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Shion didn't bother me too much in the first game, I spent most of the time being annoyed by white-haired god-child from another plane and a mysterious past Chaos.
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Jul 2, 2013 18:57
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Syrg Sapphire posted:He's being GulagDolls again, nothing de-canons it. they murderized the story without the original author's consent starting at the second half of the second game. 3 has incredibly dumbed down battle systems +character building systems, turning the entire game into press attack command button over and over to win as opposed to more tactical combat of previous two games. Also, it's bad.
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Jul 2, 2013 18:57
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exquisite tea posted:Not canon how, like they took the original director off the project? Regardless to say Xenosaga 3 isn't canon is kind of beside the point since there will never be a continuation of the story ever again. XS3 basically goes back to the classic JRPG formula and it is what it is for its time. The story is nonsensical, the combat is enjoyable but completely untuned in the player's favor, there are mechs, a cool side game (Xenosaga always had the coolest side games I thought), lots of FMVs with pandering towards action lovers and fan favorite characters (even Xenogears), etc. If you liked Xenosaga 1, there's really no reason at all to skip Xenosaga 3. It's just more of the same but a bit higher quality. It's a shame the combat system in XS2 kills the game for so many people though. exquisite tea posted:Shion didn't bother me too much in the first game, I spent most of the time being annoyed by white-haired god-child from another plane and a mysterious past Chaos. Rascyc fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jul 2, 2013 |
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Jul 2, 2013 18:58
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What I remember about XS2 is that you could easily get one-shotted by regular enemies that were fast enough and were lucky enough to knock you down in just the right way. It was very frustrating. Also, the non-Kajiura music was awful. XS3 was a lot simpler but it was more fun as well, and frankly to me that's all that really matters. I daresay the plot was alot better as well since they were forced to actually go somewhere with it, even if that somewhere was nonsense. Seriously like 10x as many things happen in XS3 compared to XS1 and XS2 combined.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:06
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regular enemies that can kill you are a good thing. There is no point to having them otherwise (and they should in fact be stripped out of the game if there is not a high level of difficulty) as the battles conclusion is already guaranteed at the very beginning if you are smart enough to press the attack command enough times or figure out that the ice monster is weak against fire (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) Waste of time - Dias Flac before being murdered by a planet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVZ63QEUZv8 this song is cool.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:11
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exquisite tea posted:Shion didn't bother me too much in the first game, I spent most of the time being annoyed by white-haired god-child from another plane and a mysterious past Chaos. Shion could get annoying with her soapbox speeches every now and then in the first game, but she was still a pretty competent scientist who actually knew quite a bit. This was cast aside in the sequels, so Shion became an annoying idiot.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:11
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I don't remember difficulty being the issue in Xenosaga 2. I remember it taking minutes to finish random encounters because of slow turns and having to take multiple turns for the setups to do meaningful damage.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:14
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Rascyc posted:I don't remember difficulty being the issue in Xenosaga 2. I remember it taking minutes to finish random encounters because of slow turns and having to take multiple turns for the setups to do meaningful damage. 'Stock' was seriously the worst idea. Stocking should have been a guaranteed side-effect of other actions instead of its own command. And yeah, the game wasn't hard. Battles just took too long to load and were boring as hell.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:18
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Rascyc posted:I don't remember difficulty being the issue in Xenosaga 2. I remember it taking minutes to finish random encounters because of slow turns and having to take multiple turns for the setups to do meaningful damage. Yeah, this was the huge problem. If you're going to make the battle system more time-consuming than "I can press Attack a few times/use a specific skill combo to get by once I'm the right level", you need to up the rewards so I don't have to fight Standard JRPG Levels of battles. Xenosaga 2 is still the only game I can recall putting down in the middle because it was just too tedious. In that drat dungeon that was just repeating the same area over and over from season to season with minor changes.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:18
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Rascyc posted:I don't remember difficulty being the issue in Xenosaga 2. I remember it taking minutes to finish random encounters because of slow turns and having to take multiple turns for the setups to do meaningful damage.
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Jul 2, 2013 19:27
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Syrg Sapphire posted:Xenosaga 2 is still the only game I can recall putting down in the middle because it was just too tedious. That's me with Resonance of Fate. Fantastic setpieces, terrible everything else. Made it to one of the later chapters and the plot still didn't even pretend to make sense and the combat had worn out its welcome so I said gently caress it.
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Jul 2, 2013 22:11
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I saw a discussion about FFVI a few pages ago, so I thought I'd share my "make the game more fun" playthrough. It's not a "challenge," to so speak (like a no-Esper challenge or something), just a different way of playing. I separated all the Espers into three tiers based on the power of the spells they teach. Tier 1 Espers are mostly WoB ones and can be assigned to three characters each. Tier 2 Espers are late WoB and early WoR Espers and can be assigned to two characters each. Tier 3 Espers can only be assigned to one character. My Esper tiers look like this (using the original translation names): Tier 1 (can be assigned to three characters) - Ramuh, Kirin, Siren, Stray, Ifrit, Shiva, Unicorn, Maduin, Shoat, Bismark, Carbuncle, Seraphim, Phantom, Golem Tier 2 (can be assigned to two characters) - Palidor, Tritoch, Terrato, Starlet, Fenrir, Phoenix Tier 3 (can be used by one character only) - Bahamut, Ragnarok, Odin, Raiden, Crusader, Alexander Basically, what makes this more fun to me is that it helps to preserve each character's uniqueness. You have to choose between assigning an Esper to someone because they need the stat boosts it offers or because they need the spells it teaches. And characters like Edgar, Sabin, and Gau, and to a lesser extent Cyan, can really get by without offensive magic thanks to their natural skills, so you'll find yourself relying more heavily on Blitz, Tools, and the like. That said, it doesn't really make the game any harder. The first time I did this I finished the WoR at around level 30-35 for everyone, just because they'd all been leveled so efficiently.
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Jul 2, 2013 23:11
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Are any of the .hack games worth playing? I have enough free time to go through a long-ish JRPG series, but I need to know if they're actually any good before I dive into it.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:49
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I'd say they are, yeah. .hack//IMOQ has a pretty cool story, somewhat weak characters, and extremely boring gameplay. .hack//G.U. made the games actually playable and has better characters, but an overall weaker story that just loving tanks in quality about halfway through the third game.
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Jul 3, 2013 18:55
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Haseo, the main character of G.U., carried me through the story of those games. He's such a little single-minded rear end in a top hat, it's kind of enjoyable to watch people spout exposition at him and his reply is either essentially "I don't care" or "shut the gently caress up." Even when he becomes slightly more like a standard JRPG protagonist, he's still a colossal dick about it. I'd be interested in seeing CyberConnect attempt another .hack game/series, considering now they have a long line of excellent Naruto games under their belt. And Asura's Wrath, I guess.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:10
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I have a lot of fond memories of G.U. I know most people will give .hack a pass for being too melodramatic, but I ate it up considerably because everything that happened in those games certainly felt big and grandscale. I love the characters, I very much enjoyed the battle system, the music has a few choice classics for me... it's just a great all around trilogy of games. They don't switch up the core battle system like other RPG series because it worked so well in Vol.1, the plot stays relatively consistent, character motivations are well explained... I could go on, but what it comes down to is I highly recommend the series if you want to play something that feels big, and is hard to put down, even if the games do have their chill moments inbetween.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:18
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Syrg Sapphire posted:He's being GulagDolls again, nothing de-canons it. It's hard to classify the worst game in the set when you're talking about xeno(gears/saga). They're all pretty awful.
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Jul 3, 2013 19:23
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I really can't say too much about the original series, because I barely got maybe halfway through the first game before getting bored out of my skull. G.U. feels a little better in the combat department, but it still feels very bare bones compared to other JRPGs with action-combat systems. The story starts out alright, but it gets to be overly melodramatic later on, and some of the characters can be pretty insufferable. I guess should mention I'm finally touching volume 3 years after finishing volume 2, and from the start of that volume 3 it reaches extreme stupidity with it's big early reveal. Also, the combat and dungeon crawling in it feels like a much more of a slog that I remember in the other two games. I imagine the combat would be less of a chore if I could bring over my save data, but no luck there, unfortunately. I'd say .hack's problems as a whole are that it spreads itself too thin for what your getting, and that looking up any information about these characters in the real world starts to make you groan after a certain point. The first is a big problem, since they could realistically condense these games into one game, or maybe two, but drag it out for multiple games to make it feel more grand/more like an MMO/to get more money out of their games. It also doesn't change the gameplay too much from game to game, if G.U. is any indication, which I feel is a really bad thing, and makes the splitting of these games feel more like a cash grab. The second just flat out takes me out of the experience a lot of the times, and in one instance ruined a character for me. It's less common in the original quadrology from what I heard, but you can get some especially dumb poo poo with the G.U. trilogy. Speaking of PS2 JRPGs, how good/bad/awful is Shining Force EXA? I'm mostly interested in it because of PXZ, but I haven't exactly heard much of that game in general.
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Jul 3, 2013 20:19
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I disagree about the lack of gameplay innovation being a flaw. If anything, tons of RPG series are just damaged by trying to switch things up along the way. The fact that G.U. kept the system relatively the same is a blessing because of this, and that way, the next game feels instantly familiar, which means you can jump right in from the previous. I will concede on the subject about the game splitting, though. I guess they had to do something to give the player some breathing room, so let's have them wait 6 months  If anything, I'd say upgrading your suit and weapons is innovation enough for me. But I'm probably alone in thinking your armaments get better and better with each new form.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:08
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Coughing Hobo posted:Haseo, the main character of G.U., carried me through the story of those games. He's such a little single-minded rear end in a top hat, it's kind of enjoyable to watch people spout exposition at him and his reply is either essentially "I don't care" or "shut the gently caress up." Even when he becomes slightly more like a standard JRPG protagonist, he's still a colossal dick about it. I had the opposite problem there. Haseo was the guy who made it so I couldn't stand the games for very long. I just can't take the MMO elements of .hack seriously and so when Haseo's dark backstory was "I got griefed when I started the game  " it went over the line from mere JRPG to hilarious parody to me. Unfortunately he doesn't remain that funny and just ends up a shithead.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:34
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I think you should try playing G.U. again today, NoMoneyDown, because the battle system is as slow, clunky, repetitive and unfun as they come. Overall a game worth playing, but undeniably bad fighting system. The original trilogy is even worse, and should never even be considered for play.
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Jul 3, 2013 21:36
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I played it about a year ago and didn't have much of a problem with the battle system outside of not liking a few of the weapons. It certainly could've done more though especially with more choices in gear/abilities/weapons etc throughout the game
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Jul 3, 2013 21:39
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The first .hack GU was kinda boring at first, but I thought the plot really picked up near the end. Too bad none of that momentum carries over to the second game. I still haven't finished the trilogy because of it. I guess I'll have to force myself through it.
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Jul 4, 2013 02:06
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I thought I'd be prepared after reading both the beforeiplay wiki and its thread, but I'm still getting a bit overwhelmed in Vagrant Story. I just got to the first workshop and it's getting ridiculous how much poo poo you have to keep track of. Also, is there a way to switch weapons on the fly? I mean the game ostensibly is based around using the right weapon for each enemy, but it's hard to imagine that being the case without some way to switch as the situation dictates. As opposed to just going into the menu every single time, which is all I can do at the moment.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:14
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Nope, get used to working the menu. As much as I love Vagrant Story, one thing a remake would vastly benefit from is a faster method of switching weapons.
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Jul 4, 2013 03:18
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I got Divinity 2 from the gog sale a couple of days ago, I've put a good amount of time into it. The thing I'm wondering is why have I not heard more about this game?? It's really, really good. If I didn't buy it on a whim I might have missed out on it. Awesomely responsive and challenging gameplay, a great world that's full of secrets and stuff to explore to the extent that I'm still in the first area 10 hours in and I'm not even remotely close to being done with it (and thanks to the great combat, exploring stuff is actually really fun.) It won't win originality awards for the concept or story, but the characters are all at least pretty well fleshed out with lots of well written and acted dialogue and the mindread option expands on almost every character in the game, even the very minor ones, while also giving you even more secrets to find. My favorite thing I've seen in this game so far: In the first zone, there's a farm outside of town. I talked to a woman who asked me to deliver a letter. I had the option of opening the seal and reading the letter. I decided to read it, and it was a love letter to a man she's having an affair with. I then read her mind, and she was thinking about why her husband leaves the key to the basement up on the rafters where she can't reach it. Rather than decide to tell her husband right away, I went and got the key, then checked out the basement. In the basement, I found the husbands diary, where he admitted to murdering the last man his wife had an affair with. I decided to confront him about this infront of everyone, and he ended up attacking me and I killed him. Then the wife ran off to her lover. I then FINALLY delivered the note, and the recipient basically said "Um, you just killed her husband, you know she ran to my house because she was kind of yelling it, and this letter is loving open anyway. Do you expect a reward or something? gently caress off." I then went into the house and told the woman that it's her fault that her husband murdered the man she was first having an affair with to get retribution!! This is the type of game that I'd think would sell millions and have tons of hype, or at least build up to the studios reputation to the point where their next game might. THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 04:02
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I just beat Divinity 2 a few weeks ago and it is indeed one of the best RPGs I've played recently. I heard the original release was pretty terrible until they fixed it up in Dragon Knight Saga, so that might be why no one knows about it.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:23
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Nate RFB posted:I thought I'd be prepared after reading both the beforeiplay wiki and its thread, but I'm still getting a bit overwhelmed in Vagrant Story. I just got to the first workshop and it's getting ridiculous how much poo poo you have to keep track of. Hold L2 and you'll get shortcuts to most of the menus. That's about as good as you're going to get. Also just ignore the existence of armor combining, doing that right is the kind of  that'd even scare Ulillillia off. Weapons are reasonably straight forward if you don't try combining swords with spears to axes or whatever insane poo poo you can come up with there, though you can get some nice shortcuts that way.In fact, ignoring combining in general til the second or third workshop isn't a terrible idea, the early weapons combine weird and generally aren't that helpful, though the rapier does combine in potentially useful ways.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:25
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Divinity 2 is fantastic and has the best sense of humour. I'm really looking forward to Original Sin.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:27
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Divinity 2 is one of my favorite games. I've got a lot of hours into it. My favorite part is how you can have your main character snark off to pretty much everyone, including bosses. The next RPG in the series, Divinity: Original Sin is planned for a November release.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:33
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I kind of want to replay Divinity 2 but I'm not sure if there's a build worth playing for a second playthrough. DW Fighter seems like the one and only fun build.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:34
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In case you haven't played it for some reason, the X-Box 360 version of Witcher 2 is $9.99 on their digital store right now.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:36
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dis astranagant posted:Hold L2 and you'll get shortcuts to most of the menus. That's about as good as you're going to get. Also just ignore the existence of armor combining, doing that right is the kind of I'm actually pretty sure you can get all the way to Hoplite (third-best) or Jazeraint (second-/arguably best) just with the equipment you find in a regular run. You miiiiiiight have to farm one or two pieces of armor, but you'll generally get enough for everything. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 04:38
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I don't know anything about Divinity 2 but apparently it's on XBLA for $5: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Divinity-II-TDKS/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802415407d8 Worth getting? Also I grabbed Witcher 2 since it's $10.
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Jul 4, 2013 04:38
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Rascyc posted:I kind of want to replay Divinity 2 but I'm not sure if there's a build worth playing for a second playthrough. DW Fighter seems like the one and only fun build. I'm kind of winging and not really into a set build yet but I've been playing mage and investing a bit into ranger stuff while still having a melee weapon hotkeyed for certain situations. Pretty drat fun so far. It feels kind of like a survival game at times as I'm trying to manage my health and mana so that I don't run out of potions as I make my way through dungeons, which is pretty enjoyable for me at least. Maybe later on you reach a critical mass of money and never have to manage resources or something, though, I wouldn't know. quote:The next RPG in the series, Divinity: Original Sin is planned for a November release. Yeah, it looks pretty good, though there is no gameplay continuity in Larian's games at all, it seems. Divine Divinity was a diablo-esque RPG, Divinity 2 was third person action, and now the 3rd game in the series is turn based isometric! Then there's the turn based strategy spin off... THE PWNER fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 04:38
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Rascyc posted:I kind of want to replay Divinity 2 but I'm not sure if there's a build worth playing for a second playthrough. DW Fighter seems like the one and only fun build. Splitting Arrow Ranger can eventually make whole rooms fall down at once with crazy high-damage attacks. THE PWNER posted:I'm kind of winging and not really into a set build yet but I've been playing mage and investing a bit into ranger stuff while still having a melee weapon hotkeyed for certain situations. Pretty drat fun so far. It feels kind of like a survival game at times as I'm trying to manage my health and mana so that I don't run out of potions as I make my way through dungeons, which is pretty enjoyable for me at least. Maybe later on you reach a critical mass of money and never have to manage resources or something, though, I wouldn't know. With enough points into Strength or Intelligence, you eventually reach a critical mass of health or mana regeneration where potions don't see much use. quote:Yeah, it looks pretty good, though there is no gameplay continuity in Larian's games at all, it seems. Divine Divinity was a diablo-esque RPG, Divinity 2 was third person action, and now the 3rd game in the series is turn based isometric! Then there's the turn based strategy spin off...  Third-person with mandatory dual character control (with optional co-op). Original Sin is the RPG they wanted to make, now that they're self-publishing. It's definitely much more like the first Divinity game, tons of interactions and reactivity in the world.Calling the strategy game turn-based is simplifying it too much. Dragon Commander, their strategy game, is a mix of genres, kinda hard to categorize: A political management thing, where you make decisions as to how to shape your expanding empire (it's got some roleplaying elements), and manage relations between the various races (and your princess), then you make overall decisions in a turn-based, Risk-like strategy map, where fights are either auto-resolved, or played out in real-time strategy mode, in which you can jump into the fight as a jetpack-wearing Dragon. That should be out at the start of August, actually.
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Jul 4, 2013 05:00
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The White Dragon posted:Nah, armor's pretty straightforward too. It's specific armor materials that's hosed. As long as you don't mind rollin' a Hagane Jazeraint set instead of the Perfect Ultimate Damascus Dread Armor, you'll be fine. Just save before you combine so you don't accidentally step backwards, or use a list so you can guarantee you're always going a step forwards. Nah, armor only looks straightforward. If you don't know what you're doing you'll completely gently caress your type defenses and mostly negate the upgrade  . That and the game flat hands you a full hagane hoplite set in the cathedral (might be iron maiden b1 but I doubt it). Hoplite is actually the best armor anyway, Jazeraint and Dread just shift some points from magic defense into regular defense. Easier to just tell the new guy to leave it alone, it's never worth the effort and you can cover any and all armor deficiencies by getting better at using your defense abilities. You're literally invulnerable so long as you don't miss your timing.
dis astranagant fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Jul 4, 2013 |
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Jul 4, 2013 05:00
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:
Oh yeah, certainly oversimplifying things with that label - I know it's more along the lines of Civ complexity than advanced wars. The dev video of the first turn is 30 minutes long, after all.
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Jul 4, 2013 05:16
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Stabbey_the_Clown posted:With enough points into Strength or Intelligence, you eventually reach a critical mass of health or mana regeneration where potions don't see much use.
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Jul 4, 2013 06:02
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dis astranagant posted:Easier to just tell the new guy to leave it alone, it's never worth the effort and you can cover any and all armor deficiencies by getting better at using your defense abilities. You're literally invulnerable so long as you don't miss your timing. 
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Jul 4, 2013 06:13
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