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Psion posted:It's not helped by them trying to build a setting at the same time; I don't care about any of these people or fictional stakes or lore dumps about how that one guy only talks to people of equivalent rank, because I'm given no reason to yet. It feels like Antara tries to do three things at once (background lore, main plot, characters) and none of them have enough space to work with so none of them really work at all. As someone who's first exposure to the Feist world was Betrayal at Krondor, I think it worked pretty well. I think the difference is the pressure of having the get Gorath to Krondor and the constant ambushes, as well as the fact that non of the characters actually live at the starting point. Aren being the stereotypical farm boy works against it I feel, as well as the only reason is him wanting magic training for free. William himself isn't directly involved either, since he was just given a medallion from a dying man. In BaK you might not instantly care about the characters but you can invest in their mission long enough to start caring. Here in Antara I haven't even gotten to know Aren before he starts being a bit of an rear end to his fiancé about him loving off on adventure, which has coloured the experience since. Basically BaK got me to buy in enough to start caring, Antarra started off too weak for me to get into it, even if the other parts had been super strong and well done. And honestly if the plot or characters are well written I don't need the others to be great. Maybe I'm just a bit tired of the young inexperienced men going on adventure and growing up, but I really liked that the starting party in BaK was older, and even Owyn had some history and experience.
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Jan 7, 2022 22:35
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I think its the lack of a clear goal from the outset. Getting Gorath to Krondor is a simple clear goal with a good reason behind it that you quickly discover (everyone's trying to kill him), and everything else plays off of that hook. Even if you wander off the beaten path, everything still reinforces "moredhel are a problem and its gonna get worse if you don't do something". With this game I just don't feel like there's that same unity of purpose in the way all the lore etc is fed to you.
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Jan 8, 2022 00:11
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I do hope people stick with the LP, though, because as I recall it, Antara does have some cool stuff that pops up from... I wanna say about the end of chapter 2 onwards. Especially chapter 6 has some things that I know people are going to love.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:10
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PurpleXVI posted:I do hope people stick with the LP, though, because as I recall it, Antara does have some cool stuff that pops up from... I wanna say about the end of chapter 2 onwards. Especially chapter 6 has some things that I know people are going to love. Oh, yeah I'm sticking with it, it's still interesting even if it doesn't have that explosive start that BaK did.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:22
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Part of it's problem is that Antara has no real 'hook' as a setting. There's a lot of stuff, but no direct hook to get you interested in the setting, let along the initial plot. So it's all this material but kind of 'why do I care'? and I say this as someone who enjoyed playing it when I did when I was younger.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:24
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This LP is golden. I definitely understand why younger me decided to drop this game after the first few towns. Building the setting, and fleshing out the people, and all that stuff. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it feels like they spent an inordinate amount of time to really show, right off the bat, that Antara is different from Krondor. Also, I'm not a fan of the dialogue. It's as tiresome then as it is now, but at least I didn't have to save scum for hours to get this payoff. Nevertheless, this LP is GREAT. Thanks, op!
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Jan 8, 2022 02:29
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I spent a lot of time in Betrayal at Krondor trying to make money by having Owyn play the lute. I loved to spend hours in that universe, but then my savefile got corrupted and I gave up. Those first three characters were so cool to a teenage me. Keep in mind that I have never read a book set in Midkemia, much less any book by Feist (I was more of a Stephen King fan back then). I kinda want to see if there would be a way to rewrite Antara to make it as compelling. It would be a big overhaul but it's interesting to think about what the deficiencies really are... at least, for me. Out of scope of this thread, though.
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Jan 8, 2022 02:41
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PurpleXVI posted:I do hope people stick with the LP, though, because as I recall it, Antara does have some cool stuff that pops up from... I wanna say about the end of chapter 2 onwards. Especially chapter 6 has some things that I know people are going to love. Oh, yeah, I'm here for it. Now if you'll just sign this blood pact promising me interesting things in chapter 2-6... 
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Jan 8, 2022 03:13
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sb hermit posted:I spent a lot of time in Betrayal at Krondor trying to make money by having Owyn play the lute. I loved to spend hours in that universe, but then my savefile got corrupted and I gave up. Those first three characters were so cool to a teenage me. Keep in mind that I have never read a book set in Midkemia, much less any book by Feist (I was more of a Stephen King fan back then). Oh, no, it's absolutely a worthwhile thing to talk about, i.e. what's boned about the game and what's needed to unbone it. It'll probably require us getting a bit more into the "meat" of the game so we know how much of the start is skippable. Psion posted:Oh, yeah, I'm here for it. Now if you'll just sign this blood pact promising me interesting things in chapter 2-6... Well, trust me, if nothing else, I realized I had to reload a bit to go back for some missed content in chapter 1, and it will definitely get you some interesting voice acting, if that counts.
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Jan 8, 2022 04:50
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PurpleXVI posted:Well, trust me, if nothing else, I realized I had to reload a bit to go back for some missed content in chapter 1, and it will definitely get you some interesting voice acting, if that counts. Voice acting in mid 90s games is so  because, more likely than not, the VAs are off the street or developers themselves. Ultima 6 is notable for being voiced by the people that inspired the characters in the game. And who can forget the hammy acting in Myst?Sierra, of course, was a big proponent of voice acting. I remember King's Quest 5 on CD and it was bad, but you could appreciate the effort. But they upped their game for Gabriel Knight, which actually had Tim Curry playing the titular character, and Mark Hamill playing another major character. The CD had an AVI where they interviewed the voice actors and actresses for the major characters. Anyways, I think the voice acting in Antara is decent. Probably not professional VAs, though. EDIT: Quest for Glory 4 had, hands down, the best voice acting in the entire series, if not of all Sierra games. The narrator fits the mood incredibly well.
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Jan 8, 2022 05:35
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Space Quest 4's narrator is a strong, strong contender if we're counting all Sierra games, but QFG4 was great, yeah.
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Jan 8, 2022 07:58
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King's Quest VI is up there on Sierra's best voice-acting, too! (And agreeing wholly with Space Quest IV's narrator being awesome, even if Gary did audibly stumble on "The powerful quad-quark drives rev to life!" And also agreeing with Quest For Glory IV's narrator being awesome, to the point where his favorite line of mine is "In a bitter battle, you were better than the Badders. (You kicked some butt, too.)")
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Jan 9, 2022 02:50
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The tavern track is almost identical to a classical music piece that I found once upon a time and I'm convinced I'm never going to find again. Perhaps it was a fever dream
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Jan 9, 2022 03:18
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That cave gives me strong Everquest vibes. I remember some purple cave city that characters of a specific race started in, but that was back in the beta, I think. Yeah, it was a long time ago. I love the style of mid-to-late 90's games. Everyone was trying so hard with what limited tools they had and it's charming in a blocky, blurry sort of way.
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Jan 9, 2022 12:36
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Expect more than the usual amount of swearing for the upcoming update. I simply can't believe the amount of drudge work and psychic deduction the developers expected of the players for this loving sidequest.
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Jan 10, 2022 02:31
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Count me in for having played this as a young kid and being utterly confused. The puzzle chests in particular I remember being stumped by. I think I recall there also being some colored marble pattern type ones that I could sometimes get, but the riddle ones were right out.
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Jan 11, 2022 15:54
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Hel posted:As someone who's first exposure to the Feist world was Betrayal at Krondor, I think it worked pretty well. Thanks, good post. I think you're making a good point on the difference dead on as to why BAK's start is stronger than Antara even with no prior knowledge of the setting. PurpleXVI posted:Expect more than the usual amount of swearing for the upcoming update. I simply can't believe the amount of drudge work and psychic deduction the developers expected of the players for this loving sidequest. can't wait
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Jan 11, 2022 19:01
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Update 5: Why Would They Do This? So to prepare for tackling chapter 2, I looked up the sidequests for the chapter in a sparse FAQ to try and plot out a sort of optimal course, whether there was anything I would need to pick up early to show something off later without needing to spend like an extra hour of playtime backtracking for a loving bucket or a piece of rope or a nudberry or something. While doing so, I found out that I actually missed a sidequest in chapter 1! Now, remember that farmer working at the tavern in Balmestri? The guy whose farm Lord Garsson had repossessed? We can actually help him in chapter 1. If you can't figure out how the gently caress we do that, congratulations, you're a normal human being. If you have in any way intuited a solution, or felt one was hinted at, then I believe the CIA is interested in you for their ESP program. For the rest of us, this will all be coming as a surprise.   So first, we're returning to Sortiga, the town between Balmestri and Panizo. I believe I skipped over the inn last time, but I'll be recapping the contents there this time, because they're, I guess, kind of relevant?       We've got this bunch of jackass locals laughing about how they mistreated some old lady, which just seems like one of the many aside content bits present in Antara which don't tie into anything. I, certainly, never realized it tied into anything! Now, let's hop outside...   Walk past a couple of houses and go off the road into this narrow area between Sortiga and a chunk of impenetrable woods and...  When we turn right, there's this super easily missed NPC hanging out next to the trees! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24eFiQApTVA Her voice acting is... unique. Especially around 3:45 where she manages to put more syllables into the vocalization "hmmmph!" than most people manage to put into entire sentences. The long of the short is that Lord Garsson paid this old lady to curse the farmer's farm so he could steal it, and then handed her evidence that he'd worked with her, which is what clever criminals do. We then promptly buy the scarf off her for 250 Burlas(I think you can get away with just 125 or 150, but the interface is kind of wonky and has poor responsiveness on that) and hoof it northwards to Imazi since we now have something to piss off Garsson with.  The smoking gun! Or handkerchief, as it may be. Along the way I also stop off in Ligano to pass some rations to Sgt. Kalyx so we can get his dialogue(and his stat boost...).      The writers for Antara were definitely fond of puns. Even if many of them are a bit too pained even for me.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13J_0tTK4Jg So we confront Garsson with the evidence and he eventually caves and... gives us nothing. See, this is because you need to ask him the question without evidence and THEN present him with the evidence, or it doesn't work and actually give you the Deed item you need to hand to Farmer Mattia. This confused the hell out of me since I didn't realize I was meant to be given a quest item the first time around, hopped off to Balmestri(which was like a five-minute walk), had to pop out and check a FAQ and try to figure it out, realized I needed an item, hopped back to Garsson, went through the dialogues again, etc. and then back down to Balmestri. All in all that sequence alone took like 20 minutes, and that was with the roads completely cleared by earlier travels, since none of the game's limited fast travel speeds things up any, and there's a huge cliff formation blocking off a direct path between Imazi and Balmestri, so you have to take the long walk around. It sucks!  Done right, though, this is the item we get as a result. Now it's just a matter of giving to the farmer which... turned out to be slightly more challenging than I initially expected.    So far the way I've given items to NPC's at all points in the past, which has worked, has been to go to a character's inventory, drag out the item, and then use it on the NPC's house door or their overworld sprite, which has both started the conversation with them and given them the item. I can drag the Deed item out inside the Inn screen, but dropping it on top of the farmer's sprite does nothing. It turns out that for NPC's that are on a sub-screen, what you need to do is instead start a conversation with them, THEN enter the character's inventory and drag the item on to their icon. This probably works for all the others, too, but since it's a mechanic that the game never deigns to explain to us, how the hell would anyone figure it out except by experimentation? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzTFpgjLdgM The immediate reward, other than doing something nice and spiting a dickhead, is that Brunia gives us a random assortment of bottles which turn out to be potions.  An archery booster.  A spellcasting accuracy booster.  And a strength booster. All temporary, of course. They're somewhat more useful than in Krondor because using potions from a character's inventory doesn't consume their turn, so you can actually bust them out in an emergency rather than needing to predict which battles will kick your rear end before they happen. At the same time it also unbalances the gameplay a bit because a sufficient stash of Senwater now allows you to power through most situations unless something can kill or incapacitate a given character in a single round before they get an action. No reason to be satisfied with just helping the man and getting his thanks, though, let's trek up to Imazi, again, and see how he's doing.     No eviction notice on his door any longer, that's a nice change.   And the man himself has replaced the two burly thugs who were keeping folks out on Lord Garsson's orders earlier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWTZSv5fvXQ So first his farm was cursed, then it was repossessed, and now it's haunted. This poor guy. Let's see if we can help him again, shoulder past him and poke around his field some.   There's something sticking out of the ground up ahead, but we can't even get near it as we are now. Now, I'll leave everyone to consider how this situation is resolved. Perhaps we need to find a calming drug? Or find some sort of counterspell? Talk to the old crone from earlier and get her to come banish the evil spirits? Ha ha, no, we have to exit the game and edit the game files. After heading down to Ligano first, of course.   Remember this cleft which, earlier, just lead to a small clearing with a few trees in it? And remember how I mentioned there was a bugged area near Ligano that required editing game files to unbug? This is it. I have to quit out of the game while in Ligano, delete or rename(ideally rename since I'll need them back later) two game files and then pop back in. Now when I go into the cleft...   There's a loving temple here! After leaving, I have to undo the changes I made, for some reason, I'm not sure what happens if I don't, but I imagine the consequences are undesired.  Looks nice enough inside, though. There are two priests to talk to here, let's get the farthest one first.    As far as I can tell, informing this guy that he can go sort out the wedding is just a fluff thing and has no actual gameplay or gameworld effects. The other priest...     Offers us this super-vague blessing that no wiki or FAQ explains what does, exactly. What it most certainly does not, based on the description, is protect us from ghosts or terror. It does not, I repeat, protect us from ghosts or terror. It does not. Ha ha just kidding this loving vague-rear end thing totally does for completely unclear loving reasons. Once again props to the psychic ubermensch who were able to deduce this, because I sure as gently caress would never have.     And just like that, boop, the fields are now passable. The farmer has no response to us doing this, which is a bit of a shame, but we do gain the staff as an item.  The Staff of Nightmares is a worse melee weapon than any non-magical staff. The other magical staves in the game are also pretty bad, all being between the starter Wooden Staff and Quarterstaff in strength. What's special is that if any of them are used for a Thrust attack, they instead deliver their magical payload. In case of the Staff of Nightmares, it makes an enemy instantly attempt to flee. This is absolutely terrible, since it means we can't kill them and take their stuff. It might be a decent in-a-pinch way of getting a single enemy out of the way, but looting enemies is incredibly vital since it's our main source of income.  We can now also continue past the farm, though there's no real reason to do so yet, but that's rarely stopped me. Behind the farm is an empty cave which we can't interact with for a bit yet.     Does certainly look somewhat neat, right? Looks kind of like someone broke into an existing underground structure.   Now I can head back to Panizo and finish the chapter. On the way, though, I decide to take the road from Imazi to Midova that skips Aliero, and which has its own little canyon network on its south side much like the northern one does. Most of the trip is unremarkable except for one nice-looking location.   This little hidden lake shows once again that the engine CAN do nice locations and the developers knew how to do it when they had the time or wanted to invest the effort. The chest is a code chest...  F-I-DA-LI It contains a stash of money and Senwater, both of which are welcome. Anyway, time to head down to Panizo and end the chapter... Again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoVpMk-oL2g  After the cutscene we're unceremoniously dumped on the doorstep of Panizo with the quest of finding "mage Finch" who's got a hiding spot north of Midova. This obviously makes Midova our first port of call but, eh, since when did we ever go where the game wanted us to go? It's not the boss of us. Mostly I want to check up on Imazi to see if there are any new quests or dialogue over there relating Lord Garsson and our chances for ruining his day.    Most areas appear to have been repopulated with fresh batches of enemies, though not quite as many as the full complement present in chapter 1(thank God), and often a bit weaker. All of the ones I encounter in the Panizo/Midova/Ligano/Imazi rectangle are either packs of mage-less bandits or field worms, for instance. No montari and their wizards or other things that could present a potential actual threat.     There's nothing new in Ligano, as far as I can tell it doesn't update for the rest of the game and can thus be safely ignored unless we happen to need an inn to pass through, but Imazi does have some new dialogue from the residents. Nothing from Farmer Mattia yet, though, I later learn that while he doesn't by default have any new dialogue, now if you go poke around his farm's cave and clear out some newly spawned enemies inside, it'll have an effect. It'll be something to remember for a future update, though, since I didn't learn about that obscure trigger until after I was done recording. As for the other residents, let's start out in the inn.   Yep, it's the rear end in a top hat in the hat again. More or less every chapter, Scott will warp to a new inn somewhere to sit around getting drunk and be ready to voice act at us. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZOLXY6f99w I guess Scott isn't the worst NPC in the history of NPC's but I also feel like the writers over-estimated how charming he would be. Thankfully there are other people to talk to outside.     Like this poor rear end in a top hat who got extremely predictably scammed by Lord Garsson, whoops.   And this guy who's now literally out of business. If we find a pack of skins somewhere, he can make us a free drum, and I guess there's no reason to turn down a free drum.  Three houses that were empty in chapter 1 are now populated in chapter 2 and all of them have a good deal of dialogue.    Pending... resurrection?       So, okay, these bits of dialogue are pretty amusing(and I did buy the insurance policy since it actually has an in-game effect much later), but it feels a bit out of place that in a setting where we have folks recently mourning their permanently departed spouses or other family members, there's supposedly common-enough magical/divine resurrection that insurance policies need to take it into account. Now don't get me wrong, I think that would make for a hilarious and interesting fantasy setting, if you went hard on it. But it feels like it's not Antara. Anyway, time for the last guy here. As a rare thing, this is something I feel requires a brief content warning for mentions of sexual violence. Nothing egregrious in the grand scheme of things, but I know some folks would probably rather skip over it.    gently caress Lord Garsson. Keep this little sidestory in mind, though, as it will actually have a resolution... when we're about another 50% thorugh the game, admittedly, but I'm sure some of you will enjoy it anyway. We can go talk to Garsson still, but there's no new dialogue, not even an option to punch him in his fat loving face and then leg it, so now we're heading on to Midova to find Finch and teach Aren some Real True Magic(tm) unlike all the piddly lightning-calling he's done so far. Being in chapter 2, this also lifts some spell-learning/skill-training limits which means Aren picks up another couple of spells on his own while taking the walk to Midova. The two spells he picks up are Web(creates a randomly-shaped area where anyone moving in or out of any of the affected hexes must spend their entire turn doing so, this could have some actual tactical use at times) and Moonless Night(target hex and all adjacent hexes are affected by a darkness effect, anyone under it has increased defense and worsened offensive stats, almost halving them. could be useful for buying time, I guess?). In most cases, just blasting enemies with damage will largely win out, however. It's also worth noting that on the road between Imazi and Aliero there's a pile of rocks you can tip over, which contains the only spare pack of skins in the game(the same item that Kaelyn starts with, in fact. you could probably just keep that and bring it to Imazi instead. the 35 Burlas for bringing it to the guy in Balmestri is some real pocket change).     Before we poke around for Finch, I'll just stick my head inside Midova to see if anything should have happened to have changed there.   Looks like a new guy in the inn, and it thankfully isn't Scott! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHOqowz47Is I'm sure that this guy getting jumped and getting his rear end kicked by a bunch of racist nobles is completely unrelated to anything. Aside from that, the two previously sealed houses in Midova are now accessible.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1dQxqGHXNc At the moment there are no dialogue options for this guy, but that'll eventually change. For now it's just a nice unassuming store that sells nice things which we can't buy because Aren isn't allowed to have nice things. Let's check out the other one.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xpsdqMlBa8 This guy is pretty blatantly shady, but thankfully he isn't our problem since William is actually smart enough not to borrow money from someone who'll try to break his legs if he doesn't pay up on time. In any case, it's clear that Mage Finch isn't inside Midova, so we'll take a look outside and just to the north.    I love that the mighty HIGH MAGE FINCH is just a chubby guy in a bathrobe wandering around barefoot in the dirt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYOSebEQLhw I swear there's no such thing as an even vaguely normal voiced NPC in this game. Welp, good thing we just met someone who can help us get rare foodstuffs!     A nice and simple convo, but he isn't lying. We're going to have to pop outside and sleep in a ditch for a week before things update. I sure hope Finch wasn't expecting that tea any time soon.    Why aren't we sleeping inside Midova? There's a town right there! It has an inn! Look, you're perfectly healthy, there's no reason to spend money on an inn when that's the case. This nice ditch has even got comfy moss in it. If I get some sort of horrible disease from this, you guys better pay up for the healing.After about a week of brushing ticks off Aren every morning, we then wander back inside...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Jatin0AvA Oh no, turns out someone flipped Paolo's store AND stole our tea, the huge dickheads. Well, let's go see the biggest dickhead in town and see what he has to say for himself.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfuMgyJw5KQ At least he owns up to it, but now we've gotta haul rear end all the way down to Sortiga and probably beat some wizard over the head until he pays up. I really hope Finch wasn't expecting that tea any time soon. On the bright side maybe he was just saying it to get rid of us and the longer we take, the happier he'll be.  I haven't blown myself up yet. I'm sure it'll be fine.Next time: Tea! Clearing out Farmer Brunai's cave! Maybe visiting Briala again if I feel like taking the long way! PurpleXVI fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 20:54
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editing game files  figuring out the rest of that quest this tea bullshit is entirely normal, by comparison.
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Jan 11, 2022 21:19
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PurpleXVI posted:Update 5: Why Would They Do This? Was there supposed to be a cutscene introducing chapter 2 here? But yeah, some of the quests seem to be of the very bullshit variety.
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Jan 11, 2022 21:39
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Hel posted:Was there supposed to be a cutscene introducing chapter 2 here? Sorry, that was actually at the end of the last post, I should probably have edited it in so it's in both posts.
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Jan 11, 2022 21:40
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PurpleXVI posted:Sorry, that was actually at the end of the last post, I should probably have edited it in so it's in both posts. Rewatching that makes it even funnier that you spend a week sleeping in a ditch waiting for a shipment of tea, since William was really hoping on quickly moving on after dumping Aren at the mage.
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Jan 11, 2022 21:50
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You know on recording the latest update, I'm starting to consider that perhaps voice-acting for Antara was part of why the game flopped. Unironically even bits of dialogue that would be workable if not good without voice-acting are regularly turned into raw comedy by this loving game.
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Jan 12, 2022 02:13
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Voice acting can be dangerous that way. Also, as someone who doesn't know of this setting and story and didn't know of Krondor's setting and stories, I think that the lack of a solid hook at the start is a great weakness of the game.
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Jan 12, 2022 02:26
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Oddly enough I don't mind the voice-acting all that much. It works a lot of the time. Right until you hit one where they probably should've reconsidered, like with the Witch or the Baron. But Scott's writing is more egregious than his voice-acting to me.
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Jan 12, 2022 02:30
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Man, I hope the plot speeds up sometime soon - it really seems like the party doesn't really have any overarching goal yet and still just sort of doing minor bullshit tasks. Also, what's people's take on the new word lock chests? I like the concept, but it seems like a lot of the ones thus far have revolved around in-game knowledge which limits the fun riddling part of it - you either know what the game's name for Antidote Herb is or you don't (being on this side of the LP, I mostly don't ); there's no reasoning it out.
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Jan 12, 2022 03:46
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MagusofStars posted:Also, what's people's take on the new word lock chests? I like the concept, but it seems like a lot of the ones thus far have revolved around in-game knowledge which limits the fun riddling part of it - you either know what the game's name for Antidote Herb is or you don't (being on this side of the LP, I mostly don't For the next update I ended up brute-forcing the answer to a chest and I still have no idea why it's the answer, and it isn't even an in-game lore thing. So I would say that while it's an interesting alternate way to put the words together, I wish the riddles were a bit better and a bit more setting-agnostic.
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Jan 12, 2022 03:54
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MagusofStars posted:Man, I hope the plot speeds up sometime soon - it really seems like the party doesn't really have any overarching goal yet and still just sort of doing minor bullshit tasks. Even once the plot kicks off, there are a lot of minor bullshit tasks floating around. A lot of the in-game knowledge riddles are there to reward people who've been reading all the flavor text. If you've seen fidali paste, it's not much of a stretch to guess that it's made from fidali leaves. I didn't mind it when I was playing the game, but posting screenshots of the descriptions of every item in the game would be fairly absurd, so it's not great for an SSLP.
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Jan 12, 2022 03:55
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I find the witch lady's voice acting highly entertaining.
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Jan 12, 2022 05:52
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Okay, I will say honestly, if Garson doesn't face justice by gallows by the end of this, and he is just replaced with a 'good' noble, I'm going to be pissed. I read a bunch of stuff with shitbag nobles regularly, but this is just hitting a nerve with me.
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Jan 12, 2022 06:04
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malkav11 posted:I find the witch lady's voice acting highly entertaining.  very hammy. The VA really leaned into it.
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Jan 12, 2022 06:04
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Ashsaber posted:Okay, I will say honestly, if Garson doesn't face justice by gallows by the end of this, and he is just replaced with a 'good' noble, I'm going to be pissed. You make it sound like's not boing to be a boss to fight. How does that fate(killing him personally) sound to you compared to him being tried and hanged?
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Jan 12, 2022 10:21
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Update 6: Tea We pick up outside of Midova. For reference, we're currently looking for tea, so a wizard will talk to us and take Aren under his wing, so he, too, can become a super wizard. But the tea has been repossessed by a loan shark who wants us to hunt down a guy who owes him money. For inscrutable reasons we aren't just pounding his head in and taking the tea, thus improving the world considerably along the way. All we know about the loan-ower is that he's in "Montari Territory," and where we encountered the most Montari was between Balmestri and Sortiga, so we sort of know where to go. Since I, uh, missed a bit of content in Imazi, however, and Briala and Aspreza have also been updated a bit for chapter 2(but not, oddly enough, Balmestri, Ligano or Sortiga), I'll be taking the long way down the east coast to clean up some of all that stuff.     The trip to Imazi is zero danger, since I already cleared it. Now let's poke our heads into Farmer Brunia's new cave. It strongly feels like there should be some kind of dialogue prior to ducking in, but I guess not.     Since we're dealing with some generic bandits, I decide to try out some of the new spells that Aren's been picking up in the meantime. First up is Web, cast at full power.  Web is actually pretty good at slowing down enemies if you get it off first, with the caveat that the web itself just sort of "flows" randomly from the target point. This means that casting it in the middle of a bunch of enemy melee combatants, it may either perfectly slow them down or inhibit you as much as it does them. Probably the best use is to drop it in the "escape corner," upper left, so that fleeing enemies can be picked off with spells and arrows before they get out of the combat area.  As an interesting note, unlike Owyn in Krondor, Aren is perfectly capable of calling down lightning from the sky to hit enemies even when below several meters of solid rock and dirt.   Next up is a group of five bandits, nothing interesting there, they go down like chumps. Lastly, however...   Four wizards in a super krangled combat plane? Please, what are they going to do?  Not like wizards have been any kind of threat so far. Turns out they have a new spell I can't get access to yet which looks like a projectile that can miss. It does, however, not miss any of the times they cast it and they just toast down Aren in a single round, prompting some amount of terror since judging by the usual spell costs I expect that they can cast it twice or thrice per caster per battle, meaning they can, if their AI judges it a good idea and I don't bully them appropriately, actually torch my entire team.  It feels like my owning them and not vice versa is more luck than skill. Anyway, let's head out and tell the farmer that we killed some people he hopefully wanted us to kill since we know nothing about them and more or less just killed them for being slightly shady in the wrong place.    His face always weirds me out, I'm not sure why.      Okay, cool, we've now given him control of a literal gold mine. We're not given a reward for this or any sort of immediate feedback that we did something smart, but as far as I can tell it might be important later.     We haven't seen Briala since the start of the game, but it has undergone a few changes.  Laura still hasn't moved from the well since we were last here, she's just been standing there, pining for Aren. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYYnqhrs4A I feel like Laura dodged a bullet here, Aren seems extremely excited about this new lifestyle which sees him murdering several people per day, to the point that it matters more to him than a woman he was prepared to marry just a month ago. Maybe we can help her feel better, though...     Well, her mom certainly isn't any help. Maybe we can set her up with some eligible bachelor? Who do we know in this town?     And that's basically the end of that subplot. Laura, Scott and Laura's mom vanish from the game from this point onwards as far as I can tell, but at least we tried to bring it to a happy ending? While we're in town we can also visit Aren's dad a last time.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uRaeoYwIaw It goes better than saying goodbye to Laura does, though that's not saying much. Last thing to do in town is check up on whether or not we managed to save those cows.     The reward for having saved this guy's cows is that we get a full stack of Senwater, which is pretty good as rewards go. Since we can't get spells directly from scrolls any longer, really the only meaningful rewards are Senwater and equipment upgrades, the latter of which are reasonably rare. Next stop: Aspreza, which is hopefully less plagued this time around.    Last time we were here, all the doors with a red diamond on them got some mild variety of: "let's not gently caress around with this place, everyone inside is probably busy dying horribly." and no further results. Now that we've helped the Sisters north of Ligano by clearing out the Montari and giving them a stack of food, all four doors with red diamonds now have actual interactions. One of them being somewhat important, but most of them just being fluff.      As far as I can tell this is the only place in the game you can pay an NPC to repair stuff for you, which is pretty important as you'll occasionally stumble across a gear upgrade which starts with dogshit durability, and stuff you just pick up off the ground you can't immediately repair, it has to suffer some wear and tear in combat first, at which point you may then be able to laboriously inch it back up over its original damaged state. This is a bit of a difference from Krondor where A) stuff you picked up off the ground or dead enemies was repairable immediately nine times out of ten and B) where you very quickly got the skill levels to repair stuff 20 or 25 percentage points in a go if it was already rather beat up. If we hadn't helped out Aspreza, this would be denied to us, mind you, which is why doing so is rather big deal. Also of course for about 2/3rds of the game's chapters we also won't have access to Aspreza, so.       The reward for this is one of the rare-ish Emerald Shieldstones which I'm still desperately trying to find a shopkeeper that'll buy, since effective use of them would largely require being psychic. Still, nice of them. And it makes no difference if you choose cards or magic to entertain the kids with, except for the descriptive text that results. Just one last house left, now.    I still always forget to use Tonguecoat before selling and buying, but at least we helped an old man, ain't that nice of us? Now, back on the road to finding the mysterious Enkudi.     While heading along the southern coast past Balmestri, I get waylaid by a bandit ambush and decide it's a good chance to test out another one of Aren's new spells, Blazing Barricade.  Unlike a lot of non-"blow a mans up"-spells, this one actually has some uses! It creates this flaming field(always with the same radius, sometimes William or Kaelyn will spawn where the barricade would, in which case... move them before casting it. It knows no friendly fire) which does damage = duration(max of 20) to any enemies walking into it, and any round they end in it, they eat a further 2 to 3 damage, but for some reason it sometimes does this damage twice or even thrice, I don't understand the logic. If you stack up William and Kaelyn in front of Aren, enemies will usually very obligingly go stand in the fire to whack at them, and since it'll usually add up to being about another swing's worth of damage over the fight, it can make them go down a lot quicker. The main downside is that to make the most of it, you'll usually end up with a formation where Aren loses line-of-sight on most enemies, making him a bit less useful. But especially if you're fighting enemies that he can't Lightning Bolt away anyway, it might be superior.  The other downside is that chasing after fleeing enemies becomes more complicated and requires that you have a good set of bow and arrows, or some ranged spells and Aren in the right position, to blow them up.    It actually took me forever to find this jackass since "Montari territory," to me, was the coastal stretch between Sortiga and Balmestri, but he's actually a good bit along the road between Sortiga and Ligano, quite far inland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Cif5QcTS4 I love how confused the party is at the concept that someone might just want to help others. If you can't write an essay justifying why you want to help people, something fishy's up. Now, we don't actually have to finish Enkudi's task for him, since he already gave us the gems for Antoni, but there's an extremely good reason to do so.   So now we actually go to the Montari. Thankfully no enemies have respawned in their tunnels, at last not in any of the areas I went through.     At the very backmost part of the cave, down a small tunnel I missed, is this dried-up stream. Aside from the stream, there's also a chest I'm very happy to find.   Despite looking almost exactly like the chainmail the party's already wearing, this is Montari chain mail, identifiable as such by the black diamond in the middle. This suit is busted all to gently caress and thus completely useless to wear until I think to haul it back to Aspreza and pay to get it repaired, but when it's fully repaired it's 20% more protective and 30% more resistant to falling apart than standard chainmail. Seeing as how it's the third-best armor in the game, it's also a while before we can actually just go buy this from a store. Anyway, to complete the quest, you gotta jam the divining rod into the trickling stream, but it's a bit kludgy since you gotta find the one spot it'll accept.   Neither Chee from the colony or Enkudi has any dialogue about us having done this, but the reason we do it is that it has a hidden benefit.  In that it unlocks Aren's access to Water magic! And if I remember right, there are some absolutely busted spells in there. For now, all it does is unlock Dehydrate, which is the same as the basic melee-range static zap spell, except it does a tiny bit less damage and, presumably, works against targets immune to electric damage, if the game has any of those. What follows from here is a walk back up to Midova to get Antoni off of Paolo's back, so we can finally, after like an in-game month, get Finch his tea, and thus get him to teach Aren about magic.    Relatively speedy trip.      Now to go to Paolo...      It's worth noting that despite Paolo mentioning a refund, we never actually paid a dime to order the Chailan Tea in the first place.  The magic powder is, sadly, dogshit, because unless an encounter has specifically owned me before and I happen to know fired weapons were why, there are no real ways to identify when enemies are using or might be using weapon boosts.  And tea. I'm not sure why the sprite is a literal teapot when all the descriptions are as though it's just, you know, dried tea leaves, as is reasonable.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E6P-5zZWWg So, I have a couple of issues with this entire sequence. First, gently caress him for having had the tea all along. Secondly... They make a big deal of Aren "not knowing magic good yet" when by this point he has reasonably been roasting bandits and montari with lightning bolts every couple of days, no issues. What would've made this part stronger would've been if the game had, say... some sort of "wild magic" system, to borrow from D&D, where Untrained Aren had random strength values for the spells he cast, or random side effects, or something of the sort so that getting him formally trained in some way was actually a big deal. As it is, it represents a very minor change.  Though it does have the advantage that gains from trainers can push past the training limits imposed per chapter, allowing Aren to scoot slightly ahead of the curve. Now, William also doesn't make a big deal of it at this point, but our objective is now to reach Ticoro, to the west. Of course, I, being a genius who knows that the worst thing you can do in any game is to follow where the plot wants you to go, am having none of that. There was a little bridge to the west between Midova and Panizo that William was very unwilling to let us use in the last chapter, but this time he surely can't raise any issues with it.  And a quick map repost so the location names make any sort of sense to people.     The only obstacle to getting over the bridge is a small pack of bandits, and just like that, we're in a new region.   With new enemies! Crabs!  They're not dissimilar from Carliths, in that they slowly approach and then snip snob you for minimal damage. The only noteworthy thing about them?   They're inexplicably full of milk.   This entire region is also designed a bit different from the one we started in, Pianda. This is the Ticor region. While Pianda is more or less cities built around the edges of big rocks that you can't pass over, Ticor is a fishhook of towns built curling around and then through a large forest which we can travel through. Of course, large parts of said forest are clusters of impassable forest jpegs, which means that it's quite possible to get somewhat lost on the twisty paths since the overhead map is rather zoomed in and only shows you a chunk very near to where you are.  Also, practically every chest in this region I've found has been trapped and even using the Essence of the Wind buffs, I've been unable to crack them. Unlike in Krondor, I don't have a character that's the designated lockpicker, Aren is only marginally better than William and Kaelyn, and I've yet to find any trainers who can do anything about it. In any case, I mash through a few crabs and some lost Montari before reaching Waterfork, either the nearest or farthest city in Ticoro to Pianda, depending on which side you approach from.    Waterfork isn't the most happening of towns, but we can accidentally fix something while we're here.   But first, more songs at the local pub.    Now, uh, back in I think update 3 or 4, just after reaching Midova, I poked my head into the little cleft where Mage Finch would be at the start of Chapter 2, there was a chest there containing nothing but a scroll that's unreadable to the party but is marked as being related to the Contuso family. Let's see what happens if we toss it at this lady, once again I don't think anything ever implies that we should think to do so.      It apparently ends a decades-long family feud, which is good! And it also gets us an emerald, which is also good! We can either hock it for money if I ever find a loving gem trader again, or I can keep hold of it for a while longer and use it to get a magic item in a way that I'm 90% sure the game doesn't tell you how to do but you just have to kind of stumble into. You never know, though, maybe I'll actually find the hint that makes it make sense at some point.    Like practically every town in Antara, Waterfork has only one trader, and like most of said traders, this one has only one thing we might care about : Senwater. I've still yet to find out what the use for the loving Nudberries is.         Not a bad reward for a single Fidali Paste... in theory. A Banded Shield is roughly twice as effective at blocking as our existing Small Shields(and having played some more, it does seem to be correct that shields just sometimes roll a total deflection on a hostile attack, though certainly not with their listed protection percentage rolled straight), but this one, starting at 50%, means it's also 50% as effective... and thus literally no better than our existing Small Shields. It even has a lower Hardness than them and would thus come apart faster, and I've been drowning in Small Shields in practically every fight in Pianda.      This mention of the fisherman actually isn't just a piece of trivia, since said fisherman actually is in town and we can go talk to him. Visiting him is a grave mistake, however, as I'm about to learn...     What in God's sweet merciful hell is that concoction?! It'll haunt my loving nightmares. And I say this as someone from Scandinavia, I'm perfectly well-used to fish-based war crimes, but what in the everloving gently caress? That's absolutely rancid. I'd rather eat Icelandic Piss Shark. In any case, that's my cue to head down the road to Cardone before I hear more about any other terrifying local specialties.   Crossing this bridge, things open up enough that we could in fact scamper right up to Ticoro and end the chapter, and so out of curiosity I decide to have a look around(though I have more NPC's to interact with since I strongly suspect, once again, that many of these interactions will be chapter 1 exclusive and I don't want to miss out on them, so I don't actually enter Ticoro).    The mighty sand-coloured cube in the distance there is Ticoro. To the right is the bridge we'd have reached if we went by the main road and...    Huh, guess we couldn't have gone this way anyway. Lore-wise I seem to remember the Mehrat nation is supposed to be somewhere northwest of Antara? And speaking of Antara, I always found the capital's location to be weird. Capitals are generally either roughly central in their nation or on a major coast or waterway, it feels like. Having it tucked away in a mountain border just violates my sense of disbelief slightly.  Anyway, back to the south and we reach Cardone, at which point I realize I feel kind of confused by the setting's naming. Like on the one hand you have places like Panizo and Imazi which sound(to my ears) Italian, then you have Cardone which sounds more French, and then you also have stuff like Waterfork which sounds plain English. Maybe I'm the only one who cares about things like that, but I wish they'd kept to a consistent theming. As usual, we'll hit up the local drinking hole first, for clues and rumours.     This provides us with the first of the two Cardone-related subquests, finding the Beast of Cardone and doing something about it. We can also buy food here(though sadly no rations), along with an unusual item.  I believe it was the witch down in Sortiga who told us that Nudberry roots were useful as a painkiller. We will only ever need one(1) unit of Nudberry roots for one(1) sidequest, but there's no point to buying them here as there are some buried in a pile of rocks in the woods not far away.    The local store sets a new bar for uselessness, as it only sells the lowest tier of archery gear, which we literally started with, and which we have relatively little use for. Some of these constraints, on where you can go and what you can access, feel like a response to Krondor players snapping the game in half before chapter 1 is even over, but it also feels like an overreaction. I prefer a game that lets me snap it in half if I'm clever, to a game that tries too hard to provide a "curated" experience.     Most of the residents in town, meanwhile, are busy talking about how spooky and scary the Beast is even though it hasn't actually done anything other than make a lot of noise and eat some chickens.    With one exception, of course.      This crotchety old guy seems absolutely on the level and not like a weirdo dickhead at all. In any case, there are two ways to find out the answer to his riddle, and I did it the hard way(because of course I did), and I still don't get it. If anyone can actually figure out this loving riddle faster than I do, you're some sort of psychic wizard. Now! Cardone is about as forest-centric as possible. There's forest on both the northwest and southeast sides, and all we know is that the Beast is somewhere near or in the forest most likely. We have no idea what it looks like or where it might be roaming, so I make the wise choice of just stomping into the woods and completely going the wrong way.    While over here looking for a rock pile full of Nudberry roots(I find them), I get ambushed by a new enemy!  The sinister Trerangs, which are just straight up a lovely sprite of an ape that's been tossed through a dozen blue filters. They play a generic "OOK OOK OOK.mp3" every time they move or attack, and at first you'd think they're kind of laughable.  Until you remember that they're roughly about the size of chimps and that chimps can pry your arms off and beat you to death with them without breaking a sweat. They have abysmal attack stats, so most of their swings end up missing, but they can three-shot more or less any member of the party, and if they land the first two, the cumulative injuries will make the third hit extremely likely to land as well as making the injured party member super likely to be unable to hit back. Additionally, they seem to have some weird immunity where the ring of fire spell doesn't hurt them when they move into it. They still take the per-turn damage of 2 to 3 points, but not the ~20 points that every other enemy takes when first moving into it.    Exploring the woods to the southeast, and beating up more Trerangs as I go, I also stumble across this hidden temple of Senaedrin. Or, at least, I'd consider it to be hidden since it's about as out-of-the-way as is possible.  No interesting dialogue, and the temple only offers two services: curing poison and healing. Temple healing feels a bit superfluous considering that the only thing they could really need to cure is the near-death status, which would cost about 200 Burlas(for a full, total healing), meanwhile the herbalist in Waterfork sells a full stack of Senwater for 60 Burlas which accomplishes clearing up the Near-Death condition(with some Senwater to spare, even, it takes 20 bottles and a full stack is 25), and then you can just rest the rest away at an inn for almost no money, comparatively. Maybe if the game had some more hard-to-shake conditions, like damaged limbs or diseases, and didn't have omnipresent healing potions, if it was something a bit more like the frankly-cruel DSA(Die Schwarze Auge, AKA The Dark Eye) cRPG's which featured death from tetanus as a very real threat, divine healing would start to be much more important. Anyway, I'm rambling. The point is that the Beast isn't southeast of Cardone, it's northwest. So I head back over the creek, through Cardone, and promptly fail to find the Beast again.     In addition to Trerangs and Crabs, the woods over here also feature a few bandits, including these four who are busy staring at a chest. I walk up and casually stab them so I can stare at the chest instead.    And here we are again, confronted with Mage Chilblain's riddle. One of the two ways to get the answer is to solve the riddle here at the chest, then it's possible to go back and tell him you did it. I smashed my brain against it for close to fifteen minutes before I resorted to just brute-forcing my way through every word I could think to construct with the allowed letter combos. What I came up with, which worked, was: G-L-AS-S And frankly, even knowing the answer? I still don't see the logic. I'm sure it's something incredibly loving stupid and I look forward to someone explaining it to me.  Nothing amazing in the chest either, though pearls do sell for a decent amount. I think this one might land about 300 Burlas. In any case, at this point I've spent close to a literal hour hunting for the Beast of Cardone and I decide to look up a guide. It says he should be "northwest of Cardone," I've gone through all of the interior woods ten times over, but maybe he's at the edge of the woods? Time to go through them with a fine-tooth comb.     You see him? He's in one of these four screenshots. I think I walked past him well in excess of three or four times before I finally saw him. gently caress those colours, and frankly gently caress the use of overworld NPC's like this, too, they're hell to find, and they don't get marked on the map until the first time you've talked to them either, it seems. Son of a bitch.  In any case, now that I've found him, I advise everyone to brace themselves for some of the most amusingly dogshit voice acting in the game so far. It completely busted me up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D95HBNzCzoQ For anyone confused about what happened, this is the one place we need Nudberry Roots. We mix it with a ration, getting a Nudberry Ration, throw it at this guy which calms him down because he's just eaten a sandwich full of morphine, and then we can talk to him. And everything else about the conversation is just loving stupid. The reward is a stack of Grrlf Arrows, which finally make archery somewhat useful as they provide a +20% hit chance over normal arrows and a further +5 damage, too, meaning that they can actually hit reliably and do damage approximating that of just stabbing someone with a sword as well. I also want to repeat that I spent close to an hour finding this rear end in a top hat. I need to communicate how much that sucked. Ahem, in any case, time to head over to Mage Chilblain and tell him the answer to the riddle! I'm sure it'll go well.     Oh no! Who could have foreseen that he'd try to gently caress us up. What a tradgedy.  Now, I presume this rear end in a top hat knows some new cool spells that I could've taught Aren by letting him toss some of them around, but I hosed up and just went for the kill instead, which I think may have delayed by learning cold magic by several chapters. Killing Chilblain isn't exactly a challenge, anyway, considering that he's pulled the ol' Navon where he's technically an imposing opponent because of his stats(I think, presume, assume, or he may just be a moron), but a one-on-three fight is pretty hard to win unless you have some real bullshit up your sleeve.  Yeah, Chilly, how did you think this was going to work out? Did you think you'd get the drop on us and just wipe us out with magic or something? rear end in a top hat.  Perhaps the real magic was inside us all along. ... I'm kidding, I'm kidding! Roll him over and let's go through his pockets. If you didn't already have it from Imazi, there's a nice staff upgrade for Aren, and if you were a bit less completionist or thoughtful about where you sold your loot, you might not have been able to gear everyone up with chainmail from Panizo, so that might also be an upgrade. What's definitely an upgrade, though, is Chilblain's ring.  The Shadowring is a bit like the Weed Walkers from Krondor, providing a permanent stealth boost to the wearer. As another nice benefit, characters actually have a "jewelry" slot this time around, so passive boosters don't have to hang around their inventory taking up space and being a nuisance in that fashion.  All in all, that took me two and a half hours to accomplish, so that seems like a good place to take a break, especially as there are still another five towns to visit before the party reaches Ticoro.
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Jan 17, 2022 03:54
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 maybe the other professions are red herrings and a child's first guess at a nice gift are the glass bottles that adults are always giving away.
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Jan 17, 2022 05:13
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the only thing I like better than long bullshit fetch quests for {{questitem.name}} are ones where they immediately undercut the value of what you just did by saying "hah I already had some!" it's a cheap attempt at humor and it doesn't work I'm not sure how that riddle worked either, but I bet somewhere you'll find a child character in a town 3000 kilometers away with a line of dialogue that could conceivably be the answer. that appears to be the level of lateral thinking and/or precognition the game wants
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Jan 17, 2022 05:25
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My dad played Antara for a while when I was growing up. His laptop could barely run it IIRC - like the battle music would sound choppy because it kept loading from the CD, I think? Anyway, there sure is a lot of brown and gray in this game.
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Jan 17, 2022 05:45
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rujasu posted:My dad played Antara for a while when I was growing up. His laptop could barely run it IIRC - like the battle music would sound choppy because it kept loading from the CD, I think? the backgrounds, the character portraits, the sprites, the equipment...
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Jan 17, 2022 05:51
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rujasu posted:Anyway, there sure is a lot of brown and gray in this game. All we need is some waist-high cover and an assault rifle for Kaelyn and Antara will be would be decades ahead! Psion posted:the only thing I like better than long bullshit fetch quests for {{questitem.name}} are ones where they immediately undercut the value of what you just did by saying "hah I already had some!" Either that or the point was that Finch just wanted us to gently caress off and was, in fact, happy, that we left him alone to watch beetles for a literal month of game time.
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Jan 17, 2022 06:43
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Psion posted:the only thing I like better than long bullshit fetch quests for {{questitem.name}} are ones where they immediately undercut the value of what you just did by saying "hah I already had some!" This is it exactly. There's a bunch of kids singing one of those children's songs that's also a game, and the riddle is about one of the verses. The tinker in Aspreza is also the only place in the game you can repair shields. Naturally, by the time you get the only magic shield in the game, Aspreza is no longer accessible. Talicor dust isn't just for protection from flaming swords, it gives you 75% protection from all fire damage, so it's useful against some mages, or if you want to run through your own wall of fire. Probably the most useful elemental resistance booster, though, is the grounding wire; there are some really dangerous swarms of lightning bugs later on, and grounding wire pretty much neuters them. Shieldstones are mostly useless (especially sapphire shieldstones, since cold damage is really rare), but you can just activate them and leave them running; they don't take up an equipment slot or anything. Selling them is absolutely the better option, though.
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Jan 17, 2022 06:47
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The Mage thing seems extra weird to me because he accepted the answer instantly without question. It's not exactly one of those riddles where you hear the answer and it makes intuitive sense; for all he knows we're totally on the wrong track. Unless he's already got an inkling of the answer, in which case, why not walk to the chest yourself and brute-force it, dumbass? Though trying to ambush three heavily armed strangers in broad daylight in the center of town isn't the greatest plan either, so uh, he's probably not the brightest bulb. PurpleXVI posted:The Shadowring is a bit like the Weed Walkers from Krondor, providing a permanent stealth boost to the wearer. As another nice benefit, characters actually have a "jewelry" slot this time around, so passive boosters don't have to hang around their inventory taking up space and being a nuisance in that fashion.
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Jan 17, 2022 15:41
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