Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • 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.

Realms of Arkania: Star Trail HD - less shovelware this time?

Do you want to support old-school role playing games by making a high-interest investment?


  • Total voters
    116

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,649
Just a normal installation. And my hdd is quite current, thank you. I wasn't aware I needed heavy tinkering with inis on top of waiting 1 year to be able to play this.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
Just a normal installation. And my hdd is quite current, thank you. I wasn't aware I needed heavy tinkering with inis on top of waiting 1 year to be able to play this.

You don't. If your system is beefy why do you have issues and I don't when I have a 7200 HD and no HDD? And an old graphics card. I don't tinker and without a framerate capper in the options I am forced to run my own to cut down on energy consumption. Why is this?
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,649
Because the game is badly optimized and has issues with nvidia drivers? Idk, man.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
I saw this linked on RPGWatch. http://www.sternenschweif.com/blog/

New screens, and lots of them. This is looking really, really good. I don't read or speak uncivilized tongues so I don't know what information is given, but I like what I am seeing.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
I bought this remake. I guess it's stable and doesn't crash much. But it is the most ugly non-fun piece of trash I've ever played. Maybe the original RoA is also partly to blame for this. I dunno.

Blackguards 2 is a masterpiece compared to this.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Goblino

Savant
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
327
Just started playing the remake. I want to see if it can be enjoyed in its present state. So far it's playable if voices are muted.
 

Goblino

Savant
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
327
I'm going to do a parallel run in the original on my tablet. I want to compare the two, and look at the completed remake both in and out of context with the original.
 

coldcrow

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 6, 2009
Messages
1,649
I bought this remake. I guess it's stable and doesn't crash much. But it is the most ugly non-fun piece of trash I've ever played. Maybe the original RoA is also partly to blame for this. I dunno.

Blackguards 2 is a masterpiece compared to this.

It is shit, really. I have no idea what roqua is smoking.
 

Goblino

Savant
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
327
I've played enough to have a conclusion here. BoD is a fucking boring mess. In the original game, navigating the town is tedious as hell. Buildings and the location overall lack meaningful distinction. The only fronts that seem any different are temples, and in periphery they look the same as every other residence. In the GB days, you could walk your happy ass around town and approximate what you're entering, from across the plaza. In BoD, you have to constantly open the map, close the map, open the map, close the map, turn right, turn left, go 6 paces, left, left...... shit! where am I now? The remake is navigable, AND the town looks like a goddamn town. That's like the least I would expect from a video game.

Combat in the remake is better, cause diagonals, cause diagonals means tacticals can happen. Overall, combat is BSB. Does combat ever get interesting in RoA? I enjoyed what little I played of Star Trail, but it wasn't impressive.

The remake is honestly better than the original, release and bugs notwithstanding. Every time I try to love the original, it pushes me away. I'm younger than the original demographic, but I've played enough old games to know what a shitty interface is, and boy howdy is this a clunky, shitty interface. The remake has a bad interface as well, but it benefits from being simple and inuitive. Both games would benefit enormously from a Darklands style menu in each location. It would fit with all the delicious bits of poorly edited flavor text, which both versions do well enough. It's like a slap in the face, when you enter bars, inns, shops, and smithies to be greeted with a stupid painting of the occupants, dumbly waiting on you to "use talent" or "talk". Darklands made each new place feel cool, because you show up ready to kick ass, and *bam!* here's a list of things you can do in this new place. It seems like a nitpick, but this is my number one problem with Arkania. It's so clunky that, by the time I get to the tasty bits, they've gone cold. Like eating a platter of boiled crabs, all the sweet flavor is encrusted with this chitonous bullshit.


TL: DR- Both games suck, remake's better, can't wait to see how Star Trail comes out.


I think these guys need to be given a chance, ya'll. Remaking RoA is a tremendous undertaking, and they've responded to criticism and genuinely done what they could to meet their job requirements, AND translate this content faithfully into a newer engine. DSA doesn't come out on PC very often and if you want better DSA, you gotta show em there's a market. We should be buying these games and then criticizing the fuck out of them. It's not like they have an audience outside of faggots like you.
 

Roqua

Prospernaut
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual In My Safe Space
Joined
Apr 28, 2004
Messages
4,130
Location
YES!
I've played enough to have a conclusion here. BoD is a fucking boring mess. In the original game, navigating the town is tedious as hell. Buildings and the location overall lack meaningful distinction. The only fronts that seem any different are temples, and in periphery they look the same as every other residence. In the GB days, you could walk your happy ass around town and approximate what you're entering, from across the plaza. In BoD, you have to constantly open the map, close the map, open the map, close the map, turn right, turn left, go 6 paces, left, left...... shit! where am I now? The remake is navigable, AND the town looks like a goddamn town. That's like the least I would expect from a video game.

Combat in the remake is better, cause diagonals, cause diagonals means tacticals can happen. Overall, combat is BSB. Does combat ever get interesting in RoA? I enjoyed what little I played of Star Trail, but it wasn't impressive.

The remake is honestly better than the original, release and bugs notwithstanding. Every time I try to love the original, it pushes me away. I'm younger than the original demographic, but I've played enough old games to know what a shitty interface is, and boy howdy is this a clunky, shitty interface. The remake has a bad interface as well, but it benefits from being simple and inuitive. Both games would benefit enormously from a Darklands style menu in each location. It would fit with all the delicious bits of poorly edited flavor text, which both versions do well enough. It's like a slap in the face, when you enter bars, inns, shops, and smithies to be greeted with a stupid painting of the occupants, dumbly waiting on you to "use talent" or "talk". Darklands made each new place feel cool, because you show up ready to kick ass, and *bam!* here's a list of things you can do in this new place. It seems like a nitpick, but this is my number one problem with Arkania. It's so clunky that, by the time I get to the tasty bits, they've gone cold. Like eating a platter of boiled crabs, all the sweet flavor is encrusted with this chitonous bullshit.


TL: DR- Both games suck, remake's better, can't wait to see how Star Trail comes out.


I think these guys need to be given a chance, ya'll. Remaking RoA is a tremendous undertaking, and they've responded to criticism and genuinely done what they could to meet their job requirements, AND translate this content faithfully into a newer engine. DSA doesn't come out on PC very often and if you want better DSA, you gotta show em there's a market. We should be buying these games and then criticizing the fuck out of them. It's not like they have an audience outside of faggots like you.

While I disagree that both games suck, I can't disagree with everything else you stated. It was a fair summation especially from a younger person. I also appreciate that you can see the diamond in the rough.

Since you brought darklands up, you have to agree both games (darklands and BoD) were going for something different than the usual. Crps were just getting over the content lite dungeon crawler days and could go in a number of directions. This game decided to really try and bring the PnP feel to crpgs with metagame mechanics. Traveler (or was it mega traveler) kind of did the same thing before this. Obviously, the direction decided upon was the BG emphasis on recruitables and super easy fast combat.

Looking back, the original RoA games did have horrible interfaces, but not if you played them at the time. For instance, I thought darksun had the greatest interface ever when it first came out, while I think it is a huge pain in the ass now. When I compare that to the pathing in the IE games, I thought it was just as bad when it first came out as I do now.

I don't think combat in these games (or this version of DSA) is the greatest by any means, but it is far, far better than anything being offered up at the time. Builds were very, very important. The function of every party member was important. When and how to use spells was very important. Every action had a reaction and required thought. Obviously, when compared to ToEE or Blackguards 1, this old DSA system loses, but compare the combat in this to Dark Suns. Dark Suns was the best of regular AD&D in my opinion (with Buck Rogers being far and away the best specialized AD&D system). Dark Sun's character and combat and spell choices were far less meaningful, chardev non-existant compared to the RoA games. Darklands was click and watch. Albion was just standard fair. This game was the standard setter for combat requiring a strategy and the employment of tactics, while also thinking of metagame longterm issues such as mana usage and regen, etc.


Lastly, I notice you didn't mention the save game xp penalty in the original BoA. That is a very unique feature I think deserves mentioning and is a big deviation of the new game. 50xp to save is a huge deal in the original, which wasn't in Star Trail or SoR. It kind of gave me my first taste of almost ironman gaming.
 

covr

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Sep 3, 2006
Messages
1,315
Location
Warszawa
I think these guys need to be given a chance, ya'll. Remaking RoA is a tremendous undertaking, and they've responded to criticism and genuinely done what they could to meet their job requirements, AND translate this content faithfully into a newer engine. DSA doesn't come out on PC very often and if you want better DSA, you gotta show em there's a market. We should be buying these games and then criticizing the fuck out of them. It's not like they have an audience outside of faggots like you.
Believe me - most of the Codexers is going to buy this game. Next year, in the 'Shit crpg #3 bundle folder' for $1.99.
The problem with the first part was kind of sad, game was too shitty to play it. And it is hard to criticize after 130 seconds of playing.
 

pippin

Guest
I think these guys need to be given a chance, ya'll. Remaking RoA is a tremendous undertaking, and they've responded to criticism and genuinely done what they could to meet their job requirements, AND translate this content faithfully into a newer engine. DSA doesn't come out on PC very often and if you want better DSA, you gotta show em there's a market. We should be buying these games and then criticizing the fuck out of them. It's not like they have an audience outside of faggots like you.
Believe me - most of the Codexers is going to buy this game. Next year, in the 'Shit crpg #3 bundle folder' for $1.99.
The problem with the first part was kind of sad, game was too shitty to play it. And it is hard to criticize after 130 seconds of playing.

I got the remake on a Bundle for that price, and it included the original games so you might as well say I got the remake for free :M This was before the remake went out of Steam for "legal reasons" too. It's been awhile since I played it but I'm playing other stuff right now. I might try it again one day...
 

Goblino

Savant
Joined
Jun 22, 2015
Messages
327
Hell, I bought this one for about half off on steam.

Roqua, I can see that these games get a lot of their feel from neue 90's deutsche sim craze. I really respect that interface suffered, because they were doing things, content-wise, which were pretty unorthodox and advanced. That the remake is a better game to me is more incidental to me being grown on early 3d games. I just get along better with shitty 3d models than with nondescript sprites. The interface is functionally more intuitive in the new one, but it's also way uglier than the old one. The towns look better and are easy to navigate, but they're too barren for a fully rendered town, in terms of interactivity. As far as the save feature is concerned, in this day and age it feels too arbitrary and punitive to penalize experience, especially for saves. If I'm gaming on my tab or a laptop, I shouldn't be punished because my friend showed up and I decided to turn off the game and engage them.

Edit: Just want to be clear, I think there should still be things that can lower your experience, just not things that pertain to saving the game.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
Brace yourselves - we have something to discuss! :bounce:

First, the German dev update:

Einer der aus unserer Wahrnehmung heraus am heftigsten diskutierten Spielabschnitte von Sternenschweif ist der Phextempel in Tiefhusen: „Wie kommen Untote auf geweihten Boden?“, „Was hat der Totengott im Tempel der Diebe verloren?“ und „Wieso ist alles eitel Wonne, wenn ich vorher reihenweise Priester um die Ecke gebracht habe?“. Fragen, auf die auch wir nicht zu antworten wussten. Nicht minder kontrovers waren das durchbrechen der „vierten Wand“ im Abschlussdialog und der schadenfrohe Humor desselben („haha, ihr kriegt gar nix!“). Zusammengenommen haben wir uns somit die Aufgabe gestellt, den Phextempel komplett auf neue Beine zu stellen.

Und genau das haben wir auch gemacht: Die Untoten sind verschwunden, Priester aus den Kämpfen verbannt und der gesamte Dungeon hat im Laufe seiner Veränderung ein völlig neues Gesicht bekommen – und vor allem eines: zahlreiche phexgefällige Rätsel! In seiner neuen Form kitzelt der Phextempel die grauen Zellen der Helden gleichermaßen wie die des Spielers.

Schon für den Early Access wurde ein atmosphärisches Gewölbe errichtet, das den Spagat aus Modernisierung und Wiedererkennungswert unserer Meinung nach bravourös meistert und gleichermaßen für Neueinsteiger wie für den x-ten Spieldurchlauf Abwechslung und Kurzweil bietet. Hier noch ein paar Impressionen, um euch die Zeit bis zum Selber-Durchlaufen-können etwas zu verkürzen:



http://www.sternenschweif.com/phextempel-tiefhusen/


Short summary: "Why was the Temple of Phex in the original game designed this way? What was the god of death doing in the temple of thieves? Why does the finale not acknowledge all the priests I've killed inside the temple? Why does the final dialogue break the fourth wall?" To deal with these questions, the game's final area has been completely redesigned for the sequel: the undead are gone, you don't fight priests anymore, and instead there are lots of Phex-appropriate new riddles.

The dungeon will be playable in Early Access, screens are above.

More studios should post dev updates on a Saturday.
 
Self-Ejected

Sacred82

Self-Ejected
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jun 7, 2013
Messages
2,957
Location
Free Village
"Why was the Temple of Phex in the original game designed this way? What was the god of death doing in the temple of thieves? Why does the finale not acknowledge all the priests I've killed inside the temple? Why does the final dialogue break the fourth wall?"

EF2H042S.jpg



Plebs cannot into eclectic thought processes :martini:
 

Siobhan

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 25, 2013
Messages
472
Location
1X 1Y 2Z
Basically a case of DSA4 fags being unable to wrap their head around how adventure modules worked in DSA1, DSA2, and early DSA3. Back then DSA was still about creating fun, tongue-in-cheek adventures rather than dull, melodramatic exercises in fantastic realism. It's pretty telling that late DSA3 and DSA4 have an entire rulebook on calculating the building costs for houses and castles, while traps and dungeons are only mentioned as examples of how stupid and unsophisticated those old adventures were.
 

Snorkack

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
2,975
Location
Lower Bavaria
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Basically a case of DSA4 fags being unable to wrap their head around how adventure modules worked in DSA1, DSA2, and early DSA3. Back then DSA was still about creating fun, tongue-in-cheek adventures rather than dull, melodramatic exercises in fantastic realism. It's pretty telling that late DSA3 and DSA4 have an entire rulebook on calculating the building costs for houses and castles, while traps and dungeons are only mentioned as examples of how stupid and unsophisticated those old adventures were.
I've been around since DSA 1 and quite happy that they ditched the Schwarzer-Keiler-age dungeons where orcs, dragons and undead live together happily because why the fuck not (or even aliens, robots and other sci-fi) shit in favor of world building with cohrerent logic, because that's one of DSA's strong points for ages now. The phex temple changes are something I really like, at least on paper.
 

thesheeep

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 16, 2007
Messages
9,939
Location
Tampere, Finland
Codex 2012 Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I fondly remember the time when we played DSA (4, I think) and one of us wanted to cast a summoning spell.
After half an hour, we got all the rules straight and some more minutes after that he cast the spell.

Actually, scratch the "fondly".
Tried to build a shaman from the southern islands once. I had to read chapters from 3+ books just to collect rules and background info for ritual dances.
Neither is it fun for 4+ people to sit around waiting for the GM & one player to get all the rules together (from far more than two source books), nor should a player be expected to spend hours of his free time just to write down and remember all the random checks required to cast a certain spell. A player that already knows the basic rules and is an experienced PnP player, mind you.

DSA is a prime example of good basic rules being utterly ruined by too many fucking bonus rules, checks, influences and what not. "Too much realism" made into a rule system.
I'd never play it again except for in a PC game or when house ruling everything deriving from the basics.
 

Snorkack

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
2,975
Location
Lower Bavaria
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Haha, I feel you. DSA ruleset could be called 'bloated' I guess. Current necessary rules to summon demons, elementals and undead are distributed over five different publications. And creating a hero without having the fan-made Hero Software at hands, will mostly take more time than an average play session evening.
But to be honest, the core rulebook provides esentially everything you need to start off the authentic DSA experience and other additional rulebooks can be included on the fly as the group's familiarity with the system grows.
Well, except if you want to play a daemonologist, an elementalist or a necromancer.
 

Siobhan

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 25, 2013
Messages
472
Location
1X 1Y 2Z
I've been around since DSA 1 and quite happy that they ditched the Schwarzer-Keiler-age dungeons where orcs, dragons and undead live together happily because why the fuck not (or even aliens, robots and other sci-fi) shit in favor of world building with cohrerent logic, because that's one of DSA's strong points for ages now. The phex temple changes are something I really like, at least on paper.

I felt like that for the longest time, too, in particular in the early 2000s when this looked like the future of PnP. But in the end DSA's obsession with fantastic realism makes it much harder for DMs to design engaging adventures and really limits what stories can be told. Maybe the DM wants a group of orcs to ambush the party, but instead a player points out that the only tribe in this area are Tscharshai, who are peaceful traders rather than warriors. Or you've designed a cool dungeon with all kinds of traps and riddles, only to have players wonder what spells could create this effect: abandoned temples with teleporter mirrors, statues that come to live and fight you, Goonies style Rube Goldberg traps, none of that fits into the DSA setting unless you deliberately set up a scenario where the standard rules don't apply (e.g. Achaz magic). Even the official adventure modules struggle with this issue and drop the realism whenever it suits their needs (*cough* Jahr des Feuers *cough*), which feels really jarring in a world that tries so damn hard to be internally consistent.

Alright, I don't want to get too far off-topic, so to the point: DSA's fantastic realism has gone way overboard, thesheeep is correct that DSA's rule system sucks (in particular DSA4), and, most importantly, there's no reason to change the Phex temple. Why? Because it's Phex, the good of thieves and trickery, just say those priests aren't actually dead and the undead are priests in some kind of karmatic disguise.
 

Snorkack

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
2,975
Location
Lower Bavaria
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Agreed, DSA 4's regional fluffbooks didn't leave many white spots on the map for a GM to fill with his own ideas. Guess I'm blessed with a party where I am by far the most knowledgeable and can get away with stuff that isn't 100% canonical.
there's no reason to change the Phex temple. Why? Because it's Phex, the good of thieves and trickery, just say those priests aren't actually dead and the undead are priests in some kind of karmatic disguise.
Idk, that's subjective, but slaughtering a bunch of priests just feels so... out of place and plain wrong. It's essentially the worst crime one can commit in the setting. Temple's easily the weakest part of the whole trilogy story-wise.
Now dozens of traps and riddles on the other hand - it doesn't get more phexish than that. Although I'm not sure the crafty guys can pull that off.
 

Siobhan

Arbiter
Joined
Feb 25, 2013
Messages
472
Location
1X 1Y 2Z
There's a simple gameplay reason for the priests, namely that the designers wanted magic users among the enemies that can destroy your weapons --- since you're locked into the dungeon, this is a serious source of attrition. Personally, I find it somewhat silly to be annoyed that those pixels on the battle field are identified as priests, but if that's really an issue, swap out the sprites for thieves and rogues. You'll still be wondering why there's so many magically gifted rogues in this random basement, but that's the difference between CRPGs and P&P --- in the former, gameplay always trumps world consistency.

Edit: Heck, you could even say those rogues were given artefacts blessed by Phex that can destroy weapons. Maybe allow the party to obtain one or two of them. There, inconsistency resolved, no need to redesign the temple.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom