What games are you playing now?

ToddMcF2002 said:

You sound awfully defensive of the game!

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Purple's only played BG2 about sixteen thousand times, so yeah, she might be a bit of a fan.

That's OK I've got a thread defending POR2 somewhere on this site. Talk about an uphill battle!

Drithius said:

BG2 expansion pretty much sucks from anything but a powergaming perspective. You basically play it to see how omgzor powerful your character has become and to mess around with +8 weapons of WTF.

The only reason to trudge through it as a roleplayer is to get closure on the saga.

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Yeah, that about sums up how I feel about it as well. I rarely get tired of playing BG1 or BG2, but I've never replayed ToB after it was initially released.

I didn't care for having my own little pocket dimension complete with an imp to craft high level items. Everything felt kind of redundant to me, and there's almost no sense of progression since you're already so powerful to begin with

ToddMcF2002 said:

BG2 Throne of Bhaal. Having a little trouble getting into it however. I like to explore and this thing is completely on rails so far. I also don't really enjoy high level combat with Mages. They always cast the same annoying uber spells. Time Stop is irritating. Tearing down their defenses get repetitive. Getting through my spell resistance with a "Death" spell is simply annoying. Lots of reloads on that last one. Is this really fun? LOL. If the game doesn't open up soon and give me a proper world map I may walk away.

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That's pretty much how I felt about the entirety of BG2. Fans of the game have an almost Joss Whedonish response to people not loving it, but fortunately the Watch isn't nearly as bad about it as a lot of RPG forums.

I'm still bouncing around between games with nothing really grabbing me. I'm going to blame it on work eating up too much of my brain and hope it changes soon.

FWIW, that's how I felt about vanilla BG2 too - but I never played it for more than ~15 hours or so, so I really don't know how it evolves.

Though I think BG2 is a great, great game, I did enjoy BG1 more.

I've always found that lower level RPG play has more charm than the higher levels. The magic of exploring the woods and finding a goblin cave or a mysterious temple has always captured me more than the higher level stuff - when you get into demon realms and demi-gods.

That's one of the key things I'd do if I were making my own RPG - tone down the grandiose progression.

Menigal said:

That's pretty much how I felt about the entirety of BG2. Fans of the game have an almost Joss Whedonish response to people not loving it, but fortunately the Watch isn't nearly as bad about it as a lot of RPG forums.

I'm still bouncing around between games with nothing really grabbing me. I'm going to blame it on work eating up too much of my brain and hope it changes soon.

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DArtagnan said:

FWIW, that's how I felt about vanilla BG2 too - but I never played it for more than ~15 hours or so, so I really don't know how it evolves.

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Well, it is like telling someone 'I don't like ...' [fill in one of the greatest examples of something here] in ANY field - music, film, art, books, poetry, and so on. It *should* elicit surprise like saying you don't like Beethoven's 9th, The Beatles, and so on.

But at the same time there is no *requirement* to like things - just because it is 'one of the greatest of all time' doesn't mean it is something everyone will like.

If only there was a way to objectively establish what's great and what's not, then that statement might actually carry some weight

But do note that I'm talking exclusively about my own feelings about my time with the game.

Fans who think it's great shouldn't take that to heart. It IS great to them, after all

DArtagnan said:

If only there was a way to objectively establish what's great and what's not, then that statement might actually carry some weight

But do note that I'm talking exclusively about my own feelings about my time with the game.

Fans who think it's great shouldn't take that to heart. It IS great to them, after all

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Absolutely - I meant to say 'generally regarded as ...' - because there are many games, mostly console-centric ones, that I have little use for that are considered classics. Like anything Bungie did after Marathon ...

txa1265 said:

Absolutely - I meant to say 'generally regarded as …' - because there are many games, mostly console-centric ones, that I have little use for that are considered classics. Like anything Bungie did after Marathon …

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Exactly.

Also, sometimes you'll be surprised to find that what's "generally regarded as" is really only "generally regarded as generally regarded as" - and there's a distinct lack of tangible support for such a claim

DArtagnan said:

Exactly.

Also, sometimes you'll be surprised to find that what's "generally regarded as" is really only "generally regarded as generally regarded as" - and there's a distinct lack of tangible support for such a claim

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Exactly - and really the only thing that matters in the end is whether or not WE like the game. And here as enthusiasts our goal should be to provide each other some context around what we like about something in order that others who haven't played can make a decision on whether they might like it.

On topic - spent a couple of hours on Gothic 2 again yesterday. Hadn't planned on it, but it was installed and my work VPN was down ... ugh, makes for a crappier day today, but oh well, love Gothic 2!

I certainly enjoy exchanging thoughts and feelings in general, and specifically about games - as I can't seem to enjoy other forms of pure entertainment on quite the same level

Gothic 2 is another sequel which never really clicked for me. It's sort of a mystery to me, though, as I absolutely adored Gothic - and I mostly love the Risens.

I think it was too much of the same thing back upon release, and these days I can't really get past the quirky controls and I've had some issues getting it to run properly on my setup. Might have something to do with Win 8.1 - as I've had other issues with a few games.

Also, I'm not particularly tolerant of old 3D games, once they get beyond a certain age. It really shows when you're used to playing modern games.

I bought Shadowrun: Dragonfall finally last week. Trying to play Guild Wars 2 with a new char until Pillars of Eternity get release didn't really work out, I got bored real fast, the new player experience is just dreadful.

Anyway, I'm enjoying Shadowrun a lot more than I did Wasteland 2. The fights are a lot more interesting and I really love cyberpunk a lot. Although, I could do with more exploration.

I had some fun with Guild Wars 2 but I can't go back either. It is the first time I've played an MMO that requires practically zero player to player communication. It is just swarms of players doing stuff coincidentally at the same time. Fun gameplay but a terrible model really.

txa1265 said:

Well, it is like telling someone 'I don't like …' [fill in one of the greatest examples of something here] in ANY field - music, film, art, books, poetry, and so on. It *should* elicit surprise like saying you don't like Beethoven's 9th, The Beatles, and so on.

But at the same time there is no *requirement* to like things - just because it is 'one of the greatest of all time' doesn't mean it is something everyone will like.

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Or, conversely, it's like hearing someone constantly rave about the genius of Rihanna or One Direction.

Also, I'm not particularly tolerant of old 3D games, once they get beyond a certain age. It really shows when you're used to playing modern games.

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Old 3D can be really hard to stomach. I can play old 2D games all night long, but I have a really hard time playing early 3D games. Even back then I generally preferred 2D, though.

Still playing Inquisition. Do you believe it? I have cleared the Storm Coast, Crestwood, Western Approach, and Fallow Mires; most of Hinterlands, Emerald Graves, Exalted Plains; lots to do yet in Hissing Wastes and Emprise De Lion. And I am level 20, power 150. Wondering if I should move the main plot forward and do the What Pride Has Wrought main quest, or keep exploring regions.

My loaner laptop with drives swapped in from my broken laptop runs Inquisition as is without game re-installation (of course, the laptop needed different hardware drivers installed). My loaner has a much weaker GPU though, so I had to move all the settings down to medium. Some minor glitches (screen flashing during loading, a lot slower and more pop-in than before). Rather surprised and impressed. Interesting eh? Only annoying problem, sometimes (mostly) when a creature/person comes into view, the game constantly pauses (not jitter, but the in game pause comes on). I turn it off, it comes back on, and so on, constantly back and forth. Irritating. Escaping to the main menu and back usually fixes it. Probably, if I did a reinstall, it would likely fix this, but why waste hours now, to reinstall when I'd need to do it over again when my motherboard is fixed.

I just started to play Total War: Attila, and hope it's nothing like Total War: Rome II was on release. I might play a few NWN mods again this week also if I find the time.

Just beat divinity original sin (at the second attempt...) and started alien isolation for a change of pace. I'm finding it a bit stressful...

Ooh, sounds good. Once it comes down in price I'll try it out, even if it wears thin by the end.

I sort of enjoyed Blackguards 1, but ultimately it was about frustrating combat. The 9 Hordes was one of the more annoying combat segments in any RPG that I've played. The worst was when you win some encounter, use up your potions, only to discover that immediately there's another round.

I waited forward towards Blackguards 2 and sure, there's major improvements. As usual I enjoyed the conversations and the camp mode the most, but realized combat is still the focus of the game. I think it would be more enjoyable if every now and then you'd have standard fights where you just have to kill your opponents, instead of every map having some stupid goal, such as pushing a lever.

I was disappointed to see that the Attributes are gone! I perhaps know why they got rid of it, since in the first game I was playing a mage and couldn't cast half of the spells due to my low physical stats. Still, I'd think some improvements would have been better rather than just slicing off an important RPG aspect.

I was enjoying the dialogs and choices they offered, but the map with the golem creator and sand wraith thing made me ragequit and rageuninstall the game. I thought I had it by placing one of my warriors next to the lever and using them whenever the other warrior got Berserked, but the enemy mage, in 1 hit, removed half of my lever warrior's health and poisoned him. Meanwhile the other warrior wasn't making any progress because he was constantly under the Berserk spell. I think I would have eventually managed, but knowing Blackguards, there's probably a ton of other such levels that are even worse.

Now I've tried the Banner Saga and oh boy, I think this game is really for me. Everything about is just so right. The pacing is perfect and I haven't been bogged down in mindless combat, instead conversing with others, managing my caravan and making decisions. When it's combat time I actually enjoy the intense fights.

Having played the recent major RPGs, I just wish that they'd stop making combat the central feature. FO 2, IMO, was perfect. Most of the time is spent in the towns doing quests and combat sequences were short and sweet. No dungeon crawling, no barrels or chests to bash, no constant flow of diamonds, loot and epic gear. Just dialog, exploration, NPCs, quests and some fights to spice things up.