D&D games are on sale on GoG.com again

elminster

Check it out. Unfortunately it doesn't include the enhanced editions.

http://www.gog.com/promo/bundle_tower_hasbro_dd_immortals_130415

Archaos

I noticed that too and the EEs are not on sale either. I hope Beamdog makes IWDEE it on sale and I'm totally grabbing it.

80% sale is a steal.

jjstraka34

Was just gonna mention this. I own all of them so it's of no use to me, but Neverwinter Nights 2 ALONE is normally the cost of this entire package. This is a great chance to get 8 of the best RPGs ever created, and a fairly crappy RTS and 3D action adventure as the mint after a great dinner.

The first 3 Divinity games are also on sale. I have Divine Divinity, but I've heard horrible things about Beyond Divinity, and not much about Divinity 2. Anyone have any experience with them?? For $5 I might just buy them anyway.

Vallmyr

Welp.
I finally bought Planescape: Torment for the first time.
/sigh
Another game on my infinitely long to-do list.

Archaos

@Vallmyr You are not the only one.

jackjack

I broke down and bought NWN2. I've been waiting for it to go on sale for a while, and 8 bucks is a steal. Never did play MotB or SoZ, so I'm looking forward to those. I've modded it a bit and grabbed a few modules to boot.

jjstraka34

jackjack said:

I broke down and bought NWN2. I've been waiting for it to go on sale for a while, and 8 bucks is a steal. Never did play MotB or SoZ, so I'm looking forward to those. I've modded it a bit and grabbed a few modules to boot.

Enjoy, the camera and party AI are generally horrible, but it's a great game on par with KOTOR 2 imo. Be sure to get yourself Tales from the Lake of Sorrows as one of your mods. And the Pool of Radiance Remastered.

Vallmyr said:

Welp.
I finally bought Planescape: Torment for the first time.
/sigh
Another game on my infinitely long to-do list.

Buying this whole package at once can cause you both joy and be a major headache. I've bought so many games over the last year that I eventually had to reduce my Steam overlay to only show about 35 of them so the rest are out of sight and out of mind. The GOG D&D pack literally has about a 1000 hours of content just based on one playthrough of each title.

SharGuidesMyHand

jjstraka34 said:

jackjack said:

I broke down and bought NWN2. I've been waiting for it to go on sale for a while, and 8 bucks is a steal. Never did play MotB or SoZ, so I'm looking forward to those. I've modded it a bit and grabbed a few modules to boot.

Enjoy, the camera and party AI are generally horrible, but it's a great game on par with KOTOR 2 imo.

How does it compare to NWN1? I never could get into the original, but I'm thinking that I may give the sequel a try anyway.

Archaos

@SharGuidesMyHand I have played both extensively, starting with Nwn1, for years and I can say the superior game is NwN2.
At least for me.

-Offers you full party control and customization.
-You can make your own party in Storm of Zehir.
-Mask of the Betrayer is considered amazing and is compared many times to Planescape: Torment.
-You have more creative freedom with the toolset but it's harder and less intuitive.
-Offers a ton of races, subraces, classes, prestige classes and spells/feats.

NwN1 is the more solid product and has more people playing online to this day.
Personally, I prefer the freedom NwN2 allows in both making characters and areas.

Get them both and play them both. There are tons of mods and modules around and people are still playing on roleplaying servers online.

On NwN2 you have stuff like a Planescape server called Sigil (with a ton of custom races) and on NwN1 you have a Ravenloft server called Prisoners of the Mist.
And you have of course the more standard settings or more Social servers.

I recently finished a fan-made trilogy on NwN1 but I usually play NwN2.

jjstraka34

Archaos said:

@SharGuidesMyHand I have played both extensively, starting with Nwn1, for years and I can say the superior game is NwN2.
At least for me.

-Offers you full party control and customization.
-You can make your own party in Storm of Zehir.
-Mask of the Betrayer is considered amazing and is compared many times to Planescape: Torment.
-You have more creative freedom with the toolset but it's harder and less intuitive.
-Offers a ton of races, subraces, classes, prestige classes and spells/feats.

NwN1 is the more solid product and has more people playing online to this day.
Personally, I prefer the freedom NwN2 allows in both making characters and areas.

Get them both and play them both. There are tons of mods and modules around and people are still playing on roleplaying servers online.

On NwN2 you have stuff like a Planescape server called Sigil (with a ton of custom races) and on NwN1 you have a Ravenloft server called Prisoners of the Mist.
And you have of course the more standard settings or more Social servers.

I recently finished a fan-made trilogy on NwN1 but I usually play NwN2.

I'm doing a play through of 2's original campaign right now (Archery Characters are the absolute worst to play at low levels, yet I start with them so often). The camera is legitimately terrible no matter how you tweak it, the only option is to slow it down completely and switch views are much as necessary. That being said, it's the only game (I believe) with the 3.5 rule set, and it really shines. There are so many options, be it at the beginning of the game, or along the way as you are leveling (at the moment I'm building toward a Arcane Archer prestige class). The spell options are vastly different than 2nd and 3rd Edition, and characters have much more freedom (much like Pillars of Eternity tbh). I love NWN2. I hate the camera, and tweaking every character's AI is a total pain in the ass (I prefer to micromanage). But it's great, and has me itching to play my copies of the Drakensang games, which from my limited experience offer hard-core stat choices in a very NWN2ish type of engine.

elminster

jjstraka34 said:

it's the only game (I believe) with the 3.5 rule set

Temple of Elemental Evil also uses 3.5.

SharGuidesMyHand

jjstraka34 said:

The camera is legitimately terrible no matter how you tweak it, the only option is to slow it down completely and switch views are much as necessary.

I just tried out the game for the first time last night, and I already like the look and feel of it much better than the original NWN. However, using the camera is such a horrific pain in the arse, it almost makes the game seem intolerable! It's a shame that such a promising-looking game would be hampered by something so basic.

jjstraka34

SharGuidesMyHand said:

jjstraka34 said:

The camera is legitimately terrible no matter how you tweak it, the only option is to slow it down completely and switch views are much as necessary.

I just tried out the game for the first time last night, and I already like the look and feel of it much better than the original NWN. However, using the camera is such a horrific pain in the arse, it almost makes the game seem intolerable! It's a shame that such a promising-looking game would be hampered by something so basic.

It is, but there are a couple of tips: I move casually in character mode, but indoors you lose the bird's eye view because of the roofs. Exploration and Strategy are basically the same, though you have to hold the middle mouse button to turn the camera. I switch liberally between them, and (most importantly) I turn all the speeds almost all the way down (though your mileage will vary).

Ultimately, I treat this game the same way I do isometric real-time pause games, as in I use it alot, which allows me to switch cameras when needed. You can make the game work fairly well, it just takes WAY more effort than should be needed (don't even get me started on the endless AI options that have to be checked for EVERY character). The game is really good, it's just hampered with some fundamental design flaws. If it had the NWN 1 camera it would be a all-timer, as it is it's just a very good game that occasionally drives you up a wall.

procco

I've tried every damn tweak for the camera in that game and have not found anything I could deal with. I played through the intro but never got any further due solely to the camera being so crappy. How did that make it through any sort of QA testing?

jjstraka34

procco said:

I've tried every damn tweak for the camera in that game and have not found anything I could deal with. I played through the intro but never got any further due solely to the camera being so crappy. How did that make it through any sort of QA testing?

From what I've read, both Obsidian and Troika (who I think we can agree have made the most ambitious games in the genre) were completely hamstrung by release dates. Neither of them were able to properly test their games, but look at their track record. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Temple of Elemental Evil, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines....KOTOR 2, NWN2, Fallout: New Vegas. Those are some heavy duty credentials among CRPG fans, yet every one of those games was littered with crippling bugs, and in many cases had to be remedied by fans.

It's worth saying that their probably isn't anyone more contemptuous of their audience than some video game distributors. In the past they have been willing to cut the knees out from under developers and ship what they knew was unfinished product for sale. It's akin to releasing a movie into theaters with a bunch of frames missing. I think Pillars of Eternity's extremely smooth launch (a few bugs, corrected nearly immediately) tells you what a company like Obsidian does when they don't have to answer to stockholders and corporate paymasters.

As for Neverwinter Nights 2, I had the same initial reaction you did. It IS a great game, but the camera and AI require constant management.

I'll also mention that sometimes, for whatever reason, the movement in game becomes pretty jerky. It simply requires a computer restart. It might be something with the cache, who knows. It always fixes the problem.

procco

I'll have to go back and give it another try. I did like the little bit of it I played...

elminster

Just under 40 hours left in the sale!

procco

Are Demonstone and Dragonshard worth getting? They're only $2 each (I already have the other games in the bundle). Should I spend $4 on those and probably never play them or get a coffee and a cookie?
YOU decide my fate...

procco

Important update! I went with a coffe and a slice of banana bread

elminster

procco said:

Important update! I went with a coffe and a slice of banana bread

Coffe?

meagloth

I finally Picked up ps:t after a little haggling with my parents. You'd think for 4$ this wouldn't be a big deal, but I am an eternal prisoner of "oh, another game? So you can spen MORE time avoiding homework?!"
Ugh. Regardless, as soon as it downloaded I got up and someone took the computer, and now I'm being sent to bed early cause I'm sick. Maybe tomorrow.

Vallmyr

meagloth said:

I finally Picked up ps:t after a little haggling with my parents. You'd think for 4$ this wouldn't be a big deal, but I am an eternal prisoner of "oh, another game? So you can spen MORE time avoiding homework?!"
Ugh. Regardless, as soon as it downloaded I got up and someone took the computer, and now I'm being sent to bed early cause I'm sick. Maybe tomorrow.

Back when I relied on my parents for money they were exactly the same way XD

I feel your feels!

procco

elminster said:

procco said:

Important update! I went with a coffe and a slice of banana bread

Coffe?

Well, I had not yet had said COFFEE when I wrote that and was not entirely up to speed. So, yes, coffe. And banana bred.

SharGuidesMyHand

Another reason to buy NWN2 is that there is a mod that recreates BG1 in the NWN2 engine.

Here's a sample for anyone who isn't already familiar with it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ayKkkD_H4

Check out the Prism/Greywolf encounter at 2:52 and Minsc and Edwin from around 9:30 onward.

jjstraka34

procco said:

Are Demonstone and Dragonshard worth getting? They're only $2 each (I already have the other games in the bundle). Should I spend $4 on those and probably never play them or get a coffee and a cookie?
YOU decide my fate...

I have all the games in the bundle already EXCEPT Demon Stone and Dragonshard and copies of the original Baldur's Gate games (I only have the EE versions currently). I was thinking of just spending the remaining 7 bucks and having those for modding purposes and getting the other two as a consolation prize.

From what I understand, Dragonshard is a very Warcraft 3ish strategy game, but is essentially incomplete, as one of the 3 races doesn't have a campaign even though they are playable. Demon Stone is a 3D action romp, and it seems like it might be good for a play through.

SharGuidesMyHand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KE-S4TIMdI

4:42 - 7:58.

I've always thought Dynaheir was hot. Now I know that she is. ;-)

elminster

21 hours left!

BelgarathMTH

About the camera in NWN2: I solved all of my problems with it by going into the .ini file and reducing the minimum camera turn speeds to a significantly lower number. Most of the problems people experience are because the default lowest settings on the camera speed sliders are way too high, such that the camera induces dizziness, headaches, and loss of visual focus on the game screen due to the absurd, manic spinning around of everything.

Once I finally found the solution of adjusting the minimum camera speeds in the .ini file, I was able to start enjoying the game as intended, and it's a pretty good game once you get that camera fixed.

Recommended .ini file adjustments for the NWN2 camera can be found near the bottom of this wiki page:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Camera

procco

Thanks for the tip, @BelgarathMTH I'll give that a try