This thread is surely a suitable tribute to that Watch review
Was anything said to Corwin's review besides questioning the 'fabulous quests'? - It seem to me most of you simply agree.
I didn't think anything needed to be said, really. The review is amateurish at best, both in content and style alike. As much as Darth Roxxor has been criticized for "Wanting to hate the game before it was even released", Corwin's blatantly falls in the exact opposite camp, namely "wanting to praise the game no matter what". And to do that, he clearly overlooks, or gives a pass, to the many (and major) shortcomings of the game. He does mention a few flaws, but deliberately moves quickly on to some more gratuitous praise. You can tell he's not entirely happy with the game, but you can also tell that he's either too shy or too bent on getting his nose brown'd.
Either that, or he's played an entirely different game. He keeps mentioning this is BG3, which is risible. He keeps mentioning how this is a true IE-era heir, which is also risible. He fails to make his claims credible, and he fails to make the reader believe he's actually played any IE-era game in depth. The feeling is that he's just pretending to be an oldschooler in order to 1.ape actual old-timers and 2.seem more of a reliable authority on RPGs to his audience (which
has to be made of 15yo's).
But hey, here's some thoughts...
So many choices, so many possibilities, so little direction.
Because redding tooltips and stats descriptions is teh hard?
As part of the game design, there are no truly ‘dump’ stats for any given class; all are helpful to some degree
No. No dump stats. Not at all. Err...
Because all the classes operate differently from what most people may expect
Yeah, the Barbarian totally caught me offguard by dealing melee damage while using shouts and a "berserk" mode, and I spent 23 minutes looking for my jaw when I found out that the Druid shapeshifted into some feral beast. I had a minor stroke when I realized that the Wizard casts spells. Oh, and the Paladin doesn't have smite or lay of hands. Nossireeeee.
While people argue over what are the key elements for any RPG, most would agree that interesting characters, a good story and a variety of engaging quests would be near the top of the list. All are to be found here.
1.Interesting characters: maybe 3, 4 in the whole game.
2.A good story: hm? where? Is it behind the three-headed monkey?
3.Engaging quests: r00fles. Even Corwin admits not doing any side quests any more after hitting level 12, so he is clearly bullshitting about the quality quests and writing.
Between quests there is a ton of exploration (it’s a HUGE game world) and many interesting things to discover and often appropriate.
There's what, 50 locations in the game, dungeons/interiors excluded? Exploring half of them is not really useful, nor encouraged. The wilderness areas especially suffer from a complete lack of interesting things to do, other than killing a few more wolves in some corner. Most of them also suffer from a severe lack of population and interactivity, and feel like a mere exercise in "drawing pretty scenes". Caves, ruins and interiors are quite often an homage to Dragon Age 2, that is, copypasted.
Scouting is very helpful here and some hidden items are only revealed when your party is in ‘sneak’ or scouting mode. Make sure everyone has at least a couple of points in the ‘Stealth’ skill.
Again, I'm not really sure what the guy's been playing. One character with sneak is the party is more than enough, for spotting traps (rare) and hidden objects (roughly 1-2 per location). Sneak is sort of completely useless otherwise, unless one is going for a solo run.
as it is divided into several parts which you regularly have to travel between
The amount of gratuitous backtracking in Defiance Bay is preposterous, not to mention the area subdivisions. I wanted to die every time I had to go talk to Lady Webb or to that whore upstairs in the docks' tavern... Luckily, even Corwin admits to that (see below)...
One small complaint is that the loading screens for all this travel tend to get longer and longer, even when just entering a building. I miss the seamless travel found in many similar games such as ‘Divinty: Original Sin’. At least they gave me an opportunity to go and get myself a drink, or take a Bio break. I guess it’s part of the nostalgia we all feel for those original IE games. Sadly, sometimes nostalgia is over-rated.
... or not. It's like he's trying to, but he's so stuck upon wanting to love the game that he cannot admit the could have optimised the backtracking/area-loading a bit. Of course, he kinda fumbles when declaring "many similar games" and then only mentioning D:OS. Either or, man.
most of your possible companions have a story/quest of their own which you can choose to follow or ignore. Some of these are fairly straightforward, but others are more complex, bringing comparisons with some of the complicated conversation quests in that other IE game, Plancscape: Torment.
Which, exactly, are
more complex? Sagani's "visit three locations" one? Or Durance's and GM's "just click the chat icon when it appears on their portrait"? And I don't think I even need to comment on the comparison with the dialogues from, and I quote, "Plancscape" (oh yes, I'm picking on a typo. People should -manually- spellcheck twice before miss-typing the Kodex' #1 fap material RPG of choice).
The main story weaves through several acts, though not all these divisions are obvious, especially the one between Acts 1 and 2. I didn’t even notice it.
So much for the writing being great, I guess.
but Act 3 is nowhere near as good as the previous acts; it’s almost as if the developers ran out of steam, time, or both. Most of the quests are fetch or kill quests and don’t compare to the complexities of the earlier ones. In fact, if it wasn’t for the need to reach the level cap of 12 before the endgame, it’s actually quite clear how to proceed, whereas earlier in the game there was no such clarity.
Again, what complexity? I don't really remember earlier quests being different from fetch and/or kill. If anything, the quests in TE bring some variety to the lot, quite a few of them allowing "completion through dialogue" and a more diplomatic approach.
Once you reach level 12, there is no real point in doing more side quests unless you’re a completionist.
Or unless they're actually well-written and compelling and enjoyable and enriching the game's world, none of which they are, sadly (as mentioned).
Some of my comments on this game may seem overly harsh,
Aside from the fact that he gave the game 4/5 stars, you call this harsh? I bet he's one of those kids forced to play score-free football games .
however, the bottom line is that I really liked and enjoyed this game. It accomplished what it set out to do, was relatively bug free,
Did he even check the Obsidian boards after release? There were more bug reports there than there are bugs in Calicut.
and hopefully showed the ‘Big Time Developers/Publishers’ that there is still a market for these Old School games.
Ehm, Obsidian
IS a
'Big Time Developer'. And this game is as oldschool as a 2014 Mini Cooper can be.
Overall, he completely avoids to mention how the core system is a bland and uninspired D&D ripoff, how only athletics and mechanics are useful as talents, how the combat gets really boring and uninteresting fast, how the story is really vague and doesn't play out too well, along with about half a godzillion other meh things (shortcomings) that even
casuals like me noticed.
