2.0/SoD Praise Thread!

Ulb

It is easy for praise to be drowned by all the criticism and I just wanted to thank the whole Beamdog team for their work on SoD/2.0.

Yes, there are quite a few kinks that need fixing. Yes, the UI certainly is a polarizing topic. With that said, I think it is also obvious that a lot of work and passion has gone into SoD/2.0.

I have only just played SoD for 10 minutes or so (will probably hold off my first real play-through for an EET run) but I can already tell that I'm loving it.

So thanks guys and girls, keep up the good work!

the_sextein

I agree, The new UI is differant and I think it will be a subjective thing just like the previous two games were. Some like the original UI over that of BG2. For SOD they made a new UI for a new game and I don't see any problems with that. Some may like BG1&2's UI better but its subjective. I do think that they could improve it and listening to the community could help with button positions and what not. They already listened to the beta team and changed it to what it is . Personally, I like the dark vibe that it has and I think the scaly artwork goes well with SOD but also the creepy look of the hell plane in TOB. The probelm is the guys who don't want the old games to change. It looks like the old style can be modded back in but that may not be enough for some critics. My thing is that you can play the old game with all the old ackward layouts that require you to pull on little boxes with your mouse and all of the low resolution overlay that doesn't scale properly. I like the direction that it is headed in. It's not perfect but Beamdog has acknowledged that it will be worked on and upgraded in the coming months so I don't see it as a major thing to complain about.

I would like to see an option to turn the sprites back to the original render style for the sake of comparison. I like the black outlines on the characters. It makes them look more sharp and AA problems are greatly reduced on swords. I am not a big fan of the sprite highlights but I can see why they would be a good thing when you have large numbers of NPC's and you could be playing on a cell phone. I disable the highlights because I am using a big screen TV. I know the original render style was pixelated and now this one is a little blurry. I think overall the characters look better but having the option to switch back is always a good thing. I may like the sharper rendering with the black outlines, you never know. If it's not possible to switch back then oh well, as I said before I think it looks better overall but giving the user the option to use the old interface or the old rendering style isn't a bad idea. If not then that is fine with me, I am all for progress and sometimes that means letting go of old habits.

Overall though, the music is really good, the artwork is really good, the voice acting is a major throw back to 1998 and some of the graphic effects look great. The starting dungeon where you have light and mist rising up from the crack in the earth is fantastic. I can't wait to dig into the story and experience it for the first time. I really like the new manuals as well. I am looking forward to my collectors box so I can check out the physical versions of the manuals. Good times.

I hear the difficulty settings are switching back to easy automatically. This will be a problem that halts most playthoughs so I hope they get a fix for that asap if it is true. Otherwise I can't complain, the downloads speeds were slow yesterday but I can't say it wasn't expected. It may not be the greatest launch ever but I am very optimistic about my new toy. It's been a long wait that is for sure and the future looks bright.

rjmacready

Well I had a near 24 hour nightmare trying to download the game but now that Ive finally had a chance to play some of it.....

Its as close to everything Id hoped for from more BG content. Yeah of course nothing ever perfectly matches your expectations, not even the originals could manage that.

Regardless Ive had to stop and take in for a moment how almost utterly indistiguishable its been playing SoD for the first time in comparison to the originals. It just feels like a real continuation.

Still got plenty to see yet though so cant get too carried away with all the praise. All Ill say is that after all the hassle of getting damn expansion downloaded its come through very nicely when actually playing.

Few technical issues like my frame rate going from one extreme to the other in various locations but nothing too bad.

Had to call it a night because Im too tired to carry on playing yet Im already looking forward to carrying on tomorrow.

Illydth

@rjmacready Any information about what areas and what hardware you're using when seeing the frame rate issues?

rjmacready

@Illydth Im afraid I cant specifically nail down any particular areas aside from saying it was most notable during the very dugeon right at thw beginning. Since then its just been the occasional slight slowdown or even speed up without any noticeable pattern. So its not like when I would normally expect it either. For example its sped up during combat with several aoe spells going off or when there are multiple sprites crowded on screen.

Im playing off a Windows 7 Lenovo laptop with AMD E-300 APU and 6 gb of ram.

Illydth

Thanks, we'll keep an eye out for it. Sorry for the thread interruption!