Yeah, well that 's how it works for me. Trash is pretty easy, but not some of the harder battles. That last one in the bttom of Cad Nua, was a royal pain in the ass BECAUSE of the pathfinding even in the pause every round mode.
Yeah, well that 's how it works for me. Trash is pretty easy, but not some of the harder battles. That last one in the bttom of Cad Nua, was a royal pain in the ass BECAUSE of the pathfinding even in the pause every round mode.
It's even more frustrating because I actually really liked the rest of the game. Ok, the mechanics weren't great - but they were still old-school, and they hit most of the right notes for me.
I've tried getting back into it. I was planning to go 2 tanks and the rest ranged DPS - just to avoid most of the pathfinding issues.
Twice I've stopped around Defiance Bay - because my brain tends to shut down when it encounters that many quests and a huge town full of NPC interactions.
Same thing happens when I replay Baldur's Gate and get to the title city.
I should just accept that I hate capital cities in big CRPGs
I remember hating Baldur's Gate city because there was so many houses, with no clear direction to take. A lot of copy pasted houses with contents somewhat random, and the occasional hidden quest.
I remember hating Baldur's Gate city because there was so many houses, with no clear direction to take. A lot of copy pasted houses with contents somewhat random, and the occasional hidden quest.
Novigrod was nicer because there was a lot of variety, and not copy pasted as much.
I have to say I like the maze-like quality of some cities where you can get spun around and somewhat lost (without a minimap) until you get all the landmarks down.
But blah cities without landmarks are a nightmare.
I was also anxious to enter Defiance Bay and feared it might cause me to stop playing but then I gave myself a little kick ("come on, only four/five city maps… you can do it" ) and ended up enjoying it for the most part.
The only thing that really sucks here is the loading screens since you will constantly switch areas and interiors.
Now that I finished PoE part 1, I recently did some research into Deadfire and was ecstatic to find out that they will be using some streaming technology for that game to all but eliminate loading screens (or make it very short like a fade in/fade out effect). Awesome news right there.
Other than that, I found Defiance Bay to be well done. It actually doesn't have that many interior cells (for a big city) and not so many pointless ones like the first BG but just about every location serves a purpose and is related to the main story or a quest. It was fun to explore the city.
YMMV but I don't think it should really stop anyone from playing. If it didn't stop a "city hater" like me then regular people should be able to pull through as well .
As for the combat, yeah, just as I put it in my list of cons above, the pathfinding is infuriating at times when your idiot "heroes" get stuck on every little pixel up to and including getting stuck !!!on each fucking other!!! . Ridiculous. It'd be almost comical if it wouldn't be so annoying, especially for the harder fights.
Talking about hard fights…
I saved the Caed Nua dragon (adra dragon) and the Alpine dragon (White March) for last before jumping into the pit when I was level-capped at level 16 and had high end gear. Same for the Siege of Cragholdt and the Mowrghek Ien fight against Llengrath.
For my party the ranking in terms of difficulty (normal diff. and expert mode) goes:
1) Adra dragon - Hardest fight in the game for me. My strategy was to avoid the dragon by sticking to the southernmost path of the map, kited and killed the Xaurip adds at/near the treasure heaps before the dragon showed up and then dealt with the dragon back in that part of the cave as well.
2) Siege of Cragholdt + Concelhaut - A close second… basically had to rest after every single fight, both on the overland map as well as in the fortress/dungeons. The hardest part was not even the Concelhaut boss fight but the fight against one of the apprentices where a bunch of Spineless Magi kicked my party's ass to hell and back with their Minoletta missiles (I believe).
3) Mowrghek Ien + Llengrath - In many guides they say this is the hardest fight in the entire game but for me it was fairly easy for some reason… maybe because of dual wizards and both with Arcane Reflection so Llengrath ended up killing herself(?). The two dragons also went down very quickly. It wasn't all that hard.
4) Alpine dragon - I got my ass kicked badly when I first tried this critter at level 11/12 or whatever it was but at max level and gear like the Abydon hammer it was a cakewalk.
Final boss -Thaos fight- was pretty easy.
On a whole, I would agree that the combat mechanics + resting mechanic + limited camping supplies (even more limited on the higher difficulty levels) left a lot to be desired.
Even on just normal difficulty, I never really knew when camping supplies from a vendor would "dry up", so to be on the safe side, I ended up doing lots of traveling back and forth between Caed Nua (or inns) and the areas I was exploring with lots of boring loading screens in between (thank the Obsidian Gods for the 'fast' option though).
I don't even want to know how many of the 117 hours it took me to complete the whole game + expansions was plain wasted staring at a boring loading screen.
Finished or been f-i-n-ishing Fallout IV just recent, since playing it on and off since the release.
One of dumbest games and disappointing games I can remember. World is completely nonsensical in practically every aspect...ecology, "legendary" enemies, people sleeping right next to rotting skeletons and living in filth for more than two hundred years, loot( magical wood that can "freeze" enemies?), locations /enemy placement...whole thing is incoherent abomination with no rhyme or reason to anything.
Like a writer who tries to fill every page in his book with as many "wacky" things without giving a damn about overall composition.
Exploration: kill everything that moves and find "goofy" notes, instead of any actual meaningful worldbuilding.
Loot was fine, until I found a mod to shoot explosive rounds...after that, junk collectaton.
Didn't really bother with Settlements.
Surprised I've heard some people actually speak positive of it's gunplay...improvement over F3/NV for sure( arguably some of the worst shooting mechanics in modern games), but compared to every modern FPS, leagues behind.
Storyline/sidequests...equally disappointing.
Overall, there is little of Fallout here, and aside from few stand outs( Valentine, jumping into power armor...), below average title.
Have no interest this time even in looking mods for it... unless they change their design drastically, think I'm fully done with Bethesda.
When my internet went down, a couple weeks ago, I picked up Fallout 4 to start down the end of the faction quests, where you have to start making choices between factions. But as soon as the internet was up, I was back at ESO. F4 really doesn't engage me as much. I really don't want to destroy any of the factions, so I haven't progressed that far. So tired of that Bethesda trope. But the exploration was very fun (as well as building up settlements).
When my internet went down, a couple weeks ago, I picked up Fallout 4 to start down the end of the faction quests, where you have to start making choices between factions. But as as soon as the internet was up, I was back at ESO. F4 really doesn't engage me as much. I really don't want to destroy any of the factions, so I haven't progressed that far. So tired of that Bethesda trope. But the exploration was very fun (as well as building up settlements).
You still have your original playthrough going? I find it pretty much impossible to jump back into an existing game after that much time has passed. I can take a few weeks off, but anything much longer than that and I feel disconnected from it.
I never finished FO4 despite playing 150 hours. I still have my saves, but I'd have to start over at this point.
Fallout 4 was a big disjointed mess of a game for me as well. I've been contemplating starting anew to play through the DLC w/ this overhaul mod, but I haven't yet become desperate enough for a new game.
I never really felt connected to the game to begin with (unlike Witcher 3), otherwise I would have finished it… But I suppose I want to see how the story plays out eventually.
Fallout 4 is a very different kind of game, obviously. I would never play it for the narrative - though I found some of that pretty decent.
I played it for the nearly endless exploration with TONS of interesting things to find at every corner - coupled with fantastic variety in combat, loot and progression. Beyond that, it has the usual supreme freedom to approach character development - and it's very easy for me to immerse myself in such a world.
I think it's an evolution over Skyrim in terms of exploration, immersion and variety - and that's saying something.
It has become the king of exploration for my part.
Never completed the main quest either. It had some interesting aspects to it, but Bethesda open world games don't work well with that kind of narrative.
You spend way, way too much time doing other things - so there's no meaningful way to stay connected with the story. Well, sure, you could ignore the actual point of the game and try to experience the story without interruption - but the structure is still very much focused on a specific set of systems that really aren't terribly suited to present a compelling "cinematic" experience, despite their best efforts.
In fact, I think the whole speaking protagonist thing was a mistake. Not that it hurt the game, really, but it seemed like a wasted effort because it didn't HELP the game much at all. A lot of resources wasted, I think.
I still think they can pull it off, but it's going to take a few more iterations - and more effort constructing the presentation and integrating it better with the open world structure. Not to mention better writing
As for the settlement crafting stuff - I really didn't care for that. I don't think it was a good fit for the game, but I'm guessing most people enjoyed it - so what do I know
