Storm of Zehir first impressions

[S_Verner]

I would much rather play a roguelike than this shit.

HEY, I can convert my saves to the new release!

oh fuck spine/eye/arms are maimed.

Where is mah robot?

Where is mah lancemate?

Where is mah spinnah?

Goddamnit, starting again, singer this time around.

No, detective.

Hacker?

Thief?

Journalist!

The best of all three worlds.

 

[poocolator]

I would much rather play a roguelike than this shit.

HEY, I can convert my saves to the new release!

oh fuck spine/eye/arms are maimed.

Where is mah robot?

Where is mah lancemate?

Where is mah spinnah?

Goddamnit, starting again, singer this time around.

No, detective.

Hacker?

Thief?

Journalist!

The best of all three worlds.

TWO WORDS:

Dwarf Fortress

 

[Darth Roxor]

Just got to the final battle and

Spoiler

holy motherfucking shit. The whole last stage is just brilliant, and the fact that IT'S POSSIBLE TO TOTALLY AVOID COMBAT!1 in it is marvelous. I managed to not raise the alarm in all the three levels, and got a total of 3000 xp for it after I arrived in the Throne of the World Serpent. I got to the Herald when my party was level 15 and got so totally and utterly raped even though I tried several different tactics and loaded the game like 10 times, I couldn't even damage the Herald and had to run away in absolute shame. I guess I'm gonna have to go grind on random encounters till I get two more levels and vastly change my array of spells just for this single fight

 

[fastpunk]

@DarthRoxor: What level is your party now?

I just got to the third level of the temple and saved there last night as it was pretty late. I'm curious how my level 13 party will fare... the encounters on that portion of the overland map are all 17-18, so I'm a bit worried.

 

[Darth Roxor]

@DarthRoxor: What level is your party now?

Well, after writing that post I hunted some megaraptors (best monster name evar, btw), and I'm fresh on 16. Gonna go for 17 and return to the boss then.

I'm curious how my level 13 party will fare...

Well, to put it kindly... you are uberfucked

I just got to the third level of the temple and saved there last night as it was pretty late

I had the same yesterday. The whole high-level area of Samarach kept me interested till midnight, and after I arrived to the third floor I was like "holy shit, it's midnight already?"

 

[fastpunk]

I'm curious how my level 13 party will fare...

Well, to put it kindly... you are uberfucked

Oh well, I'm going to give it a few tries, see if I can use the layout of the place to my advantage. Of course, if it's open I'm pretty much fucked. And I hate grinding for levels. I'll bring news of either my glorious victory or my epic failure later today.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I tried using choke points to my advantage too, but it only postponed my failure (yet the results were still a lot better than fighting in the open).

 

[fastpunk]

I tried using choke points to my advantage too, but it only postponed my failure (yet the results were still a lot better than fighting in the open).

Yeah, I was curious to see how the battle is so I tried it twice. It's gonna be a hard one, I managed to get the Herald down to 30% health but he's a terror up close. Of course, the others were only barely injured from my warlock's eldritch chain attacks. This reminds me of the Yxunomei battle from IWD btw, only harder cause here you've got 2 ubertough opponents instead of one. Trying to squeeze them into a bottle-neck at the stairs will be my next attempt but I think I need a few more levels for this one anyway.

 

[Darth Roxor]

he's a terror up close.

Exactly. He has three attacks per round, and all three are sneak attacks, crit hits, disarm or smite good.

This reminds me of the Yxunomei battle from IWD btw

I had the same impression

only harder cause here you've got 2 ubertough opponents instead of one.

I fucking hate the hierophant and his daze/blindness spamming.

Anyway, got to level 17 now, and I'm gonna try the bossfight again

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

he's a terror up close.

Exactly. He has three attacks per round, and all three are sneak attacks, crit hits, disarm or smite good.

I kind of had hoped my level 20 Yuan-ti Swashbuckler/Duellist would hold him off for some time with her AC of, was it 42, and high parry and all that. Well heh, he just disarmed her and then it was one or two rounds and death. That was kind of awesome, finding that what I thought was overleveled and overpowered party was only adequate. The only other fight I have had to try so many times in maybe years was Pool of Radiance : Remastered's last boss.

I'm trying to design a module myself, and I hope to include lots of tough fights like that.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hot damn, just finished the game and I must say, the last area itself is enough of a reason to play through it. The boss fight was pretty much one of the hardest I've ever had in not only an RPG but in a video game. I believe I had like 15 tries before I achieved victory and during that I had to leave once to get from level 15 to 17, and again later to totally change my array of spells for the cleric and druid, and even after that, by the end of the fight I had 2 corpses (one for the second time) and 2 unconcious. I also had to defeat the herald twice, because the first time I did, the game crashed, and I must confess, there're not too many games that cause me to go from 'MWAHAHAHAHHAAHAHA, EAT SHIT BITCH, I ROCK' to a large and loud 'FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK', (all done verbally) which is also gud.

Moreover, the ending slides were also well done, and being the nosy bastard that I am, I checked all the possible outcomes, and was actually surprised that I managed to miss some of the content, even though I thought I've done almost everything, and the amount of different consequences was also surprising.

All in all, SoZ was pretty damn good. It had its share of flaws, sure, but they were totally overshadowed by the pros.

Tomorrow I'm gonna start a party of evil assholes and different classes/races to see if it plays different, and I'm gonna write a review.

 

[Black]

The last area reminded me partially of ToEE's temple. And that's a good thing. We need more dungeons like that one.

Tomorrow I'm gonna start a party of evil assholes and different classes/races to see if it plays different, and I'm gonna write a review.

Hint: cohorts are much, much more useful for evil party D: But make sure to have at least one neutral guy.

 

[Starwars]

The final boss is at the level of challenge I'd like to see "special encounters" basically. It's the most memorable fight I've had in a cRPG in a long time. I still thought some of the other encounters were quite tough (largely depending on the level of your party), but the final boss really had that extra 'oomph' to make it memorable.
Anthony, if OEI makes another expansion, make sure to tell Jeff Husges (who I assume "designed" the encounters and sneaking) to keep the fights that are supposed to be really hard at that level of challenge.

And yeah, I'm pretty happy with the smaller dungeons in the game since I don't like getting bogged down in a dungeon to often (unless it's designed to be a dungeon crawler from the start), but the final area definetely left me wanting more.
It was pretty thrilling to sneak through it as well.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Hint: cohorts are much, much more useful for evil party D:

I believe I know where, lawl.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Seeing Darth Roxor's assesment of this game, I'll definitely play SoZ, regardless of what others are saying about it.

I trust his judgment, because I just happen to agree with most his opinions on games, particularly considering that we both found Betrayal At Krondor one of the best games ever made.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I made myself a test module that allows you to play the SoZ end battle, with some leveling helper and shop NPCs stolen from the JEGs leveling module. Here's the download for anyone interested:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-1303173/SozEndbattle.7z.html

I like to play solo, I really liked the end battle, and I like to try new character concepts, so this seemed like the way to go to stop me endlessly agonizing if this particular build would do any good alone at the very end. You start in a temple from the game, and up the stairs where you start is the transition that leads to the end battle (though its still falsely marked "to overland map"). As far as I can see all the special scripting works fine.

 

[ricolikesrice]

Seeing Darth Roxor's assesment of this game, I'll definitely play SoZ, regardless of what others are saying about it.

I trust his judgment, because I just happen to agree with most his opinions on games, particularly considering that we both found Betrayal At Krondor one of the best games ever made.

heh. its fun how people who have otherwise 99% equal tastes in gaming can be split up so radically on one game. there s 3-5 codex posters which i think they have 95% the same tastes as me in gaming so when they recommend something i get interested, but all of them at least recommended 1 game that i found utterly disappointing (vd - gothic 3, starwars - SoZ, you - stalker, etc. etc. )

hope you have more fun with SoZ than i did, if not -and you havent already- check out the sublety of thay module.

 

[Imbecile]

Dunno if anyone has played both, but I might pick up either SoZ or Fable 2 tomorrow. Any idea which is better? I'm horrifically easy to please, but would probably rate the original NWN2 and Fable about the same.

Reviews say Fable 2, but then I dont really trust reviews...

 

[Silellak]

Dunno if anyone has played both, but I might pick up either SoZ or Fable 2 tomorrow. Any idea which is better? I'm horrifically easy to please, but would probably rate the original NWN2 and Fable about the same.

Reviews say Fable 2, but then I dont really trust reviews...

I'm not sure I could honestly compare them; they are very different games.

If you wanted to play it safe, I'd go with Fable 2. SoZ is something different entirely.

Of course, SoZ is also half the price of Fable 2, so that's something to keep in mind.

 

[BLOBERT]

Fable 2 was really, really slow to start. Took a while to stop the tutorial type bullshit. Now it is sort of fun in a Sims type way, doing the gay minigames, playing dressup, getting married, etc.

If you've got some patience and in the mood for some playful, silly, and not in any way challenging, Fable 2 isn't bad.

 

[Silellak]

Fable 2 was really, really slow to start. Took a while to stop the tutorial type bullshit. Now it is sort of fun in a Sims type way, doing the gay minigames, playing dressup, getting married, etc.

If you've got some patience and in the mood for some playful, silly, and not in any way challenging, Fable 2 isn't bad.

Personally I really enjoyed the combat system, though you're right, it's definitely not challenging - I never died once.

But the combination of melee, range, and magic is very simple yet very well done.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Seeing Darth Roxor's assesment of this game, I'll definitely play SoZ, regardless of what others are saying about it.

I trust his judgment, because I just happen to agree with most his opinions on games, particularly considering that we both found Betrayal At Krondor one of the best games ever made.

Get a room.

 

[made]

Right, I haven't read through this thread because I didn't give a shit about SoZ, but now I decided to give it a try to see what the drama was all about.

Turns out the game crashes every time I get to the character selection screen due to some UI issue and all suggested solutions on the forums do squat. So I figure fuck it, delete the whole 20GB monster and reinstall NWN2 and SOZ from scratch. Game works, I create a party but, what's this? Apparently Favored Soul/Spirit Shaman followers can't level up without MOTB installed... fuck!

Since I want a FS instead of a lame cleric I'm now installing MOTB again, which will require me to reinstall SOZ as well. And then patch it again.

So far I've spent 3 hours messing with the game and didn't even get off the damn ship. :evil:

 

[fastpunk]

@made: Just uninstall everything and do the following: install NWN2, install MotB, install SoZ. At this point the game is at version 1.20.1541. Now patch it via the autopatcher, though it didn't work for me so I got the community made NWN2 Patcher from NWN2 Vault. If it doesn't work for you either then get the patcher and patch version 1.21.1549 and apply it. Now it should work, it did for me.

 

[Imbecile]

So far I've spent 3 hours messing with the game and didn't even get off the damn ship. :evil:

*bait* that's one good thing about consoles...

Also, I keep wandering round and exploring, but I've yet to see any three headed monkeys

http://www.djgallagher.com/games/pc/monkeyisland1/images/map_melee.jpg