Review RPG Codex Review: Darth Roxor on Disappointment, thy name is Pillars of Eternity

[Night Goat]

Yeah, when the combat is as tedious as PoE's you really don't want to turn up the difficulty and make it take longer.

 

[Black]

Here's hoping that Torment Numanuma will actually have an interesting world and lore that's not ecyclopedia'd in your face, with funny words such as Hŵrpa Dwrp.

 

[Volrath]

Here's hoping that Torment Numanuma will actually have an interesting world and lore that's not ecyclopedia'd in your face, with funny words such as Hŵrpa Dwrp.

To be fair, I have ZERO expectations for Torment after the clusterfuck that was Wasteland 2.

 

[Lady_Error]

the combat itself was uninteresting (reardless of difficulty). There are plenty of "difficult" games that fail to promote alternative tactics or approaches - if anything, they can encourage the opposite.

He complained that combat was too easy. Solution: increase difficulty level.

Yeah, when the combat is as tedious as PoE's you really don't want to turn up the difficulty and make it take longer.

I'm not a combatfag, and yet I enjoyed the combat in POE. Turn-based like TOEE would have been better, of course, but POE combat is not worse than Baldur's Gate. Except I also missed the epic mage fights.

 

[Black]

Zero expectations is the only way to go in life.

 

[FeelTheRads]

I am curious about staff member Infinitron's opinion about this review. Would he think that the only RPG ever that tried to be good from the best RPG company ever is severely misrepresented?

I'm attacking Roxor because he is a retard. This review made me buy Blackguards 2.

People who tolerate mediocrity are the reason we don't get anything better.

Agree 100%.

You are dumber than a sack of potatoes. Just because YOU like the game it should be obvious it's shit.

 

[Irenaeus]

I am curious about staff member Infinitron's opinion about this review. Would he think that the only RPG ever that tried to be good from the best RPG company ever is severely misrepresented?

I'm attacking Roxor because he is a retard. This review made me buy Blackguards 2.

People who tolerate mediocrity are the reason we don't get anything better.

Agree 100%.

You are dumber than a sack of potatoes. Just because YOU like the game it should be obvious it's shit.

Take his dick off your mouth, you're embarrassing yourself.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Interesting review. I find myself agreeing with it depressingly often.

Tried also wading through this thread and gave up. 25 pages already, damn.

 

[Darth Roxor]

at least over there you can see a couple folks making some sort of attempt to respond to the substance of the review:

on the nature of dex

Okay, there is one point here that I'd like to discuss on a different basis. A question, if I may. What does the famed "action speed" from dexterity actually do? What is "attack speed"?

Here's the answer from me - I barely know. And I suspect that barely anyone knows either, because everything regarding action speed is based on nothing but assumptions, since that shit is not explained A N Y W H E R E in the fucking game. There is no tooltip, the manual has nothing on it, no other tooltip ever references it. I mostly just did some makeshift experiments among naked characters with differing dex to test things and understand it.

If your delay between actions is governed by recovery, then surely the attack speed doesn't matter for the multiplicity of attacks, but only how fast they are resolved. And similarly, if action speed alters recovery, and gun reloading is during the recovery stage, then action speed translates into faster reloading. There is also more than just a 'case' for mages, given how fukken slowly the cipher spells go off.

on the nature of accuracy

I mentioned weapon specs right there. I also comment on the nature of debuffs and the buffs.

As for your stuffs:

on the nature of cogito

Yeah, I am aware that in modern philosophy cogito has lost most of its importance, but that's only natural due to developments in thought and systems, just like many of the early Greek ideas atm are nothing but pure subjects for discussion and not much else, but they nevertheless laid down the groundwork for many future developments.

My point here by and large is not to discuss whether cogito is really the ultimatest answer for the question posed by the game, but that it is surely much superior to all the others that are given to you because, essentially, a few of them actually boil down to certain fragments of it, but not to the whole. When I saw this question, 'I think therefore I am' was a no-brainer to me. But what I got instead was a set of irrelevant crap that is, to me, completely overridden by something that is not even esoteric knowledge to begin with - the real meaning behind cogito ergo sum has perhaps become diluted in recent time when it has morphed into some sort of a buzzword, but I would expect people who even try to tackle or pose philosoraptor questions in their work to have at least a modicum of knowledge in the field, which, in my view, is not the case in PoE.

on the nature of Plato

meaning that learning is actually a process of remembering. Was that confusing? It doesn't matter, because all you have to notice is that none of this has even the slightest thing to do with with Pillars of Eternity.

But this is precisely what PoE is about. Even without going through the extreme singular example that is Thaos who remembers all his past lifetimes and thereby gains turboknowledge and power thanks to his soul's migration, doesn't that also work for almost everyone in the fucking setting? Isn't the whole gradation of soulpower connected to how much people are drawing from the fountains of their souls and previous lifes, hence boosting their intellection and shit with information and experience they've already gained once?

Fuck, the game even has some completely blatant Plato 101 moments - I very clearly remember one of the wikipedia npcs also mentioning people 'whose souls were once separated very long ago but then they met in another lifetime and suddenly recognised eachother!!!' which is as blatant as you can get.

I suppose if you were trying to accuse PoE of being unoriginal regarding souls and reincarnation it'd make way, way more sense to reference Buddhism or maybe the Vedas, but even then you'd have an awfully long climb ahead of you.

I originally wanted to write 'Plato for Dummies with a sprinkle of Buddha', but I realised the Buddha would be stupid because the buddhist notion of reincarnation has a completely different basis than Plato's metempsychosis, since the former is more or less regarded as a "punishment", which doesn't happen in PoE.

on the nature of Hegel

You misunderstand, I didn't want to name Hegel as a god among writers. I namedropped him only in relation to MCA as a signifier of philosophical thought, not style or general writing quality. Bad wording perhaps.

(Also, yes, I never read Hegel )

but I can say that Mssr Roxor's name-dropping of various philosophical figures smacks of the shallow pseudo-intellectualism of one hoping to dress up a weak argument with a few fancy names.

I RESERVE ALL RIGHT TO BE PRETENTIOUS

At one point I even wanted to namebomb the Cathars, but realised that would be waaaaaay overboard

they give the impression of one who formed the opinions far before they had reasons to support them.

might be a case of prejudices, should ask Gadamer about it

 

[Irenaeus]

Boring attention whore.

 

[Lady_Error]

"dumber than a sack of potatoes"

Hey, no need to attack our resident potatoes like this.

 

[Irenaeus]

"dumber than a sack of potatoes"

Hey, no need to attack our resident potatoes like this.

To be fair, the clown reviewer is also a potato.

 

[Commissar Draco]

But yeah it's an okay game, better than I expected but I had exactly 0 expectations. I'm glad I pirated it and there's nothing really memorable about it, but there's something about it that's nice and relaxing to play. Shame all round, as a lot of expressly minor tweaks could have added up to make it really great, but too much of its design seems calculated to be blandly inoffensive. I was going to write a longer post/review of it, but frankly I can't even be bothered, and I guess that says enough.

And the review was spot on with few minor points like that some quests were memorable and fun with multiple way to solve them and there was a few unique trinkets like small buckler which gave you better defense and much better offense than generic Tower shields you can craft and the fact that as the worst Obsidian game goes NNWN2 OC is still lot more banal, shit and boring than PoE, the worst part was obliviously entire Chapter II and Balance Bay with its multi loading screens fedex quests and very disappointing factions; on the other hand Hand Village of Stone Age Noble Savages had some fun quests and tied to the finale and its question: What Can change the nature of gods? It was also lot shorter too.

It was fun game in Chapter I, boring hore in chapter II and much better deeper game in Chapter III and IV where your previous life choices and choices from game tied up nicely.



Had to admit I played it on easy at end just to diminish the time waist-ed on exterminating the trash mobs, the ending felt satisfying even if much of it was left for sequel/DLCs.



I blame Sawyer for pretty much the worst of PoE its blandess and FC-ness... It could be much better game but its still above AAA mainstay tittles like DAI or AFs so my vote 8/10 stands.

 

[Darth Roxor]

To be fair, the clown reviewer is also a potato.

"On with their heads!", I'm the clown prince of fools
if you don't get the joke it's your loss

 

[Irenaeus]

But yeah it's an okay game, better than I expected but I had exactly 0 expectations. I'm glad I pirated it and there's nothing really memorable about it, but there's something about it that's nice and relaxing to play. Shame all round, as a lot of expressly minor tweaks could have added up to make it really great, but too much of its design seems calculated to be blandly inoffensive. I was going to write a longer post/review of it, but frankly I can't even be bothered, and I guess that says enough.

And the review was spot on with few minor points like that some quests were memorable and fun with multiple way to solve them and there was a few unique trinkets like small buckler which gave you better defense and much better offense than generic Tower shields you can craft and the fact that as the worst Obsidian game goes NNWN2 OC is still lot more banal, shit and boring than PoE, the worst part was obliviously entire Chapter II and Balance Bay with its multi loading screens fedex quests and very disappointing factions; on the other Hand Village of Stone Age Noble Savages had some fun quests and tied to the finale and its question: What Can change the nature of gods? It was also lot shorter too.

It was fun game in Chapter I, boring hore in chapter II and much better deeper game in Chapter III and IV where your previous life choices and choices from game tied up nicely.



Had to admit I played it on easy at end just to diminish the time waist-ed on exterminating the trash mobs, the ending felt satisfying even if much of it was left for sequel/DLCs.



I blame Sawyer for pretty much the worst of PoE its blandess and FC-ness... It could be much better game but its still above AAA mainstay tittles like DAI or AFs so my vote 8/10 stands.

Finally a good review.

 

[l3loodAngel]

The same retards who now bash POE vote DA as the RPG of the year.

This is pretty hilarious since I thought DA was garbage for many of the same reasons I don't love POE. Namely, combat too-inspired by MMOs and endless trash combat. Now that you mention it, the games are a lot more similar than I realized.

Combat system should be reworked in POE. Period. However, in POE's case it can still be salvaged, while DA's combat system was doomed from the start.

Both games need to be completely rebalanced and rebuilt with better encounter design and AI while jettisoning the various degenerate mechanics in them, but I have to give DA the edge because at least it was more original and had more interesting character development.

I am playing on hard. Now I am level 8, 40 hrs in the game and I don't see much problems with encounters. There are just problems with stats/items/wizard class/some combat dynamics. But then encounters themselves are OK.

The bolded part deserves a separate mention.

 

[Irenaeus]

Maybe he likes romances.

 

[Rostere]

People are too afraid to play on PotD. That should be the only acceptable difficulty setting. Also, tick all the expert mode stuff except AoE markers if you're not a sucker for missing BG functionality.

 

[Night Goat]

The encounters are just the same shit over, and over, and over again. It's like a Korean MMO.

 

[Irenaeus]

People are too afraid to play on PotD. That should be the only acceptable difficulty setting. Also, tick all the expert mode stuff except AoE markers if you're not a sucker for missing BG functionality.

I play on Normal and it's challenging enough. Then again, I'm not a min/max munchkin who exploits combat with cheesy tactics.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Maybe he likes romances.

My favourite is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

 

[Jools]

If your delay between actions is governed by recovery, then surely the attack speed doesn't matter for the multiplicity of attacks, but only how fast they are resolved. And similarly, if action speed alters recovery, and gun reloading is during the recovery stage, then action speed translates into faster reloading. There is also more than just a 'case' for mages, given how fukken slowly the cipher spells go off.

By trial, error and observation, I came to the same conclusion. At first I thought it'd affect "recovery", then I realized it didn't, so I assumed it affects the actual "swinging/casting" speed, thus affecting the weapons' and spells' inherent "speed" value (which, ultimately, would result in a few more "hits" in, on the long run). Unfortunately I haven't yet been able to make any field-trials, and tbh I'm not even sure the game is worth such an effort.

BTW, fromt he official wiki:

Spoiler

Maybe he likes romances.

My favourite is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

 

[Irenaeus]

Maybe he likes romances.

My favourite is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Morgan le Fay more like Morgan le Master Troll XD

 

[l3loodAngel]

The encounters are just the same shit over, and over, and over again. It's like a Korean MMO.

Go play Hepler RPG.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

felipepepe
They could have hundreds of guys with eons of experience. You can't just spend 3 years and beat a system that was being constantly upgraded, tweaked and polished for decades. Notice how the first system that managed to outperform DnD was Pathfinder, which was nothing else than a slight upgrade of the 3.5 ruleset. A guy who made Knights of the Chalice managed to outperform both Obsidian and Bioware when it came to combat design despite being a single person who also never designed a video game before. I'd like to remind you that the same Bioware who made RPG Codex's 4th best RPG started making banal shit boring DA games the moment they've lost access to the Dungeons and Dragons license.

This times 10,000.

Everybody thinks DnD sucks and that it would be trivial to make some new awesome system in its place. Every single time said new system falls on its face and simply sucks to high heaven. I have never had more fun playing RPG's than when playing AD&D derived RPG games.

Sawyer has spent an enormous amount of his teen and adult life over thinking RPG design. These types of people almost universally end up hating D&D. They all sit around shit talking D&D, and the way people play RPG's in general. They also almost all believe that if only given the proper time, money, and freedom the world could see what a true genius game designer could do to an RPG system. Thankfully we are spared most of these peoples insufferable ideas due to lack of opportunity and motivation..............but alas there is Sawyer.

Sawyer- a man who secretly becomes enraged as he spies on people enjoying themselves playing games the 'WRONG' way and has thus vowed to spend a lifetimes energy in a determined effort to put a stop to it...