RPGWatch Feature - Blade of Destiny HD Review

… uh, no, sorry. Just because it may work in extremes does not say anything about how it works in the details. Anyway, are you really sure you know enough about Crafty students, the conditions of their decisions, and all their subsequent steps and actions to fully and correctly judge them? I'm not. I learned enough to never ever preorder from them again, hehe. But if they make good on their promise to fix this release and if they do better in future projects, I perceive no "evil" that would preclude me from ever buying from them again.

Well said sir, well said.
 
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@TheSHEEP
Will you stop that? Please? :'(

Anyway, are you really sure you know enough about Crafty students, the conditions of their decisions, and all their subsequent steps and actions to fully and correctly judge them?
Of course. What is there to know? I somehow doubt a syndicate is behind them, putting pistols on their heads, forcing them to release unfinished products. If I'm wrong, I take everything back.
But I am absolutely certain that releasing in this state was a decision they either made or did not object enough. It's not like this is especially hard to do for a developer, if they really value their products and reputation. Again, as the Chaos Chronicles dev did show. To me, it is seems perfectly clear that all they valued is job safety and money. And quality somewhere after that. Clearly the wrong order. It's not like jobs in development are incredibly hard to come by. If you do something just for money, you should not develop games. Those games either become soulless (take Fifa 2XXX) or broken (take this one).

Also, the only excuse I read from them was something like "A commit just before the release screwed things up". Yeah, right, because that is totally how source control works. That must have been one hell of a commit to break so much. :S

But if they make good on their promise to fix this release and if they do better in future projects, I perceive no "evil" that would preclude me from ever buying from them again.
Easier to forgive than to forget, eh? Well, I'm not exactly the forgiving kind (IMO, if you give second chances easily, people tend to screw their first, almost on purpose), but that sure is a decision everyone has to make for himself.
 
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Will you stop that? Please? :'(

Stop what? Replying to you? Not quoting the entire post? Forgetting one "E"? Using "@"?...

A syndicate? We call them publishers, I believe. Evil publisher don't absolve developers from responsibility, but its' always a factor to be considered. IIRC these guys were not self-funded.
 
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I agree to GhanBuriGhan here. I think the "background" of the game or the developer or publisher should not influence the score. It can (and should) be mentioned as a side note though.
"baby-seal-slaughtering-nazi-communist-homophobic-fanatics" might make the "perfect game" and I would give them a score of 5/5 for that. But imho you should mention that in the review.
But same goes for lots of other things: DRM for example. Lots of people don't care. There are a couple of people hating an "always online" "feature" of a game. But the game doesn't get bad because of it. It should be mentioned in the review though - if you can't stand this criteria you shouldn't buy it.
I remember a game review on gamespy? where they tested "Left behind". A syndicate like game with a religious setting. You had to either convert or kill your enemies. If you killed them, well you could go pray and everything was forgiven. They tested the game for the gameplay. Not for the "christian message". And their result was that the game itself was horrible independent of being a christian game.
Imho this is how it should work.

But of course people see it differently and if you prefer subjective tests where the game may score 1/10 because it's only available in Japan and the reviewer didn't understand a word - that's fine. But every site should have it's standards or conventions.

Maybe you know Tom Chick from Quarter to Three. He is a very subjective tester using the full range. Civ BNW got 2/5 stars from him, same with SC2 Heart of the Swarm. While it's bad for the Developer of the game, because it goes into Metacritic as every other review, it's Toms right to do so. And if you can follow his standards/conventions you might also understand why he gave ratings like that. That doesn't mean you have to agree. It's more like saying "for me personally this game has a score of 2/5".
But as RPG Watch is rather community centric and not a one-man-show I'd rather prefer a very objective review.
 
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Hey, I was going to post that! :p

But yeah, I encourage everyone to read Darth Roxors review. Reading both reviews will probably yield in a balanced experience.

DRs review also has much more comparison with the original game (which I felt missing in Fluent's review), which IMO is very important for a remake.
 
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Fluent:
doesn't know the original, sees the good concepts in the game (inherited from the original) -> 3/5

Darth Roxor:
loves the original, sees that nothing is better done in the remake, some things even worse -> pissed off
 
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Yub, summarizes the situation pretty well @HiddenX
Well, he didn't love the original though. ^^
 
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Lets not forget the review was probably made to counter ours. We all know how the codex liked Fluent's review. Anyways I'm with Kordanor on this you summarized it pretty good HiddenX.
 
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Darth Roxor:
loves the original

Except he doesn't
bird.gif


Lets not forget the review was probably made to counter ours.

Not really. I've been playing and having a general idea for my review before reading the one on the Watch.

And besides, if it really had been meant to counter yours, I wouldn't have forgotten about adding 3 out of 5 stars at the end :cool:
 
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Shame on you for prefering the cutting of the intro though! ;)
Also don't see how the original was inferior to other classics at that time, but of course that's a different story not really relevant to the review.
 
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Not really. I've been playing and having a general idea for my review before reading the one on the Watch.

And besides, if it really had been meant to counter yours, I wouldn't have forgotten about adding 3 out of 5 stars at the end :cool:
Nothing you can say will make me believe you. It's nice to get different opinions on reviews so that's a plus here at least.:bored:
 
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Lets not forget the review was probably made to counter ours. We all know how the codex liked Fluent's review. Anyways I'm with Kordanor on this you summarized it pretty good HiddenX.

Since when did the codex get viewed as a positive place for rpg info?
 
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Since when did the codex get viewed as a positive place for rpg info?
Well they have good interviews at least. That counts for something right? Don't worry though I never said they are viewed as a positive place.:)

Hell would freeze over before I said that.;)
 
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Hi guys, let me break your nostalgia a bit as someone who played (and loved at that time) the original Realms of Arkania Trilogy and Realms of Arkania Remake. But before that there are some things to clarify.

First of all, Crafty Studios is an online gaming company which had no significant experience with PC gaming and PC gamer attitude. In an online game (let it be a bananaware or a Multi-User Dungeon game or flashy MMO) you bring out a game which improves over time with the players who play it. Of course same mentality does not work in PC games unless you put it out explicitly as Early Access or Alpha etc. That was the crucial mistake of Crafty Studios and the reason of shitstorms all around. If they were experienced and had a more complete view of PC gamer behaviour they would definitely put it to Early Access and now you'd be calling them as heroes for returning the Trilogy. They are working hard to make amends and bring the game into a good shape with bugs solved.

Second point to those people who claim they played the original games and go ragey ragey on remake. Time to break nostalgia (Don't get the criticism wrong, at that time I liked the game as well…but I was unaware of some things)

1. Original game was a large wasteland of copy/paste towns. While it was acceptable graphically their limitations were high, their limitations to writing was practically close to nil. Original games are devoid of many city encounters, filled with empty towns and lacks several event based things.

2. Original games has no major use of some Negative Attributes. Perhaps you know Superstition will make your characters less resistant to magic, but any of you seen Superstition used in an event to put your party in a bad situation? Or curiousity perhaps. Remake has the promise of fixing it up with additional events and dungeons which in line with Aventurian lore.

3. Original games had several useless skills and spells which had no real application in the game world. How many of you used Necropathia at all? Perhaps you will get a chance to use your Driving skill in the remake or cast Necropathia to communicate with the dead. If you are believing Crafty Studios will leave the game as it is after they reach the original's features. Then sir or madam, you are wrong. There is already several events and instances of extra things which populates the remake.

4. It is hard to find bugs in the original game, so nostalgia makes us turn a blind eye to that fact. How can you be so sure the attack checks are calculated right? Or maybe the winter time you get sick more because some bug exists which ramps up the chances? In the remake you can just hit F9 and see the rolls and notice if there is any oddity or not.

In light of these facts, claiming that original is angel and remake is devil…it is nothing but a nostalgia fever. But to lighten the mood up, let us see what will come in the future.

-Revamped NPC models
-New dungeons
-Lacking spells
-New events
-Modding tools
-(Hopefully) A new intro
-More bugfixes (There are really only minor issues left, there is no game breaking element)

Personally I bought the game without a thought when I first saw it on Steam. Do I regret? No. Because I knew it had a potential and Crafty Studios did not prove me wrong yet.

Side note: Also those who are claiming there was no major bugs or was a great game. In Skyrim…I was not able to finish some questlines (such as Dark Brotherhood) if I did not manually triggered some events. Sometimes I'd have to console-kill some guard NPCs because they were firing criminal subroutine at 0 bounty. Backward flying dragons at some point…riding horses to rooftops…when you finish civil war they treat you like shit. No real faction conflict, eating a dragon everyday, being a real estate mogul, vampires and werewolves starred with two sided choice (vampires or vampire hunters!)….and borked monster resistances.

Really Skyrim was a commercially successful business, maybe a sightseeing simulator with story. But then toilet paper is also a commercially successful business…go figure.

Conclusion: While Crafty Studios had mistakes in the beginning, they are working hard to create more then a mere remake.
 
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bananaware

Please put some details on that term.
If that's what I think it is, I'm about to abuse it a lot all over the place. :evilgrin:

Also those who are claiming there was no major bugs or was a great game. In Skyrim…I was not able to finish some questlines (such as Dark Brotherhood) if I did not manually triggered some events…
Yea, well… Some guys didn't see any bugs in Skyrim's beta too.
On the other hand I couldn't believe how many bugs I got on the release version.
But maybe I'm the only one who's blind or delusional - those were probably not bugs but features. Luckily, thanks to you, seems I'm not the only man in the universe with the "he found a sh*tload of bugs in Skyrim" disease.

But honestly, that's offtopic here. Skyrim is not a remake.
 
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I referred to small online games which looks maybe too lovely, shallow in content or has no taxing graphical/computing necessities, hence easy to moderate. You know several silly browser games and such.

Since a part of the forums is to discuss "elephants in the room" and some interesting phrases…I thought it would catch attention :D

But feel free to abuse the term!

Edit: I added Skyrim there because earlier someone mentioned Skyrim had minor bugs only in the release and of course some people brags about professionalism on and on. Which is not correct really.
 
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Edit: I added Skyrim there because earlier someone mentioned Skyrim had minor bugs only in the release and of course some people brags about professionalism on and on. Which is not correct really.

Since I am only one with Joxer that mentioned Skyrim I think this refers to me.

I only said that games wasn't broken, I mentioned nothing about professionalism and such.I did completed every major quest line including dark brotherhood and I found no game breaking bugs, there where ton of smaller ones.

On topic:Game was released in sad state and I don't want to support that kind of businesses practice, not anymore.I think company should get burned on this so they don't do it ever again.
I have to say codex is right on this one(after this statement I think I better start running).
 
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Well, you call a boy "bad" once, twice and thrice...and if the boy changes his behaviour in a positive way, you should acknowledge it. But if you keep saying "bad", it is not discouraging that kind of behaviour, it is just legitimizing the behaviour or making the boy insolent.

I'd rather like to see people who are learning from their experiences and amending for their mistakes, instead those who do same mistakes in their all games but get awarded by GotY.
 
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