/v/ - Video Games

Torment is a good book

Arcanum is a meme just like Fallout

PST is a mess, but it is good.

>>13730968

Arcanum has its flaws (namely balance), but overall it was a classic in terms of top quality presentation, interactivity. replay-ability and still hold those qualities up to this very day and put a lot of modern RPGs to shame. The classic hallmark of all Troika games (other two being VtmB and ToEE).

Torment is a classic in the sense that the it is very story centric, and has a mindfuckery/philosophy centric story to go with it, so it was revolutionary for that time. Too bad that some hipsters caught wind of it and think heavy story/reading means good game and push out its shovelware clones. While those pretentious works are written in purple prose, drowning players with needless readings; original Torment was written in beige prose, brief, concise, precise, and provides all that the player needs in both information, setting up story, atmosphere, and tension. A hallmark of good writing and it was clear a lot of time was spent on it.

Old RPG games are good, Arcanum is shit

>>13731165

>These games do lack modern quality of life improvements though

That's why they are better games.

>>13731188

Nice digits but I wouldn't call terrible menus and absurdly low framerate cap something good.

And something as simple as mousewheel camera zoom would make Fallout or Baldur's Gate 2 times better and more enjoyable to play.

>>13731192

TW3 is the most casual friendly RPG ever though

>>13730968

Arcanum could have been great, but it's broken as fuck.

Planescape Torment is apparently really good, but I've never been able to make it past the first board because it's boring as FUCK. People actually never stop fucking talking and get to the gameplay.

>>13731192

many times I tried to play planescape, but really I should rather say I tried to read it, it's not a game.

I'd rather read real books by sanderson, rothfuss, brent weeks, etc than spend hours sited in front of my PC reading an interactive book with a very poor display (compared to a quality printed book)

>>13730968

they are better as VNs because the gameplay is shit in both

I'm having a lot of fun playing Arcanum. The amount of ways to do quests are staggering that it has changed my perception of how RPGs should really be done. I can't go back to playing that JRPG Baldur's Gate anymore after Arcanum.

But Arcanum is very, very unpolished.

>>13731268

That's the point.

oh look, children are making threads

>>13731416

>>13731416

>

>

>I'm having a lot of fun playing Arcanum. The amount of ways to do quests are staggering

You're trying to sucker some idiot into playing this turd with your super-obvious lies, huh?

>>13731017

The real-time combat mechanics is shit, but what else?

>>13731468

Would you say, newfag memester, that the original X-Com game was also a turd? I had lots of fun playing Arcanum too. Although blindly walking around trying to find the Stillwater Giant was a pain in the ass, for example.

>>13730968

Your fucking face is a meme you cunt

>>13730968

>unfinished shitty game

>shitty game with walls of text at every corner and a tryhard edgy 2d4u bullshit

No, they were pretty shit alright. Don't fall for the memes.

I've played some of Arcanum, but I can honestly say that that feeling of nothingness you get at the start by trying to follow up on this guys instructions to find his batshit cult seems forced in a manner that seems really off-

Also, because how fucking easy it is to die at that point, it feels really easy to screw up.

Also, because of the fucking Patches and overhauls you have to install before playing it, the Hidef music, and a few others to note.

I've not played Planescape, but opposed to BG, it's not got that much in the way of class design.

I'll have to play Arcanum again, but I can;t say that using Necromancy to raise the spirits of the dead dissapointed me when they had fuck all to say at the crash site.

>>13730968

These games are dog shit Play Chrono Trigger instead if you want to see a good old RPG.

>>13731565

This would be funny if it weren't so depressing. Anyway, Arcanum is flawed but still an absolute gem. Certainly better than most of the crap that gets shoveled out these days. PS:T is a fantastic game for the most part, combat is pretty janky but story, world, characters, all of it is fucking amazing (I love the Planescape setting holy shit).

>>13731192

>trilogy

Wat. Unless you're counting Throne of Bhaal as an entry, which makes no sense (might as well call it a quartet, because of TotSC).

>>13731602

I loved PS:T's setting and characters, and in the case of Arcanum, I am a huge fan of the first 2 Fallouts, so I tried getting into Arcanum expecting something similar, I liked the setting, and much of the art style, but the game always felt uncomfortably wonky for me, however underneath that there's a pretty dope game.

Arcanum has a terrible start and aged like shit. Torment is pretty good from beginning to the end but if you've seent he movie memento you arlready know what to expect. It's basically memento meets lovecraft.

>>13731622

>It's basically memento meets lovecraft.

Do you know how I know you've never played PS:T

>>13731628

I think you don't know shit about lovecraft.

>>13731631

Lovecraft was big on the fear of the unknown and madness/the revulsion we have to shit we can't understand. I really am not seeing Lovecraft in PS:T. Memento is a maybe but it's not like it was the first thing ever to rely on "I have amnesia and I keep finding notes I wrote to myself" and so on. There's a lot more to PS:T than the amnesia (though the amnesia IS one of the major factors pushing the Nameless One on).

No, really, I'm trying to figure out how you get Lovecraft here. I'm sure there's got to be a better example than him.

>>13731648

Planescape was always a weird dreamcycle rip off.

>>13731639

that's not Annah, Morte and Vhailor

Not bad taste though.

>>13731514

>ive been called out on my trolling! better call him a newfag!

LOL

retard ;)

Planescape: Torment is a meme.

>>13731622

I actually liked Arcanum's start, I wanted to play with guns/tech and was too weak to actually kill the guards by the bridge. So I decided to play smart and set up some dynamite nearby before aggroing them and managed to kill them with it without harming myself.

It's biggest problem I would say is that any given combat encounter only works as intended in one of the two given combat modes, but it does make things interesting if you decide to use it as another combat option rather than as separate modes. Such as switching the game to real time mode to kill super slow rock golems from a range, or using turn based combat in fights with many weak foes so you can ping them down one by one without being overwhelmed. The turn based mode really would have benefited from separating movement and action points imo.

>>13731662

I actually never personally ran with him in the party, my brother went with him but I can't remember what his party comp was. I just love his concept/backstory and so on and my bro loved his ability to wreck shit

Why do you guys keep arguing over the best companion when it is clearly Xachariah?

>>13731670

I remember a similar start, except I simply lied my way through the town bridge, the selection of choices in hand are what's the main strength of Arcanum in my opinion.

>>13731682

Xachariah was blind and he was an archer, he died for good reason

>>13731664

>probably unironic emote

kys famalam

>>13731398

>crawls up his own ass describing how well-read he is

>grammar is a trainwreck

>couldn't even beat Planescape Torment

>>13731718

BG1 is complete crap, but BG2 is magnificent.

>>13731722

What's so shit about BG1?

>>13731726

It's just a very basic fantasy RPG while BG2 has a much mroe interesting setting, and better classes for you to play around in. Each class gets a unique quest chain for it too and the whole world felt more alie while BG1 is just go to tavern, kill 30 kobolds and let the shitty companion with the moonblade die.

Planescape torment reminds me a lot of Xenogears: fantastic story but very lacking gameplay.

>>13731722

BG2 is by no means a bad game, it's good but highly overrated, especially the shit combat and having magic items thrown at you willy nillybut that's personal preference, I'm not a huge fan of high level D&D

>>13731726

fairly generic and not nearly as polished

plus it was the first game with the infinity engine and bioware had never done rpgs before this point

>>13731731

Never made it out of Nashkel Mines, I see.

>>13731741

You already start off BG2 very highly levelled and as an accomplished adventurer who grows into a demi-god so the magic items are somewhat understandable. Edwin remarks on it numerous times that power and magic artifacts stick to you like flies to shit.

>>13731750

Whatever you might be implying you better stop here and now.

>>13731760

What was that noise?

no, the game play is awful. For all the criticism about turnbased JRPGs, these games are far worse. The tabletop concepts they borrow are meant for tabletop, where you are surrounded by friends and enjoying the playing pretend with each other. Joking, snacking, talking, being around friends. The same way people can enjoy utter shit like borderlands, you're with friends and everything that entails.

the CRPG is essentially the ultimate submission that you are a lonely nerd. You can't even attract other nerds to play pretend with, so you're stuck with pretend simulators.

>>13731764

** The sound of cut-scenes and weebs defending the lacking gameplay like >>13731772

**

>>13731776

nice spoilers, cuckchanner

Those kinds of RPGs just don't appeal to me too much.

Too d&d-like for my tastes. That said, they are objectively good and well-made from a design standpoint, just not my thing.

Arcanum is not a very good game. Really ugly in most of its graphics, unbalanced character creation, bizarrely uneven difficulty curve, and some amazingly unsatisfying quest "resolutions," including for the main storyline.

I'll say this for it though, it had a lot of content.

>>13731792

they aren't good, if they were you would be able to say why they were good

>>13731799

Niggah I'm just lazy and tired right now; I spent all night playing Fire Emblem (and goddamn is it a satisfyingly long game, not even a 1/3rd of the way through yet)

>>13731808

as I got older I realized there was too little going on in the FE games to keep my interest, which one are you playing?

>>13730968

It's obviously not for you if you need someone else to figure it out for you. Get a new hobby.

>>13731813

7/Blazing Sword/Fire Emblem (shit's got too many names)

Its my second time playing through it (well, technically 4th if you include EHM and HNM) Couldn't get through HHM the last time I tried it and then all my data disappeared. Its been over a year and a half since I last played it

I dunno how old you are anon, but you'd be surprised at the capability of the storytelling. It can tell a surprisingly mature, tragic epic of a story when it wants to.

>13731816

>The best part of BG1 is its expansion

FTFY

Durlag's Tower is one of the best dungeons in CRPGs

>>13731824

>>13731816

It didn't quote properly for some reason

>>13731820

that was my first one, played it when it came out in America and a few times after that too. I've played quite a few other ones like the NES games, two of the SNES games, and some of the newer ones. I'll be honest I don't think much of the story and it's very explicitly shonen-anime feeling.

If you're open to it, I suggest trying some other tactics RPGs like Wochenroder, Dragon Force 1 & 2, the Shining force series of games too.

>>13731837

Alright, so I'm not gonna delete the thread. Just wanted to confirm since OP is a faggot that sucks cocks

>>13731835

Thanks for the recommendations anon, I'll definitely keep 'em in mind. As for the story: ah well, we all have our tastes. I have a bit of a soft-spot for certain types of shounen-elements in stories. Call it nostalgiafaggotry created from my youth

>>13731210

>mousewheel camera zoom

That just doesn't work in 2.5D games with hand drawn environments. I know it was done in the first Sacred, but that game had proper 3D character models which displayed every piece of equipment worn, so being able to zoom in on the details was a nice addition. It doesn't do anything for games using flat sprites though.

I would say minor UI improvements. Like mouse scrolling for Fallout inventory. For all the hate Beth games get, imagine how annoyed you would be if scrolling through the pip-boy had to be done by repeatedly mouse-clicking a button, just like in the original. While we're at inventory, not having to hold down LMB to keep the context menu open would also be nice. Pressing ESC or something else to quit the conversation menu instead of having to mouse-click the red button. You can improve the interactivity in many ways that don't really alter the way the game looks or works.

Those games aren't old, faggot. Play the fucking Gold Box series of games already, how many fucking times do I have to say this?

>pst

>rpg

>implying

>>13731406

>>13731831

Fuck off.

Jesus christ mods are fucking cancer.

I wish mark and his cocksucers would just die.

>>13731876

Do you realize that changing resolutions effectively acts as zooming in and out?

>>13731948

Yes, and outside of optimal resolution range everything is either too tiny or too upscaled and blurred. High resolution backgrounds and sprites would sure do wonders for the game size and performance on toasters.

>>13731980

Ever heard of Brigador? God-tier pre-rendered graphics.

You can also use cheat console to zoom in and out in real time.

>>13732002

>look up system requirements

>at the very least 2.6 GHz / 4 GB memory + preferably some cheap graphic card

I mentioned toasters for a reason. Brigador is styled on old graphics in a dogshit way while being pretty demanding. It looks worse than many other games from the 90s or early 2000s.

>>13732018

>2.6 GHz / 4 GB

>demanding

Wait what?

>>13732028

It looks significantly worse than Fallouts or Arcanum which work fine at 1-1.2 GHz / 512 MB, with Arcanum also featuring optional real time combat. One of the thing that made the old isometric games great were the hand drawn environments. People will usually mention the storyline, RP and music, but the visual aspect is just as important.

>>13732050

It doesn't look worse.

Maybe look up videos or something.

It's also a real-time game running at high framerates with fully destructible environments.

What's the best way to play Torment today? Is the enhanced edition worth a pirate or better to have original with mods?

>>13732066

>What's the best way to play Torment today?

just pirate the gog version, they had working copies of all the IE games before the "enhanced" ones rolled out

My experience with those games so far is that they seem to have really interesting stuff buried deep under a sea of not very intuitive as well as just plain annoying stuff. Not only that but it seems really easy to create a character that will be completely useless as well as just fuck up something from the start, add to that the fact that most of those games start incredibly slow and you've got a situation where if you're completely new to the genre it might be better for you to just pick up DnD and find a good gamemaster to get you into tabletop RPG's before you even attempt those games.

>>13732066

The Enhanced Edition is great this time around. They didn't change plot related or added fanfic tier shit to it. Credit where credit is due.

>>13732075

probably based off steam statistics, but IIRC that number sounds roughly true for almost all games since they started tracking completion.

>>13731700

Reading fantasy doesn't make you well-read.

Turn based is outdated for reason,

take those rich settings apply to good rpg instead, watch people flock to it because it doesnt require blind luck and is actually engaging

doesnt kill flow by STOPPING THE ENTIRE GAME AND THE WORLD TO CLICKEDY CLACK

Arcanum is a glorious magical trainwreck and you should play it.

>>13732169

>Cmon, man. I stopped playing at Disc 2

what a gigantic poz cum drinker you are. disc 2 was the best part of xenogears because it skipped most of the shit-tier gook rpg gameplay.

>>13731726

Low level 2E D&D is pretty boring, especially the spell users. 8HP and 2 spells per day is no fun for anyone, and I'd pick a class that has high constitution and HP gains for BG1. Also, the party companions have very little interjections or chatter. It's a decent game, and I'd say it's worth at least one playthrough, but there's many reasons everyone replays BG2 instead of BG1.

>>13732211

>I like to play shitty rushed stories and boss rushes

Keep defending that gameplay, faggot.

>>13731816

Baldur's Gate 2 was one of the biggest inspirations for modern rpgs.

What I like about BG1 is that it's a low level adventure with comparatively low stakes. It's a simpler game and tells a simpler story that leads into Baldur's Gate 2 better than if you just start with the second game.

>>13730968

Of course it's a meme, back on cuckchan we pretended to like these meme games to trick redditors into signalling how much they loved these games too. We did it to prove that redditors just copied our taste in everything.

>>13730968

>RPG games

>Role Playing Game games

>>13732211

>heh, playing games what a faggot

>>>/polygon/

>>13731664

We have IDs here, retard. Fresh from cuckchan?

MODS WAS RIGHT. THIS STUPID THREAD SHOULD'VE BEEN DELETED

>>13732091

you can generally use steam stats to determine a solid average on these things. Anyone who points out it's not counting x, y or z should be dismissed - they are the equivalent to the people that scream "not all muslims!"

I assume for story decisions, writing and RPG mechanics, yes. Gameplay sucks total shit though, I can't enjoy isometric games for some reason and also do not like turn based combat, so its a double loss for me.

>>13738290

>I can't enjoy isometric games for some reason and also do not like turn based combat

Don't feel too bad, isometric RPGs were hated during their time by most people as well. Over the years I have no idea how the meme began that they were good ever came from.

>>13736033

Still don't know why it hasn't been

Its templateshit at its finest

It's a meme that it's a meme.

>Arcanum

I'm glad I grew out of the "steampunk" phase.

>>13738450

>isometric RPGs were hated during their time by most people as well.

lolwut?

Like 2/3rds of all the great RPGs are isometric or some other form of top-down. The only other viable contending viewpoint is Wizardry-style first person blobbers.

I can't fathom people hating the table-top aspect of RPG's. The whole genre is based on the tabletops, but with the game as the master.

Unless you're a pleb and prefer Morrowind and Skyrim over Daggerfall that is.

>>13738766

I'll let you in on a secret, "RPGs" were hated by the majority for a long time too. Only the biggest neckbeards and basement dwellers played RPGs.

>>13730968

They are overrated; the gameplay is painfully slow, the UI's are disgusting. Also they have bugs just enough to fuck up your playthrough. These game's mechanics had enough stolen DnD potential that the developers managed to fuck up. Basically, just old shit for "oldfag" "elitists". A reddit-tier meme.

Growing up with consoles I recently went back to try one of those older computer rpgs. Research told me NWN2 MoTB had a good balance of gameplay and story.

It made me go full autism, even did a solorun where I sacrificied all my allies and wrote up a build on the website. Haven't managed to find a game like this since. The other NWN campaigns aren't as fun.

Watching /v/ weebs trying to talk about crgps is always fun.

>>13739576

Yeah, if you install the greyface patch make sure you fix the music shit too. Make a folder called Sounds and copy the files in folder Music in it.

>>13731662

Nodrom is better because it won't betray you in the end.

>>13739576

>Arcanum is probably the best of all the isometric CRPGs from the late 90s/early2000s, in spite of it's flaws.

This is probably true if you're a chargen autist, otherwise even BG1 has way better graphics, balance, and quests/writing, to say nothing of BG2.

What's the average age here 16? The older games were much better than the crap that is out now - that's why people still play that. Shit, Darklands is 25 years old and I still play it more than any of that Skyrim/Dragon Age/whatever other gay crap is out there.

The problem now is most of you faggots couldn't handle actual video games that didn't lead you by the hand with a way-point marker and mini-map. Wait I actually have to think? I actually have to draw a map because the game doesn't provide one? WHAT? Imagine actually having to read a manual and play the game to figure out the mechanics, the world, how things work and not just have 4 buttons to press that do everything for you and require no strategy at all.

>>13741182

>BG1 has way better graphics

What in the goddamn

>balance

by virtue of 2e AD&D ruleset yeah

>and quests/writing

Stop it. Just fucking stop it. That's either the worst fucking lie I've seen in weeks or you've got absolute shit taste.

>>13741237

I mostly agree with you except one thing

>Imagine actually having to read a manual

The amount of bad advice and outright errors in many game manuals is staggering. (NWN's manual, as big as it was, was so full of fucking retarded mistakes and so on that it amazes me.)

>>13741243

I don't know why you should even bother, 90% of the posts here are going to be opinions or memes that someone read on here or on another site and just spout them without actually having spent a good amount of time playing the game, now only now, but in the context of the time that it came out.

>>13741267

Yeah that's just one example, and NWN is not really a game that you need the manual at all for if you've played a CRPG or D&D before - not to mention that it has a pretty through tutorial. But with games in the early 90s, especially before CD-ROMs took over, you had to read the manual not just for controls alone but for backstory, explanation of the world, explanation how certain mechanics work in the game. I still have my maps around somewhere that I used to make for Dungeon Master and Dark Heart of Uukrul.

ps. serious fuck that crossword puzzle at the end of uukrul

>>13730968

Torment is the best book you'll ever play.

Arcanum is amazing but flawed, if it had a bit more polish and balance I'd go as far as saying it's the best RPG of that era.

>>13741420

>Arcanum is amazing but flawed, if it had a bit more polish and balance I'd go as far as saying it's the best RPG of that era.

Or perhaps what I mean is a hypothetical version of Arcanum that fulfilled its full potential, it's hard to describe. The game is great as is but the little annoyances and 'I can see what they were going for here but it isn't quite perfect' moments add up.

>>13741436

I don't want to go full "Troika can do no wrong" but Arcanum's flaws had to have been due to something that was out of their power.

Well, except maybe the tech/magic balance. That was probably Troika.

>>13741420

>more polish and balance

>vanilla game is sometimes unfinishable due to arronax glitch

>can spam harm to get through almost half the game

>85% of the spells are COMPLETELY useless

>tech is the easiest and more powerful route to take over magic

>a tech melee character could easily tank through the game

Not balanced at all but was still an enjoyable game with a really easy to use mission editor what else could you ask for?

Torment is a good book

Arcanum is a meme

>>13730968

If you're playing Arcanum, install these fixes to make it playable: http://terra-arcanum.com/drog/guide.html

I'm warning you though, Arcanum's combat is rather easily broken. Going full mage will easily do the trick. Going full tech also has its share of problems. Anyhow, Arcanum isn't praised for its amazing combat. It's praised for its storyline, worldbuilding, and quests. General verdict is that it's well worth playing once you have the patches installed, but it's a bit of a cakewalk.

>>13731192

I bet you they finished the game on youtube. That's what happens when you make a game that is mostly praised for its cinematic storytelling, uses combat as the primary mechanism for gameplay, and then fails to have good and fun combat. People just watch the cinematics on the usual medium for cinema: video.

>>13731668

Mistborn series wasn't very good. He should have made a trilogy out of the first book instead of rushing through that plot and the rest was pretty much downhill. I know he had a concept with the trilogy that he wanted to execute, but fleshing out the first book would've been worth more than his trilogy.

>>13741182

> BG1 has way better graphics, balance, and quests/writing, to say nothing of BG2.

You're retarded since bgs are shit

>>13741450

It's the usual Troika (and later Obsidian) story of being far too ambitious. I mean if they weren't their games wouldn't be half as good but Troika never understood that you have to limit your scope.

>>13741474

>tech is the easiest and more powerful route to take over magic

>85% of the spells are COMPLETELY useless

Clearly that's intentional to remind you that magic is inferior really though it's pretty silly, I don't want my SP games to be perfectly balanced but it shouldn't be so broken that significant parts of the game and arguably even entire playstyles are ruled out.

>>13741580

You can summon several monsters at once to tank in your place, so tanking yourself as a mage is unnecessary. Add Temporal College spells like Haste, Stasis or Tempus Fugit and no tech character can compare.

>>13741580

Playing the game vanilla you can be a really strong magic user if you focus on the top 3-4 schools of magic and makes the game fairly easy. The only reason it's easier to play tech is because of the abundance of schematics and completely fucking OPed items (Pyrotechnic Axe I'm looking at you!!). Now if you want to talk about exploits, once you get Reflection Shield you can pretty much max out your stats by making spells permanent.

>>13741625

And if you have to tank yourself, just cast Body of Air on yourself.

>>13741659

>>13741625

I've never tried a run with intentionally gaming the mechanics, what's the upper cap on what you can do a magicfag? Are we talking Morrowind-tier broken?

>>13741665

You have no idea.

http://arcanum.wikia.com/wiki/Bugs_and_Glitches#Meta_Magick_College

>>13741674

Oh dear. I actively try to avoid reading up on things like this for at least my first playthrough of a game.

>>13741697

Well you should, It's gonna save you a few retries and broken builds.

>>13741700

I don't mind a retry or dodgy build (and frankly if you're used to RPGs you'll generally be able to produce a half-way functioning build no matter what you try), I just don't have great self control about not abusing broken mechanics.

>>13741562

Just to be clear, going full tech is much less crazy that going full mage (with higher magical aptitude, your spells become stupidly powerful). You actually have to make a special tech twink build to obliterate shit that way. You can also go hybrid, but that tends to half-ass your bonuses. Then again if you actually max out in a specific field the game gets fairly dumb anyhow.

Oh, also, it's important to note that your starting stats not only modify your starting stats, but also your stat cap (which is 20 by default). Race/gender/background all affect your starting stats, but only race will let you exceed a stat cap of 20. In addition, reaching the cap of 20 will typically offer special bonuses. Strength's bonus is doubled at 20 str and you get a fuckhuge speed bonus if you get 20 dex. That means that having any build that starts with a strength penalty will make you a much weaker melee character, for instance., which is part of the problem with playing women, since they get a -1 to strength and a +1 to constitution (not charisma or beauty).

Incidentally the beauty stat is overrated and rarely matters. The largest effect you'll notice in the beauty stat's workings is that it can adjust the rates merchants give you (much like a haggle skill), but exploiting the trading economy isn't necessary when you can just farm more loot and get rich anyway. The charisma stat on the other hand is rather valuable since it determines the amount of party members you can have and you need 20 cha if you want to keep certain characters with diametrically opposed philosophies in your party without killing each other.

>>13741580

Pretty much any damage spell will obliterate shit with extreme magical aptitude.

Sense Hidden is worthless. Conjure Spirit is rarely useful (unless you're on an evil playthrough, in which case killing important NPCs and interrogating their dead souls can be an expedient solution to quests). Other spells typically have their uses.

>>13741717

>Although I find that more fun than actually playing the game

Then all is well anon, and those with less autism/autism focussed in other places can just read up on what you've been doing.

>>13741721

>Conjure Spirit is rarely useful (unless you're on an evil playthrough, in which case killing important NPCs and interrogating their dead souls can be an expedient solution to quests).

This should be a feature of every game really, at least ones where it fits into the fluff (so any RPG with necromancy).

>>13741721

Forgot to mention this, but a lot of magical spells are lousy and worthless if you have low magical aptitude and downright unusable if you have tech aptitude, and yet are amazing with high MA. When it comes to tech aptitude most objects simply give a reduced effect with low TA instead of failing outright. If you're on the extreme end though, expect shit from the other side not to work on you.

Hybrid builds are typically the redheaded stepchildren of arcanum builds, since they generally suck at everything, but they can be done.

>>13741746

Yeah, although in Arcanum's case it's pretty clear that they really did have great ambitions and ultimately released an unpolished, buggy game. There are a lot of cases where you can be sure that the design intent went much further than what the actual game left you with. Conjure Spirit is one of those spells that almost never does anything for you, unless you're going around killing quest NPCs.

That's also the problem with the Sense Hidden spell, since there are no enemies who use invis and the few traps that exist in Arcanum have low DCs anyway. I'm sure they meant to add that content in, but there's a lot of unfinished work in Arcanum. The stuff they did deliver though is worth checking out.

>>13732107

Turn based isn't outdated, it was never outdated. It just isn't flashy and ADHD enough to bring in sportsball-watching, CoD worshipping normalfag shekels.Reminder that Skyrim, the most successful """RPG""" of all time was targeted at casual arena shooter console dudebros. Turn based games were always about thought(U+200B was here) and strategy over twitchy reactivity, the reason they died is solely the problem of the player base and not the system.

BG2, Fallout 2, Dragon: Age Origins are the only games you need to play from that era.

>>13742237

You left out Temple of Elemental Evil.

>>13742237

BG2 was good for only 1 playthrough. It never had any consequence for any choice that you make and if any, it's barely impactful. It may have nice graphics in comparison to any other isometric crpg, but that's pretty much it for BG2.

D:AO OTOH, was too simplified, and wants the LoTR audience. Your choices matter even less in this game.

Arcanum, doesn't have the fancy graphics, but you certainly can play however you like. You make your own class in Arcanum, and offers lots of ways to do quests. For example, in first town you're faced with thugs who block the bridge, and you're given more than 3 ways to get out of town:

>fight the thugs

>bribe the thugs

>do their quest

>talk to and convince them to let you through

>steal the bridge gate key from the boss

>>13742237

>Dragon Age: Origins

>Same era as BG2 and Fallout 2

At best this is bait.

>>13741721

IIRC most/all of the mage buff spells work 100% even as a tech character.

>>13742331

DAO is mediocre but playable. Very underwhelming though and the support for the modding community that Bioware promised simply never materialized, probably because EA wanted to milk the DLC train and was worried about competition from superior mods. Instead Bioware just released the mod tools and called it a day. Plus the mod tools weren't very newbie-friendly, which was part of what hindered the mod community. Ultimately DAO feels rough and unfinished. Nature of the Beast and Circle of Magi are two questlines where it's clear the alternative outcome should've been much better developed than it actually was.

There's a mod for DAO that's worth checking out though. A user campaign by the name of Thirst: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/3496/

>>13742527

If you're 100% tech I'm pretty sure you're immune to magic, so no, but short of that you should be able to self-buff, yes. Buffs don't scale with magical aptitude, but the amount of buffs you can sustain depends on your int score and your fatigue (constitution in particular is key to maintaining high fatigue recovery so you don't need to worry about running out, but potions/herbology can work too). Int is the stat you tend to need most if you are going full tech anyway though. And if you reach 20 int you also get a free +10% to all your skills.

>>13742599

Also originally you were supposed to be able to make your own dwarf noble king in the dwarf questline. They cut that too.

Honestly Dragon Age feels a bit half-assed. Like they used the grey warden thing as an excuse to make you an adventurer who goes around doing shit, except the story as a grey warden means you're under pressure to do shit that matters quickly instead of wasting time with stupid sidequests in the countryside. I think in a way Bioware was a bit surprised at how much players cared about the grey warden thing, even though the whole central narrative of the story is the player being one, but I guess that's half-assed design for you.

>>13742599

>>13742695

My point was, modded or not, it is objectively not of the same era as BG2 and FO2: it came out fucking nine years after BG2 (itself really at the tale end of that era) and 11 years after Fallout 2. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the games in question should know that.

Setting that aside the writing (plot, characters and world) of DA:O are your standard forgettable Bioware shit and the whole origins stuff was a fucking marketing gimmick that was frankly irrelevant after the opening sequence. The gameplay is alright but I never found it as amazing as some seemed to.

>There's a mod for DAO that's worth checking out though. A user campaign by the name of Thirst: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/3496/

I actually didn't know there was even a single notable content-adding mod for DA:O though, I'll have a look at it some time. Any other notable mods?

>>13742750

>My point was, modded or not, it is objectively not of the same era as BG2 and FO2: it came out fucking nine years after BG2 (itself really at the tale end of that era) and 11 years after Fallout 2. Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the games in question should know that.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Literally the first thing I said is that DAO is mediocre. A number of mods try to make it less mediocre, and I'm not sure how good all of them are.

>Setting that aside the writing (plot, characters and world) of DA:O are your standard forgettable Bioware shit and the whole origins stuff was a fucking marketing gimmick that was frankly irrelevant after the opening sequence. The gameplay is alright but I never found it as amazing as some seemed to.

They originally clearly had greater intentions to make it matter then scaled down their efforts and settled for lip service for the most part because they were worried about putting in work that would only affect a single playthrough. That sort of tepid attitude is basically DAO's design in a nutshell, although I think EA shares part of the blame. Also, that stuff about origins reminds me, originally the dalish elf protagonist was going to be from the same clan as the main questline. If you ask your friend in the origin some questions, he'll mention a master varathorn, a holdover from earlier design.

>The gameplay is alright but I never found it as amazing as some seemed to.

Gameplay is underwhelming. It's fucking World of Warcraft shit, except the martial classes in DAO are extra bland and shitty while mages get all the shiny toys. BioWare's excuse was something about how mages are supposed to be awesome, rather than it being shit design. Also traps and poison-making are broken, and potions make a mockery of the health and mana system by letting you just keep healing up whenever you please. The patches only worsened things. The dex to damage implementation in an early patch led to stupid dex-maximizing builds (normally you wouldn't really do this because you do no damage this way) and in 1.04 they wrecked the grease fire spell combination to do joke damage (like 2 damage every 2 seconds instead of 30 damage every 2 seconds) in what I am certain was an indirect and intentional gimping of the hitherto memorable tower of ishal encounter where you get nailed by a giant grease fire which will roast you alive if you don't get the fuck out.

>I actually didn't know there was even a single notable content-adding mod for DA:O though, I'll have a look at it some time. Any other notable mods?

For the main campaign, here are the main mods to fix the bugged pile that is DAO:

Combat Fixpack: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1601/

Two Specializations Sten: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/486/ (Sten still gets no racial stat bonuses, though)

Giant Fucking Quest & Item Fixpack: https://qwinnmods.com/download/qwinns-ultimate-dragon-age-origins-fixpack-v3-3/

Advanced Tactics: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/181/

Detailed Tooltips: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/248/

But if you're talking about stand-alone quests, I don't really know. Neverwinter Nights has some lists of good stand-alone campaigns, but DAO doesn't. Thirst is the only decent campaign I can think of.

>>13742981

>I'm not disagreeing with you. Literally the first thing I said is that DAO is mediocre. A number of mods try to make it less mediocre, and I'm not sure how good all of them are.

I wasn't saying you didn't anon. This anon >>13742237 is the one who said they were of the same era.

>They originally clearly had greater intentions to make it matter then scaled down their efforts and settled for lip service for the most part because they were worried about putting in work that would only affect a single playthrough.

Ah, the traditional 'but only 30% of players bother to even finish the game once, extra content is wasted dev time' nonsense.

>That sort of tepid attitude is basically DAO's design in a nutshell, although I think EA shares part of the blame. Also, that stuff about origins reminds me, originally the dalish elf protagonist was going to be from the same clan as the main questline. If you ask your friend in the origin some questions, he'll mention a master varathorn, a holdover from earlier design.

Is there a list somewhere of all the cut content? It'd be an interesting thing to read through if nothing else.

>Gameplay is underwhelming. It's fucking World of Warcraft shit, except the martial classes in DAO are extra bland and shitty while mages get all the shiny toys. BioWare's excuse was something about how mages are supposed to be awesome, rather than it being shit design. Also traps and poison-making are broken, and potions make a mockery of the health and mana system by letting you just keep healing up whenever you please. The patches only worsened things. The dex to damage implementation in an early patch led to stupid dex-maximizing builds (normally you wouldn't really do this because you do no damage this way) and in 1.04 they wrecked the grease fire spell combination to do joke damage (like 2 damage every 2 seconds instead of 30 damage every 2 seconds) in what I am certain was an indirect and intentional gimping of the hitherto memorable tower of ishal encounter where you get nailed by a giant grease fire which will roast you alive if you don't get the fuck out.

I have no idea if I played patched or unpatched but I do remember the mages being a bit broken. Didn't they also have a habit of dropping AoE spells on your other party members if you didn't micromanage them?

>For the main campaign, here are the main mods to fix the bugged pile that is DAO:

Will bookmark, many thanks. I want to give the game another shot in as good a light as possible.

I'm just going to leave this here

>>13743010

>Ah, the traditional 'but only 30% of players bother to even finish the game once, extra content is wasted dev time' nonsense.

Actually they were expecting players to finish a single playthrough (and got very surprised at the statistics their game logged), but some completionist idiot designers decided it would be unfair if content was locked to certain routes and others wouldn't get to experience it, and yes they said that it is wasted dev time to create circumstantial content like that. IIRC there was also a cut quest from Ostagar where you are supposed to rescue the human noble's brother, and they removed it because they were worried it wouldn't make enough sense if you weren't a human noble. After the battle he just vanishes and you're just the last of your house, until the epilogue comes around.

>Is there a list somewhere of all the cut content? It'd be an interesting thing to read through if nothing else.

Not that I know of. Just a lot of references here and there. I know Jowan was originally meant to be a recruitable companion. When the Redcliff questline asks you to decide Jowan's fate, you were originally supposed to be able to invoke the rite of conscription on him. That reminds me, you were supposed to have a joining ritual for your party members. That was cut out too. I believe there was supposed to be a lyrium addiction mechanic for mages and a corruption mechanic for party members earlier in the design of the game.

They also completely cut the Human Commoner origin (which started in Redcliff) because they were worried it seemed too generic or something and there was an Avvar origin that they designed and wanted but never created to begin with.

>I have no idea if I played patched or unpatched but I do remember the mages being a bit broken. Didn't they also have a habit of dropping AoE spells on your other party members if you didn't micromanage them?

I believe so, but I almost never used tactics. I prefer to manually control my entire party all game long, so I blank out their tactics. Grease Fire is a spell combo though so you generally have to intentionally set it up to happen. I think it was just a nerf because a lot of people got their asses kicked in that fight in the tower of ishal, threw their hands up, and cried that the game was too hard. It was also one of the few fights where Bioware did some serious encounter design and decided to show off their combat system. They used the Tower of Ishal levels (and Redcliff) as their E3 demos, which is why those levels are less lazy than deep roads or fade or shit.

Oh, and the two guards you get in the Tower of Ishal were originally optional (and if you took them with you, they'd die at the end). I think they just made that mandatory too.

>Will bookmark, many thanks. I want to give the game another shot in as good a light as possible.

There's also the Dragon Age Redesigned mod which tries to improve DAO's aesthetics. Haven't tried it out myself (and look at the images before implementing it) but it appears to make DAO look less shit. https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/686/ Slight chance it might be incompatible with that fuckhuge fixpack I mentioned above, but I think this is a pure aesthetic mod which means it should be perfectly compatible.

Oh, by the way, here was a crew redoing the starting level of Baldur's Gate II in the DAO engine: https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/1836/

They were originally going to do the whole game, then gave up, but at least you got a starting level.

>>13741243

Most of this is at least a matter of taste, but are you kidding me, trying to say Arcanum's quests aren't shit? How about we look at the Siamese Twins quest for an example?

>find clues about why there are so many half-ogres guarding gnomes

>turns out gnomes are running a giant rape/murder factory to make slaves out of these guys

>the old factory is already gone so you can't do shit about that

>the new factory never appears in game so you can't do shit about that either

>good thing you know a newspaper publisher so you can at least get the word out - oh no you can't, if you tell him then these guys just assassinate him and taunt you about it because they're omnipotent and omniscient apparently

>literally no resolution ever beyond "lol you wanted to fix this thing you spent a billion clicks investigating because Arcanum's movement sucks so bad? Tough"

>at least you can be a hero by killing the gnomes involved though right? only if you don't mind shifting straight to evil because THEY'RE ALL GOOD ALIGNED

Name me a quest from Baldur's Gate, or even from any other remotely respected game, that was so unbelievably half-assed.

>>13744097

That whole quest is a reference to X-Files. Things almost never get resolved in that show and there's nothing they can do to stop it, because more powerful men are in control. Of all the quests, you picked the one that was intended to end at a point where it makes you angry.

>>13743426

That's an interesting read anon, where did you find all of this out? Just hanging around mod communities?

It's a real shame to think about what DA:O could have been.

>>13744097

That was fully intentional. The whole point of that quest is that you uncover a disturbing conspiracy and are left angry and powerless to actually do anything about it. If they did let you resolve that, they'd probably have to write another campaign.

>>13747073

I used to lurk BioWare boards and I followed some of DAO's development around a year before release so I still read all kinds of comments and promises from the devs about what the game was supposed to have (both before and after launch) and how it was supposed to play. I can also tell you that it was originally fully intentional design that strength be the only attribute to affect weapon damage regarldess of the weapon. The dex to damage patch implemented later pretended that this was originally intended but bioware devs' forum comments back in the day said something completely different.

RPG Codex also drove David Gaider from their forums back in the day by making fun of the bombastic promises BioWare was making about DAO. They still joke about "Enslave nations with necromancy!" (which was a promise/tagline about what you could do in DAO way early in development) which was obviously never going to happen in any reasonable sense. I think they also made fun of the two linguistics experts BioWare hired to make the elven language as a testament to the worldbuilding (except DAO's elven language basically consists of making up elven sounding words and associating them with english meanings).

The truth is that DAO was originally a very uncertain design by lots of people who didn't quite know what they were making because they were practically throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks and scrapping what didn't for years and years and years. They created all these ideas and plots and questlines and shit and then they didn't know how to tie it all together. The Grey Warden thing was the excuse plot for you to be a special person traipsing the countryside and doing all kinds of shit except the Grey Warden narrative was one that said you were a bit too important and under pressure to get shit done fast, and therefore didn't support wasting your time on silly shit. The only real level to acknowledge your importance as a Grey Warden was Ostagar (also used in the E3 demos) and later on you're basically generic adventurer all over again on an epic quest because that was what those levels were originally designed for. Ostagar was probably one of the last levels built into the game, because it springboards you into the rest of the campaign. If they redesigned the rest of the game after Ostagar, it would've probably been a better game, but they settled for lip service mostly. On the cutting room floor a lot of stuff got thrown out of the game because ultimately they were focused on releasing a game and wanted to stop wasting dev time which meant a lot of the cooler ideas went fully wasted and the result was a fairly mediocre romp.

Oh, and before I forget, there was also EA meddling back in Dragon Age's release. At the time EA was trying to screw the second hand market so they had a policy they called Project Ten Dollar where you get a free $10 DLC with the game so that anyone who bought the game used would lose out on valuable content. This is how you got shit like Javik in ME2 and Shale in DAO. Originally Shale was supposed to be located in Redcliff, not Honnleath. Bioware made the bullshit excuse of how they had to cut shale and only had budget to finish it when EA funded them to delay the release a bit for consoles, but in reality Shale's content in Redcliff was pretty much fleshed out already and they had to scrap it out and create a whole new level for Shale to get recruited from. Vid related: It's Shale's Redcliff content. DAO infamously also had in-game salesmen trying to convince people to buy to DLC, which is such a fucking EA move. Plus all the DLC was cheap and underwhelming as hell. That reminds me, all the promo DLC for retailers also seems like an EA move, and a lot of those items ended up fucking itemization and game balance early on.

It's also probable that EA pushed BioWare to casualize the game further which is why we see strange consolidations like the Nature of the Beast questline handing you the ideal solution on a silver platter instead of at least letting you discover that killing the werewolves might not be the best idea (then again BioWare also didn't let you fail the Mage Origin and get yourself possessed and that was intentional, what a waste), and why the Intimidate and Persuasion skills were merged into Coercion for no apparent reason. There was definitely a marked increase in DAO's edginess after the EA acquisition. The whole marketing changed and started showing off blood spatters and shit instead of looking like an oldschool RPG. DA2 was practically a natural sequel in that regard. They tried to ramp up the edginess and make enemies explode into violent gore, and it was very much rushed out the door thanks to EA pressuring BioWare to release a major product every year so that the beancounters could measure the profitability of every studio on a year-to-year basis. They learned their lesson after DA2 tanked so horribly it tainted the BioWare brand so now BioWare can have multi-year development again.

Some of the failure though was definitely BioWare's own. The whole subplot with the Loghain was mostly because BioWare didn't know how to use the darkspawn as a major antagonist so they doubled up on Loghain for a second antagonist to keep the plot moving when they should've kept the focus more on the giant fucking problem that is darkspawn ruining the land, but they didn't really know how to do that. Honestly Loghain's character in DAO made precious little sense as an antagonist. That reminds me, though, originally Cailan was supposed to be discovered to have been cheating on Anora and considering divorcing her to marry Empress Celene of Orlais because he liked her (which would basically sell out his entire country) and this was to be the trigger of Loghain's betrayal, but they cut that out for some daft reason. (Then they brought back in a reference or two to that during the Return to Ostagar DLC.) So instead Loghain seems to have let Cailan die for shits and giggles so he could destabilize Ferelden and be a power-hungry tyrant even though Cailan already seemed to defer to Loghain considerably. Alistair was also originally written as more of an Aragorn type, an experienced Grey Warden who is supposed to be there to help you out, but they rewrote that because no one liked the original Alistair because like any stupid writer, when you want to write an Aragorn archetype, you make him into an annoying know-it-all stoic as fuck type who condescends and bosses you around to show off his own keen superior insight. Alistair's stature in DAO's concept art is considerably different, but they couldn't make it work because BioWare was always fail at nuance. Vid related, it's all the concept art that was included in the collector's edition, and yes BioWare released it as a shitty video clip with a music track instead of actual pics. At 2:49 you see original Alistair acting decidedly not like a little bitch.

The Harrowmont vs Bhelen questline in Orzammar is also an instance of bad writing. BioWare wanted a morally gray conflict but since they only do black and white they basically slapped both on the guys and called it a day. So Harrowmont is the honorable dwarf who is true to his word and respects the dwarven ways while Bhelen is a power-hungry tyrant who runs roughshod over everything but Harrowmont will ultimately be a useless douche who doesn't do shit as Orzammar declines while Bhelen will become dictator and make a push to restore the dwarven empire. Basically Harrowmont is the good guy who turns out to be a worthless asshole and Bhelen is the bad guy tyrant who fixes shit. See, if you squint hard enough, that's a morally gray decision, but in reality it's just a really shitty decision where the good option results in evil and the evil option results in good and the curveball doesn't make it any more gray. A lot of BioWare morally "gray" choices thrive on this kind of stupidity while BioWare praises themselves for their mastery of morally gray writing where you are forced to pick between two unpleasant and dumb choices without a sane option. Every so often BioWare pussies out and provides an ideal option, which would be fine if they made you work for it, but they just hand it on a silver platter and immediately invalidate any reason to do anything else. They do that in the Circle of Magi (where you just rescue the good mages without having to fight the templars) and the Nature of the Beast (where you save the werewolves even as you side with the dalish). Both of those are also casualties of unfinished content though, since BioWare clearly failed to include a proper werewolf questline in the forest or a proper "side with the mages" route in the circle of magi. They only had time to do one side of the questline and did a very half-assed implementation of the other. Speaking of lazy ideal choices though, originally in the Redcliff storyline if you went to the Circle of Magi to save Connor, Connor was supposed to have gotten possessed again while you left him unattended and everything would be ruined when you return, but they cut that out because they pussied out of having consequences and making a situation where there was no ideal solution. Dragon Age was intended to be a dark fantasy game, but the writers weren't really capable of it.

Bump.

Oh, here's some cut content with Oghren. Apparently there was supposed to be a lot more content regarding Oghren in the dwarf questline that was cut out for some reason. This cutscene in particular is a good example of content which by rights really should have stayed in the game, since it explains why Oghren up and leaves with you (by extension forfeiting his house and caste), while in the final game no rationale is provided and he just tags along inexplicably.

There's a mod here that tries to restore that content, but it might be incompatible with Qwinn's giant fixpack above, since that mod damn near overrides and touches every questline. https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4394/

Speaking of cut Dwarf content, there's also an abandoned female dwarf noble plotline or whatever. If the female dwarf noble pursues a romance with Gorim, Gorim will tell her to look for him at Denerim later when she is exiled. Of course when the player arrives, Gorim has already married and the MC is told off and you're left with him playing merchant, same as always. It's very apparent that there was more content planned for that route (and that most likely Gorim was originally intended to be recruitable to Dwarf Nobles in an earlier design) but that it got scrapped and they didn't know what to do with it so Gorim just gives you lip service and that's all. Just in case you were wondering about that romantic subplot from the dwarf noble origin, vid related covers it. This is what's left of it in the game. It's extremely obvious that there was supposed to be a continuation to this line of content, but upon reaching him in Denerim it's completely shafted. Safe to say there was likely a lot more planned for Gorim originally, but with Steve Blum voicing both Oghren and Gorim I suspect that Gorim was never fleshed out as a companion.

>>13753994

>Trash like Plane Scape: Torment.

diaf tbh

>>13730968

Depends on where you are at. If you don't feel like looking up key bindings and dedicating some mental power, then no, don't play them. Go play a VITA VN or something. They are good games. They don't operate using the same standardized systems that we have now. .. because they didn't exist. You will have to work a little bit. If you don't want to, don't play anything pre-2007 or so. Just don't bitch about them being bad games. They aren't. They are just from a more raw and unrefined time.

>>13752124

>Oh, and before I forget, there was also EA meddling back in Dragon Age's release. At the time EA was trying to screw the second hand market so they had a policy they called Project Ten Dollar where you get a free $10 DLC with the game so that anyone who bought the game used would lose out on valuable content. This is how you got shit like Javik in ME2 and Shale in DAO. Originally Shale was supposed to be located in Redcliff, not Honnleath. Bioware made the bullshit excuse of how they had to cut shale and only had budget to finish it when EA funded them to delay the release a bit for consoles, but in reality Shale's content in Redcliff was pretty much fleshed out already and they had to scrap it out and create a whole new level for Shale to get recruited from. Vid related: It's Shale's Redcliff content. DAO infamously also had in-game salesmen trying to convince people to buy to DLC, which is such a fucking EA move. Plus all the DLC was cheap and underwhelming as hell. That reminds me, all the promo DLC for retailers also seems like an EA move, and a lot of those items ended up fucking itemization and game balance early on.

Typical fucking EA.

>>13731743

He's terrible but I love him anyway. Easily my favorite character/companion in the game.

>>13739657

>Nodrom

Shit, I can't spell backwards. Nordom.

Talk about Arcanum, in my opinion one of it's biggest flaws is the way experience and companions are handled.

The largest part of combat experience is assigned based on damage dealt. Party members don't track experience though, they just level up when you do. That means that lower-level party members will always be lower level, even if you hit the cap, and less combat oriented main characters (or anyone with strong party members) will lose a LOT of experience. Charisma/persuasion characters often won't be able to hit cap at all without grinding.

If party members gained exp the same way player characters did, or else if any friendly damage contributed to your exp total it would be fine, both together really fucks things up. It's also annoying that you need to recruit people exactly at their level or else they fall behind permanently (you generally can't recruit someone higher level than you)

>>13752124

>>13747042

>it's shit ironically so Arcanum is a good game

Okay then.

>>13755396

Combat experience overflows since the official 1.0.7.4 patch, so at least if you hit the cap, party members will still continue to level until they hit their own cap. Won't help while you're leveling, but in Arcanum hitting the level cap is very easy unless you have a cap raising patch.

>>13756202

It's not "ironically shit" you stupid fuck. The whole point is that the quest leaves you having uncovered a great big conspiracy that pisses you off but you can't do anything about because the conspiracy is a step ahead of you and destroyed evidence and witnesses. You want to act but you can't. The only thing that seems to remain for your character is ranting at people about the great conspiracy hoping they will believe you but no one will believe a conspiracy nutter on the street. The entire punchline to it all is that you have become one of those raving conspiracy nutters, except your conspiracy is totally real and you have to let people know about it or do something, man.

Maybe in your modern "my hero solves every problem" heroic fantasy that feels like fail design to you, but I'm pretty sure you missed the point of the quest and are just butthurt you can't resolve it in the end.

>>13758143

It's not easy at all if you rely 90% on companions to do damage. Something I've done a couple times is run 6-7 companions with several bow users on real-time and everything dies before it shoes up on screen. End level completing every quest would be under 40 unless you grind random encounters (also further compounded with the Teleport spell skipping most chances at encounters)

>>13758143

>The only thing that seems to remain for your character is ranting at people about the great conspiracy hoping they will believe you but no one will believe a conspiracy nutter on the street.

>that really is the only thing that remains because the devs either didn't put in obvious options to try and deal with the conspiracy (like talking to your BFF, super rich and connected and conspiracy-aware Gilbert Bates) or were just straight up retarded (like making all the gnomes involved good-aligned so you can't kill them)

>this is good game design, it's just 2deep4me

>>13758657

I never said anything about summons. I said companions, NPCs, as with a character with 20cha and grandmaster persuasion

>>13758718

No, you just never bothered to learn to use them and presumably because of muh cuck can't deal damage worth a shit approach to PC building. Taking Sogg aka the pansy PC safety net NPC and eventually having a top shelf familiar or some bots will take care of most of the encounters with minimal involvement required even if you wasted your points on dumb shit like 20 CHA.

There are also several near capped companions out there you can get fairly early to midgame if you know what you're doing.

>>13758770

20cha gives you your 5th companion, expert persuasion is your 6th, and dog is your 7th. 18cha/master persuasion is also necessary to have cross-alignment party members.

There are two reasons to want to do this. First, it's the easiest way to play the game. The NPCs literally kill everything for you with bows and you can leave combat on Real Time and never actually even click on an enemy that isn't some kind of boss. Second, more NPC companions means more story/quests/flavor, not to mention persuasion/charisma opens up extra dialog outside of your party, so it's clearly the best way to play as an RPG.

The problem is that any damage done by these NPCs does not count towards your exp total. Since you never even get the CHANCE to do damage you'll be missing out on over 50% of the games total exp. Even if you do every single quest (which is the point of the build) there is simply no way you will reach level 50 without grinding.

It's not a question about how difficult the game is, just about NPCs stealing your levels which you primarily need in order to unlock content.

>>13758865

>more NPC companions means more story/quests/flavor

Yeah, good luck with that in this game. Hell, good luck with anyone other than Vergil, Magnus and maybe the she-elf having more then two things to say the whole game. Also throwing fireballs and ogre mercs on everything is easy, going grandmaster melee or throwing is easy - what you're going on is intentionally gimmicky and I don't see how you further gimping yourself is the game's fault.

>>13758956

Virgil, Magnus, Loghaire and Raven are all pretty talkative, you probably want to take Arronax too, so that's 5. I'm not sure which others have any story to them but I think Z'an Al'urin, Payne, Geoffry and Gar might.

>>13759050

> I'm not sure which others

You forgot about Torian'Kel.

>>13744097

Perhaps I might see things from your perspective had I played it yet but that sounds pretty cool that they went to all that trouble to layer it in and still leave you hanging and frustrate your efforts, it's just like real life where you find out the horrifying connections between business and government and you're left enraged but totally outside of it so you're impotent to change the situation outside of causing a huge legal upset that everyone will attribute directly to you. It makes sense that a world would have corruption threaded through it so deeply that you bring a larger hammer down on yourself in trying to fix it than upon the heads of those responsible.

RPGs need more stuff that you have to just suck up and live with, having everything in a solvable state just means the NPCs in a given world are bone-idle lazy cunts who won't lift a finger for themselves and have you do it. What if there's bigger problems than you can solve? Makes the world sound meatier to me.

>>13738648

achievement is a fucking mistake and only serve as datamining for publisher to casualize their games even more

>>13755436

No, Xenosaga is a prequel, not a sequel. It doesn't change the names and directly leads to gears.