Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
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.
Oh, and for the record, I'm pretty sure I almost never manually paused BG1 or BG2 - the auto-pause options were pretty comprehensive, and covered all the need-to-pause scenarios I could think of. I was rather sad to see these options dwindle with each future Bioware release - DA included.
I mean I guess if you wanted to play those games by frantically jabbing at the spacebar every 5-10 seconds, you were welcome to, but it certainly wasn't necessary.
I define the "quality" of combat based entirely on how fun and strategic it is - these being games, after all - and in that regard, combat in the IE games and even KotoR are leaps and bounds over the crap found in Bethesda titles.
Bethesda titles are now some standard of gaming or something? I don't understand - why your kind always insists on comparing everything that overhyped crap does bad to Bethesda's games?
And no - IE combat is not strategic - it's a clusterfuck and a mess with absolutely pointless real-time implementation where you can't even play the game normally in real-time to begin with. Now let's compare it to ToEE or RoA combats - how 'bout that?
I am going to speak veeeeeery slooowly so that you understand. You are the one who claimed IE and KotoR combats were the "worst real-time combats there are". This ridiculous hyperbole is what opened the gates of comparison to every action RPG with real-time combat - even the Bethesda ones. If you don't want people to use Bethesda games in their examples, stop making such retarded broad statements that invite those comparisons.
You are in the minority if you believe IE combats are not in any way strategic. You are welcome to cradle and pet that belief if it makes you feel better, but I'll just disagree and leave it at that.
I would also argue that NWN1 has the worst RTwP combat I've ever seen, if only because the inability to control multiple party members really cripples any sort of strategic aspect there might be
Except for the fundamental difference that you can manually control multiple party members. Once again, your hyperbole is as unintentionally hilarious as it is inappropriate. It may only be two additional party members, but it's better than none, and that's why I rate KotoR combat as "tolerable" when compared to the shit-fest that is NWN1's combat.
Finally, while I've yet to play Arcanum myself, general consensus is that the real-time combat in that game is pretty much the worst thing ever.
The combat is terrible there because it's a twitchfest - the opposite extreme to "this is real-time - except you can't play it in real-time and your party members will act when they will wish to". How many times I wanted to kill my own clerics because after receiving the order to heal other party members they were too busy chillin' out and reacted only 5 seconds afterwards. And lots of stuff happens in the traditional IE mess during those 5 secs.Now try and find an excuse for this one.
See? This is what happens when you form complex opinions of a combat system without ever actually trying it. IE has a 5-second delay due to its admittedly half-assed implementation of DnD rules, which were never meant to be real-time. There is no such delay in DA - you tell your healer to cast the heal spell, and they fucking heal. That alone is a significant difference from the IE-implementation of RTwP that you despise so much. Not only that, but the "tactics" aspect of DA allows you to pre-program party members to perform certain actions in certain scenarios, which greatly reduces the need for frantic pausing to micro-manage every person in the party, and largely makes up for the lack of IE-style "pause the game under one of the following 13 scenarios."
Ok this is pretty fuck up (watch out this is a minor spoiler). A young male elf wants to fuck a 70 year-old human female. Yes he blatantly asked her about it in front of the group. He has also described her ass as one of the most beautiful asses he has ever seen. Dunno if it's supposed to be funny or what.
And no - IE combat is not strategic - it's a clusterfuck and a mess with absolutely pointless real-time implementation where you can't even play the game normally in real-time to begin with. Now let's compare it to ToEE or RoA combats - how 'bout that?
Looks like Today's Volourn-cast: Moderately Volourny with a 30% Chance of R00fles.
Gonna go ahead and take you up on this challenge, because I'm particularly bored today. In what ways is NWN1 combat better than KotoR's combat? I submit that the combat systems are similar, but that KotoR's combat is preferable because you can take direct control of party members instead of just issuing them vague orders. While NWN1's isometric view is preferable to KotoR's third-person camera, it does not in my opinion compensate for the fact that RTwP combat does not serve any real purpose when you only have manual control of a single party member.
Skyway... Stop being an ignorant newfag man. You still haven't made peace with the fact that BG2 has been top 5 material around here since before you joined. That's just sad. The mass of people that liked BG2 will no doubt like this game as it's the best Bioware has done since, I'd even say DA is better but then I never liked BG2. This is how things are. Deal with it.
Instead of whining here you should be in a BG2 thread of your choice and well deservedly whine the shit out of it. At least you've played that game so you won't come off as an ignorant shit-spewing moron there and may actually make quite a few valid points. Yeah, right, you've already done that a thousand times... Maybe you should just fuck off then. And take Racofer, your retarded wannabe, with you.
I wanted to know if any of the players here tried this game on a single core processor, I heard rumours that this game was optimized for dual-core processors. I know that the minimum requirements ask a for a dual-core equivalent (I don't remember the frequency), but I wanted to know if the actual usage shows significant differences in performance and quality.
I realize you didn't ask me, but if I may chime in:
As far as choice and consequence goes DA offers far more choices and more drastic consequences than The Witcher. This can obviously be good, but at times it can seem a bit overwhelming.
So far after just my first major task in recruiting allies for the war I've had some tough choices, not the least of which has been deciding whether or not to kill a demon possessed child in order to save a Lord who commands an army that could aid me.
I had a choice at one point before this to kill a mage that had run away from the Mages tower at the beginning of my origin (I am a mage as well), and looking back at the fact that I decided to spare him has opened about 3 or 4 different choices on how to proceed. I could:
A)Sacrifice the child's mother to save him, and the Arl.
B)Kill the child with the possible risk of also killing the Arl in the process since they have suggested that the child is keeping his sick father alive.
C)Leave the manor and proceed to the Circle of Magi who can perform the same ritual as option A, but without having to kill the mother.
D)Tell them to fuck off and die (run away)
I am under the impression that at the very least option C would not be open to me unless I were a mage, which I am.
The writing is typical Bioware fare. It's the best written since BG2, but it's still very generic in feeling. The Witcher, even though I played the english version was much better written and had slightly better twists and turns in the story, and the world was a bit more believable. As most Bioware games are, almost every minute exudes "EPICNESS!!!!". This can get old, and if you don't like the writing style of David Gaider in the slightest, then you really aren't going to like this game despite the incredible branching of storylines.
The combat is ok. It's similar to KOTOR, but more of what it should have been than a rehash. Think KOTOR meets the Infinity engine, and takes the best of both worlds and mixes them up. The tactical camera really doesn't lend itself very well to the game IMO however. It's not terrible, but it's a bit cumbersome and takes some getting used to.
Lastly, I really don't understand the whole "spiritual successor to BG" tagline that was bandied about before the release. I have really seen very few similarities. Even the writing bears very little resemblance to BG. The writing is weaker than BG. The tactical camera isn't quite as intuitive as BG. But the scope, and interaction with the world seems to be on a much larger scale than BG 1 or 2...Or really any RPG I've played recently with the possible exception of the Witcher.
All in all I'm enjoying the game. Is it the new shit? Yeah probably. Is it the best shit ever? Not by a long shot. It's serviceable if you enjoy having a lot of options at your disposal on how to solve problems, and if you can tolerate David Gaider's pedantic writing style.
Uninstalled shortly after I've gone through the Joining. I've caught myself thinking that I don't give a flying fuck about the fate of Ferelden. Since I've never been a fan of RTwP there's no reason to keep the game on my HDD.
There are: lesbian romances, lesbian banter between party members, homosexual romances and banter, a threesome, a foursome, suggestions of geriatric buttsex and you can force your party members to sleep with each other for "plot" reasons.
In short, it's a Japanese sex sim, with dragons and a smattering of combat. Enjoy.
I am going to speak veeeeeery slooowly so that you understand. You are the one who claimed IE and KotoR combats were the "worst real-time combats there are". This ridiculous hyperbole is what opened the gates of comparison to every action RPG with real-time combat - even the Bethesda ones.
The real-time combat in Fallout 3 is better than the real-time combat in Dragon Age. It was never fun, but it also was never frustrating. Once again, Bioware tries to appease everyone and creates a giant clusterfuck.
- scroll back to "tactical view" which shows about 10' around your character. Over-the-shoulder almost always provides more information on what is going on.
- The NPC AI is horrible. Lot's of charging ahead, not concentrating attacks, and other stupid stuff.
- You can click on all characters and give them orders, but the game makes this an exercise in futility (just like bioware always does). Basically everything is designed around you controlling one character ( amount of combat, MMO-style action bar, etc..). There is a bare bones interface for pausing and controlling all characters, but you'd go through 5 space bars finishing the game and it would take hundreds of hours. And you still aren't really in control.
I don't expect Bioware to make the next x-com or JA2, but the party control of BG2 or IWD would be such an improvement over anything they've done in what? 8 years?
CAVEAT: I haven't played around with the scripting rules much. All Bioware games seem to have this sort of thing and it always is crap, so I'm not filled with hope.
Not that anyone actually care but here's my impressions (playing on Nightmare with mage, stopped after getting a dog so far).
Combat:
- it's not that difficult so far I only had one problem with an Ogre fight. Though Mofo, if he only be smarter he would totally raped me (he was attacking my Force Fielded mage nearly all the time but still I had to drink 12 healing pots through the fight). Maybe this is because I am playing a mage with Cage and Hex of "You can't hit a thing" = 2 enemies out of combat each time.
- auto-ress and auto-heal is retarded, it deprives a lot of tactical approach. Maybe if the fights would be much more difficult it would be essential to avoid knockouts but so far I didn't have any problems with winning after 1-2 members were knocked out.
- injuries are bullshit, it's not enough punishment for being KOed. I didn't buy any injury kit and I still carry like 15
- cameras. The tactical one is quite okay but it annoys me a lot that it has really limited scroll. Enemies can shoot and cast spells while you do not see them in Tactical camera. You have to zoom to Exploration, select bad guy, zoom out. As I said, annoying. Other then that it is just a matter of time to get used to it.
- tactics. Well, they are extremely basic. Focus fire, throw stuns in a rotation, cast some curse there, Cage the spellcaster or archer, hex of missing on the other and thats it. It's not a rocket science but hell, IE games never been strategist's delight (unless seriously modded).
- animations are ok, combat looks pretty "alive".
- the most idiotic thing regarding combat I have encountered are enemy's special attacks. In your first Ogre thing, he throws a giant chunk of rock, slams, charges etc. Ok, so here's the deal: he pick up this fucking rock, aims at my mage and archer. I pause the game, order the mage to run to the left and archer to the right. Unpause. Rock flies in majestic arc and hits the empty ground, obviously. Meanwhile, 5 meters away from the spot in both directions, my mage and archer falls to the ground and got hit for massive damage. Looks really ridiculous. The same with charge, you step out of the way, but still got hit. Bullshit.
Graphics:
- I am not a graphics whore so it's hard for me to judge whether they kick ass or suck balls. I find them very enjoyable. Animations are very good, effects are well-done, weapons and armor are very detailed.
Sounds and music:
- music is very good, I like it a lot. Climiatic choirs, some interesting combat beats. Big plus over here.
- voice acting isn't so bad as I was afraid after watching trailers. Some characters sounds ridiculous, some don't. Like in a real life ;P
Plot and dialog:
- the weakest part of the game so fair is not a plot itself but the dialog options you can choose. OMFG, they present you with like 6 options each time, 5 of them are nearly the same, 4 of them are so terribad that you forget about them instantly and you choose from the 2 left which can translate to: "Yeah, i am eager to suck your balls" or "No, go fuck yourself". And I don't have to tell you that the latter has the same outcome as the former in most of the cases? Bad bad bad writing, terribad.
- as for plot itself, well, i have seen worse. Itself it's not so bad, just some generic epic fantasy stuff. But the way You are incorporated into it... Come on.. 12 year old kiddo can came up with better justification why you are dragged into this mess then the writers of DA:O.
Other stuff:
- I don't like DA:O's inventory, it's very confusing. WTB IE's inventories.
- Character progression is not very exciting. Abilities are crap so far. About the talents, well, they are kinda okeish but could be much better. Not very challenging to plan your character's proggresion.
- I like the cooldowns. They actually make you to use nearly all of your learned spells. No more of the situation that you are spamming one SuperDuperImbaFunkySexyKiller spell of UnspeakableDoom or memorize entire level of spells with Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting for example but actually wonder about cast sequence and targets.
- character personalities are generic, big down.
For all of you, who are TL;DR short recup: overall impressions are neutral. Plot is weak, dialog options are ridiculous, combat is not difficult enough in my opinion, graphics are enjoyable, so is music and sound. Running around, admiring views, raping some monsters is fun but when you hit dialogs you instantly wanna cut yourself with a dull spoon. I will see how it develops and post some more of my impressions.
How far along are you? I'm currently playing on Nightmare and am at Ostogar, but I've read that the combat gets more challenging after Lothering (which I think is the level after Ostogar). Just wondering where you are, story-wise.
