Pope Amole
Educated
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2010
- Messages
- 138
You see, I wanted to reply to the neighbouring (atm) Spiderweb topic (asking what is good in his games and stuff) and the basis of my potential post was "well, they can be fun if you know how to cook them". And then I tried to describe how exactly to cook them, but when I looked at my post in the end, I found that it was kinda way too big for a mere reply and that it also could be potentially useful to someone, so it would be a shame if it just drowned on the page 2 or 3, never to be read and remembered again. So I've decided to make a thread out of it - why not?
So, as I've already said, you just need to know which of his games to play and how to play them. I can't speak about either Nethergate or Exile (was too tired of the underground thematic after Avernums and never was too fond of roman empire and its surroundings), but I can tell about his major series - Avernum, Geneforge and, unfortunately, Avadon.
Latter is simple - it is the new shit in its most absolute form, just without gay sex (or any sex, for that matters) and next-gen graphics. It's a breeze on the easy/medium difficulty settings and a chore on the hard/torment ones, it has lot of choices which don't influence anything and don't lead anywhere, instead of a proper RPG system it has 2 viable choices per character, there's no real difference between the classes (with the exception of shamaness, maybe, but she kinda sucks), it's fond of reusing the same and same content (not the graphical one - that's fine for Vogel's games, but the gameplay one), it is grimdark with greyscale NPC factions, it tries to save your time by auto-regenning your health after each battle yet at the same time it wastes your time by unnecessary walking and tons of trash mobs, it is a fully modern RPG, to put it simply. I thought about writing a proper review for Codex, but it's already kinda late for it or is it?
To put it simply, you can't make a turd edible. Avoid at all costs.
Next, Avernum.
Avernum is mostly about combat - storyline there is a constant trashfest in vibe of "hurr-durr, let's protect the awesome citizens of awesome underground country from some evil-evil menace!!!" Problem is, Vogel couldn't write a decent NPC to save his life, his characters are usually annoying and/or retarded, so you don't have much incentive to help them and the plot itself is very, very simplistic or nonexistent even . Setting is fine, though, but not that original - thanks to the d&d underdark drizzt drow galore, it's been showcasted in quite a number of games.
Since combat in first four parts is primitive and boring, it's obvious that you shouldn't touch them with a 10-feet pole, even if they do have some free exploration or respawning fedex quests or whatever. 5-6, on the other hand, are rather nice, actually, if you build your party right and by right I mean a full-caster mode. Yeah, while warriors and archers can only hit & run and shoot & run(not exactly rich, eh?), mages and clerics actually do have some options. Not insanely broad options, but when you mix them up with combat disciplines (access to which is gained through increasing melee/archery skills, but they can be applied to spells freely) and with the factor that these games feature quite a high number of bosses with relatively intricate and more or less varying tactics, you can have some pretty enjoyable combat. So either 1 +3, 2+2 or 3+1 mages and clerics (I prefer an even mix, personally, but that depends on your tastes; also, fifth part has some tempting options for pure cleric party, but this way also has some serious disadvantages), all of them with divine favour and natural mage/priest traits and of the Slann/nephilim races, so you can gain access to combat disciplines easier - that should do the trick for you. Fifth part is also cool since you can say a big "fuck off" to those pesky dungeon dwellers whom you, by Vogel's idea, should love and adore. It has some unpleasant consequences which will try to make you feel guilty, but that only shows the level of Vogel's imagination and writing.
Geneforge series also have similar rules of finding fun in them.
First, unless you want to go a full-stealth mode, never try to solo them. Excluding rougelikes, where the high number of spells, scrolls, items and potions creates a huge number of available battle options and severity of consequences (i.e. permadeath) makes every single one of those choices pretty important, one man turn based combat is shit. True for Fallout, true for Arcanum, true when you try to solo any M&M, Wizardry or other dungeon crawler, true for any jRPG, true for Geneforge. Especially for Geneforge, since it is all about shaping and if you're not using it, you're playing the wrong game - there are lot of other titles when you can enjoy being pure-fighter or pure-caster (where, caster - yes, fighter - not really, they're usually boring as hell in cRPGS). Shaping is the essence of the game (well, it's kinda other way around, but you'll understand it after you play the game), so there's little point of playing it solo.
Second, melee combat, ranged combat and mental magic are boring. Well, ranged combat less so, because in later(3+) parts it affects your crystals (basically, magical grenades) and wands greatly and these cute thingies have a nice assortment of effects in them, but they're quite finite so most of the time you'll be just point&clicking your enemies with your baton (basically, a gun). Or even popamoling them in melee combat, because that's how a DEX-based builds often work in Geneforges . Pure melee is, as I've said, a turn-based popamole, avoid like hell, especially in the second part where you don't even have to click on the opposing monsters - you can just stand amidst of them and watch as they kill themselves thanks to the idiotically powerful parry skill. Mental magic either leads to "stun all enemies, then whack them one by one in melee" or "berserk your enemies and let them kill themselves", and I'm sure that we all agree that it is very interesting to watch the game playing itself without doing pretty much anything. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Pump either combat magic or blessing/healing magic (depending on the part you play) to support your creations in combat, that gives you most tactical options possible and they are the heart of fun in turn-based games.
Third, don't overtrain your creations. What I mean is that they gain experience and levels with you if you let them live long enough, and you really, really shouldn't do that. If you take a good creation and train it long enough, it becomes so ridiculously stupid that even higher-tier monsters that you'll eventually be able to shape won't hold a candle to it. Yeah, keeping your summons alive for a while makes them grotesquely strong and is the key to surviving the game on a torment difficulty, but it also makes the whole game boring because it leaves you with nothing but pwning enemies by using one and the same trick again and again, level after level, throughout the whole experience. Potent tactic, but repetitive and, obviously, uninteresting. On the other hand, if you're not training them, they become easily replaceable, you can part with them without any regrets, you can use them for suicidal attacks, you're not forced to reload each time one of those buggers dies(yuck) and you can change your mix constantly to match the challenge of any area you're in. That makes the game more strategical, which is good, in my opinion. Also I advise against specializing (and, in some of the games, training at all) in shaping schools. Usually, there's enough trainers and various buffing items to allow you to shape you pretty much anything that you want without spending a single skill point, so why bother? Invest those points either in your shaper's intelligence (to you'll have more material to make creations from) or magic skills, though G1 is kinda exception here. Also, specialization in the schools sucks since they're all not that deep and you can't get a nice mix with just one of them.
So that's about combat. In terms of storyline - well, in first and second and fifth parts, if you know what you're doing, you can play an awesome magnificient bastard, swindling and betraying people for your gain left and right, but that's kinda hard to do without any hints on your first walkthrough, so that's really a replay material. You can also play most of them with with more or less pacifistic character which is a huge bonus in my book, though again I'm not sure whether it's that viable on your first walkthrough or not. Note that stealth is not really deep in the game, rather simplistic if not primitive, and you'll skip a lot of content by relying on it, so you've been warned. Also, annoyingness and retardedness of Vogel's characters somehow turns out to be a plus in the game since you can complete some of them by slaughtering everything you see mercilessly and gain a perfectly good ending for it - sometimes it's good to be a little EXTREME. As for the faction choice - well, whatever suits your tastes, though I always found rebels to be idiotic in either motives or actions, but that's IMNSHO.
While it may seem that I'm really narrowing the games' choices with my advices, it's quite the contrary - first, you still have a ton of choices within these boundaries, second, it's all about quality of playthroughs, not quantity of them. And, obviously, I advice taking some breaks between playing the various parts of the games so you won't get fed up with the stuff.
So, as I've already said, you just need to know which of his games to play and how to play them. I can't speak about either Nethergate or Exile (was too tired of the underground thematic after Avernums and never was too fond of roman empire and its surroundings), but I can tell about his major series - Avernum, Geneforge and, unfortunately, Avadon.
Latter is simple - it is the new shit in its most absolute form, just without gay sex (or any sex, for that matters) and next-gen graphics. It's a breeze on the easy/medium difficulty settings and a chore on the hard/torment ones, it has lot of choices which don't influence anything and don't lead anywhere, instead of a proper RPG system it has 2 viable choices per character, there's no real difference between the classes (with the exception of shamaness, maybe, but she kinda sucks), it's fond of reusing the same and same content (not the graphical one - that's fine for Vogel's games, but the gameplay one), it is grimdark with greyscale NPC factions, it tries to save your time by auto-regenning your health after each battle yet at the same time it wastes your time by unnecessary walking and tons of trash mobs, it is a fully modern RPG, to put it simply. I thought about writing a proper review for Codex, but it's already kinda late for it or is it?
To put it simply, you can't make a turd edible. Avoid at all costs.
Next, Avernum.
Avernum is mostly about combat - storyline there is a constant trashfest in vibe of "hurr-durr, let's protect the awesome citizens of awesome underground country from some evil-evil menace!!!" Problem is, Vogel couldn't write a decent NPC to save his life, his characters are usually annoying and/or retarded, so you don't have much incentive to help them and the plot itself is very, very simplistic or nonexistent even . Setting is fine, though, but not that original - thanks to the d&d underdark drizzt drow galore, it's been showcasted in quite a number of games.
Since combat in first four parts is primitive and boring, it's obvious that you shouldn't touch them with a 10-feet pole, even if they do have some free exploration or respawning fedex quests or whatever. 5-6, on the other hand, are rather nice, actually, if you build your party right and by right I mean a full-caster mode. Yeah, while warriors and archers can only hit & run and shoot & run(not exactly rich, eh?), mages and clerics actually do have some options. Not insanely broad options, but when you mix them up with combat disciplines (access to which is gained through increasing melee/archery skills, but they can be applied to spells freely) and with the factor that these games feature quite a high number of bosses with relatively intricate and more or less varying tactics, you can have some pretty enjoyable combat. So either 1 +3, 2+2 or 3+1 mages and clerics (I prefer an even mix, personally, but that depends on your tastes; also, fifth part has some tempting options for pure cleric party, but this way also has some serious disadvantages), all of them with divine favour and natural mage/priest traits and of the Slann/nephilim races, so you can gain access to combat disciplines easier - that should do the trick for you. Fifth part is also cool since you can say a big "fuck off" to those pesky dungeon dwellers whom you, by Vogel's idea, should love and adore. It has some unpleasant consequences which will try to make you feel guilty, but that only shows the level of Vogel's imagination and writing.
Geneforge series also have similar rules of finding fun in them.
First, unless you want to go a full-stealth mode, never try to solo them. Excluding rougelikes, where the high number of spells, scrolls, items and potions creates a huge number of available battle options and severity of consequences (i.e. permadeath) makes every single one of those choices pretty important, one man turn based combat is shit. True for Fallout, true for Arcanum, true when you try to solo any M&M, Wizardry or other dungeon crawler, true for any jRPG, true for Geneforge. Especially for Geneforge, since it is all about shaping and if you're not using it, you're playing the wrong game - there are lot of other titles when you can enjoy being pure-fighter or pure-caster (where, caster - yes, fighter - not really, they're usually boring as hell in cRPGS). Shaping is the essence of the game (well, it's kinda other way around, but you'll understand it after you play the game), so there's little point of playing it solo.
Second, melee combat, ranged combat and mental magic are boring. Well, ranged combat less so, because in later(3+) parts it affects your crystals (basically, magical grenades) and wands greatly and these cute thingies have a nice assortment of effects in them, but they're quite finite so most of the time you'll be just point&clicking your enemies with your baton (basically, a gun). Or even popamoling them in melee combat, because that's how a DEX-based builds often work in Geneforges . Pure melee is, as I've said, a turn-based popamole, avoid like hell, especially in the second part where you don't even have to click on the opposing monsters - you can just stand amidst of them and watch as they kill themselves thanks to the idiotically powerful parry skill. Mental magic either leads to "stun all enemies, then whack them one by one in melee" or "berserk your enemies and let them kill themselves", and I'm sure that we all agree that it is very interesting to watch the game playing itself without doing pretty much anything. Avoid, avoid, avoid. Pump either combat magic or blessing/healing magic (depending on the part you play) to support your creations in combat, that gives you most tactical options possible and they are the heart of fun in turn-based games.
Third, don't overtrain your creations. What I mean is that they gain experience and levels with you if you let them live long enough, and you really, really shouldn't do that. If you take a good creation and train it long enough, it becomes so ridiculously stupid that even higher-tier monsters that you'll eventually be able to shape won't hold a candle to it. Yeah, keeping your summons alive for a while makes them grotesquely strong and is the key to surviving the game on a torment difficulty, but it also makes the whole game boring because it leaves you with nothing but pwning enemies by using one and the same trick again and again, level after level, throughout the whole experience. Potent tactic, but repetitive and, obviously, uninteresting. On the other hand, if you're not training them, they become easily replaceable, you can part with them without any regrets, you can use them for suicidal attacks, you're not forced to reload each time one of those buggers dies(yuck) and you can change your mix constantly to match the challenge of any area you're in. That makes the game more strategical, which is good, in my opinion. Also I advise against specializing (and, in some of the games, training at all) in shaping schools. Usually, there's enough trainers and various buffing items to allow you to shape you pretty much anything that you want without spending a single skill point, so why bother? Invest those points either in your shaper's intelligence (to you'll have more material to make creations from) or magic skills, though G1 is kinda exception here. Also, specialization in the schools sucks since they're all not that deep and you can't get a nice mix with just one of them.
So that's about combat. In terms of storyline - well, in first and second and fifth parts, if you know what you're doing, you can play an awesome magnificient bastard, swindling and betraying people for your gain left and right, but that's kinda hard to do without any hints on your first walkthrough, so that's really a replay material. You can also play most of them with with more or less pacifistic character which is a huge bonus in my book, though again I'm not sure whether it's that viable on your first walkthrough or not. Note that stealth is not really deep in the game, rather simplistic if not primitive, and you'll skip a lot of content by relying on it, so you've been warned. Also, annoyingness and retardedness of Vogel's characters somehow turns out to be a plus in the game since you can complete some of them by slaughtering everything you see mercilessly and gain a perfectly good ending for it - sometimes it's good to be a little EXTREME. As for the faction choice - well, whatever suits your tastes, though I always found rebels to be idiotic in either motives or actions, but that's IMNSHO.
While it may seem that I'm really narrowing the games' choices with my advices, it's quite the contrary - first, you still have a ton of choices within these boundaries, second, it's all about quality of playthroughs, not quantity of them. And, obviously, I advice taking some breaks between playing the various parts of the games so you won't get fed up with the stuff.
