I'm kind of curious about the guns. I guess that means scopes and armour piercing bullets also.
Ok, so perhaps you could say what you did in BG2 that wasn't combat preparation? You walked around in circles a lot?
Blackguards had lots and lots of NPCs to interact with, from companions to quest givers to random lore exposition givers to traders and enemies. I have particularly fond memories of the old lady with the gorilla problem, the mad professor with many quests, feeling particularly happy when completing companion quests etc etc.
It also had some C&C. Not a huge amount, but it had some. Sure, it wasn't Planescape: Torment, but then Baldur's Gate 2 wasn't either.. What was the amazing C&C in BG2?
It had plenty of exploration with no-end of side-quests that were not crucial to the main plot with many providing interesting and varied set-locations from jungle to city etc. The difference was that you didn't physically walk to your locations, and that is the only difference.
So if you could have physically walked to each location instead of the walking being dots on the world map, it had, what, 3 more NPCs? , then it wouldn't have been a 'tactical RPG', but an actual RPG?
Is it a 'tactical RPG' because the combat was turn based and actually required tactics sometimes? (oh, don't forget, some of the 'battle' scenes weren't even battle scenes and were often also tests to see if you could complete the screen without any combat at all…) So if it had had RtWP combat instead then it would have been an RPG instead of a 'tactical RPG'?
From what I gathered from Zloth's posts the Expeditions: Vikings game is undercooked with useless skills and skills that you max out too early. Not enough companion banter and general bugginess. But the framework for a good game is there and the combat is pretty decent. Companion interactions were good but not enough of them.
Logic Artists are working with Larians engine this time through. They will have had the development time and resources to flesh out the game and Larians input to refine things. It sounds like the classic case of an indie game not reaching its potential due to funding and time issues. Shouldn't be the case this time through.
You're joking… right?
You're not conversating… right?
Just checking. I thought maybe it was already April 1st wherever you're at.
I mean, you seem convinced that Blackguards isn't a tactical RPG and that Baldur's Gate 2 doesn't have anything outside of combat.
To each his own though. If that's really your perception, cool.
You really do have a great knack of dodging backing up a single thing you ever say don't you…
Don't tell me, attack is the best defence, eh.
What a shame no-one was attacking you. Just trying to have a conversation about a point you yourself brought to the discussion…
You seem convinced Blackguards doesn't have ENOUGH NPCs, eh? Well, that's mighty informative, how MANY would you like?
You seem convinced that Blackguards doesn't have ANY exploration, eh? Well, what are non-main-plot side-quests if they are not 'exploration'? Just what IS exploration in your opinion? You never actually said. Apparently the word exploration to you is just a word you write on forums and then 'attack' people who ask you what the fuck you're talking about.
Fascinating stuff.
Yeah, "undercooked" sounds about right. Companion characters that were interesting until you recruited them. Then they just turned into a bag of HP and skills that followed you around. Camping started in fun and new but then I got good at it and it turned into tedium. Skills were nice but then maxxed out way too early. It's like they designed the demo then couldn't follow up on the rest of the game.From what I gathered from Zloth's posts the Expeditions: Vikings game is undercooked with useless skills and skills that you max out too early. Not enough companion banter and general bugginess. But the framework for a good game is there and the combat is pretty decent. Companion interactions were good but not enough of them.
"not reaching potential due to funding"… lol, If only that were the case. Let's be honest, how many times have we heard that one? How much money does it cost to provide a framework that at least suggests you want to have a game with meaningful skills and character progression? A crap game with a good suggestion of intent is surely the same price as a crap game with absolutely no suggestion of intent?
I quit after 10 hours of Conquistador & after reading Zloth's notes on Vikings didn't even bother firing up Vikings, so the following is all from Conquistador:
1. The game had no loot. Zero, nada, zip. No weapon drops, no weapon upgrades, no armour drops, no armour upgrades, no charatcer inventory screen at all. The only inventory screen is the global group screen where big numbers go up and down like food and healing costs.
I say no inventory screens, and hey, technically I'm incorrect. Technically. If by pedantry you're correcting a Dickens novel by arguing he spelt a word wrong on page 97. The entirely of character inventory consists of putting a X mark next to either a weapon or your armour. This X represents a 1% increase in either damage (or was it to-hit, it really didn't matter much) or a 1% increase in damage reduction. Each X costs one 'dollar' of your global X fund. The most X's one person can have is 20, four blocks of five Xs, to which you can only put more X blocks on a character after you level them up.
The end-result of your Xs is a barely noticeable, to the point of that famous meme pic of that oriental guy squinting at a tiny piece of paper, benefit during combat. You would not notice if this was removed from the game. After the first few battles on the tutorial island two of my team of six were already 15/20 in both weapon and armour Xs.
2. Which brings me neatly onto character building. The max level, aka the level cap, is… wait for it… you're not going to believe this… Level five. Yup, just five. And only one of your six guys is even allowed to be level 5. two more are allowed to be level 4, ahahahaha, and the level cap for anyone else is level 3. Are you telling me that any game can have character building of any kind when the level cap is… level 3.
To which gaining levels isn't even that big a deal. Again, similar to above, after just a few battles on the tutorial island I already had half my six characters at level 3, with many more on level 2.
And then you realise that levelling doesn't actually do anything much anyway. Again, you get extremely minor increase to attack, some stats to help your global stat pool and, oh the excitement, a new combat skill. To which you'll use that one combat skill for the rest of the game, namely 'stun'.
3. Which brings me neatly onto combat. There is virtually zero combat variety. You will always be fighting a bunch of humans (though apparently there is a couple of wild animals in the game somewhere). And those humans will be either 'natives' or 'Soldiers', both of which have pretty much the same neutered abilities you have, that is, fire ranged weapons until the enemy is in melee range, then switch to melee weapon & literally hit each other until the numbers go to zero.
Which might even sound fine on paper, lots of good games involve just hitting each other until the number gets to zero. However, in this game, your characters are performing exactly the same process in literally every battle against the exact same enemies, over and over again. With exactly the same weapons.
Positioning is more important than anything you might be 'wearing' (as if you can wear Xs) and more important than any stat you gain on level up. Sometimes, if you've put global points into 'tactician' or whatever it was that was supposed to make your battle options superior, and you chose the 'better' battle opening scenario, the game game would actually start you in a worse position that if you'd chosen the 'just rush at them' option. Because they just cared so much about everything.
Calling it 'tactical combat' would be a vast exaggeration. It's just two identical boring squads of meat shields deciding where best to stand. There are traps you can use as well and other environment-based equipment (that you earn and learn from global stats), but I never got far enough into the unrelenting boredom-grind to ever find out if they were even worth bothering with.
4. Companion conversations consist of being forced into 'situations' via pop-ups. Some guy from your 'squad' is having an argument with another guy from your 'squad' (you march around with 12 pre-made characters but can only ever use six in combat, who'll always be the same six, the other six are just there to help amass points to your global number harvesting), so you'll listen to these two 'bicker' for about six pages before telling them both to shut the fuck up etc. You wont know who they are, because like fuck are you going to bother to independently monitor 12 meat shield NPCs, you wont care what the issue is, as you have a surplus of 6 dudes anyway and the end result is just some old bollocks that doesn't matter because the game tells you at the beginning that it doesn't matter what happens because the game is completable whatever you do.
5. There's no charatce creation beyond adding a few points to XYZ stat that will have some minor impact on something at some point. Once you've chosen your meaningless stat bonuses you're then asked to pick 12 random dudes from a list of 24 random dudes, most of which is a done deal anyway as you'll want at least one of each 'class' and then the rest will be 'soldiers' (the majority of the people you'll actually play the game with).
There's practically no difference between all these mooks beyond facepalmy character traits like 'religious' or 'racist'. Each of these 'personality' traits being the only 'game mechanic' stat-wise, to which the 'game' is to sit back and watch them all bicker at some point while you painstakingly attempt to simply move forward in the game.
6. And I say painstakingly because exploration in this game, and the primary game mechanic, consists of walking down a road with trees on each side, stopping after half a screen's worth & then resting (using up your global numbers). To simply go from A-B, or, rather, from 'scene to scene', you'll have to perform this 'resting ritual' a good five to ten times. Over and over again. Until you're completely insane and can bare it no longer and find yourself literally punching at the uninstall button. Ok, not literally, just figuratively.
I have more points to make, but as with all walls of text… well, they're walls of text, how much more would you like? What else are you curious about?
Supposedly it's along the lines of XCOM w/ the D:OS2 world & combat system. You fly around in a ship (the same one from D:OS2) running missions. There is also base (ship) upgrading, recruiting troops, etc.I just got the email on this. Honestly, I still don't really have a clue what the game is going to be like. A mix of Dragon Commander and the recent Divinity games? That could mean a lot of different games. They made a big thing about choices mattering but many RPGs have said the same over the past few decades.
This is coming from another studio - Larian could still do a follow up to Ego Draconis.I guess a full sequel to Ego Draconis would be too much for them.