Well, here's my take on things. I got the game today and I installed it, and then downloaded and installed all the latest drivers to make sure I was up to date on drivers. Then I spent half an hour configuring and testing my system to make sure Bloodlines ran the best, while still having the best graphics my system could handle. I guess I should mention my system specs, they are: 3Ghz P4, 1GB Ram, Radeon 9800Pro, onboard sound (on the motherboard), and two 10K RPM drives in a RAID0 configuration.
Because of my fast hard drives, the game load times are extremely quick (in fact a lot of the times I don't have enough time to read the tips they flash up during the loads). Despite the fast load times, I've got the game running at 800x600, but I've got things like anti-aliasing on (I found I had better graphics this way, instead of upping it to 1024x768 and having AA disabled). With that all said, the game definitely has bugs. I've had the game crash to desktop a couple times (not entirely certain why), and there must be a memory leak because after a while of playing (about 3-4 hours), the game got SUPER sluggish, it was like watching a slideshow.
Now I haven't run into any showstopping bugs, but I have to say Troika is really starting to lose me here. The problem is all the little things add up. I've had problem with the physics in the game (somehow my character model will sometimes "merge" with another object that has physics and it gets stuck to me and makes it hard to walk) I've had graphics issues like texture problems. I've seen quite a number of AI problems related to pathfinding (characters getting stuck on each other and not moving but still doing the walking animation while the models jerk around for a bit), the enemy AI doing stupid stuff like not attacking me while I'm standing right in front of them. There's this annoying sound problem, where the music is so much louder than the people talking that I have to put the subtitles on, but the last line of text for any subtitle is missing. So if a person just says one line, I don't see it. Oh, and the damned footsteps are getting on my FUCKING NERVES! They keep on going for a few seconds after I stop moving and they are just plain annoying. The list goes on, but like I said it's all minor stuff.
What gets me is, it makes Troika seem like a company that can't put out a polished game. This one's simply unpolished just like ToEE. This is a trend that doesn't bode well for Troika. I don't think it's too much to require that a game be released in a polished form. I know some bugs are hard to catch, and some are so well concealed that they pretty much won't be caught until the game goes out to the general public, but most of these bugs I'm running into are inexcusable. I can see why gamespy gave the game a 4/5. In it's current state I would as well. Regardless of how good the RPG element is (and so far I've found it to be AMAZING), the rest of the stuff just brings the whole game down a notch. It's like having to sift through a layer of grim just to get the good stuff. I hope that they can get their act together.
I really liked Arcanum and thought of it only second to PS:T and Fallout for the well crafted RPG story. I haven't been able to finish ToEE, simply because I don't feel like trudging through all the bugs (namely for the fact that the first party I wanted to play was Chaotic Evil and I still can't play that party even with the latest patch, it just crashes the game). So if Troika's next game is just as buggy as this Bloodlines, I think I'll wait till it hits the bargain bin before buying it. That way I can still have the fun of playing a great RPG, while not paying so much for an unfinished product. It's just like what seperates a B flick classic from being a mainstream classic, it lacks polish.
Maybe all this is because Troika hasn't caught a break and been able to sell games well enough to make money, so I hope they do make a lot of money on Bloodlines if that means they can put out a less buggy game in the future. It's just a shame that a company that seems to have such a bright future to lose it to mainstream gamers.
Troll/Flame me if you want. I don't really care because I'm just one person stating their opinion. I will however be sending a list of the issues I find with the game to Troika (hopefully they can get a patch out before my next play through of the game, because I'll undoubtedly have to play it more than once simply for the amount of choices they offer, like 5 endings
). I suggest everyone who plays the game do the same thing, and who knows if they put a patch out, it might fix all my troubles!
