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Incline Thoughts on Prince of Qin

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong 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'm nearly halfway through the game so far and I have to agree with much of what has already been said by the reviewer, Saint_Proverbius here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=29

I would have just tacked my comments unto that thread, but since it was under the RPG news section, I felt the game deserved its own thread in the general rpg section.

This game really forces you to pay attention. Combat does stay interesting due to two facts already stated; that two separate but similar packs of enemies are going to fight at different variations of difficulty due to the five ring system, and since respawning enemies will sometimes appear right next to where your melee combat is taking place. The first fact is intentionally coded into the game as part of the game world, while the second seems more due to poorly thought out coding. Either way, it pays to be aware and not to get cocky lest you suffer a total party kill in an area you had just been completely owning.

Although our Codex reviewer found the poor translations charming like an old kung-fu movie, I had some trouble with it. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't enter a series of caves in one part of the game. The only message I received when trying to click on one of these five caves was something akin to 'There is danger and you cannot enter without cave.'
:retarded:

Also, while some of the supporting cast of voice actors at least try to make an attempt at inflection and emotion, the person voicing the main character is quite bland, especially when you consider he's playing a fugitive on the run whose family members are being eliminated. That's not a spoiler by the way. The whole story is pretty much told to you in the manual. Other actors sound as if they were chosen from the developer staff and told to read lines from a piece of paper before they had their morning coffee.

Character creation doesn't exist, the skills available are plentiful but with only a limited amount of skills to invest you aren't likely to put points into many of them, and your fellow NPCs often perform some stupid moves in the midst of combat such as when the wizard steps away from an oncoming enemy soldier, just to back up into several of the soldier's antagonistic allies. Or when your assassin steps away from danger so far that she walks around a corner and becomes useless. You'll have to micromanage in a number of battles.

And despite all these complaints, the game has grown on me. Most NPCs aren't given names but generic descriptions when your roll the mouse over them. Yet you still should make the attempt to talk as these people, identified as 'old man', 'middle-aged man', 'bad child', 'hooligan' and so on, often will give you quests or items that give permanent stat boosts just for talking. Again, you have to pay attention and actually take time to talk and explore in order to gain reward. Some side quests you encounter early on may be beyond your ability to handle, requiring you to move on with the intention to try again later. Some people are not always what they at first seem, for good and for ill. The violence and morbid fates of your protagonists' friends and family seem almost laughably over-the-top... and then you remember that the game is based on real events and actual Chinese records and your smirk at the dialogue from sneering villains fades as your touched by the tragic elements that must have actually happened. Reading the game manual about the amount of people killed just in the building of the Great Wall during this time gives you a sense of the desperation normal people must have felt.

So I won't be putting this game on a top 25 CRPG list anytime soon. But I will say its a flawed and forgotten gem that I must recommend. Though I am nearing the halfway point, my enjoyment of the game is increasing as I continue my play through and simultaneously absorb information on Chinese history, culture and lore. Take that for what it's worth and have a Merry Christmas while we are at it.
 
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laclongquan

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This game prove without doubt that Chinese game voice actors/actresses are the worst we will know. God~

And there's a good reason it's less known: Bugs galore. At early stages not much things work as intended. For example is the item crafting. The elements only work right in the last patch.

second is the destruction of two major concentration of Qin players, in strategy first forum and the english section of object software's forum. Hell, in the old day if you want to dig really deep, we used to try translating the chinese section.

For your information, there's 7 ending based on your companions on final party that defeat the final boss, and some stuffs you've done in the game.

Yes, the narrators of those endings are just as atrocious as the dialog ingame.
 

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
And there's a good reason it's less known: Bugs galore. At early stages not much things work as intended. For example is the item crafting. The elements only work right in the last patch.

I've run into one of the bugs you were talking about. I got to the end of Chapter 2, when I suddenly noticed my in game log stopped working, and I don't mean that it stopped updating. The entire log is now one big blank. I was using the damn thing as my reference to know where to head next. I actually had to go and find a walkthrough so I could figure out where to go next. Up until that point I leaned completely on the log to figure out what to do.

This game is damn huge, and not all the quests are solvable right away. I explored every area I could, but the game stops you from visiting some locations until you progress in the story. I have about eight side quests I cannot complete, and I am supposing that I will find the solutions to them later on as I've pretty much talked to everybody in this game a couple times over. I only had around ten places I couldn't go by chapter 2. I also think I was supposed to pick other companions in a different order than what I did, as I didn't get a witch until very recently, but if I had helped my dying brother closer to where I started the game I would have had one way earlier. Right now I have one member of every character class, but wouldn't mind dropping the witch for a muscleman or another wizard. I thought I was nearly done with the game, but I just realized when looking at the walkthrough index that there are 9 chapters! I just entered chapter 3 and have already sunk quite a number of hours into this game. My characters are level 21, and the cap is level 50, so I had thought I was nearly halfway... wow...
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire 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
And there's a good reason it's less known: Bugs galore. At early stages not much things work as intended. For example is the item crafting. The elements only work right in the last patch.

I've run into one of the bugs you were talking about. I got to the end of Chapter 2, when I suddenly noticed my in game log stopped working, and I don't mean that it stopped updating. The entire log is now one big blank. I was using the damn thing as my reference to know where to head next. I actually had to go and find a walkthrough so I could figure out where to go next. Up until that point I leaned completely on the log to figure out what to do.

This game is damn huge, and not all the quests are solvable right away. I explored every area I could, but the game stops you from visiting some locations until you progress in the story. I have about eight side quests I cannot complete, and I am supposing that I will find the solutions to them later on as I've pretty much talked to everybody in this game a couple times over. I only had around ten places I couldn't go by chapter 2. I also think I was supposed to pick other companions in a different order than what I did, as I didn't get a witch until very recently, but if I had helped my dying brother closer to where I started the game I would have had one way earlier. Right now I have one member of every character class, but wouldn't mind dropping the witch for a muscleman or another wizard. I thought I was nearly done with the game, but I just realized when looking at the walkthrough index that there are 9 chapters! I just entered chapter 3 and have already sunk quite a number of hours into this game. My characters are level 21, and the cap is level 50, so I had thought I was nearly halfway... wow...
There are probably enough witches around... I remember getting one as early as Xianyang. I found her as useful as the other classes, they all seem somewhat balanced from the perspective of usefulness.
 

laclongquan

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Oh enough witch. There's one as early as chapter 1 and another in chapter 2.

Yao Tong is pretty useful and you can develop her in one of three way to optimize her spells.

Chanyu Qiu: Go to the biggest city on the east, her house is opposite of the station. She suicide and youhave to save her. Qiu is locked into one way already. you could develop her the other ways but it's inefficient.

And more later on.

Witch is heavy artillery of magical power, different style than water wizard.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire 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
Oh enough witch. There's one as early as chapter 1 and another in chapter 2.

Yao Tong is pretty useful and you can develop her in one of three way to optimize her spells.

Chanyu Qiu: Go to the biggest city on the east, her house is opposite of the station. She suicide and youhave to save her. Qiu is locked into one way already. you could develop her the other ways but it's inefficient.

And more later on.

Witch is heavy artillery of magical power, different style than water wizard.
Oh, yeah. Chanyu Qiu. That's the one I recruited. Might have gotten the city wrong though. On the whole, there's at least 3 of each class and you can get a full crew pretty early. If only it didn't crash so much...
 

Lady_Error

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Isometric and RTwP combat - doesn't sound too bad.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire 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
Isometric and RTwP combat - doesn't sound too bad.
To be fair, it does have respawning enemies, although they're somewhat necessary for crafting. As far as RTwP goes, there's quite the variety in abilities and such.
 

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
Ok, just finished the game. Now that I'm going through the list of hints, it seems that there were seven possible different endings. My character retired into obscurity and allowed Liu Bang to come into power. I'm not sure what other endings there are. I'm looking over the walkthrough, and I see that I also missed out on a ton of side quests. I answered a question incorrectly during one side quest, and therefore was never allowed access to some promised land of peace, which would have allowed me to find a home for the survivors of an early village that was destroyed. I also never found a lost king, didn't build some knick knacks like a fishing rod for some peasants, and never figured out what to do with two jugs of alcohol I was lugging around. Simply put, I sucked at finding secrets in this game, and according to the walkthrough, once I left certain areas I was never able to complete some of them.

It took me over 52 hours according to my save file, but if I would have to guess I easily played over 60 when you factor in reloads. Your soft squishy spellcasters can really get their asses handed to them quickly when you're fighting against large groups. At the end of the game, some of my characters would stop engaging the enemy and I didn't always notice. Because of that, I did less damage to the final guy than I should have, which dragged the fight out longer. This resulted in me losing my summoned bear, witch, and strongman before finally taking the boss down. I ended the game at level 48. The funny thing is that I entered the palace at level 40. They send so many men after you towards the last part of the game that my computer started lagging from having to process their movement, and I jumped 7-8 levels for each character. The more men I killed, the quicker my computer was able to process information once more.

The AI can be somewhat stupid. Often I would run away from a blob of enemies, and they would stop chasing me and turn around. I would then turn and kill the stragglers. Wash, rinse, repeat until the force is manageable to take on in a rush. This could even be done in more constrained dungeons. The ability to build your own items was fun, but there was a definite lack of materials. I found countless metal ore and wood to use, but I hardly ever found tendons. There were some locations where you could kill continuously spawning monsters, but for some reason the respawning areas mostly had ogres, which never dropped tendons, hides, or bones. Some balance in regards to raw materials would have been nice. As it was, I mostly could only make weapons for my muscle man and rings for everyone else.

It was a fun game, but a lot of the time spent was due to padding. The ton of random encounters and battles against Qin soldiers became annoyingly repetitive. The support class of the witch should have had a normal distance attack. Those are quibbles, though. I liked the character classes, the lore, the graphics, the music, the unforgiving side quests, and many of the characters. Find and play this if you can, especially if you liked isometric games such as Baldur's Gate and Divine Divinity. Prince of Qin took elements from both.
 

ERYFKRAD

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Strap Yourselves In Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire 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'm not certain if level scaling is applied in this game, though I doubt it, however, you should find wolves in the early regions of enough to score a few tendons every now and then.
 

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong 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'm not certain if level scaling is applied in this game, though I doubt it, however, you should find wolves in the early regions of enough to score a few tendons every now and then.

I think there might be level-scaling, because some of the Qin soldiers seemed tougher as I played through the game. Not sure if it was automated level-scaling, or if they just put higher level monsters against you in later stages. At the same time some monsters would drop different level materials. Wolves always drop level 3 raw materials through the game. Tigers drop level 6. Only a few unique monsters drop level 9 or 10 bones and tendons and skins, but soldiers had higher level ore and wood. So I could make lesser items with all high level material, except level 3 tendons.
 

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