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

[Darth Roxor]

that sux

 

[Volrath]

no, sorry, i wanted to enjoy PoE as much as the next guy, and I was prepared to cut it a LOT of slack if it was going to give me an enjoyable game experience and take me back to the IE times. This game does neither. It's a boring chore of a game, without inspiration, with awful combat and bland items and its only strength is its art direction/graphics. This review evidentiates the weak points, and those complaining about it need to explain to me what they found enjoyable in repeating the same fight a million times and finding the same items a million times and casting the same spells a million times.

I found it to be adequate for a storyfag, engaging enough for me to finish it at least.

Can't argue with the remarks about combat though, then again I've always hated combat in the IE games as well.

 

[tindrli]

Josh Sawyer clasped his hands in deep thought and let out a quiet hum. /QUOTE]

someone should make us a gif of above

 

[commie]

A game that has IE style combat, was mentioned as having IE style combat, causes 'shock, horror' in supposedly 'learned' Codexian reviewer and various acolytes that it has IE style combat.

 

[Darth Roxor]

A game that has IE style combat, was mentioned as having IE style combat, causes 'shock, horror' in supposedly 'learned' Codexian reviewer and various acolytes that it has IE style combat.

damn you have it all figured out

 

[hiver]

The way you could access the temple through various means was great, yes, especially considering how one of them let you completely ignore all the trashmobs inside, and which wasn't even that 'obvious', per se.
Like I noted in the revioo, Dyrford was generally of a much higher quality than most things in the game. Just a shame that it was so short (four quests at best?)

You should have made better note of the quests structure of this area in your review. It was a relatively small area so as long as it had good quests, and one of the better companions in the game it should not be criticized for lack of more.

Like Roxor, I was also disappointed with the ending dialogue with the noble girl, but for completely different reasons. I wanted her to go back to her uncle and go along with his plan of finding her a suitor. Didn't have that option, so I just sent her to the nearby temple

Isnt that the option you have during the dialogue with the leader?

I had the option of agreeing with him. But i didnt actually agree so it was extermination option for me.

 

[Tommy Wiseau]

Said it before, but it's probably the best Kickstarter game so far.

 

[Irenaeus]

Like Roxor, I was also disappointed with the ending dialogue with the noble girl, but for completely different reasons. I wanted her to go back to her uncle and go along with his plan of finding her a suitor. Didn't have that option, so I just sent her to the nearby temple

Isnt that the option you have during the dialogue with the leader?

The leader wanted to have her return to her uncle and murder him or something. I wanted for the uncle to carry on with his cunning plan.

I had the option of agreeing with him. But i didnt actually agree so it was extermination option for me.

I didn't agree with him either, so it was extermination option too.

 

[LeStryfe79]

As long as Roxor keeps his current avatar for all eternity, I'm happy with this thread.

 

[hiver]

I dont think she is supposed to kill him immediately, according to the narrative of the quest. I think the rouse is supposed to continue for some time.
But im not sure if we would ever see that consequences, though it seems like an interesting thing to try out, ... just for the game C&C experiment of course.

I told her to travel to Valian republics instead, i think... forge her own destiny, kind of a thing.
Couldnt bring myself to trust those priests. I kept thinking it would probably turn out they were also some kind of cult or another.

It just makes me curious to see how all those options pan out, even if its off screen stuff.

 

[Ulrox]

Said it before, but it's probably the best Kickstarter game so far.

Presentation wise probably. Personally dont think it holds a candle to D:OS. If the combat wasnt so lacklustre I would have loved this game till the end of time, for now I can only replay it a few times and be done with it. Hopefully expansions are better.

 

[eremita]

Thats not true. If we assume god is some kind of evil monster then not even your thoughts can serve as proof of anything. Just the fact that you are thinking wouldn't mean anything in that case. You would be nothing more then a program build to think its thinking independently.

But i was rather arguing that thinking - everything is a lie - is nonsense just by itself, nothing more then extreme assumption - so it does not need any special proof for or against it.
Because it is nonsense extreme idea.

You misunderstand me to be arguing that everything is a lie there, for some strange reason, while that very sentence proves that kind of thinking is basically an oxymoron.


maybe i should have made it clearer....


If you are thinking everything is a lie, then that very thought may not be true - ok?
Or, if you think everything is a lie - then you cannot think that "everything is a lie" is true - since that would defeat the starting position.

You can spin yourself inside such preposterous assumptions indefinitely and thats just pointless. Since the starting position is preposterous unfounded extreme assumption.


Besides that, i exist even when i dont think, obviously, as that happens every night when im sleeping.

"You would be nothing more then a program build to think its thinking independently." Funny you should mention this, because this is quite a strong movement in modern philosophy - people are just an outcome of their "hardware" and they're only under the illusion of will, because they don't understand the complexity of their own mental patterns. But what does this really say? You said it your self; you're not really thinking, yoy're just a program thinking its thinking independently. But that's all you need, that's your proof right there.

So aplllying that to what you said would look like this:

"If you are thinking everything is a lie, then that very thought may not be true - ok?" - If everything is a lie (or just a possibly lie, we don't need the extremes), then the legitimate conclusion would be: content of your thoughts is a lie, your thinking is not independent, your process of thinking is flawed etc. etc. That's all true hiver. But you cannot deny that something is really happening there. Is it possible that you're wrong in determining what exactly is happening? Sure. That's based on the premise that everything is a lie. But again, that's just a content of your thoughts. There is obviously some activity/operation/function happening there and this function has to have some kind of cause. If you really want to claim that even the thinking itself (or rather function in the words of modern philosophy) is a lie, then the only way how to prove that is not doing anything at all, which is equivalent to death. But the very thought "Wait a second, am I dead (non existent)?" is the only prove you need to rightfully establish that you're indeed not dead, therefore somehow existing.

"Or, if you think everything is a lie - then you cannot think that "everything is a lie" is true - since that would defeat the starting position." - Same here, the starting position only applies to the content of your thoughts (or nature of your thoughts) and that's because what I said in my first post: it's a logical conclusion, a pattern of how human deduction works, but that's it. Experiencing some process (i.e. claiming that everything is a lie and somehow conclude it's the truth) cannot be denied, no matter the position it's supposed to defeat. And it doesn't even do that. Again, the only thing that's established by that statement is that everything you think about your own thinking might me as well lie/wrong. Which is not the same as claiming the thinking itself is not happening.

"Besides that, i exist even when i dont think, obviously, as that happens every night when im sleeping." - In this manner of speaking, you might as well be dead when you're sleeping.

Are you completely fucking STUPID eremita?

ARE YOU COMPLETELY FUCKING BAT SHIT FUCKING RETARDED??

DO I HAVE TO WRITE IN REALLY BIG CAPS LOCKS FOR YOU TO FUCKING UNDERSTAND THAT I AM ARGUING


AGAINST THE IDEAS SUCH AS THOSE?



- fucking hell... if you now try to argue that im not, im going to fucking blast your brain all over this thread.

I know you're arguing against ideas claiming everything is a lie because the very statement "everything is a lie" is in the end self-contradictory. That is trivial and I agree with you as long as that statement is just a statement standing by itself (meaning as long as we're just playing language games here). The nature of my problem with your posts can be expressed by this: "Thats not true. If we assume god is some kind of evil monster then not even your thoughts can serve as proof of anything." With that I don't agree and explained why the best I could.

BTW, the mentioned contradiction is easily avoided by modifying the statement (i.e. human reasoning and perception are flawed) yet preserving the message (there's a God who's deceiving me) - the problem is then reintroduced.

 

[hiver]

Its just a hypothetical idea that is self-contradictory nonsense, a fallacy into itself, that is simply invented extreme - so there is no need to come up with any kind of special arguments to defeat it.

 

[Darth Roxor]

I swear to God, if I only had a dollar each time someone brought up that dungeon siege 3 ending comment, I would already be rich. Particularly on that obsidian forum thread. And further particularly from retards who can't distinguish between "worst Obsidian game I've played" and "worst Obsidian game of all time".

 

[Jagged Appliance]

What ones have you played?

 

[Darth Roxor]

The only ones I didn't were South Park and F:NV (actually, I played that, but I ragequit pretty fast because I simply couldn't handle how terrible was the Fallout 3 engine and gameplay at its core).

But what I basically mean to say is: I couldn't with a straight face call Dungeon Siege 3 an objectively better rpg (or even game) than PoE, that's obviously stupid, and I would have assumed that people with basic cognitive abilities could recognise that. DS3 is smaller, is obviously shovelware, unpolished as hell, its camera is cancerous, and at the core it's basically nothing more than a beat 'em up with some stats. I could see myself going to a slot machine place, getting a bunch of tokens and playing DS3 for a while before finally getting killed, seeing the 'insert coin to continue' countdown and walking away more or less contented because I had fun. It's just that with PoE, despite its high production values and more or less big scope, I didn't have fun. That's the gist of it.

 

[Average Manatee]

Ok, faggots. Let us talk some sense here:

1)Most writers in the game industry are not that brilliant. When people complain about bad writing in games we have to consider which games represent the standards of good writing to make a proper comparison - Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky doesn’t count. I think we could all agree that the best writing can be found in games such as FO, FO2, F:NV, PST, MotB and maybe VMB and AP – AoD leave them in the dust, but is not released yet. In comparison to these classics, POE writing is on the same level concerning the characters and the lore, but is worse in the remaining aspects. This still puts POE on a league above every single other cRPG out there.

Usually whenever Obsidian has a game with poor writing or even small instances within a game of poor writing, the excuse is "publisher made us do it", or "our hands were held back by needing to be consistent with the previous game", or "we had to hit the deadline so we cut stuff" and other such things. So one would think that when given full creative freedom that they could at least approach MotB, but at best very small segments manage to do so while the rest is either poor or poor and TL;DR.

2)The game has many retarded mechanics, but we can’t hold Sawyer’s philosophy accountable for every single stupid thing. A lot of the bland talents, spells and stats results from creating things in a hurry. Stgy is working on Underrail for five years know – he made some changes in the psionic abilities in the last fucking month. VD is working in AoD for ten years and still making changes in the crafting system. Quality takes time. Since kickstarter most naive players have been bouncing around like childish little girls expecting that the studios will make the game of their dreams in less than three years. Wake the fuck up!

Which is why in the past games have, get this, used a system that has been fine-tuned for decades. Something called D&D. Something that the IE games, which PoE is supposed to be a spiritual sequel to, used. It would be explainable (though no less uninteresting to play) if PoE was released in 1998 before BG2, but it wasn't so its not.

3)Even with all the trash mobs and retarded design decisions, the game provides an engrossing experience and is more than the sum of its parts. Players that say differently are idealists that see their opinions as a matter of principle and are just protesting against Sawyer retardness and its related waste of opportunities.

4)A lot of codexians have this massive delusion that Sawyer is a bully imposing his views on the rest of the developers at Obsidian and that Tim Cain or Chris Avellone will be the saviors of the grognard mentality. They aren’t. The team is conniving with Sawyer and will support him 100%. They are all ok with the causal mentality of making every build viable to players. I guess that as they got older, they got tired of cRPGs or simply burnout.

I have basically no idea what all of the Sawyer drama is about because I couldn't give less of a shit. PoE just bored me and I lost interest. That's more damning than anything else.

 

[Alex]

I'm actually a fan of Sawyer now.

Fool, it is all a KGB ploy! Soon you will be demanding social justice in games.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

I dont think she is supposed to kill him immediately, according to the narrative of the quest. I think the rouse is supposed to continue for some time.
But im not sure if we would ever see that consequences, though it seems like an interesting thing to try out, ... just for the game C&C experiment of course.

I told her to travel to Valian republics instead, i think... forge her own destiny, kind of a thing.
Couldnt bring myself to trust those priests. I kept thinking it would probably turn out they were also some kind of cult or another.

It just makes me curious to see how all those options pan out, even if its off screen stuff.

Lol, you've said a single confused woman to go an adventure to the country full of niggers and people like Palegina, good job Hiver.

 

[tuluse]

POE characters have vastly more 'hit points', while the damage done is usually not scaled up in the same way. This, by itself, makes most fights take longer than in the IE games, that's one thing.

You suck at this game.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is just factually incorrect. Endurance to damage ratio is much lower than ad&d HP to damage ratio, and many people complain that combat is just shooting everything with guns at the opening and wiping everything out too fast.

This is the first time I've heard it even put forth that PoE fights take longer than say BG2 fights.

Ad&d does have the advantage of save or die spells that quicken fights quite a bit, but if you are actually relying on damage to exceed health, I don't see how IE could be faster than PoE after about level 2 (when enemies are no longer one shotted).

 

[Alex]

The only ones I didn't were South Park and F:NV (actually, I played that, but I ragequit pretty fast because I simply couldn't handle how terrible was the Fallout 3 engine and gameplay at its core).
(snip...)

Said the guy who seems to love Alpha Protocol.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Goddammit

Endurance to damage ratio is much lower than ad&d HP to damage ratio, and many people complain that combat is just shooting everything with guns at the opening and wiping everything out too fast.

The important word here being guns. You have to stick guns on everyone to make the combat faster because melee damage, among other things, is so bad. Many spells that aren't fan of flames also have relatively low damage that makes them shit outright.

+ with those D&D games you very quickly reach a point where you one-hit-kill most low level enemies with one swing of a sword, which, as far as I remember, doesn't happen in poe at any stage of the game.

Also, grazes. Always remember the grazes.

 

[Irenaeus]

Absolutely disgusting.

 

[Lhynn]

Guns and arbalests make fights go by quickly, if you stick to melee or bows the tougher enemies take a long time to bring down, the difference in speed is so big that fights seem to take forever. Not sure if they are longer or shorter than IE fights, but they are definitely less enjoyable.

 

[Irenaeus]

Yeah, I use melee and bows, just Durance has a blunderbuss 'cause it makes sense to his story and also he looks like a pirate. Maybe next playthrough where I'll roleplay a cruel eccentric dumbfuck I'll give more guns/arbalests to the people.