D:OS2 First Impressions

you said:

You have to meet the pig later and talk to him; then he will have a method to return to human form. I met him way later after removing the fire - actually he ended up near the dragon in this play.
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The dragon quest hasn't closed for me either but he did return to human form.

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*Lizard.

And yes, I realize that there's more to it, but it was never indicated. The log says "you saved the pigs!" followed by "you talked your way out of the fight with Scapor" and then finally "the pigs are still burning horribly you sick bastard."

Or something similar. You get the gist of it. It's clearly wrong.

tomasp3n said:

Learn to play.

Tomas who hopes Pibbur is no longer confused.

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Ahhh. Thank you.

pibbur who now, thanks to tomas, is NC.

Well, you'd expect that I'd bail and Fluent would love this, but I'm still playing and he dropped out. Weird.

I may be gimping myself, but I'm trying to play the first island totally solo except for where a 2nd party member is mandatory (if you want all the chests, you need someone to teleport you).

I'll try to grab each person and walk around with them before I finish, so we get their personal agendas fulfilled. I really only know Sebille's and Red's quests so far. I don't really plan on playing those two. Red would be okay if his breath affected everything in an area instead of a flat plane. Sebille's a bytch.

I wonder if Origin folks auto-level to keep up with me. I'm almost level 4 and I haven't done all that many quests yet, just went around killing most of the critters.

crpgnut said:

Well, you'd expect that I'd bail and Fluent would love this, but I'm still playing and he dropped out. Weird.

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No grind in a game - you can't expect him to like that.
But I'm surprised you're into it - it's not survival random generator!

crpgnut said:

I may be gimping myself, but I'm trying to play the first island totally solo except for where a 2nd party member is mandatory (if you want all the chests, you need someone to teleport you).

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Actually, there is a ranger 2 skill where you can teleport yourself. It'll appear in shops when you level up a bit. There is also a warfare skill but not in the first island. Finally, if you played the default red prince, he gets something to be able to teleport anywhere.
You've betrayed your antisocial role!

crpgnut said:

I'll try to grab each person and walk around with them before I finish, so we get their personal agendas fulfilled. I really only know Sebille's and Red's quests so far. I don't really plan on playing those two. Red would be okay if his breath affected everything in an area instead of a flat plane. Sebille's a bytch.

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Don't. If you plan to finish the game with full party, choose three you like right now and stick with them. Ignore others and their stories, that's what' replay's for.

crpgnut said:

I wonder if Origin folks auto-level to keep up with me.

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They do.

crpgnut said:

Well, you'd expect that I'd bail and Fluent would love this, but I'm still playing and he dropped out. Weird.

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I'm disappointed in it. It didn't capture me like the first one did. That said, some of that could be my attitude towards gaming in general right now. I'm a bit burned out from it. But I think I'd rather explore Vaporum right now because it's different, a fresher idea to me. And D:OS 2 just seems so slow and boring at the start. I'm really surprised as I expected huge things and that could also be part of the letdown I have for the game.

I don't care for things like:

Bad camera angle and poor controls in general. It's a struggle (literally) to work the camera and try and cramp my thumb to press Left Alt to see only things on the ground and not containers. I didn't start with a Steam Controller for this game so that is probably my own fault, but I'd expect the kb+m controls would be better.

The first area gives no real reason or impetus to explore it. It seemed linear and just not very enchanting or enthralling to me. And the combat has been a mess to me. Every enemy seems to have AoE magic and 20 different attacks. It ended up feeling like I was fighting random constructs outfitted from a list of possible skills rather than enemies with character. The crocodiles swinging their tails to hit me with AoE earth magic just sealed it.

On top of that all it just seems too overwhelming. There's so many people to talk to and none of them I find interesting, and the combat throws 50 different status effects at you quickly and I don't even have time to digest what the heck is going on. Maybe I'm getting old at 32 but I ain't got time for that man. Going to either delve into something lighter, like Divinity II, or continue Vaporum or just chill from gaming in general for awhile. Get that spark back a bit.

Also, I wish the game was just like Divinity II with the 3rd-person movement. IMO it's a very poorly implemented isometric, but that's just my opinion. Glad you guys are enjoying it. Peace.

Camera is indeed horrible. Having to pan around continuously to locate containers (because ALT doesn't highlight them) gets tiresome. Nearly two decades of 3D isometric games and camera perspective is still a nuisance.

...and Larian LOVES hiding stuff behind rocks, in foliage, digging places in sand, etc. They expect you to constantly rotate the camera if you want to find everything...which I do.

I think I'd give it more of a chance if the camera was at least decent. It's just too cumbersome. Middle mouse button + WASD + swinging it around + Left Alt is just a disaster to me. Makes me not want to play it.

I just finished Act1 (on tactician) and I'm still absolutely loving it. I won every fight, but I forgot to go back to the arena after the first win. I also killed most of the NPCs and regret not killing all of them since I can't come back to act1. Also, I saved the dragon and he flew off but I wish I fought him! I didn't kill any animals though; I'm not a monster!

There have been some really challenging battles! Every fight seemed impossible, at first. It forced me to really try and squeeze every bit of power I could out of my party, search everything. Always had 0 gold remaining because I'd buy upgrades. Had to come back to fights later with better equipment, think about how to use the environment to my advantage. I often had to get creative and set up some traps, start the fight without talking first, bomb areas where I knew there was in invisible unit before the fight starts, try approaching from a different path, etc.

@joxer;
Yeah, I fixed the permanently wet bug.
There's a thread on it:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=605573

If anyone else is going to do this get Notepad++ if you don't have a good text editor.

Also the direct link to the pak extractor:
https://s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/nb-stor/dos/ExportTool/ExportTool-v1.8.4.zip

After following the guide my characters haven't become permanently wet again.

Bind your camera rotation to Q & E. Still tedious as hell, but much less cumbersome.

SirJames said:

Had to come back to fights later with better equipment, think about how to use the environment to my advantage. I often had to get creative and set up some traps, start the fight without talking first, bomb areas where I knew there was in invisible unit before the fight starts, try approaching from a different path, etc.

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So, basically, powergame to the extreme, save/reload until you have prescient knowledge of the battle, throw any immersion out the window, and repeat that for the entire game. Sounds fun.

Difficulty scaling should be about optimizing one's character and party, not repeatedly cheesing through the limitations of a game's inherent mechanics.

I honestly don't see myself playing it anymore for now. But if/when I go back in the future I'll fiddle with it.

Ok. Finished act-1 - the alex fight was a lot easier than in the alpha. Either I got very lucky or they toned it down a lot. the only super hard fight i had in act-1 was the void ambush (which was also very hard in the alpha). I guess I'll keep going as Tactician and hope it doesn't get a *lot* harder later on.

SirJames said:

@joxer;
Yeah, I fixed the permanently wet bug.
There's a thread on it:
http://larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=605573

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The permanently wet bug was fixed by yesterday patch, no need to use save editor.

Drithius said:

So, basically, powergame to the extreme, save/reload until you have prescient knowledge of the battle, throw any immersion out the window, and repeat that for the entire game. Sounds fun.

Difficulty scaling should be about optimizing one's character and party, not repeatedly cheesing through the limitations of a game's inherent mechanics.

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Powergame? I did read/listen to everything and think about my dialogue options. It hasn't been about doing it fast as possible.

Save/reload is my strategy, yes. F5 and F8 and my favourite spells!

Plenty of immersion. I'm just playing sort of chaotic. Not strictly evil, definitely not pure good.

Give it a go on Tactician then when you feel its too hard realize it IS possible and win it however you can. If you can't win it playing good then play evil and steal everything and kill everyone and there's a lot more XP and items which will help.

I mean, I'm a demon summoning red lizardman, I don't think my roleplay is immersion breaking, at all! He probably eats people. He DEFINITELY eats people.

Fluent said:

I think I'd give it more of a chance if the camera was at least decent. It's just too cumbersome. Middle mouse button + WASD + swinging it around + Left Alt is just a disaster to me. Makes me not want to play it.

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I hardly ever use WASD. Most of the time I just click where I want to go.

The camera, to me anyway, isn't that bad if you play with KB and mouse. Until I read about people talking about it here I hadn't even really thought about it. Sure it's not perfect but in no way does it stop me from anything. I can see how it would be annoying on a controller though.

Myrthos said:

I hardly ever use WASD. Most of the time I just click where I want to go.

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But the camera doesn't follow, right? Maybe I need to adjust settings. And when hunting for hidden objects and the like, I think I was using a lot of WASD to "angle" the camera to my liking. The angle itself is poor too and frankly makes me want to not play the game because of it. Just wish either we got a basic 3rd-person ARPG camera or some way to adjust the tilt of the thing. Would be nice in general to start getting multiple camera angle options in these games like the 2K basketball series and sports games have.

Galaad said:

I can see how it would be annoying on a controller though.

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That's funny, because I actually think the Steam Controller would be way, way better for a game like this. Just use the right trackpad to spin the camera around as you would a typical 3rd-person RPG on a controller, with an up or down touch to zoom in/out. I'd also set Left Alt to something like a touch of the Left Trackpad and now we're in business.

The current setup actually makes my hand ache after a short amount of playing. I'm glued to Left Alt. But, I didn't bother rebinding or anything. In general I was trying to play "out of the box" and didn't feel like setting up my Steam Controller or anything else, just jumping in and giving it a go. Looks like one way or another it will need adjusting though.

Still not sure if I'll continue it though.

Fluent said:

But the camera doesn't follow, right? Maybe I need to adjust settings.

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In the options, turn on "enable edge panning" and "keep mouse cursor in window" (or something like that the settings are one under the other).

Also, this is a pretty much a point-to-click isometric game, I'm not sure why you are trying to play this as a 3rd person game.

azarhal said:

Also, this is a pretty much a point-to-click isometric game, I'm not sure why you are trying to play this as a 3rd person game.

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I'm not bud. I found myself wishing it was 3rd-person because their implementation of isometric is not to my liking. I'm plenty familiar with isometric RPGs.