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ilitarist posted:I'm probably more than half into Geneforge 1 Mutagen (level 12) and I like it well enough, but the dungeon design feels... Boring? There aren't many bosses or special encounters so most of the fights are trash. I recently fought Cocatrice and it's an only boss fight in a long while. I imagine in that regard is a faithful remake. But I clearly remember Geneforge 4 & 5 having much more interesting locations and fights. I’m only on the first (I assume major) dungeon in the game and you are kind of right. I found it to be just tedious compared to the other areas of the game thus far. I also started G5 as well, and I can say that the starting area(s) are pretty interesting indeed.
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Mar 30, 2023 00:01
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New update, Jeff's soliciting suggestions for the new creation in G2 from the backers. Wonder what we'll end up getting this time, the Cockatrice was a bit outside the norm and I wonder what he picks. I pitched a 'proto-Fyora', basically a bigger, meaner and harder to control one. The wolf to the modern Fyora's dog essentially, close to whatever the initial species they started refining them from was. This is mostly so I can have a higher tier dino buddy in G2, but I do think Jeff could do some neat stuff with finding details on creating an old, discarded line and going into how creations are refined over time.
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Apr 7, 2023 21:48
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Zore posted:New update, Jeff's soliciting suggestions for the new creation in G2 from the backers. Wonder what we'll end up getting this time, the Cockatrice was a bit outside the norm and I wonder what he picks. My favourite was the cryoa, so they should make one of those that is bright yellow and spits out blinding light and other statuses.
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Apr 8, 2023 00:38
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A 3-headed Fyora, a Gydora 
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Apr 8, 2023 07:00
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A clone power. Some kind of undead that can serve as an explanation for where necromancy and undead come from?
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Apr 10, 2023 04:23
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I am workshopping a suggestion for some kind of crab creation because I think they are neat. I want to flesh the idea out a bit more though in terms of maybe what it would have for abilities, which is slightly daunting.
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Apr 11, 2023 17:35
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Confusing Crab Rave, of course.
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Apr 11, 2023 18:44
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How about a crab creation that can only move side-to-side but can attack with extendo-claws?
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Apr 11, 2023 20:27
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Maybe finally give players the joy of summoning the apex predator of the vogelverse: the fungus turret.
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Apr 11, 2023 20:38
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My first though was G.I.F.T.S but maybe that's too silly.
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Apr 11, 2023 20:57
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Tylana posted:My first though was G.I.F.T.S but maybe that's too silly. weaponized cute
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Apr 11, 2023 21:13
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I think it'd be interesting to have a creation which focused primarily on buffing/healing others. There's already tons of variety in offensive options, especially in GF1: Remake which gave even the previously boring stuff like Thahds some abilities like charge or stun...but there's really not much in terms of creations which can serve a support role.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:05
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LLSix posted:A clone power. Undead and Necromancers in the Geneforge setting, from what I recall, seem to be very standard fantasy fare versions. Necromancy is forbidden to Shapers, and Shades/Spirits can also spontaneously arise when powerful Shapers die. In GF1 and 2 we could create Thahd Shades, but those don't technically count towards that. One of the sealed labs in GF1 was full of ghosts that ended up being made because the shapers in charge of that lab decided meddling with necromancy was a good idea.
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Apr 12, 2023 01:09
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I'm going to give a go to Geneforge 1. Not Mutagen, the original. I know that this sounds like a stretch, but I had fun with Exile 1, so my tolerance for old game jank and dodgy visuals is pretty high. I'm helping a guy test a translation of GF1 original specifically, so Mutagen isn't an option despite being more user-friendly. I'm posting here to ask for advice in building a character. I don't really want to play a full shaper for various reasons, though I know that that is probably the most popular and powerful choice. The problem is that none of the classes really fit my idea as I want to play a traditional wizard who shapes a bit. Guardians are very good in melee and solid shapers, but rubbish at magic. Agents are very good at magic, which is what I want, but horrible at shaping, which I want to 'minor' in. What I really want is a classic wizard-type whose rubbish in a punch-up but has a couple of adorable cryoa buddies - any thoughts?
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Jun 30, 2023 03:41
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JustJeff88 posted:I'm going to give a go to Geneforge 1. Not Mutagen, the original. I know that this sounds like a stretch, but I had fun with Exile 1, so my tolerance for old game jank and dodgy visuals is pretty high. I'm helping a guy test a translation of GF1 original specifically, so Mutagen isn't an option despite being more user-friendly. I'm posting here to ask for advice in building a character. I don't really want to play a full shaper for various reasons, though I know that that is probably the most popular and powerful choice. The problem is that none of the classes really fit my idea as I want to play a traditional wizard who shapes a bit. Guardians are very good in melee and solid shapers, but rubbish at magic. Agents are very good at magic, which is what I want, but horrible at shaping, which I want to 'minor' in. What I really want is a classic wizard-type whose rubbish in a punch-up but has a couple of adorable cryoa buddies - any thoughts? Geneforge 1 is rough for that, it has a significantly lower level cap than 2-5 which means the big benefit of not having an army of creations is nullified by the end of the game and its missing a ton of the broken spells that got put into 2-5 that made magic the best and easiest way to beat them. However its absolutely not a super difficult game and you can pretty easily make any kind of build work. By the endgame even Agents are gonna be able to have enough essence for multiple Drayaks or whatever you want to make, so if you have like a Cryoa or two you will have more than enough essence to cast Terror to your heart's delight.
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Jun 30, 2023 03:54
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Impermanent posted:I'm thinking maybe it's time to get into these spiderweb games but I have no idea where to start. What's the best intro? nethergate
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Jun 30, 2023 06:23
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Zore posted:Geneforge 1 is rough for that, it has a significantly lower level cap than 2-5 which means the big benefit of not having an army of creations is nullified by the end of the game and its missing a ton of the broken spells that got put into 2-5 that made magic the best and easiest way to beat them. Any advice for actual point allocation? I'm not averse to lowering the difficulty if I have to. I am aware that the level cap is level 30 in GF1, but I didn't realise that it was an impediment. What is the cap in later games?
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Jun 30, 2023 14:05
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Zore posted:Geneforge 1 is rough for that, it has a significantly lower level cap than 2-5 which means the big benefit of not having an army of creations is nullified by the end of the game and its missing a ton of the broken spells that got put into 2-5 that made magic the best and easiest way to beat them. 
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Jun 30, 2023 16:57
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JustJeff88 posted:Any advice for actual point allocation? I'm not averse to lowering the difficulty if I have to. 62 in all the later games which you will never, ever hit outside a solo run. For points um, Leadership checks cap out at 12 as do mechanics iirc, though you might want to double check a guide on that. Otherwise mostly just do Int with a small amount of Dex/End and pump Battle/Mental magic high. Also if you want your pet Cryoas to not be deadweight put a few points in Fire Shaping and absorb/remake them every time you bump it.
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Jun 30, 2023 18:22
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If you want to utterly poo poo on Geneforge 1 (with the booger UI) go all in on magic creations. Artila & Vliish are glass cannons and Glaahk will stunlock anything and everything while also doing heaps of damage.
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Jun 30, 2023 19:13
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To be honest, I just think that Cryoas are adorable.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:08
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JustJeff88 posted:To be honest, I just think that Cryoas are adorable.
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Jun 30, 2023 20:18
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KICK BAMA KICK posted:Imagine having a pet one, that chilled people's drinks as a party trick? Makes me wanna side with the Shapers. It would be like an adorable blue, scaly reverse-microwave. Part of the reason that I want Cryoas, apart from the adorability, is that I think that a creation that's solid at melee and ranged would be a good complement (not compliment) to a blastie wizard. How much fire shaping do I need to unlock them? Should I keep adding to fire shaping to power them up? Are there any other abilities that affect them? Horace Kinch posted:If you want to utterly poo poo on Geneforge 1 (with the booger UI) go all in on magic creations. Artila & Vliish are glass cannons and Glaahk will stunlock anything and everything while also doing heaps of damage. I don't want to poo poo on it, honestly. I'm testing a translation patch and I want to do a completionist playthrough with a fun theme that hopefully won't make the game incredibly frustrating. One concern of mine is accidentally going places that are too high of level. I've seen LPs of that game where this happens, and I don't want it to happen to me.
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Jun 30, 2023 21:08
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You'll know when underleveled if the local fauna starts oneshotting your platoon of dinosaurs and scorpions.
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Jun 30, 2023 22:26
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Horace Kinch posted:You'll know when underleveled if the local fauna starts oneshotting your platoon of dinosaurs and scorpions.
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Jul 1, 2023 02:07
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Avernum Beat this today! It's been eating my mind for the last forty hours and spurring all kinds of monomania. I want to play the sequels, I want to play everything else the dev has made now. Avernum is a classic rpg with an emphasis on tactical turn-based combat. It has an interesting setting, a well-written if thin plot, and thoroughly addictive explore-fight-loot-sell/talk-repeat loop. It feels, in a lot of ways, like a computerized version of sitting down to play a tabletop rpg with your group; specifically the classic Dungeon and Dragons. (No, I don't know which edition. I am, alas, not into D&D enough to care about editions.) You can practically feel the DM rolling the dice behind his screen, going 'uh oh' with a smile and then telling you that your party feels like it's being hunted. Same deal with 'you arrive at the goblin fort!' as he sets out the hand-drawn maps with the tokens and asks for initiative. This also applies to the plot structure - it's effectively the DM saying 'here is the setting, here's the worldmap, where are you going?' and it's very modular. Arriving at town A, you find out that they're under siege by zombies. Arriving at town B, you find out they have problems with the mayor's missing necklace. Solving these problems can be done in any order, and it doesn't really change the setting much, so to speak? This is not a linear narrative that has you eager for the next plot beat, it's a roadtrip as you decide to find out what's over there. This is not to say that it's without a plot or coherent setting! This is not to say it lacks character! I am being clear about what Avernum is, and this game specifically feels like the developer wanted to share his really good D&D campaign with you - but not in the sense of "look at my special OP protagonist with dual blades and a magic panther!" but in the sense of "I wrote the BEST adventure but all of my players are out sick  will you let me run it for you? please? I even premade character sheets!"It works. It absolutely works and it oozes charm to the point where I forgive the rough edges and some of the glaring balance problems. So, details! Jeff Vogel, our sole developer and DM, released this game in 1995. It was called Exile. It had a top-down perspective, a rough (antique) UI, and it sold well enough that Vogel went into gamedev as a full time career. He made Exiles 2 and 3, other games, and then in 2000 he fully remade Exile into Avernum. New engine, it's isometric perspective now, a decent UI, etc. I personally think this was a great idea: at the rate of technological progress, Exile looked antique when it was released, and no one in 2000 wanted to touch it, let alone buy it. It also couldn't run on then-modern systems. The remake made it marketable again - and vastly easier to play. Like, to be completely honest Avernum still looks rough. You can tell it doesn't have the AAA polish even for the time and genre (compare and contrast Baldur's Gate from 1998) - but unlike Exile it looks solid. You're playing indie, not something from the early 80s. Vogel goes on to remake Exile 2 and 3, makes more games, then makes a sequel to Avernum! Avernum 1-3 are now followed by 4-6 for a full saga. Vogel then decides in 2011 to shake things up and gets a brand new engine... and yes. He remakes Avernum. Avernum 1-3 are remade, and... I'll be honest. It's a full top-to-bottom remake, but not the major upgrade Exile to Avernum was. It's nice to have them available on tablet for mobile play, but... well, personal preference. I don't like that the new Avernums feature less in-depth skills, they changed how secret doors work, etc. The graphics are - instead of straight better, they're different. It's the same style, and honestly you can overlay the games and they're close. The script remains the same. I personally believe that the early 2000s Avernums are better to play, BUT if you told me you started with Avernum 2011 I'd be happy anyways, it's the same game and we're picking flavors. Anyways. In conclusion, Vogel remakes Avernums! But not all six, just the first three. He makes more games, and as of this writing he's working on remaking his Geneforge series and making a new game, and I'm looking forward to them. Avernum! The plot, the setting, is simple: evil Empire has conquered the entire planet, rules with iron fist. There's a huge cave system underground called Avernum, and the Empire decides to make their own underground Australia and exile criminals there. They run around sealing up all of the entrances and exits, declare it off-limits, and use a magical portal to send people on a one-way trip to the caves. Your party of four (six in Exile) is the latest set of criminals, and the game opens as you stumble out of the portal. The starter town gives you basic gear, tells you about nearby cities, and warns you to be wary of Nephilim and Slitherizaki and Bandits. You step out into the overworld, and the game begins proper. See, even from the start, you can go basically anywhere. Go left and find a town. Go north and find a fort, or skip it and find a cave. Or bandits. Or.... well, it's one of those overworld maps that encourages you to poke around and just fill out the minimap. I think it does a great job balancing "go explore!" with "you found a dragon that bit your head off" by using the excellent worldbuilding. The starter area? It has bandits, sure, but they're low-level. You're safe poking around as it's a quote-unquote civilized area of Avernum - local soldiers have swept out the worst monsters. They'll set up camp near rough spots and warn you (sometimes) if there's something awful. (Later on, for example, you can try to go to a cavern but soldiers will warn you there's a bandit fort in there, and they're setting up an ambush. Either help them or leave.) Using common sense and paying attention will keep you from certain death - area full of skeletons? Weird pink monster spotted on the map? Maaaybe turn back - or better yet, save. Saving in Avernum is free and highly encouraged. Keep multiple saves, explore, and that way if you do mess up, you're not redoing too much. But, right, the setting - leaving the nice farmlands and towns and going into the unexplored area leads to high-level encounters. It's simple but it works super well. So far so generic, right? Towns, farms, caves, bandits. But it's all nicely fleshed out with lots of text: visit towns, talk to people. Find out that the farms are mushroom farms, and the mushrooms exist because a mage modified the species to be sustainable food for humans. The towns are ruled by mayors who sit on a council headed by a king. This society takes whoever the empire exiles and integrates them freely - settle down with a farm, become a merchant, become a soldier, whatever. Those who don't want to fit in become bandits - or, in a fascinating reflection - are exiled from Avernum to an even worse part of the caves. You can visit these exile settlements too, and meet people who just don't fit in - either by being evil or disagreeing or... yeah. Avernum is not a utopia, it's basically a struggling civilization desperately surviving in a harsh environment and you get this interesting juxtaposition of normal generic fantasy town, but the blacksmith is there because people need weapons more than they need their horses shod. (Not that they have horses...) The setting is well thought out and interesting, and supported by interesting, charming dialogue. I never felt like I was wasting my time talking to everyone in town - partially because I read fast, but partially because it's a good read. Nothing that will make you go "this is Shakespeare! I must write an English essay on it!" but instead stuff you smile at or think about and just, y'know, good. Additionally, I really like how the setting handles mages. It fully embraces D&D magic: anyone can learn magic and cast spells... and most wizards are assholes. Why is this random pair of pants cursed? Wizards have no sense of right and wrong! Most mages are at the Mage Tower, and you'll find all kinds of people - mages who want to help, mages who are power-mad, mages who are just weird. Some are involved with the big plot, some aren't. Wait, big plot? Oh yeah. It's a slow build, but in the true tabletop rpg style there is an overarching villain and you do build up to defeating him. I won't spoil this - but like, the king has a quest for you. So does at least one mysterious wizard in their tower. And doing these quests gets you closer to finding a potential way out of Avernum - which is your overall goal, after all. This brings me back around to game design. The overworld has dungeons as well as towns, and you're incentivized to explore them not just for the experience and loot - but because in every single dungeon is at least one item or piece of info that you will need for the big plot. Is goblin fort locked? Another dungeon has the key. Wizard needs something? A dungeon has it. Not everything is in dungeons (explore towns! talk to people!) but you never walk out of a dungeon feeling like you wasted your time grinding. (You CAN grind, if you want, the overworld spawns enemy groups you can fight repeatedly!) I love this. I love feeling focused like this, even as we're zipping around looking everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. I won't lie, I had my partner with a walkthrough nearby so I could be all "I can't find the dragon's key " and they could answer "you should search the throne room again" - or be vague or explicit. I can't offer you my partner, alas, so you can't get custom hints, but I can tell you that Vogel is SNEAKY and finding some of the plot-crucial stuff in the endgame especially was a nightmare of "I've been looking for X and you mean it was THERE how was I supposed to figure that out" - but hey. This is end-game, and you've been trained the entire game to look for secret walls and check, because in most cases Vogel DID put something where you thought he did.The game ends with some really satisfying plot beats and setpieces and it really works. I love it. I've neglected one final piece of the game: the combat, and how it's unbalanced. It's fun, by god it's fun, but it inherits a lot of problems from stealing from D&D wholesale. Combat takes place on a grid and everyone gets an amount of action points during their turn. It's surprisingly similar to X-COM, but instead of guns we have wizards. Now, the game's character creator has a point system - you can pick a pregenerated class, or you can dive into assigning all of the points yourself. Make a fighter, put their points into strength, endurance, melee weapons and maybe a point into luck, pick a perk, there you go. In combat they have a lot of hitpoints so they can survive walking up to an ogre and hitting it. Fighters are straightforward: crank stats, give good weapon, walk up to enemy and bonk it until dead. But the other classes - I'll be honest. You have four character slots, you need specific skills just to survive, I defaulted to the standard party: fighter, thief/rogue, mage, priest. You can multiclass freely and teach your fighter spells, but for the most part I stuck to these archetypes. As the victory screen rolled, well, how was it? Was my party balanced? Yes and no. The Fighter: vital, 10/10, perfect. Having a really strong tank who can take and give hits for free was SO useful that in some points they made the mage seem useless. I love this. I love breaking out of wizard supremacy - not all the time, but having a solid meathead was vital to my victory. The game also has at least one magical sword, so having someone who could use that sword was huge. The Thief: sighs. You NEED points in tool use, because there are a LOT of traps in the game and they do not screw around. I had more total party KOs from opening a chest wrong or stepping on the wrong floor tile and failing the trap check, because traps can be 'you've been poisoned' and oh no, guess I'll cast cure, but more often they're 'a knife flies out and impales you!' and suddenly someone is dead. Or, worse, higher level explosion traps where everyone takes 40 damage three times in a row. Traps are bullshit and if you can't neuter them with tool use, there's a giant difficulty spike. Now, since you can't split tool use among the party like some other skills, it has to be piled on someone. Now, without checking, I believe it also gets a bonus from dexterity, so - well. I can already see myself doing a new character build where they're a second fighter with more DEX than STR, but no no, let's stay focused. I built my thief around DEX, Tool Use, and Bows. This, hm. It meant that they were surprisingly flimsy, so if anything got into melee range my priest would be tied up healing them. Bows range from exceptionally good to "oh man c'mon" depending on your luck and ammo. Ammo. It's manually tracked and there's no free refills. Early and mid game this was fine - I'd pick arrows off of enemy archers to keep my quiver full. I even hit points where I found out you can only carry 100 arrows in a stack. But - and this got to me - you can sometimes pick your arrows out of corpses after a fight, but it's never 1:1 to you're always running at a deficit. Which meant as the game got harder and less full of archers, it became common to run out of arrows and then I'd have a squishy thief standing around being useless in combat. Which - well - being an archer is great! Ranged attacks are amazing, especially as you run into mages who will summon waves of rats to prevent your fighter from reaching them. But without ammo, well, I ultimately decided to multi-class. My thief got points in endurance and pole-arms, and while they never caught up to my fighter, they were at least able to stand next to them and take blows and dish out decent damage. (Numbers: Fighter would hit an enemy for 70, Thief would hit for 40. That varied, but that was the gap I was working with.) It worked out well in the end - thief was real good at sniping mages and used their spear on melee dudes - but it's something to keep in mind if you try to go pure archer... and if you're going to spend that many points into tool use. The Mage: lol, lmao, what's game balance. Mages are OP and if you do not have one you will not keep up with the enemies and you will die horribly. Why? Because this game has haste and slow. Yep. Your fighter may have a billion hitpoints and hit like a truck but they will die when an enemy mage slows them repeatedly, hastes their allies, and even rats will chew you to death if you never get a turn. If you are not keeping up with haste/slow, you are going to lose. Sometimes entire fights would be determined by my ability to counter slow. Now, I'm not sure if you can mitigate this by giving your entire party basic mage training so they can all cast haste/slow themselves, but having a focused mage has other benefits. Mages have about 20~ spells ranging from utility (cast light!) to mass damage (lightning spray) to crazy buffs (arcane shield) to - wait for it - summons. Summons are so important they're getting their own paragraph. In the game of X-COM where cover is important and you want clear shots at the enemy mages, you quickly realize Avernum has no cover, kind of. You can hide a mage behind a wall sometimes as DPS spells need line of sight, but that's never guaranteed, nor are chokepoints. Your fighter can tank, but there's no taunt skill. The solution then is to summon your own minions. Early game summons are trash. Useful trash, but they die in one hit to anything and meh. I ignored summons because of this. But mid-game - as enemy casters are beginning to come into their own - even the trash became useful. Having six rats on the field as the enemy casts lightning spray... well, it can only target so many people, and if it chooses even one rat instead of your mage, there you go. This goes doubly for slow, or even worse late-game debuffs. Now, well. As your mage levels and finds the higher level summoning spells, the game balance flies out the window again. You can summon your own mages. Your summoned mages can then haste/slow... or summon their own critters. Yeah. None of your summons are controllable so there's a chance they'll spend three turns in a row casting fireball at an enemy immune to fire, but since there's no limit to summons, just summon another mage. In some very silly fights I wound up with three summoned mages who would summon their critters and my party was able to basically sit out the fight and then pick up the loot afterwards. Yeah. Mages' DPS isn't anything to sneeze at either. Remember fighter hitting for 70, thief for 40? Mage cast lightning spray and did 40 to the entire enemy group, and then since they were hasted they could do it twice in a row instantly. This is silly. Mages are broken, wizard supremacy, etc. Except... except. And here is the balance that keeps the Fighter relevant: mana. MP. There is no way to regain it in combat outside of potions, the big spells are expensive, and since most dungeons are sieges where you need to chew through a lot of enemies before you can rest and regain mana again, there is a serious element of resource management going on. A mage without mana is kind of useless, and I didn't really put any stats into strength or endurance outside of enough to keep them alive. Making it to the boss of a dungeon as your mage is out of mana is really bad. You also have to do some big thinking as you choose between keeping their mana reserved for haste/slow and summoning and DPS and well, I really like that your mage is a big useful toolbox but you have to think about how to deploy them. The Priest: vital, no notes. Going without a priest is suicide. Even if you're winning a fight you're taking damage and that has to be healed. Debuffs are plentiful and nightmarish. On top of that, priests deploy some insanely potent buffs that can boost your damage to ludicrous levels - or slap on some magic armor that keeps your squishy mage alive. And then! And then, because priests are awesome, they do the highest damage spell to undead - it's cheap to cast, huge DPS, and can multi-target - AND priests can do some summons. In other words, priests are busted and you should have one. Now - why am I not complaining about game balance here again? Because unlike a mage/haste/slow/summoning-other-mages, I think you could probably get through the game without a dedicated one. Huge challenge mode, you will need a huge amount of potions and someone should learn at least the level one priest spell heal, debuffs are gonna suck - but I think you could do it. Don't, it won't be fun, but - yeah. Priest summons, by the way, while great, will not cast spells. If I had to play Avernum again right now I wouldn't replicate my party exactly but I'd still need the same set of four. Someone has to fight, someone has to cast haste, someone has to heal, someone has to disarm traps. There's not much wiggle room there, and I think this is a reflection of how Avernum reduced the party count to four - Exile had six, originally. Oh, well. It works, and there's enough flexibility and loose skill points that I could probably build a solid trap disarming mage. That said, there are some hard skill checks through the game that you just have to roll with. You will need to be able to make a potion to finish an important quest, so someone needs at least a few points in potion making. Stuff like that. It's not sign-posted, it's - well, it's a symptom of what kind of game this is. You're either up for this or you aren't. Last bit: potions and the economy. In general this works great. You're tight for money so you're incentivized to pick up loot to sell, but you're never so tight for money you're scraping all the heavy armor off the floor to sell for a pittance. I got very good at skimming the loot window to go 'ah silver ring that's light and sells, that's just another shield heavy and not worth it' etc etc. As you do more quests and get better loot you'll begin to swim in money - but buying new spells is very expensive (and worth it) so it evens out. There's also a cap on how much money you can carry, so you're encouraged to make regular trips to buy spells / items / etc. My only complaint here is that arrows are expensive and you can't carry enough. And I mean expensive to the point where part of the reason I dual-classed my thief was so I wasn't spending hundreds of coins on arrows after every major dungeon. Right. So. Potions. Lifeblood of the mage, and the only way to cure some awful debuffs. I did not hoard enough of these. Putting points into potion-making is not meant to be a dump stat: the game is balanced around you actively making and using potions, and I challenged myself by not doing this for a long time. I drat near made the final boss fight impossible because I didn't stock enough potions. (I won anyways, but BOY it was hard!) Potion-making ingredients can be harvested in the wild for free, respawn, and are so useful. Please do not make the same mistake I did! Overall.... yeah I loved this game. I've talked too much about it already. I could keep going - boy I want to talk about Erika, or the Spiral Pit, or Dumbfound, or what I think about the dragons - but really? Avernum is good and it deserved no less than two remakes. It deserves to be popular and played by people who dig it. That eager, enthusiastic DM who wants to show you his module just shines with passion and excitement and interesting ideas. I finished this game happy, and I'm thrilled there's five sequels.
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Dec 11, 2023 21:37
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That was an excellent writeup, thank you for sharing it! For the record, I will say that the second set of remakes (i.e. the most recent versions), while not a substantial aesthetic change, did smooth out the gameplay significantly. Arrows don't exist (you just need the bow). The action economy has been reined in, no getting six times as many actions as the enemies get. Dealing with loot is a lot simpler: you have a loot bag with unlimited capacity, and a button to sell everything in the bag when you're at a vendor. And so on. Casters are still OP as gently caress, but my archer was so nimble that it was, as far as I can tell, literally impossible for enemies to touch him except with spells and ghost touch. Of course, that smoothness does remove some of the retro charm. There's no abusive solo character builds that can stomp the entire game, for example. Builds in general are mostly just "choose a skill line and commit to it", for that matter. There's no secret skills to unlock or much of a benefit to cross-class training. So it's not all upside. But there is a lot to be said for accessibility.
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Dec 11, 2023 22:06
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Awesome post. Avernum 1 and 2 (Windows, the first 'remakes' of Exile, but not the 2011+ versions) are some of my favorite games. I like the remakes too, but I keep going back to these "originals."
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Dec 11, 2023 22:08
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Thank you Strix for mentioning this in the Steam thread, found this thread via an internet search ;p Just browsed the ancient spidwebsoftware site and found that the old Exile games are now totally free, it took less than 60 seconds to download, install, and have the intro screen knock my socks off from nostalgia, amazing. Just... wow. --- The Avernum remakes look like they have a skill-tree system (as just mentioned), would I like it? I played Exiles, Nethergates, Avernums, Geneforge1 and Avadon1. I kinda fell off as I felt the newer games, despite having a larger view area, had a sloppier gfx style (unimportant) and a much more... steramlined-in-a-bad-way builds. Avadon in particular turned me off.
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Dec 12, 2023 04:10
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That was a fun write-up. This thread doesn't get used enough. It will bubble up when the Geneforge 2 remake comes out next year, then hibernate again. I like what you said about party building, and I'm going to propose a radical idea... I like the original Exile games the best in many ways. My problem was that the latter games went back to boring-as-porridge 4-person parties, which greatly restricts party-building options and is just less fun. 5 would not have been as bad, but if 5 is a cut then 4 is an amputation. 4-person parties inevitably come down to the old fighter/mage/priest/rogue quartet, which is done to death. That aside, how many of the Geneforge games do you think Jeff will remake? 2 will be here soon, then he will finish the Queen's Wish series. Then? Do 3 and/or 4 and/or 5 need modernisation as well? I wish that he would make anothe Nethergate game, but that's not going to happen.
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Dec 12, 2023 04:23
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JustJeff88 posted:That was a fun write-up. This thread doesn't get used enough. It will bubble up when the Geneforge 2 remake comes out next year, then hibernate again. if he lives to age 105 without retiring he might get around to nethergate
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Dec 12, 2023 04:31
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Love the review. I’m very much on the side of not liking the first set of remakes, because they’re in a weird spot where they’re not the true old school jank (Exile) nor the modern conveniences (basically anything from Avernum 4/Geneforge 4 or newer). But I get your rationale and appreciate it.Serephina posted:The Avernum remakes look like they have a skill-tree system (as just mentioned), would I like it? I played Exiles, Nethergates, Avernums, Geneforge1 and Avadon1. I kinda fell off as I felt the newer games, despite having a larger view area, had a sloppier gfx style (unimportant) and a much more... steramlined-in-a-bad-way builds. Avadon in particular turned me off. JustJeff88 posted:That aside, how many of the Geneforge games do you think Jeff will remake? 2 will be here soon, then he will finish the Queen's Wish series. Then? Do 3 and/or 4 and/or 5 need modernisation as well? I wish that he would make anothe Nethergate game, but that's not going to happen. I think he has said that he hopes to keep going for another decade or so. He typically finishes about a game per year, give or take, so which would put remaking Avernum 4-6 plus perhaps one final new series in the time table.
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Dec 12, 2023 04:35
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Serephina posted:The Avernum remakes look like they have a skill-tree system (as just mentioned), would I like it? I played Exiles, Nethergates, Avernums, Geneforge1 and Avadon1. I kinda fell off as I felt the newer games, despite having a larger view area, had a sloppier gfx style (unimportant) and a much more... steramlined-in-a-bad-way builds. Avadon in particular turned me off. The most recent games' skill trees work in a way where you basically choose a capstone skill to invest in, and that will dictate how you allocate probably 90% of your skillpoints in the game. Because in order to invest N points in a tier-2 skill, you have to have already invested N points in one of the earlier skills that leads to it. In other words, you can't do the Diablo 2 thing of just putting 1 point into prereq skills and dumping all your points into the top-tier skill. If you want to reach rank 4 of a tier-4 skill, then you need to have at least rank 4 in a tier-3, tier-2, and tier-1 skill, which means that boosting the top skills is very point-intensive. You get IIRC 2 skill points per level, by the way. In practice, this means that the available builds are: - Sword & shield/tank - Two swords - Spears and other polearms - Archer/dodge tank - Mage - Priest and your remaining skill points go to party support skills and/or extra defensive options. There's also a perks system, where every few levels you get to add a new perk to the character. I don't remember them being terribly impactful; you can basically think of them as getting another 50% of a level or so worth of power. Oh, and stat points. There's four stats (Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Intelligence). Every level, you get to assign 1 stat point, and you also have a stat point assigned for you, which cycles through all of the stats (so no matter what, you'll get some investment in every stat). The way the games' systems shake out, my experience is that there's little incentive to not just dump all of your stat points into the stat that gives bonuses to your chosen weapon (melee, ranged, or spellcasting), and just ignore Vitality entirely. In short, it's very, very hard to make a useless character in the Avernum reremakes, but the flipside is that it's also difficult to make a character that really feels "yours", because the variety of build options is so limited.
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Dec 12, 2023 04:37
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That really sounds like what I didn't like of Avadon, what a shame. I liked having a page full of weird stats with the Phil Folio artwork, really tinkering around with stuff, balancing combat vs utility, etc.
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Dec 12, 2023 05:09
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Honestly that's why I prefer the original Exile to the later remakes, they feel much more like proper rugs to me.
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Dec 12, 2023 09:58
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I never played Exile but that's one of the reasons I liked Avernum 1-3 better than the reremakes. Gear upgrades also felt way more discrete, like when you get Demon Slayer you suddenly get way the hell better at slaying demons, while in the second round of remakes is just another pretty good two handed weapon.
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Dec 12, 2023 11:36
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The Moon Monster posted:I never played Exile mods?
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Dec 12, 2023 11:40
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JustJeff88 posted:That was a fun write-up. This thread doesn't get used enough. It will bubble up when the Geneforge 2 remake comes out next year, then hibernate again. I'll start playing Avernum 2 (the newer one) any minute now and will probably whine about it here before Geneforge 2! I know plenty of people prefer a more open and playful style of previous games, but I like newer games approach with fewer but more balanced and viable options. I've seen older games and having so many spells and skills sounds fun for something like Blades of Avernum, where you can have relatively short campaigns so it's not scary to experiment. I also sadly didn't like Geneforge 1 as much as I did. I played Geneforge 4 & 5 when they were released and loved them, but Geneforge 1 feels too basic to me. Both in terms of story and gameplay. Maybe I just misremember the complexity of later Geneforge games. Hope that the second game has a more interesting setting than an island full of people bred and taught to sound stupid and exotic invaders.
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Dec 12, 2023 13:36
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:In short, it's very, very hard to make a useless character in the Avernum reremakes, but the flipside is that it's also difficult to make a character that really feels "yours", because the variety of build options is so limited. I do agree it's hard to have a character that feels unique, but there are some possibilities there. In terms of party it might be useful to have a not-entirely-combat-focused character who specializes in auxilary skills and item usage. It might not be the best idea for higher difficulties but it works well enough. A lot of Cleric spells do not scale with stats and so dipping into cleric casting is good for everyone. Some combat disciplines you get for investing in fighter skills work for mages so it might make sense for a mage to invest into these. But of course, many combinations are weak (mage/melee fighter combination is probably pointless), and sticking to a boring classic party of a tank, archer/agile fighter, cleric and mage is a very obvious and sensible choice.
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Dec 12, 2023 13:51
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Playing an avernum game and flipping a coin to find out if putting points in Bows made a character overpowered or completely useless.
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Dec 12, 2023 23:17
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