderfully to the atmosphere. Such good music deserves a good story to go along with it.
It doesn't. It has an illusion of choice. But once you dig deeper you realize that it is just all a shallow sham. PoE didn't have a single truly interesting and memorable fight, only repetition and copy paste. AI is formulaic and boring: Shadows teleport to Aloth, vampires mind control GM.
PoE has many things but good combat is not one of them. "Yeah! Another identical fight with identical enemy composition, this is gonna b. great!"
I'm not aiming to prove that PoE has objectively great combat, I am arguing that PoE has more interesting combat than Divinity.
Illusion of choice: I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but "choice" in D:OS is either nonexistent or pretty arbitrary. Yeah, you can choose a number of different ways to dispatch a group of enemies, but it all boils down to the same tactic. Crowd-control/buffs reign supreme in terms of "efficient" combat and most fights are extremely easy. The only time I remember a semi-challenging fight in all of D:OS was the big orc on the beach at the very beginning, and that was because I was level 2 or something. Actually, there is another interesting fight that is coming back to me now, there are some flowers in Luculla forest who replicate if you hit them with magic. I launched a fireball into a group of them prior to acquiring knowledge of that ability. Anyway, that was interesting for a few seconds until I realized that I simply couldn't cast magic at them so my warrior friend hacked away while I buffed him and "blinded" them.
As far as PoE goes on its own, I'm not incredibly impressed with the encounter design either, but there have at least been some challenging bits. e.g. : If you're unprepared, the cave with mushrooms in Anslog's Compass. The group of priests at the end of the Woedica temple (if you're not immediately prepared to counter the two mages, try tanking and spanking while fireballs rain down on your party - who are probably cramped into a tiny hallway - coupled with strong warriors and a couple of priests, as well). The third level of Od Nua, if you start going down right when you get to Caed Nua, required a change in tactics for me. Even with high crushing DR Eder got smushed pretty hard by ogre clubs. The druids can do massive damage in their own right, and moonwell -> sustained fight -> not good when they do much more damage than you can. Sure, if you know the exact composition of the enemy you can employ a tactic that will make the fight pretty much a guaranteed win, but in D:OS I could run blindly into any battle and win it easily using the same tactic 99% of the time. If you have that experience in PoE, then I'm not sure what to tell you. I can come up with a distinct list where I had to change my tactics to overcome a challenge in PoE, and I can't really do the same in D:OS. When I did have to change my tactic in D:OS, it was only artificially (use lighting bolt instead of fireball). It didn't make the battle challenging, it just made it take longer.
Anyway, most of the interesting combat that I remember from something like the BG series came later. Mindflayers, umber hulks, high level mages, kangaxx, the celestial fury fight, etc. If PoE2 delivers the same, I'll be satisfied with the pair of them.
Prior to Homestead the game looked like guys at Larian having a lot of good ideas for individual aspects of the game but lacking overarching plot that would bind the game together in an interesting fashion and build its atmosphere (despite Kirill's efforts and brilliance).
Mechanically the game is, maybe not maxed out, but still very strong, so if the rift story threads goes anywhere interesting and/or atmospheric I'm set
It doesn't. This really isn't a game you should play for its story or themes. Unfortunately. Because I agree whole heartedly that the soundtrack adds wonderfully to the atmosphere. Such good music deserves a good story to go along with it.
Anyway, leaving Cyseal now. Had a bit of a problem with Braccus because I wrongly assumed he would just raise his minions.
So far I stand by flaws I identified:
game is too goofy overall, but without actually amusing moments that were the strength of Divinity 2 and seem to be a definite strength of Larian - it's the worst of both worlds, you neither get the serious tone making player care about their actions, nor genuinely memorable comedic moments, the game comes off as very goofy but none of it is in a good way. Should have been much more serious overall (with art direction to match), but punctuated with troll dialogue options and bafflingly off the wall moments of utter hilarity (like Dragon Terror Patrol). So far I'm not sure I laughed ONCE - suffice to say Divinity 2's tutorial area alone has DOS beaten in that regard, and I can't really put my mind on anything funny happening in Farglow.
weak beginning - it seems to be a bit of Larian's tradition to either start off with something deeply unexciting or promptly mire player down in boredom somewhere between game's start and game proper.
bad leveling mechanics and itemization - it's traditional, but still bad. Larian should switch focus from HP and damage inflation (the latter by sifting through a torrent of multicolored, tiered loot) to the actually exciting part of character development they already have implemented - getting new, interesting abilities and finding actually rare and interesting items with interesting properties. Speaking of itemization switching to TES model where characters get actual equipment (including armor) and play by the same rules as players. This includes breakable equipment, BTW - even if it might be seen as broken, so is teleporting enemies into lava - in this kind of game broken stuff is sometimes indispensable part of fun.
weak attribute system - three of the attributes seem to have exceedingly narrow utility - I'm speaking of intelligence, strength and dexterity. I'm also of opinion that game that doesn't use intelligence to limit or modify interactions beyond spellcasting or combat in general, should settle for some sort of "magic affinity" stat name instead. Also, hard item restrictions are bad - it would be much better if soft restrictions already used for level reqs were used for stat reqs.
worldbuilding and consistency. Seriously, it might seem like just blahblah restrictions but it really pays off. It helps player understand the rules, it helps players care, it prevents players from getting apathetic towards ever growing amounts of evidently asspulled bullshit, and it prevents confusion over some guy getting into pact with dark powers to resurrect his dead wife in a world where he could buy a rez scroll from a street vendor. There is certain magic to storytelling but that magic only holds if the storyteller at least seems to be bound by some rules, otherwise there can be no investment in the story if literally anything can happen next. Suffice to say Larian isn't my go-to company when it comes to worldbuilding, although I would love to see that changed, especially given how Kirill's music could augment a well built setting.
encounter design leaves much of game's potential untapped - for example, it's nice to have all those different surfaces, but why doesn't the game exploit actual z-axis in its encounters design? I expect it could, especially given it using fairly detailed collision for projectiles.
needlessly flashy physical skills - some things just look better without all the auras and particles, especially if you're just tripping the guy or stabbing him in the spine.
Good stuff include:
Combat in general, and elemental system specifically - it opens up tons of options.
General interactivity.
Area design in terms of layout and content density.
General hi-level quest structure is nice with many interconnections although on low level it seems to be bogged down by needlessly specific and rigid scripting.
Some small details are meaningful - I'm speaking particularly about consistent symbolism that can reward observant player.
There seem to be some potentially nice twists there, but I'm reserving my judgement.
So far, even if latter areas will suffer from lower content density it feels good to leave the stasis of a town locked down by roaming undead.
On the one hand I agree with this. Some of the emergent gameplay mechanics already discussed work both in and out of combat. Also just the ability to find a solution to a problem or quest as opposed to being presented with them is perhaps the way D:OS separates itself best. But one thing D:OS really fell short with is skill and attribute checks.
Yeah it does have some like perception for finding hidden objects and the blanket charisma for the conversation RPS game. But Larian could have achieved a lot more in this area with just a few tweaks. One of the changes that I always considered a mistake was combining the talking skills into charisma. They did this after the first 2-3 alpha builds and it really took a lot of the potential out of the system. The traits you gained through the dual dialogs still had an impact on your charisma choices in the RPS game but ultimately it took out a lot of impact from the charisma skill.
PoE's checks don't have the degree impact I would like but they are a much more consistent presence in the game. I could see a game with great usage of attribute checks coming from the Pillars system. D:OS has an upper limit to how interesting it can be based on some of Larian's scope control through the development cycle.
PoE leading in the poll.
RPG Codex, with spacebar.
I didn't even play PoE and there's few games I ever gave less of a shit about. It's IE fanwankery at its greatest wankfest. No IE game ever had good combat and the game also comes with a generic fantasy setting which is undoubtedly taking itself very seriously and being generally boring. Basically that leaves you with shit combat, shit setting and fancy graphics and music. Yeah, I'm not installing that.
While D:OS also has a boring story, at least the setting is self aware to a degree and has fun. The combat is great. Graphics are pretty and the music is decent, but I honestly don't give that much of a shit. I had endless fun fighting.
Well maybe you should reserve judgement if you dont know shit about the game . And Baldurs Gate 2 is considered the game with the best encounter design by many of us, so no its not shit only because you dont like it. Your post is just a big cryout for others to disregard your opinion.
The HP bloat really is the biggest sin (haha) that Original Sin commits. I agree that the end game was absolutely terrible in that regard, with the Void Dragon standing as the prime example of what you shouldn't do when you want to make the last boss battle challenging (it took 45 minutes to kill the thing which is absolutely fucking ridiculous). So yeah, that was shit.
the game had HP bloat, but it also had damage bloat so things balanced out. Actually, the amount of damage you can deal at endgame makes the endfight quite trivial, you can literally kill the dragon within 3 combat rounds.
PoE leading in the poll.
RPG Codex, with spacebar.
I didn't even play PoE and there's few games I ever gave less of a shit about. It's IE fanwankery at its greatest wankfest. No IE game ever had good combat and the game also comes with a generic fantasy setting which is undoubtedly taking itself very seriously and being generally boring. Basically that leaves you with shit combat, shit setting and fancy graphics and music. Yeah, I'm not installing that.
While D:OS also has a boring story, at least the setting is self aware to a degree and has fun. The combat is great. Graphics are pretty and the music is decent, but I honestly don't give that much of a shit. I had endless fun fighting.
I never played Fallout 3 either, yet I am confident the game is shit. I don't need to put my hand in the fire to know it's hot.
Likewise, I don't need to eat shit to know it tastes bad. I can smell it and see it already for the horrible dish it would make.
the game had HP bloat, but it also had damage bloat so things balanced out. Actually, the amount of damage you can deal at endgame makes the endfight quite trivial, you can literally kill the dragon within 3 combat rounds.
I must have fucked up my builds completely and utterly, then, because there's no way in hell I would've been able to kill the dragon in three rounds. No way at all. I'm not kidding when I say it took at least 45 minutes.
. And Baldurs Gate 2 is considered the game with the best encounter design by many of us, so no its not shit only because you dont like it. Your post is just a big cryout for others to disregard your opinion.
