Can I whine in this thread after having finished the game?
My collected random thoughts:
The story:
First I'd like to say something to the people who are concerned with the story and whether the game tackled a serious philosophical question (as per the name of the other thread):
I didn't notice this "what can change the nature of a man" question as if it was supposed to be a theme of the game or something. I have no idea why people keep bringing it up.
the text just got so cumbersome with the descriptions of all the bullshit that when the question popped up, I was wondering wtf was that supposed to mean, answered something "I don't give a shit" and moved on to skipping the rest of the dialogues. These fucking people can't write, the text is so heavy on empty filler shit it's a waste of time most of the time.
The ending didn't tackle any deep concepts imo, it felt tacked on with some random lady appearing suddenly and asking about total shit. I don't know what the fuck she was talking about, I started skipping all that shit halfway through the game, lol. She kept nagging about why I wanted to kill Thaos and I had no idea, I told her he was the bad guy and she kept bringing up some inquisition or what but that didn't connect with me. She told me I had gone to Thaos for answers and betrayed her or what. I had been under the impression that I kept telling Thaos to fuck off in all the visions or what with the purple ghosts and suddenly I was supposed to be a traitor or a big cultist or something? I wanted no part in their shit from the beginning!
I thought I was supposed to kill Thaos because he started killing the childrens souls or using them to power the bad Woedica god. The lady kept acting as if I was under some moral dilemma and I couldn't find the right answers to tell her to fuck off. Another horrible point was that I was supposed to be going insane but I never noticed anything insane so I never cared. I blame the shitty, heavy writing for all this.
I liked the grim setting at the start, as many others have noted. It was the best part of the game by far.
I have no idea what the gods were supposed to be - some robots or what? I don't think the game explicitly explained it or how they have their godly power or wtf because as far as I understood the gods were real enough to be able to behave like gods, as per the old saying, any technology that is too far advanced is indistinguishable from a god. or something. Basically, the game never told me why they WERENT gods, just having been created by people doesn't make them not gods, for example as in Discworld.
One quest that stood out to me that really pissed me off was the nobleman's daughter with his child. I basically got a modern day, liberally naive options at the ending dialogue. This was a big point where I thought wtf what fucking developer inserted their ego here?
The combat:
Otherwise, the game was ok, the items were seriously shit, everything samey, the combat was ok but everything samey and too easy with the default Eder + slings guns on everybody else.
My criticism is that nothing felt really powerful. Some enemies dealt a bit more damage, some had a bit more HP but it was all kinda in the middle. I'd like there to be skeletons who you basically can't shoot because they have holes in them so you gotta use magic or swords, ghosts resistant to all physical damage so that you need magic weapons, stuff like that, otherwise you don't give a shit and pelt everything with bullets even if it takes 15 seconds longer. They fucked it up because the good bestiary was practically begging for this, they had all the systems in place to support big strategic decisions like this. They even had more inventory slots for weapon sets, for christ sake. Don't say shit like OMG NOOB YOU SHOULD PLAY ON POTD DIFFICULTY ITS THE TRUE DIFFICULTY. That's bullshit, Hard is supposed to be Hard. I started Lords of Xulima on the highest difficulty, thinking it was gonna be the same shit as every other game, not wanting to get burned like in PoE but I got my ass kicked so bad I basically need to restart because I can't do anything. That's how it should be, they should name the difficulties accordingly and not move everything 3 levels up so that Easy actually means For People Without Eyes and Hands.
I also don't understand why the hell there was nowhere to read about the enemy race, like I understood that xaurips were wilderlings or something but it should have been written in their bestiary slot. Another thing they should have done with this cool html linking system was display random links or random bestiary descriptions in the horrible long loading screens instead of putting those generic shit useless advices like IF ENEMY IS TOO STRONG KILL HIM BETTER. I hate the wasted opportunities like this. I might have learned what the skills and stats did had they put their descriptions in the loading screens instead of that shit.
I don't know which system is to blame for my characters randomly standing and shooting a guy from close range instead of running away, I think it was a combination of a shit pathfinding and the engagement system but it seriously pissed me off many times.
I hear all the talk about making the combat more difficult by increasing the damage or something but I don't want that. I want it to be more mentally challenging, hard counters to shit, better enemy placement, more powerful and game changing spell effects, the enemy reacting very differently to different attacks, not just HP bloat or damage bloat. Better make a simple rock paper scissors system than this shit which, while with tons of number crunching, in the end it just allows me to finish the game without ever bothering with any of it, even on Hard.
The rest/random shit:
As has been said many times, I wished for more of those nice scripted story events. I wished the stronghold wasn't hidden behind 30 loading screens, the resting bonuses stacked as they should have and that I actually were attacked there. I'm not sure if there were supposed to be some sieges, I think people wrote about it but I never had any siege.
As for the XP - I don't think the XP was bloated, I just wished I could go to a higher lvl instead. I finished the majority of the final act at lvl 12, I don't think it has ever happened to me in any other game, so that pissed me off.
The no XP for combat bullshit was horrible. Exactly as everybody had predicted - the game is all combat and getting no XP for it, no good loot and no fun spells makes it boring, no matter any retarded arguments about how it's not realistic to improve your Barter skill by killing kobolds.
I'm also not sure about what the stealth mechanics were for. Was I supposed to be improving it just so that I could spot the enemy before they can spot me and have my thief do 1 critical hit?
The ending slides were nice, well narrated, bittersweet. Although not many of my choices got mentioned, those which did had some more complex stories about them, not just YOU SAVED CHILDREN, EVERYBODY IS HAPPY but instead YOU SAVED CHILDREN EVERYBODY IS HAPPY EXCEPT FOR THOSE WHO ALREADY HAD KILLED THEIR CHILDREN, THEY GOT FUCKED OVER AND ARE NOW REALLY SAD. That's cool, I wasn't expecting anything like this.
Grieving mother sucked because her dialogues were badly recorded so I never used her.
Durance was quite funny, all those whores and bitches and dirty language. Too verbose for my taste but at least he had some strong opinions and a strong personality.
Eder was a bro, who didn't really fit in the game, because he was almost breaking the fourth wall as he was usually saying the stuff I wished I could be saying - laid back, making fun of all the retarded peasants with pitchforks. The rest of the companions I didn't care for.
I didn't discover the druid until Act III because he was in a tiny black spot on the map that I didn't explore by accident. My mistake, whatever.
Raedric's hold crashed the 2nd time I went there so I never had this famous fight with the fampyrs. Oh yeah, some of the enemy names were really stupid and took me out of the game. And I hate fighting the fucking puddings/oozes in games, it's the least interesting enemy ever. Better give me some rats than this shit. It's literally a formless blob, oh my god. At least they had weird shit stuck in them in Wizardry 8.
The game was so beautiful but after the first Act, it started feeling so soulless. I'm not sure why that was, I think mostly the writing and the shit +3% numbers and made-up fake sounding lore being dumped on me from all sides are the most to blame.
If I ever replay the game (I don't think I will) I'll play on Easy, turn on all the HUD indicators, speech indicators and play it to actually check for all the c&c, but I suspect there won't be too much of it to get me through the slog.
