@Silverstar I just wanted to clarify your comment:
"Actually you can pick a trait that disallows companions."
The talent you are referring to is called Lone Wolf, and you are partially correct.
*MINOR Spoilers follow* (I really hesitate calling the below info a spoiler, but just in case):
The talent only prevents you from getting companions (recruitable NPCs, if you will) for your two protagonists. You still have to play with the original two protagonists even if you pick Lone Wolf on both of them.
So, in summary:
- If you took Lone Wolf on both protagonists, you could only use both protagonists and no one else.
- If you took Lone Wolf on ONE protagonist and not the other, then you could pick up ONE additional companion later in the game (the protagonist that did NOT take Lone Wolf could recruit him/her).
- If you did NOT take Lone Wolf on EITHER of your protagonists, then you could pick up two companions (one for each protagonist).
Lastly, if anyone is curious, Lone Wolf makes your character stronger, thus the tradeoff being that you cannot recruit a companion. I hope that clarifies it a bit.
I've started to get frustrated with the combat in this game.
Wolves casting healing on skeleton allies. Really?
Mindless skeletons avoiding puddles of water I've electrified. Really?
4 Skeleton Archers, 4 Enraged Boars, 1 Skeleton Warlock and 1 Skeleton Mage vs. 3. Really?
I'm Level 4 with three members in my party and I can't even get to the Lighthouse. I've already cleared the undead area west of the cemetery as I moved toward the Lighthouse.
Can't get past the enemies outside the Lighthouse door. One of them jumps around, gets like 3-4 attacks with however number of attack points they've been given, and kill my party. Just when I think it's going good, the creature brings back those I've killed, then jumps around again.
Anywhere else I go, I get killed. Found a nice pack of wolves. Three attacks each! Where can I get that many attack points without passing my round, please and thank-you!
I've done all the quests I can do within Cyseal, and I'm roughly 7,000xp away from Level 5. All remaining quests point outside of the city walls, and I've cleared everything I could.
My fighter has 5 combat points. How do I get more so he can get multiple attacks like skeleton archers or some wolf? Some Skeleton Mages cast, move, and cast a second time before their turn is up.
Combat on the way to Cyseal was fun, not so much anymore. It's really getting to me just how it seems so unbalanced all of a sudden.
The "DLC" is the kickstarter backers reward, which due to overwhelming demand was made available to anyone that wants to pay extra. It's just a couple cosmetic things (alternate armor skin mostly) and some art-books, sound track, and making of things.
The golden grail allows you to recolor some parts of your armor in a gold color, and the trucks DLC gives a new underwear skin for your character to choose from.
It's bundled with the collectors edition, OR you can buy it separately if you only want the game for now, but change your mind later.
(the collectors edition includes two copies of the game, so if you have a friend you'd like to play with, it's a little cheaper then buying them separately, saves about $10 overall).
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You get more AP by raising your speed (also your armor can mess with your AP costs, if you don't have enough armor specialization to reduce the penalty), OR you can save un-spent AP and use it next turn, though there's a maximum cap. Haste also gives bonus AP and reduces AP cost of movement and actions for the duration (haste is basically free to cast since it gives back more AP then it costs, but has a really long cooldown, so you'll probably only use it once per fight).
Also it depends on the spell. They have a variety of AP costs, which vary from spell to spell. Same for weapons really. Lighter weapons cost less AP to attack with.
I found that the game got a whole lot easier once my wizard got Fireball from the wizard vendor living above the legion commander. Sfarting a fight with dealing massive fire damage to almost every enemy, plus setting them on fire helps a lot.
Later on when you get your first summon spells, this gets even better (the enemy loves wasting their spells on your summons). You'll also get more spells to remove opponents from a fight for a while (Like the Knockdown from Madora's skill, freezing or petrification). The first few levels are v. harsh though.
As for the lighthouse, remember that blunt weapons deal more damage to skeletons. Witches can get a +50% damage spell from the lady at the inn and the ooze the ghoul shoots explodes. Shooting a burning enemy with poison also makes them explode. If you have Hydromancy and so does a party member, two castings of Chill freezes a target (and one cast dispels Burning). Fire thaws them so be careful with those explosions. Healing magic harms the undead and don't forget to liberally use your scrolls. It's the first tough boss fight, and not the hardest I'm afraid.
Whelp, this game lost me today. I spent *seven hours* of play time trying to solve the murder mystery in the first town.
I worked my way to the murder scene, and immediately got teleported out into some main storyline stuff before I could even look around the room.
I came back, and ran around town finding stuff and making progress for a couple or three hours, and then I finally hit a brick wall.
Upon throwing up my hands and consulting a walkthrough, I found out that I *still* couldn't get any more progress without completing *another* quest that required that I find a secret cellar entrance and move some stuff around. How was I supposed to know about that legitimately?
Apparently, *after* I had found the secret MacGuffin in the secret area, I was supposed to go back to an npc I would have had no clue to go back to, talk to them, and then find *another* secret area in that npc's house without the npc noticing, and locate *another* hidden key to *another* secret area that I wouldn't even have a chance to find until I was well out into the wilderness, at some unspecified time later. All without having any clue from the game that I needed to do all that.
Good lord, I just spent *seven hours* of my life on this game without a single combat! And now, others are saying that the combat gets frustrating as well, and starts blocking your progress.
I dunno, maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but life is too short, and I could have just spent the past seven hours playing BG and having fun. I did *not* have fun struggling with D:OS today.
This frustration came so early in the game, I believe it can only presage more frustration to come. There's *way* too much puzzle and dialogue and *way* too little fulfilling action. You spend most of the game either stuck on a puzzle, or stuck on a combat encounter, which is also a kind of puzzle.
I should have known better, since I tried and hated Divinity 2.
I am starting to regret spending my $40. It's such a shame, since this game was so promising in its introductory prologue, and I was so excited to see what would come next.
If you read this whole rant, thanks for listening. I'm sure this game is wonderful for a certain audience, but it has abjectly failed the fun test for me in early Act 1.
Aka...it's actually an RPG, and not a diablo-clone with slightly more plot like BG is.
Just be aware of what you're getting into, though I honestly can compare it more to Torment in terms of it being a slower start and having to pay attention and talk to people to succeed, though with better combat when you need to do combat.
I've been enjoying it quite a bit, since there just haven't been very many good actual roleplaying games.
Actually...now that I think about it.....it does have a lot more in common with Temple of Elemental Evil. Though they were at least nice enough to give you a tutorial dungeon before smashing your face in with trolls or a huge pack of frogs this time.
I'm about to give it one more chance today, for just a couple of hours. I want to abandon the murder mystery and try heading out into one of the wilderness areas so I can see the combat situation for myself that everybody's talking about. I figure I'll try normal difficulty to see how far I get, then turn it down to easy and try that if normal seems unbalanced. I have a really low tolerance for puzzles in my rpg's, though, so if I run into more of that, well, we'll see.
I don't think I'll make the mistake of spending my whole play day on it again, though. I want to play a little while, until it starts to feel no fun (assuming it does), and then spend the rest of my session on my BG run.
Since I already spent my money, I really hate to feel like I completely wasted it.
EDIT: Okay, I tried to play a bit more, and I figured out what is wrong here with the balance. Act one starts you with a "home base" town, a murder mystery quest, and three exits from the town, with quests for those first three areas.
Out the north exit, the first enemies encountered were level 5. Out the west exit, level 6. Out the east exit, level 7. That seems obvious enough. The problem is that my two main characters, after following the mystery quest all the way to the end in town, were only level 3. There are no level 2 or level 3 monsters to fight, and fighting level 5, the lowest monster level available outside of town, is suicide for level 3 characters. So, you don't have the option to retreat from an area that is too difficult and go back to level your characters, because there's nowhere to go back to.
Now, I noticed that the first group of level 5's were standing in a pool of poison that should be ignitable by fire. But they were also standing behind a barrier that would be very difficult to maneuver around to get into position, and they had ranged attacks. It's a puzzle. There's some way to solve that first encounter out the north gates, if I cared to reload over and over long enough trying different tactics each time.
But you can't just have a straightforward fight. You're too badly outleveled, and it looks like you will always be outleveled by at least two levels, which is a significant difference.
I'm not really sure what Larian was thinking by balancing the game this way. I know that a lot of people are succeeding in getting through it, but the game isn't motivating me to want to do it. I've read many, many complaints about the game balance along the lines of what I've said here.
I think the folks who like it kind of enjoy having every encounter be something that can't be won in a straightforward fight, but rather requires careful observation of the situation with a lot of trial and error and reloading to solve. The satisfaction comes from finally solving the "impossible" problem. I can understand that intellectually. It's just not my kind of game.
Oh, well. It's certainly beautifully crafted. The art and music are top-notch. So, if you enjoy that kind of puzzle-based gamestyle, it might be just the game for you. I just wish I had realized what it was before I bought it, because I don't think you can get the idea just from reading the reviews and previews and such.
Especially them any ways to customize your character. The only thing that really bugs me is that you have to play 2 'main characters'
Actually you can pick a trait that disallows companions. Not tried that since I actually like having party members, but I imagine it should appease Iron Man and No Reload weirdos.
I read the talent, alas it doesn't stop you from having 2 PC's. But it stops you from getting other companions like already explained earlier.
I don't mind having scripted companions, but two protagonists is hell. Even in games with 1 protagonist I spend like 5 hours and do 20 restarts to get it the way I like it.
You can also pick an AI for your companion to have them make their own decision. But the limited choices between 'Loyal' and 'Random' just didn't seem what I had in mind for a companion character.
Even though I like roleplaying games, I always roleplay 'myself in the protagonists shoes'.... I don't really like thinking in the way of 'if I was a chaotic neutral witch, what would I do in this situation?' since for me, it breaks immersion.
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On another note, still haven't made much progress in the game. It tends to get a bit too sandboxy for my liking and like @BelgarathMTH i'm afraid that the game will get too puzzly and slow for me to enjoy.
While playing it I usually think after 20 minutes 'let's do another BG run'
I disagree with most of the things @BelgarathMTH has said. First of the murder mystery you talk about isn't some sidequest as you make it out to be. It's part of the main quest, if you had followed the story better you would know that the reason you had actually arrived at the town was because of that murder. This should be made even more obvious by the teleporting (and especially by the place you are teleported to) you also complain about. The murder being the reason for your arrival is actually even mentioned in the intro video...
Rest of it I honestly I'm not even surewhat you are talking about. I had no trouble progressing without reading anything else than what the NPCs told me, and using common sense (like eg. I should probably talk with the main suspects). Only thing I think of it is that you are making houses having basements be some "secret" area? And keys literally sitting on desks, shelves, or in chests to be hard to find? Ok to be fair, I have seen ONE key that partly under a pot, but it wasn't even part of the main quest and using the DOS equivalent of TAB highlighted it just fine. Also I can say for my own that that part that didn't take me anywhere near 7 hours, more like an hour, or two at most.
As for the combat talk that's the part I partly agree with you. This game is relatively rigid about what level of mobs you can fight. One thing I do find kinda strange is how could you spend so much time in the town and not notice the companions you could recruit? Anyway back to the combat as you say it's very hard to fight mobs much higher level at you at the beginning. Which makes the start pretty linear since you need to go after easiest mobs first, ie. clear the way to the lighthouse is your first task. Again though one of the main characters you are told to talk literally says where to go at first.
I'm sorry to say, but lot of your combat complains simply seem to stem from you being rather poor at it. I rarily used barrels, or anything else other, than the abilities of my characters. Not that I don't understand you having trouble with the combat the start was the most difficult part me as well, especially so since you had completely missed the extra help available.
Basically the start is very BG1 like. Very tough at first but once you get few levels under your belt it starts to become a lot easier. You are definitely not going to be behind enemies by couple levels all the time as you claim. One big thing to notice is that you really should pay attention what the NPCs are selling. You can will find skillbooks in the wild too, and can craft them, but the easiest way to get what you want right away is to buy them. Having things like haste, fireball, etc. as early as possible makes a big difference.
That's the point though. You aren't roleplaying if you ignore what your character is. Your role is play the character you've chosen with all their faults and their strengths taken into account, and that does require to change the way you play. If you are roleplaying you, then make sure you have the stats you feel that you have and that it fits your outlook, since you are not playing the character otherwise.
Which is why I dislike BG's alignment and conversation system since you pick whatever, and it basically never changes no matter what your actions. You can be evil as sin and still keep a good alignment or good npcs just by throwing a few pennies at a church every once in awhile. And even if you're utterly brain-dead, with the charisma of a shut-in, you can pick out eloquent or highly intellectual responses just because it leads to a better reward, but without the physical/mental stats to back it up.
Part of what made Torment's roleplaying great was it enforced the roleplaying. You still had a choice of decisions but if your character lacked the int, wisdom, charisma, dex, str, whatever, to pull off a particular action, it wasn't available or would fail. And the alignment freely shifted as you made decisions. Arcanum also did this quite often, at least early on before the rushed portions of the game hit and it was great.
If you ignore what your character is, there's no point to even have a game to begin with. You're effectively just reading a Choose-your-own-adventure book and ignoring everything that makes it an actual game in the process.
Aka...it's actually an RPG, and not a diablo-clone with slightly more plot like BG is.
Baldur's Gate is a Diablo-clone?
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what?
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No, I really don't see it. In the Diablos you butcher legions of enemies from the get go and loot rains from the heavens. I really don't see how that is comparible to Baldur's Gate wherein the first few hours you get killed by lone gibberlings or stray kobold arrows and identifying a magical item is a huge cost.
I agree with @ZanathKariashi for the most part. Part of what made Planescape and Acranum great, and part of the reason I still play Arcanum now, so many years on, is the fact your stats actually affect game play. Baldur's Gate could seriously benefit from this. Neverwinter Nights 2 allowed alignment change based on actions to, a mechanic that was quite enjoyable! One day the CG fighter might just get pushed to far, loose his temper and do something stupid. It happens from time to time. . . I'm not sure if it's been suggested adding this to BG:EE, most likely it has, I don't know if its even possible but it would be lovely to have. I would love it if my 5 intelligence half orc barbarian couldn't match wits with Ragefast. . . He would just have to smack him in the face with his mace.
This game sounds amazing in alot of respects, but it also seems like there is quite a difficulty curve. Still, it's likely the closest spiritual successor to the BG series that we are going to see anytime soon.
@Silverstar You literally just described Baldur's Gate.
(and no....100g is chump change for identification (some only charge 75), especially since most merchants offer identification. Just like scrolls of identification in Diablo are. If Identify cost 1250g per item (even if YOU cast the spell) to fully reveal it's statistics and the shop-keeper could only cast it once/twice per day due to the reducing the caster's Con by 8 for 24 hours per spell, AND it only had a 10% chance of success per caster level to a maximum of 90%, like the PnP version of Identify does, you MIGHT have a point).
Even Icewind DALE has more enforced Roleplaying then Baldur's Gate does, and it's more dungeon crawler-ish then any of the other infinity engine games.
The only difference is that BG has more side-quests. But at the end of the day, it's you slaughter droves of enemies with little difficulty, and gets gobs of monty haul loot that no GM in their right mind would hand out as freely as BG does. The biggest difference is...BG takes out the grind, since levels are largely pointless and the look is always in the same place, replacing it with SLIGHTLY harder encounters.
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Keep in mind, Paladins aside, slipping every once in awhile would not cause your alignment to shift in such a way to cause problems (Barring something like a Helm of Opposite alignment, alignments can only shift 1 step at a time on either axis, and is generally a gradual process). You would have to choose a lot of similar responses over a long period of time for a full alignment shift to occur, unless a particular response with a lot of sacrifice involved, which would be weighted heavier.
But at the end of the day it's you slaughter droves of enemies with little difficulty, and gets gobs of monty haul loot
Yes, at the end of the day. This is when you start getting magical loot everywhere, this is when you easily dispatch large groups of enemies without looking at the Load Game screen. When you're way up the levels. When you're in the second game of the series. And even then it's not every single encounter unlike in the Diablos if you build and play your class right. If you want to call Baldur's Gate a "Diablo-clone" the gameplay experience has to be similar to that of Diablo's from start to finish. It is not.
You can't run as a solo caster into any random cave you see in Baldur's Gate. You get mauled by a bear in one blow and then it's game over, not a free teleport back to town with all your levels intact. In Diablo II, your very first quest is running solo into a cave full of monsters. Even if you're playing the squishiest class your chance of dying is laughable. Due to random loot generator you have a decent chance of allready ending up with several magical items in addition to scrolls for identifying them and gold to spend on anything.
Even when you have a full party Baldur's Gate doesn't get as mind numbingly easy. Give an amazon bowwoman a bow with a poison and an ice gem, summon 2 skeletons and watch them clear out any area your level while you sit back and do nothing. Try marching your +1 BG party into one of the forests with the AI doing its thing and watch them running into traps, pulling several encounters and getting themselves killed on the initial one that consists of a single enemy type.
The fact that you end up with, eventually, more magical loot than you know what to do with does not make Baldur's Gate a Diablo-clone. The fact that you can easily dispatch large groups of opponents, eventually and sometimes, does not make Baldur's Gate a Diablo-clone. The fact that Baldur's Gate doesn't have as deep and meaningful roleplaying as one would like does not make it a Diablo-clone. It makes Baldur's Gate a CRPG.
Of course, you could be of the opinion that almost every CRPG is a Diablo-clone because almost every CRPG does lack deep RP, lets you become obscenely powerful and gives you tons of magical shinies. In that case, sure. But is it accurate comparing every other game to it, seeing as Diablo did not invent the combination of vast wealth, non-deep RP and high powered characters? I find it hard to agree that it is.
I really like the game. My only criticism would be very, very minor thing. Namely why "load" is on the right side (right button I guess you could call it) and "back" is on the left side. Same with "no" and "yes" in the game. Maybe people who are left-handed prefer this, I really don't know the reasoning behind it, but I'm used to Yes/No and Option/Back as being pretty much the default arrangement in PC games. I mean I have absolutely no doubt I'll get used to it but I guess I don't really see the need for it to be the opposite of the norm here.
Still loving Original Sin myself. I can completely understand why some may not enjoy it as much. It requires your full attention and there is a good amount of reading and side story. For me, that is utterly fantastic, but for others it may not be as much.
Don't forget, to the un initiated d&d player, Baldur's gate would be a difficult beginning learning curve as well. Mages especially. 1d4 hps? 1-2 spell casts of only a few types of spells per day? People would think the game was being masochistic if they had never played any d&d before.
It is for that reason, and many others, that I love Original Sin. It is the first game in a long long while that requires your full attention. If you get distracted easily, don't enjoy reading a lot, or want to blaze through it, it will not be an enjoyable gaming experience.
I haven't given up on D:OS, and I'm liking it a bit better now. Part of my problem early on was that there is a fourth exit from Cyseal that I didn't know about, and wouldn't you know, *that's* the exit I needed to find 3rd level fights.
I had picked up a hint from an NPC that I should go west, but I thought that meant west toward the beach, which is for 6th level characters, so I couldn't make any sense out of it. The next closest zone to my level that I could find was out the north gate, for 5th level characters. I finally checked an online map, and saw the northwest gate that was hiding in the fog between a large smithy building and the town wall.
Any way, once I finally figured out where the appropriate level zones are, it started to get more fun. I turned the difficulty slider to "easy", and found that to be appropriately challenging for a beginner at the combat, but I'm already getting tempted to turn it up as I get more familiar with what is going on.
My main criticism remains the slow start in Cyseal with the murder mystery. It's really, really slow, and frankly I found that part boring and annoying. I've restarted several times to try some different builds and party compositions, though, so each time I've practiced getting through the opening as quickly as possible, now that I know the exact order of events that need to be triggered, because the game doesn't really start until you can get outside the gates of Cyseal.
It's a little like Candlekeep or Irenicus' dungeon, only about 10 times longer and duller. So, I predict somebody will eventually come out with a "Cyseal be gone" mod.
Now that I've gotten to the good part, I'm actually finding the turn-based strategy combat quite fun. Each combat is like a game of chess, and can take a really long time to complete, sometimes twenty or thirty minutes or more. If you're getting frustrated, swallow your pride and turn the slider to easy. That's what that setting is there for.
I'm especially enjoying the music. Each area has several tracks that rotate in the music loop, rather than only the one track per zone that you get in most crpg's. If you're a fan of the original Divine Divinity as I was, you'll be delighted to find a few of the tracks from the original in the mix, along with new compositions using the same themes.
I could wish the colors were a bit brighter, as Cyseal and its outskirts are very drab, with lots of washed out sand tones and grays. But on the whole, the art and graphics are also great to behold. The water surfaces are especially good.
I'm okay with the two-character system, but roleplaying is where I don't think D:OS lives up to BG. First of all, there are only two joinable npc's that have interactions (I think). There is a "hero's hall" where you can get a joinable npc of any build you please so you can fill out a classical balanced party of four, but most or all of those have no interactions. Given the number of hirable henchpeople the devs made available, I can understand why most of them couldn't be fully programmed characterizations. There is a *lot* of voice-acting in the characters that are.
Your two main characters will have many, many voiced dialogues together, but then you make selections on dialogue trees that basically amount to "we agree", and "we don't agree". You can play it as a best friendship, or as two people forced together by mutual "Source Hunters" duty who genuinely dislike each other and can barely stand each other. There's a fighter, Madora, who has an interesting personality for you to interact with, and a priest.
In my case, I couldn't use the priest, because he duplicated the build I wanted for myself, so I picked one of the generic archers from the "Hall of Heroes" with no voiced dialogue. If you want both a balanced party and to hear commentary on the game events from your hirelings, you have to take the fighter and the priest, and have your two mains play a complementary mage and archer. I think the classic fighter/healer/mage/thief works best, because you'll be able to use most of the random equipment you find, but again, you get to make your own choices.
Bottom line: I'd say if you played Might and Magic 6, or Temple of Elemental Evil, there's a good chance you will like Divinity: Original Sin. Just be warned about the slow start.
Where'd you find the priest, BelgarathMTH? I've met Madora and that mage whatshisname in the library, but no priest. As for the "generic" faceless companions you can pick up I suspect those got added as part of the kickstarter project ("look, more companions!") though I didn't follow it so that's just me guessing.
I ended up choosing a rogue and a wayfarer to make a balanced party with the two companions currently available. I'll just avoid making custom characters until I feel comfortable with the system.
@Silverstar I'll disagree.....my mages have zero trouble soloing the first cave they come across, largely in part to BG's Monty Haul nature (in fact..i would actually argue that BG is EASIER then Diablo since there's no level requirements on gear nor do you even need to level up hardly at all, and you can stumble across ridiculously power items right at the beginning of the game (finding a wand of lightning in Beregost was what turned my opinon of mages around back when i first started and was stymied by the lack of personal spell-casting). And of course, the experience of any non-caster is identical to Diablo, since all of DnD's tactical options were excised to make the game more palatable to a real-time combat system.
Now...which Diablo you're talking about does matter here.
I'm usually referring to Diablo 1, which is much closer to the difficulty to Baldur's Gate has due to a lack of regenerating health/mana, non-respawning enemies (unless you're playing MP), and a general lack of ability to use spells freely till higher up, just as in BG2 (and unlike BG, there is no cheese PI or wish-resting to abuse for nigh unlimited spellcasting). Instead often casting from scrolls or wands/staves to offset your lack of mana resource or a lack of magic stat needed to raise an abilities level to a higher level.
Diablo 2 on the other hand, while objectively a superior game in most respects, relies on hordes of weaker enemies and barring a handful of encounters, is generally not difficult until you get to nightmare difficulty or beyond. (unless you're used to Diablo 1's level of difficulty and insist on playing with /players 8 active at all times which MASSIVELY increases the game's difficulty, turning the Den of Evil into HELL for new character).
While I don't think it's wise to compare the two games, I'd have to say there is a much higher chance of meeting death at the beginning of Baldur's Gate than in Diablo 2 (or even Diablo 1 up until the Butcher). You walk into that first house with the assassin without having purchased any gear and you'll be in for a rude awakening. Or if you and Imoen run into a Dire Wolf on the way to the Friendly Arm.
As for the spellcasting, good luck even playing a character that uses ANY mana costing abilities for the first 10 levels or so in Diablo 2. As a Sorceress in the Den of Evil and for the first few maps afterward you are reduced to auto-attacking with your stave for most of the beginning of the game since you can cast roughly four fireballs before running out of mana. A massive part of the appeal of Baldur's Gate was (and is) that it is the closest video game adaption of the 2nd Edition rules, so while the spell situation can be frustrating at first, at least the limitations make sense and serve a purpose.
Playing Diablo 2 nowadays is an almost painful experience, and though they were contemporaries in many respects, Baldur's Gate has aged about 100 times better than either Diablo game.
@Silverstar, sorry, that's the one I meant, the one in the library. I call him a "priest" because he chants latin, wants to exorcise demons, and specializes in healing magic (water). That's what I want for my main character, and I don't want to duplicate skills in my party. I probably should have said "healer". D:OS treats healers like Dragon Age:Origins - as a subset of mages.
I did try to build a classical mace-and-shield cleric, and I quickly realized that it was a very bad idea, because if you split precious attribute points between strength and intelligence, you won't be able to keep up with strength requirements on the weapons, shields, and mail armor, and your spells will be sub-par. I decided it was best to specialize attributes - strength, *or* agility *or* intelligence, one of the three for most attribute points, plus a few points in constitution, perception, or speed. Conveniently, it seems that the game intends for constitution to complement strength (fighters), perception to complement agility (archers and dagger-fighters), and speed to complement intelligence (mages).
The game allows you to split focuses if you want, but I didn't think it would be very effective to do so - you'd have two professions, but you'd be bad at both.
Comments
"Actually you can pick a trait that disallows companions."
The talent you are referring to is called Lone Wolf, and you are partially correct.
*MINOR Spoilers follow* (I really hesitate calling the below info a spoiler, but just in case):
The talent only prevents you from getting companions (recruitable NPCs, if you will) for your two protagonists. You still have to play with the original two protagonists even if you pick Lone Wolf on both of them.
So, in summary:
- If you took Lone Wolf on both protagonists, you could only use both protagonists and no one else.
- If you took Lone Wolf on ONE protagonist and not the other, then you could pick up ONE additional companion later in the game (the protagonist that did NOT take Lone Wolf could recruit him/her).
- If you did NOT take Lone Wolf on EITHER of your protagonists, then you could pick up two companions (one for each protagonist).
Lastly, if anyone is curious, Lone Wolf makes your character stronger, thus the tradeoff being that you cannot recruit a companion. I hope that clarifies it a bit.
Wolves casting healing on skeleton allies. Really?
Mindless skeletons avoiding puddles of water I've electrified. Really?
4 Skeleton Archers, 4 Enraged Boars, 1 Skeleton Warlock and 1 Skeleton Mage vs. 3. Really?
I'm Level 4 with three members in my party and I can't even get to the Lighthouse. I've already cleared the undead area west of the cemetery as I moved toward the Lighthouse.
Can't get past the enemies outside the Lighthouse door. One of them jumps around, gets like 3-4 attacks with however number of attack points they've been given, and kill my party. Just when I think it's going good, the creature brings back those I've killed, then jumps around again.
Anywhere else I go, I get killed. Found a nice pack of wolves. Three attacks each! Where can I get that many attack points without passing my round, please and thank-you!
I've done all the quests I can do within Cyseal, and I'm roughly 7,000xp away from Level 5. All remaining quests point outside of the city walls, and I've cleared everything I could.
My fighter has 5 combat points. How do I get more so he can get multiple attacks like skeleton archers or some wolf? Some Skeleton Mages cast, move, and cast a second time before their turn is up.
Combat on the way to Cyseal was fun, not so much anymore. It's really getting to me just how it seems so unbalanced all of a sudden.
The golden grail allows you to recolor some parts of your armor in a gold color, and the trucks DLC gives a new underwear skin for your character to choose from.
It's bundled with the collectors edition, OR you can buy it separately if you only want the game for now, but change your mind later.
(the collectors edition includes two copies of the game, so if you have a friend you'd like to play with, it's a little cheaper then buying them separately, saves about $10 overall).
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You get more AP by raising your speed (also your armor can mess with your AP costs, if you don't have enough armor specialization to reduce the penalty), OR you can save un-spent AP and use it next turn, though there's a maximum cap. Haste also gives bonus AP and reduces AP cost of movement and actions for the duration (haste is basically free to cast since it gives back more AP then it costs, but has a really long cooldown, so you'll probably only use it once per fight).
Also it depends on the spell. They have a variety of AP costs, which vary from spell to spell. Same for weapons really. Lighter weapons cost less AP to attack with.
Later on when you get your first summon spells, this gets even better (the enemy loves wasting their spells on your summons). You'll also get more spells to remove opponents from a fight for a while (Like the Knockdown from Madora's skill, freezing or petrification).
The first few levels are v. harsh though.
As for the lighthouse, remember that blunt weapons deal more damage to skeletons. Witches can get a +50% damage spell from the lady at the inn and the ooze the ghoul shoots explodes. Shooting a burning enemy with poison also makes them explode.
If you have Hydromancy and so does a party member, two castings of Chill freezes a target (and one cast dispels Burning). Fire thaws them so be careful with those explosions.
Healing magic harms the undead and don't forget to liberally use your scrolls.
It's the first tough boss fight, and not the hardest I'm afraid.
I worked my way to the murder scene, and immediately got teleported out into some main storyline stuff before I could even look around the room.
I came back, and ran around town finding stuff and making progress for a couple or three hours, and then I finally hit a brick wall.
Upon throwing up my hands and consulting a walkthrough, I found out that I *still* couldn't get any more progress without completing *another* quest that required that I find a secret cellar entrance and move some stuff around. How was I supposed to know about that legitimately?
Apparently, *after* I had found the secret MacGuffin in the secret area, I was supposed to go back to an npc I would have had no clue to go back to, talk to them, and then find *another* secret area in that npc's house without the npc noticing, and locate *another* hidden key to *another* secret area that I wouldn't even have a chance to find until I was well out into the wilderness, at some unspecified time later. All without having any clue from the game that I needed to do all that.
Good lord, I just spent *seven hours* of my life on this game without a single combat! And now, others are saying that the combat gets frustrating as well, and starts blocking your progress.
I dunno, maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but life is too short, and I could have just spent the past seven hours playing BG and having fun. I did *not* have fun struggling with D:OS today.
This frustration came so early in the game, I believe it can only presage more frustration to come. There's *way* too much puzzle and dialogue and *way* too little fulfilling action. You spend most of the game either stuck on a puzzle, or stuck on a combat encounter, which is also a kind of puzzle.
I should have known better, since I tried and hated Divinity 2.
I am starting to regret spending my $40. It's such a shame, since this game was so promising in its introductory prologue, and I was so excited to see what would come next.
If you read this whole rant, thanks for listening. I'm sure this game is wonderful for a certain audience, but it has abjectly failed the fun test for me in early Act 1.
Kind of reminds me of IWD2 and the fact that it starts out easy, and then its time for a crap load of puzzles that just annoy the player.
I think I'll refrain.
Just be aware of what you're getting into, though I honestly can compare it more to Torment in terms of it being a slower start and having to pay attention and talk to people to succeed, though with better combat when you need to do combat.
I've been enjoying it quite a bit, since there just haven't been very many good actual roleplaying games.
Actually...now that I think about it.....it does have a lot more in common with Temple of Elemental Evil. Though they were at least nice enough to give you a tutorial dungeon before smashing your face in with trolls or a huge pack of frogs this time.
@FinneousPJ So I'm not the only who doesn't like Steam? Everywhere I go everyone LOVES it.
I'll be updating my progress with the game as it goes. Currently haven't the time to play. Perhaps on sunday.
I don't think I'll make the mistake of spending my whole play day on it again, though. I want to play a little while, until it starts to feel no fun (assuming it does), and then spend the rest of my session on my BG run.
Since I already spent my money, I really hate to feel like I completely wasted it.
EDIT: Okay, I tried to play a bit more, and I figured out what is wrong here with the balance. Act one starts you with a "home base" town, a murder mystery quest, and three exits from the town, with quests for those first three areas.
Out the north exit, the first enemies encountered were level 5. Out the west exit, level 6. Out the east exit, level 7. That seems obvious enough. The problem is that my two main characters, after following the mystery quest all the way to the end in town, were only level 3. There are no level 2 or level 3 monsters to fight, and fighting level 5, the lowest monster level available outside of town, is suicide for level 3 characters. So, you don't have the option to retreat from an area that is too difficult and go back to level your characters, because there's nowhere to go back to.
Now, I noticed that the first group of level 5's were standing in a pool of poison that should be ignitable by fire. But they were also standing behind a barrier that would be very difficult to maneuver around to get into position, and they had ranged attacks. It's a puzzle. There's some way to solve that first encounter out the north gates, if I cared to reload over and over long enough trying different tactics each time.
But you can't just have a straightforward fight. You're too badly outleveled, and it looks like you will always be outleveled by at least two levels, which is a significant difference.
I'm not really sure what Larian was thinking by balancing the game this way. I know that a lot of people are succeeding in getting through it, but the game isn't motivating me to want to do it. I've read many, many complaints about the game balance along the lines of what I've said here.
I think the folks who like it kind of enjoy having every encounter be something that can't be won in a straightforward fight, but rather requires careful observation of the situation with a lot of trial and error and reloading to solve. The satisfaction comes from finally solving the "impossible" problem. I can understand that intellectually. It's just not my kind of game.
Oh, well. It's certainly beautifully crafted. The art and music are top-notch. So, if you enjoy that kind of puzzle-based gamestyle, it might be just the game for you. I just wish I had realized what it was before I bought it, because I don't think you can get the idea just from reading the reviews and previews and such.
I don't mind having scripted companions, but two protagonists is hell. Even in games with 1 protagonist I spend like 5 hours and do 20 restarts to get it the way I like it.
You can also pick an AI for your companion to have them make their own decision. But the limited choices between 'Loyal' and 'Random' just didn't seem what I had in mind for a companion character.
Even though I like roleplaying games, I always roleplay 'myself in the protagonists shoes'.... I don't really like thinking in the way of 'if I was a chaotic neutral witch, what would I do in this situation?' since for me, it breaks immersion.
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On another note, still haven't made much progress in the game. It tends to get a bit too sandboxy for my liking and like @BelgarathMTH i'm afraid that the game will get too puzzly and slow for me to enjoy.
While playing it I usually think after 20 minutes 'let's do another BG run'
Rest of it I honestly I'm not even surewhat you are talking about. I had no trouble progressing without reading anything else than what the NPCs told me, and using common sense (like eg. I should probably talk with the main suspects). Only thing I think of it is that you are making houses having basements be some "secret" area? And keys literally sitting on desks, shelves, or in chests to be hard to find? Ok to be fair, I have seen ONE key that partly under a pot, but it wasn't even part of the main quest and using the DOS equivalent of TAB highlighted it just fine. Also I can say for my own that that part that didn't take me anywhere near 7 hours, more like an hour, or two at most.
As for the combat talk that's the part I partly agree with you. This game is relatively rigid about what level of mobs you can fight. One thing I do find kinda strange is how could you spend so much time in the town and not notice the companions you could recruit? Anyway back to the combat as you say it's very hard to fight mobs much higher level at you at the beginning. Which makes the start pretty linear since you need to go after easiest mobs first, ie. clear the way to the lighthouse is your first task. Again though one of the main characters you are told to talk literally says where to go at first.
I'm sorry to say, but lot of your combat complains simply seem to stem from you being rather poor at it. I rarily used barrels, or anything else other, than the abilities of my characters. Not that I don't understand you having trouble with the combat the start was the most difficult part me as well, especially so since you had completely missed the extra help available.
Basically the start is very BG1 like. Very tough at first but once you get few levels under your belt it starts to become a lot easier. You are definitely not going to be behind enemies by couple levels all the time as you claim. One big thing to notice is that you really should pay attention what the NPCs are selling. You can will find skillbooks in the wild too, and can craft them, but the easiest way to get what you want right away is to buy them. Having things like haste, fireball, etc. as early as possible makes a big difference.
Which is why I dislike BG's alignment and conversation system since you pick whatever, and it basically never changes no matter what your actions. You can be evil as sin and still keep a good alignment or good npcs just by throwing a few pennies at a church every once in awhile. And even if you're utterly brain-dead, with the charisma of a shut-in, you can pick out eloquent or highly intellectual responses just because it leads to a better reward, but without the physical/mental stats to back it up.
Part of what made Torment's roleplaying great was it enforced the roleplaying. You still had a choice of decisions but if your character lacked the int, wisdom, charisma, dex, str, whatever, to pull off a particular action, it wasn't available or would fail. And the alignment freely shifted as you made decisions. Arcanum also did this quite often, at least early on before the rushed portions of the game hit and it was great.
If you ignore what your character is, there's no point to even have a game to begin with. You're effectively just reading a Choose-your-own-adventure book and ignoring everything that makes it an actual game in the process.
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what?
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No, I really don't see it. In the Diablos you butcher legions of enemies from the get go and loot rains from the heavens. I really don't see how that is comparible to Baldur's Gate wherein the first few hours you get killed by lone gibberlings or stray kobold arrows and identifying a magical item is a huge cost.
I would love it if my 5 intelligence half orc barbarian couldn't match wits with Ragefast. . . He would just have to smack him in the face with his mace.
You literally just described Baldur's Gate.
(and no....100g is chump change for identification (some only charge 75), especially since most merchants offer identification. Just like scrolls of identification in Diablo are. If Identify cost 1250g per item (even if YOU cast the spell) to fully reveal it's statistics and the shop-keeper could only cast it once/twice per day due to the reducing the caster's Con by 8 for 24 hours per spell, AND it only had a 10% chance of success per caster level to a maximum of 90%, like the PnP version of Identify does, you MIGHT have a point).
Even Icewind DALE has more enforced Roleplaying then Baldur's Gate does, and it's more dungeon crawler-ish then any of the other infinity engine games.
The only difference is that BG has more side-quests. But at the end of the day, it's you slaughter droves of enemies with little difficulty, and gets gobs of monty haul loot that no GM in their right mind would hand out as freely as BG does. The biggest difference is...BG takes out the grind, since levels are largely pointless and the look is always in the same place, replacing it with SLIGHTLY harder encounters.
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Keep in mind, Paladins aside, slipping every once in awhile would not cause your alignment to shift in such a way to cause problems (Barring something like a Helm of Opposite alignment, alignments can only shift 1 step at a time on either axis, and is generally a gradual process). You would have to choose a lot of similar responses over a long period of time for a full alignment shift to occur, unless a particular response with a lot of sacrifice involved, which would be weighted heavier.
You can't run as a solo caster into any random cave you see in Baldur's Gate. You get mauled by a bear in one blow and then it's game over, not a free teleport back to town with all your levels intact. In Diablo II, your very first quest is running solo into a cave full of monsters. Even if you're playing the squishiest class your chance of dying is laughable. Due to random loot generator you have a decent chance of allready ending up with several magical items in addition to scrolls for identifying them and gold to spend on anything.
Even when you have a full party Baldur's Gate doesn't get as mind numbingly easy. Give an amazon bowwoman a bow with a poison and an ice gem, summon 2 skeletons and watch them clear out any area your level while you sit back and do nothing. Try marching your +1 BG party into one of the forests with the AI doing its thing and watch them running into traps, pulling several encounters and getting themselves killed on the initial one that consists of a single enemy type.
The fact that you end up with, eventually, more magical loot than you know what to do with does not make Baldur's Gate a Diablo-clone. The fact that you can easily dispatch large groups of opponents, eventually and sometimes, does not make Baldur's Gate a Diablo-clone. The fact that Baldur's Gate doesn't have as deep and meaningful roleplaying as one would like does not make it a Diablo-clone. It makes Baldur's Gate a CRPG.
Of course, you could be of the opinion that almost every CRPG is a Diablo-clone because almost every CRPG does lack deep RP, lets you become obscenely powerful and gives you tons of magical shinies. In that case, sure. But is it accurate comparing every other game to it, seeing as Diablo did not invent the combination of vast wealth, non-deep RP and high powered characters? I find it hard to agree that it is.
I really like the game. My only criticism would be very, very minor thing. Namely why "load" is on the right side (right button I guess you could call it) and "back" is on the left side. Same with "no" and "yes" in the game. Maybe people who are left-handed prefer this, I really don't know the reasoning behind it, but I'm used to Yes/No and Option/Back as being pretty much the default arrangement in PC games. I mean I have absolutely no doubt I'll get used to it but I guess I don't really see the need for it to be the opposite of the norm here.
Don't forget, to the un initiated d&d player, Baldur's gate would be a difficult beginning learning curve as well. Mages especially. 1d4 hps? 1-2 spell casts of only a few types of spells per day? People would think the game was being masochistic if they had never played any d&d before.
It is for that reason, and many others, that I love Original Sin. It is the first game in a long long while that requires your full attention. If you get distracted easily, don't enjoy reading a lot, or want to blaze through it, it will not be an enjoyable gaming experience.
I had picked up a hint from an NPC that I should go west, but I thought that meant west toward the beach, which is for 6th level characters, so I couldn't make any sense out of it. The next closest zone to my level that I could find was out the north gate, for 5th level characters. I finally checked an online map, and saw the northwest gate that was hiding in the fog between a large smithy building and the town wall.
Any way, once I finally figured out where the appropriate level zones are, it started to get more fun. I turned the difficulty slider to "easy", and found that to be appropriately challenging for a beginner at the combat, but I'm already getting tempted to turn it up as I get more familiar with what is going on.
My main criticism remains the slow start in Cyseal with the murder mystery. It's really, really slow, and frankly I found that part boring and annoying. I've restarted several times to try some different builds and party compositions, though, so each time I've practiced getting through the opening as quickly as possible, now that I know the exact order of events that need to be triggered, because the game doesn't really start until you can get outside the gates of Cyseal.
It's a little like Candlekeep or Irenicus' dungeon, only about 10 times longer and duller. So, I predict somebody will eventually come out with a "Cyseal be gone" mod.
Now that I've gotten to the good part, I'm actually finding the turn-based strategy combat quite fun. Each combat is like a game of chess, and can take a really long time to complete, sometimes twenty or thirty minutes or more. If you're getting frustrated, swallow your pride and turn the slider to easy. That's what that setting is there for.
I'm especially enjoying the music. Each area has several tracks that rotate in the music loop, rather than only the one track per zone that you get in most crpg's. If you're a fan of the original Divine Divinity as I was, you'll be delighted to find a few of the tracks from the original in the mix, along with new compositions using the same themes.
I could wish the colors were a bit brighter, as Cyseal and its outskirts are very drab, with lots of washed out sand tones and grays. But on the whole, the art and graphics are also great to behold. The water surfaces are especially good.
I'm okay with the two-character system, but roleplaying is where I don't think D:OS lives up to BG. First of all, there are only two joinable npc's that have interactions (I think). There is a "hero's hall" where you can get a joinable npc of any build you please so you can fill out a classical balanced party of four, but most or all of those have no interactions. Given the number of hirable henchpeople the devs made available, I can understand why most of them couldn't be fully programmed characterizations. There is a *lot* of voice-acting in the characters that are.
Your two main characters will have many, many voiced dialogues together, but then you make selections on dialogue trees that basically amount to "we agree", and "we don't agree". You can play it as a best friendship, or as two people forced together by mutual "Source Hunters" duty who genuinely dislike each other and can barely stand each other. There's a fighter, Madora, who has an interesting personality for you to interact with, and a priest.
In my case, I couldn't use the priest, because he duplicated the build I wanted for myself, so I picked one of the generic archers from the "Hall of Heroes" with no voiced dialogue. If you want both a balanced party and to hear commentary on the game events from your hirelings, you have to take the fighter and the priest, and have your two mains play a complementary mage and archer. I think the classic fighter/healer/mage/thief works best, because you'll be able to use most of the random equipment you find, but again, you get to make your own choices.
Bottom line: I'd say if you played Might and Magic 6, or Temple of Elemental Evil, there's a good chance you will like Divinity: Original Sin. Just be warned about the slow start.
I'll disagree.....my mages have zero trouble soloing the first cave they come across, largely in part to BG's Monty Haul nature (in fact..i would actually argue that BG is EASIER then Diablo since there's no level requirements on gear nor do you even need to level up hardly at all, and you can stumble across ridiculously power items right at the beginning of the game (finding a wand of lightning in Beregost was what turned my opinon of mages around back when i first started and was stymied by the lack of personal spell-casting). And of course, the experience of any non-caster is identical to Diablo, since all of DnD's tactical options were excised to make the game more palatable to a real-time combat system.
Now...which Diablo you're talking about does matter here.
I'm usually referring to Diablo 1, which is much closer to the difficulty to Baldur's Gate has due to a lack of regenerating health/mana, non-respawning enemies (unless you're playing MP), and a general lack of ability to use spells freely till higher up, just as in BG2 (and unlike BG, there is no cheese PI or wish-resting to abuse for nigh unlimited spellcasting). Instead often casting from scrolls or wands/staves to offset your lack of mana resource or a lack of magic stat needed to raise an abilities level to a higher level.
Diablo 2 on the other hand, while objectively a superior game in most respects, relies on hordes of weaker enemies and barring a handful of encounters, is generally not difficult until you get to nightmare difficulty or beyond. (unless you're used to Diablo 1's level of difficulty and insist on playing with /players 8 active at all times which MASSIVELY increases the game's difficulty, turning the Den of Evil into HELL for new character).
As for the spellcasting, good luck even playing a character that uses ANY mana costing abilities for the first 10 levels or so in Diablo 2. As a Sorceress in the Den of Evil and for the first few maps afterward you are reduced to auto-attacking with your stave for most of the beginning of the game since you can cast roughly four fireballs before running out of mana. A massive part of the appeal of Baldur's Gate was (and is) that it is the closest video game adaption of the 2nd Edition rules, so while the spell situation can be frustrating at first, at least the limitations make sense and serve a purpose.
Playing Diablo 2 nowadays is an almost painful experience, and though they were contemporaries in many respects, Baldur's Gate has aged about 100 times better than either Diablo game.
I did try to build a classical mace-and-shield cleric, and I quickly realized that it was a very bad idea, because if you split precious attribute points between strength and intelligence, you won't be able to keep up with strength requirements on the weapons, shields, and mail armor, and your spells will be sub-par. I decided it was best to specialize attributes - strength, *or* agility *or* intelligence, one of the three for most attribute points, plus a few points in constitution, perception, or speed. Conveniently, it seems that the game intends for constitution to complement strength (fighters), perception to complement agility (archers and dagger-fighters), and speed to complement intelligence (mages).
The game allows you to split focuses if you want, but I didn't think it would be very effective to do so - you'd have two professions, but you'd be bad at both.