Fighting Duels vs Armies
Grum
Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 2,100
Last night I just beat IWD2. And today I was thinking about it, and how different it felt from BG2. In IWD2, there really weren't any boss fights. You didn't go up against single wizards who were covered in spell protections. You went up against wizards surrounded by allies, many of whom hit pretty hard. It was weird in the sense that I felt like tanks and mages were both equally needed. Tanks to keep enemies back, mages because there were just far too many to kill. And enemy mages always tried to disable you.
What really made me smile though was the final fight. High level summons kept coming in. Imagine my surprise when my barbarian found a mage hiding behind a wall, summoning nonstop. A mage with no protections who was easily cut down. A very nice touch.
But what the game didn't have was a 1 vs party fight. Which BG2 has in droves. Sure, IWD2 has 1 dragon...but it is so ridiculously overpowered. And not in a tactical sense. There weren't any spells/protections to remove. It just teleports around murdering you.
BG2 had liches, dragons and mages out the wazoo. Many of whom could quite easily take down a full party that wasn't prepared.
I suppose the best way to describe it: IWD2 was a frantic mess, which often meant being surrounded by hard hitting enemies. You had to make a line and hold it.
BG2 felt more tactical in the sense that you had to find a way to actually do damage against big hitters while staying alive.
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I think on the whole I liked the combat in IWD2 better. Call it the dwarf in me, but having my Charname dwarf (fighter/paladin) with his shield holding back a horde of enemies (next to a single-class human paladin with a shield), while a barbarian swings away from the rear with a great sword, a rogue shoots a bow (at enemy casters), a cleric heals and a mage desperately does AOE spells...it felt good. As if though everyone had a job to do, and the job was needed.
But that's just me. Anyone have a different take on it? Which type of combat do you like better and why?
What really made me smile though was the final fight. High level summons kept coming in. Imagine my surprise when my barbarian found a mage hiding behind a wall, summoning nonstop. A mage with no protections who was easily cut down. A very nice touch.
But what the game didn't have was a 1 vs party fight. Which BG2 has in droves. Sure, IWD2 has 1 dragon...but it is so ridiculously overpowered. And not in a tactical sense. There weren't any spells/protections to remove. It just teleports around murdering you.
BG2 had liches, dragons and mages out the wazoo. Many of whom could quite easily take down a full party that wasn't prepared.
I suppose the best way to describe it: IWD2 was a frantic mess, which often meant being surrounded by hard hitting enemies. You had to make a line and hold it.
BG2 felt more tactical in the sense that you had to find a way to actually do damage against big hitters while staying alive.
----
I think on the whole I liked the combat in IWD2 better. Call it the dwarf in me, but having my Charname dwarf (fighter/paladin) with his shield holding back a horde of enemies (next to a single-class human paladin with a shield), while a barbarian swings away from the rear with a great sword, a rogue shoots a bow (at enemy casters), a cleric heals and a mage desperately does AOE spells...it felt good. As if though everyone had a job to do, and the job was needed.
But that's just me. Anyone have a different take on it? Which type of combat do you like better and why?
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Comments
I love battlefields in tundras! I adore slaughters on top of mountain ranges! Seeing ambushes in dark, ancient and snow burried forests brings me joy! But please spare me from bleak dungeon duels, labyrinth clearances or wading through cityscape gutter wastes... I'll only ever visit that place due to Schlumpsha the Sewer King's annual fanclub meeting. >_>
For me, even Baldur's Gate I feels too much like a high magic setting where every shady guy in a dark street corner is a spellcaster whizzkid or would-be-lich. And let's not even speak of SoA or ToB. If magic pollution were a thing, then everyone within BGII would be bedridden in no time.
There was an attempt once (Wes Weimer's Icewind Gate) but it's sadly unfinished.
Also, IWD2 gets boring after few runs. The sole tought of going through that ice temple again turns me away from playing it.
Like in Neverwinter Nights, I have a Monk with Great Cleave and Circle Kick, and hordes just get decimated, where as one-on-one fights feel more like fun duels as my character dodges and weaves and gets occasionally lucky with improved knockdown. And in DDO I love the quest boss fights, rather than having to deal with hopping masses of kobalds or swarms of enemies, since boss fights for a quest tend to be one-on-one deals.
On the other hand, Neverwinter Nights 2, because I'm in full control of the whole party, I like party-vs-party fights, using Neeshka to target casters with her shortbow, directing Khelgar to hold a line where he's needed, and so on and so forth. The Inifinty Engine games let me control the whole party too, and that causes me to enjoy the horde fights more.
So, to sum up, games where I'm in control of only one person, I prefer one-on-one fights, while games I'm in control of the whole party, I prefer party-vs-party fights.
Everything gets kind of weird, too, when the player/enemy arms races gets out of hand; you either rush headlong into a 'can I play too, daddy?' comp-stomp or a seemingly impossible and invulnerable foe that just crushes you time after time until you figure it out... which just kind of feels like learning by rote.
I usually find army fights more fun, often because there isn't a standout enemy so much as a standout formation, battlefield or tactic; Things happen more slowly but powerfully (and often more subtly, potentially escaping your notice in the chaos), which favours a broader and less rigid approach. You take more hits, but when the computer has more firepower at it's disposal the game can at least do away with gimmicky surprises that have to hit you out of nowhere in order to artificially inflate difficulty.
For me it's also a gameplay issue; a top-down isometric game just isn't the right platform for 'good' boss duels in my opinion. It IS a party game after all.
Bg1 chapter fights do it well. For instance, the bandit camp in bg1 is quite proper for me. A horde outside and a medium size party inside. The cloakwood mines are fun. Trashing through the ranks to get to a single tough caster. Or the iron Throne with that challenging caster party upstairs.
I always have a hard time finishing IWD games, because, before long, it starts to be such a drag... I read the Chris Avellone's interview given on an other thread and he mentionned that the IWD games were going for the "Diablo" like gameplay. I think that the IE engine is not the best to replicate that style. Combat is nowhere near as dynamic as Diablo games can be.
Don't get me wrong : I love IWD games; the setting is beautiful and the atmosphere is wonderful, but I never replayed IWD games as much as BG games. Not even close.
Ideally I'd like a bit of both. Strength in numbers for certain encounters and strong individuals for others. This would help diversify strategies a little bit. SoD nailed this fairly well, I think.
man, do I crave for a modern iwd2.
Simple enemies require simple strategies, and that gets repetitive pretty quickly. But diverse enemies require diverse tactics, and that takes a long time to get old.
I think that the best thing that IWD2 did was make it really feel like you were taking on an army.
Step 1: Defend Targos (beat back infiltrators. find the traitor. strengthen defenses. beat back the enemy attack)
Step 2: Take back an important bridge from the enemy leading to their fortress. This includes fighting for a mountain pass first, taking a dam, and then taking the bridge before the enemy can destroy it.
Step 3: Getting into the fortress. I actually loved the drum mechanics. There are four (if I remember correctly) guard posts around the fortress. Each one has a drum which summon unlimited (and strong) reinforcements in the form of goblin wolf riders. So you need to sneak around and either assassinate the drummer or disable the drum before attacking the guard post. There are very few places on the map where you can safely destroy the drums with ranged weapons, meaning that it takes practice and luck to prepare your attack.
Step 4: Sneak into the goblin fortress via tunnels. End up fighting unprepared goblins, caught practicing/sleeping/etc. Can get involved in local disputes, and can be betrayed by a goblin you catch if you trust it.
Step 5: Break into the fortress proper. Slaughter the guards and kill the general of the goblin of the army.
All in all...it really felt like a war against an enemy army. When it was done, you *feel* like a hero who overcame great odds.
On the other hand, it was *really* tiring. The goblin guard posts? Yeah, when those fights were done I was done for the day. Just so many enemies chaining over to you. Fighting them on bridges, watching them try to disable you...your heart falling as your little rogue tries to backstab and then gets mobbed to death....
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Though I *will* say this: BG2 EE does army battles pretty damn well. The Devs did a good job.
Just look at the Monk Monestary. When you fight on the bridge, you go up against a force of Sharran monks, crusaders, archers, clerics and mages. Sure, it's not a huge slog through an entire army as in the above, but it does feel like a force put together for the purpose of destroying the cult.
So aye. The devs have gone in the right direction.
A war force motivated by fear of the leader will disband on its own in the absence of a leader, an army like that which Yaga-Shura gathered probably would have continued its march elsewhere after the fall of Saradush simply because they're bored and leaderless.
(The only issue I have with the Yaga-Shura scenario is that it's not the climax of the Bhaalspawn story, but just a small bump in the road. In that light, it's fair enough that Gorion's Ward simply duels YS and moves on to whichever one is next in line without caring about the now leaderless army of fire giants in the Saradush area)