First Impressions

Originally Posted by you
I hope to do the last act this weekend or into next week (not sure how long it will be) but I felt that this third island lacked a great deal of love that the earlier portions of the game received in all apsect (story progression; writing; technical and general presentation). Given that this is approach the climax I'm rather disappointed in the love it did received. Anyway hopefully the last act is not nearly as poorly done and then I'll let the game sit for 6 to 12 months while I presume it will see significanlty patching and try again.

It's not that long. Nameless Isle + final act combined probably represent the final third or so of the game. It depends on your patience, and how long you're willing to go on some of the quests until you just look them up. The final third is what I usually refer to as a bit vague and seemingly not properly tested: The lack of hand-holding is one thing, but even lacking clues is something else.

Originally Posted by you
I am playing with the latest patch but perhaps because I started before the patches that is having some impact in the later part of the game ?

I don't think it should. I seem to recall reading that most of the changes would be applied even to existing save games.

Originally Posted by you
Anyway hopefully the last act is not nearly as poorly done and then I'll let the game sit for 6 to 12 months while I presume it will see significanlty patching and try again.
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I am playing with the latest patch but perhaps because I started before the patches that is having some impact in the later part of the game ?

I can confirm your words - posted before that the third island needs much more polish.

IIRC the last patch didn't speak much about the third island, they were concentrated on the fourth island. And no, the last island is not poorly done.
Just don't do what I did. Don't rush at The Doctor, leave it for last, explore everything before going there.

Hey, guys, something I wanted to ask - with the old view that most of the games do intro/begining part poorly - what do you think of the Joy island? I personally liked the many ways you can get out of it.

I was very happy with how Fort Joy played out myself

Larian has always had trouble finishing games, not the beginning chapter(s). Most of their games take a nose dive after chapter one but before the finale. DD was great in the beginning, but lousy at the end. BD was fun at the beginning too. DKS was wonderful once you got past the dull prologue and the boring dragon parts. DOS was wonderful in Cyseal and kinda dull later. DOS 2 had a very long Chapter 1 and I got bored quickly in Chapter 2. All imo, of course.

Good pacing and fun in act 1. Act 2 pacing is godawful - way too long and drags the game down. Acts 3 & 4 feel rushed. In fact, act 3 feels downright out of place and the majority of its content could have been cut entirely.

Game would have benefited greatly from the content of act 2 getting cut by 1/3 and getting tacked on to a revised third (and final) act. As it stands, the game is uneven as hell.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Larian has always had trouble finishing games, not the beginning chapter(s). Most of their games take a nose dive after chapter one but before the finale. DD was great in the beginning, but lousy at the end. BD was fun at the beginning too. DKS was wonderful once you got past the dull prologue and the boring dragon parts. DOS was wonderful in Cyseal and kinda dull later. DOS 2 had a very long Chapter 1 and I got bored quickly in Chapter 2. All imo, of course.

I couldn't get into BD at all. It's the only one of their older titles that I haven't finished. It seemed like it was basically all combat and didn't have the charm of DD. Did I miss something?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Did I miss something?

Nope.

Started a new playthrough - out of interest - with 2 lone wolf characters, on classic. Won't do much more, I was just curious…but they seem very powerful. I have Fane (badly spec'd - I have too few memory slots right ), and a generic fighter - almost every fight I struggled with before (with 4 characters) I now do with ease. I have not optimized anything, don't have healing spells etc etc. Thought I'd add a 1 pt (2 pts because of lone wolf) into summoning and got summon incarnate - what an underwhelming skill. I assume you are meant to buff your incarnate - but I'll just drop summoning and get necromancy instead (I didn't use that at all before). I'm level 4 at the moment, so not that many skill pts to spend. I'll probably do a chunk of Fort Joy and then drop that in favour of Elex, assuming reviews are positive…

PS Is there a way to undo a point assignment at level up? I clicked on Wits instead of memory, which is why Fane has 2 fewer skill slots (!) but there is no undo button that I can see.

Originally Posted by booboo
PS Is there a way to undo a point assignment at level up? I clicked on Wits instead of memory, which is why Fane has 2 fewer skill slots (!) but there is no undo button that I can see.

No undo apart from respec by using a special mirror in the ship (bottom level). If you don't have the ship yet, you'll have to play more till you get it. Or reload some previous save.

Note that I've deliberately put a few points in Fane's wits for crit chance and secrets detection - also the second perk I took on all party memebers was Mnemonic (+3 skill/spell slots).

As for islands, sorry but I cannot share… erm… everyone's "letdown"?
Each was fun to me. The third one is a bit annoying due to bugs, but stuff like our NPC and clockwork realm saves the day even there.

Originally Posted by booboo
Started a new playthrough - out of interest - with 2 lone wolf characters, on classic. Won't do much more, I was just curious…but they seem very powerful. I have Fane (badly spec'd - I have too few memory slots right ), and a generic fighter - almost every fight I struggled with before (with 4 characters) I now do with ease. I have not optimized anything, don't have healing spells etc etc. Thought I'd add a 1 pt (2 pts because of lone wolf) into summoning and got summon incarnate - what an underwhelming skill. I assume you are meant to buff your incarnate - but I'll just drop summoning and get necromancy instead (I didn't use that at all before). I'm level 4 at the moment, so not that many skill pts to spend. I'll probably do a chunk of Fort Joy and then drop that in favour of Elex, assuming reviews are positive…

Yep, 2x Lone Wolves are stronger than a normal party. I've also tried both and there's very little doubt, especially later on. I think I ended up with something like 6x Warfare, 10x Summoning, 4x 1H, 2x Necromancy and 10x in two spell schools each (fire + earth on one and water + air on the other). It was also fairly easy to get 50+ in both Strength and Intelligence, though I used spells almost exclusively later on, so I'd say a respec to get even more Intelligence is probably worth it for power builds.

Originally Posted by booboo
PS Is there a way to undo a point assignment at level up? I clicked on Wits instead of memory, which is why Fane has 2 fewer skill slots (!) but there is no undo button that I can see.

Not that I know of. Using the mirror aboard the ship is the only way.

Well I just killed the Doctor; I'm level 21. It was a bit anti-climax after reading stuff on this board. Didn't find anything particularly special but there was a bit of sadness in snuffing out the souls. I will say that he had 17k hp and each time I knocked him down he got back up with 8k armour (lightining is so much better at 'knocking' him down ). I ahven't seen any of the super great stuff joxer posted (er super great items) in this thread but I'm doing ok. I guess I'll finish it today or tomorrow. Not much left to do I think.
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One bug I keep running into is when i cast spirit vision and see ghosts - I can't talk to most of them.

21? I was level 19 man, didn't have the church 2H weapon, didn't have permareflecting shields from paladin chief, etc crapload of OP items you better equip when facing him.
While I'd never try it again at level 19, he's beatable by melee KO_lock cheesing but you need to cast clear mind to buff wis on your best melee DPS to get the first move, or if you don't have that scroll/spell respec on the ship (one thing I didn't try though - to teleport him while in dialogue out the house to paladins' base so they fight him instead of me).

Honestly, there were fights I thought not possible through the game but each was manageable after just a bit of thought. This one, I've tried a different approach a dozen of times maybe even more till I finally nailed it.
But that's because IMO I went there too early.
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Try to talk to those spirits with another party member. For some reason when it bugged on me I could still talk to them with a sidekick.

Given how gear scales, two levels worth of extra gear can make you somewhere in the region of 50-80% tougher, simply because of the brutal ramp up in armor and damage. And yes, it's best to face the doctor as the final enemy before heading into the tomb.

Also, and I'm not sure if this has been fixed or not, but he used to be bugged. If you talked to him and checked out his inventory/trade during the conversation, he'd start the fight by chugging down about a dozen potions, making him almost immune to all forms of damage. Normally, he doesn't use potions at all.

The Doctor was extremely tough - I died several times before killing him (I think was level 20) - after having first tried when I was level 18/19 ;-) I ended up luring out two of his assistants first and killing them, because they were a huge irritation in the actual combat (cursing, decaying etc etc and if you can't remove decay you can't heal). I think I still ended up with 2 dead party members. And the combat took a looooong time.

Joxer, I don't have a two handed weapon fighter and I'm playing on tactian so church weapon ain't gonna help me at all.
- I was able to kill Doctor on second try. First try lasted 2 rounds; second try wasn't that bad - but the approach I took was to start it at the entry way. I could pretty much waste the nurses in a round or two - my fighter did not have the super op shield; but after the doctor fight i chattted with lord kemp (the reason for the long delay was that I wanted to find a way to raise my pursasion so i could save the fellow from execution). I had hoped i would get another skill point but i never did (maybe level 22?); but i still found a + persasion item and that did the trick. Anyway after the doctor i did kemp (by accident - i mention the sallow man to him and he didn't take too kindly to that) and i found some hidden white magicster place - some where after all that i found this really nifty shield - oh yea the vault - i did the vault after i did the doctor but it didn't take very long. Anyway i'm now working on some puzzle in the crypt so I think i'm near the end - i think there are two more 'little' puzzles. I still need to craft some ethey armour and stuff from the preiovus island but i think i'll reach level 22 in the next fight then i'll craft them and see what i end up with.

Finished !! Bleh.

Btw exactly which character was the rpg watcher ?

Originally Posted by you
Btw exactly which character was the rpg watcher ?

An undead lady called The Watcher on the Nameless Isle near the dwarven god temple.

Well I'm impressed so far.

I'm seeing something I haven't seen in a long time, too - combat is staying pretty steady. Most games start out somewhat difficult then get easier and easier as the game goes on. This one only did that a little and I'm pretty certain it's just because I was terrible about combat at the start. (Gotta concentrate magic attacks on one enemy, physical on another!)

P.S. Oh, patch notes today! http://store.steampowered.com/app/435150