I'll go as far as to say Heretic E5 on bringest them oneth is more difficult than Ultimate Doom E4 on ultra violence. Ambush Liches and maulotaurs in cramped areas are worse than the cyberdemon sniping, especially when factoring in bugs (item selection don't save). There's times where I had to save glitch to amnesia the monsters (sneaking by liches) or to cancel a disciple attack. Never thought to use much of the invuln rings or tomes (these unstack to 1 every level)

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-02, 21:45:

I recommend also getting the first expansion if you don't already have it, I my opinion it has the best content in the game. Very atmospheric. I didn't even hate the roguelike dungeon in it while I very much dislike the ones in the base game, the chaos one is pure garbage as far as I'm concerned.

I couldn't stomach Neverwinter Nights OC anymore and noped out.

I do have the expansions 😀

I had the same experience recently with NwN OC. The game is too simple, too long, and too repetitive (enter hub area > go collect doodads in each cardinal direction > go to new hub area and repeat). Every map is filled with barrels, chests, and crates, but in 99.9% of them is just a few gold pieces or some other junk.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-02, 22:14:

The Allies do get one interesting unit - Cruisers. Those things can wreck an enemy base in seconds, but you get them so late in the game that it barely matters.

But yeah, you need to produce massive quantities of tanks and such to stand a chance during the campaign.

Cruisers are fun and the navy units are in general much less of a headache than the subs Soviets get, due to subs being more interested in killing each other and rocks than the enemy requiring a lot of micromanaging. I wonder have I killed more of my own subs than Allied ships while playing as the Soviets.

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-11-03, 02:13:

I had the same experience recently with NwN OC. The game is too simple, too long, and too repetitive (enter hub area > go collect doodads in each cardinal direction > go to new hub area and repeat). Every map is filled with barrels, chests, and crates, but in 99.9% of them is just a few gold pieces or some other junk.

And some of them are locked like a bank vault and have a very deadly trap requiring a few reloads to survive it as a non-thief character, only to find some damn copper ring in it 🤣

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-02, 21:45:

I moved to the first expansion which I do like a bit more. If OC seems like something a couple complete amateurs cooked up in their moms basement this one feels like someone there actually had at least some idea, but maybe not enough time or resources. I think I'm nearly at the end, the first half of the expansion was better than the latter half. At least the first part had a nice area to explore while the latter part reeks of half-assing possibly due to time/money running out.

Looks like I have to take that back at least partly, I wasn't at the end of chapter 2, I was at the end of the intermission between the two chapters. I guess the INTERMISSION text on each saved game on load game screen could have been a hint if I had actually noticed them, heh. So I guess I'm 2/3 in?

Hopefully the second and last chapter has more going on than the intermission had. I'm not sure was the whole thing blatant padding or did the developers just rely on combat alone to keep the player engaged, can't decide which is worse in NWN's case 😀

Play Castles II for fun, to kick out the Pope and have him crown me king.

Zak McKracken, it's always fun to play it.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-03, 18:50:

Hopefully the second and last chapter has more going on than the intermission had. I'm not sure was the whole thing blatant padding or did the developers just rely on combat alone to keep the player engaged, can't decide which is worse in NWN's case 😀

It didn't. Oof.

The expansion as a whole felt like a very avarage mod campaign made by a single person the net is full of free to download and this was a official expansion with retail release and everything. I should have played this back in the day considering back then I liked even the OC, a fact that now baffles me immensely, and this expansion even with its shortcomings still was better than that. I especially liked how the world wasn't full of chests and boxes stuffed with random crap everywhere like in OC, stuff was stored in much more logical places like store/treasure rooms, loot bags around camp fires etc.

I liked the first chapter well enough, what it lacked in story and writing department it made up with a pleasant enough fairly open area to explore, but the rest 2/3 were just extremely simplistic straight forward combat all to way to the end with not much to spice things up. By the time I reached the end I was so fed up with it I had begun to hate nearly everything about it, NWN's combat mechanics haven't gotten better with time that's for sure. Still an improvement over OC, I started to hate that with a passion before I was even half way through the first chapter 😀

Also something odd happened at the end, I didn't take a single point of damage during the final tower thing you need to climb up right at the end, not even during the final confrontation. Neither did any of the debuffs enemies tried to use do anything. Either the game bugged out, I got ridiculously OP with the gear the game handed to me or there was some story reason for it I didn't notice as I really wasn't paying any attention to anything by that point and just wanted to get it done. Boots of speed were a great find for this reason!

At least I can now finally mark this one off as done deal, time to move on to something else. I don't think I dare to touch Hordes of the Underdark any time soon.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-11-06, 09:29:

I liked the first chapter well enough, what it lacked in story and writing department it made up with a pleasant enough fairly open area to explore, but the rest 2/3 were just extremely simplistic straight forward combat all to way to the end with not much to spice things up.

That was pretty much my takeaway as well. The first chapter shows what happens when the developers actually take some time to craft something interesting. The rest of exp1 does eventually devolve into mindless combat, but at least it's not quite as bad as in the original game.

At least I can now finally mark this one off as done deal, time to move on to something else. I don't think I dare to touch Hordes of the Underdark any time soon.

I never was a big fan of exp2 for some reason. Sure, it had an interesting story and I really liked some of the dialog options near the end (the true name stuff). But the dungeon design just felt uninspired, with weird puzzles and some overly gimmicky stuff like that flying hand thing. It's better than the original game, but that's not much of a milestone I guess.

BTW, I heard some good things about the Kingmaker (official?) module, but I never got around to trying it. I think the GOG Diamond version of the game includes it, so I might give it a shot when/if I decide to replay Neverwinter Nights myself.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-11-06, 09:50:

I never was a big fan of exp2 for some reason. Sure, it had an interesting story and I really liked some of the dialog options near the end (the true name stuff). But the dungeon design just felt uninspired, with weird puzzles and some overly gimmicky stuff like that flying hand thing. It's better than the original game, but that's not much of a milestone I guess.

BTW, I heard some good things about the Kingmaker (official?) module, but I never got around to trying it. I think the GOG Diamond version of the game includes it, so I might give it a shot when/if I decide to replay Neverwinter Nights myself.

Now that you mention it I don't think I ever was all that fond of the undermountain part of the game it starts off with. In fact I only remember corridors, traps and the stupid henchmen from OC 🤣

I haven't either tried any of the extra modules from Diamond. I've always had a problem with extra content in any form whether they are expansions, dlc's or freely available things, by the time I finish the main game I feel I've had my fill and move on. And when I do feel like coming back I start with the main game and the cycle starts again.

Grim Dawn
I completed this just now, and must say that I really enjoyed it! This is only the third "Diablo II clone" I've ever completed (first was Record of Lodoss War [Dreamcast] and second was Torchlight; yes, I've never completed either Diablo or Diablo II). I had a ton of fun deciding what build to use as I played the game, and then developing/improving it with all the cool systems available. I played as a ranged damage class (rifles), and it took exactly 60 hours to complete the game plus its two DLC expansions, fully exploring every map and doing every quest I found. That number does include a failed first attempt with a different class (lost interest partway through), so this winning run took probably 50 hours.

The game has a cool setting and look, but it's unfortunately wasted on a pretty dull story. There were some cool touches here and there (and one really cool part involving a seemingly idyllic town that isn't what it seems to be...), but most of the story is told through notes and journals, and much of that is your typical sort of situation where a guy is dying in a tunnel but takes the time to write out a spooky note and put it in his pocket for you to find, or where you happen upon a journal of a crazy religious cultist raving about something or other.

Whatever. You get to slaughter a billion demons, ghosts, cultists, and other monsters, and it's fun.

I made the mistake of playing through on the Normal difficulty level, and it was way too easy. I would recommend enabling "Veteran" mode even for a first-time player. I could definitely see myself replaying this again a year or so from now, though I will definitely choose a higher difficult level, a different class, and will probably skip the DLC areas; they are fine, but add a good 12-15 hours to a game that is already pretty long.

Exile: Escape from the Pit
I was in the mood to play a more traditional turn-based RPG, so I resumed my game in progress. It took a short while to get used the interface again (it's pretty clunky), but I'm having a great time with this again. I'm not sure why I stopped playing it months ago. I took a glance at a map of the world someone drew up, and the game is truly massive; I thought I had explored a good portion of the world, but I've actually just started.

The clunkiest part of the game is definitely combat. During random outdoor encounters, it doesn't seem possible to scan the battlefield without actually moving your characters around; pretty annoying. Indoor combat is fine, since it occurs right on the exploration screen (nice touch, actually). It is annoying that you must use the mouse to aim arrows and spells... I would have preferred a system like in the Gold Box games where you can just cycle through enemies with the keyboard.

Other than that, it's a lot of fun. Character development is definitely a high point, in that characters are defined by skills rather than classes. Leveling up is always rewarding.

Diablo
I played a lot of this online back in the day, but never completed it. Having completed Grim Dawn the other day, I decided that now would be a great time to finally beat this one. I reached dungeon level 7 today, so just about halfway through the game as I'm not planning on doing the Hellfire expansion for now. I'm playing a Rogue and enjoying it. It's interesting how differently this plays from Diablo II (and by extension, every Diablo II clone). It's much slower and more deliberate to play, and feels sort of like a survival horror game at times. I think I might even prefer the structure of this over Diablo II and the clones, with its single dungeon beneath your base of operations (Torchlight is also like this, but plays much more like Diablo II).

Diablo's soundtrack is legendary, but I must also praise the graphics. They are definitely much simpler than those in Diablo II, but I like the clean look. The GOG release allows you to run the game at native res scaled up 2x to 1280x960 (with black bars around the image), and it looks fantastic.

Tomb Raider (2013)
I've been slowly losing interest in Ultima VI and I think I may be done with it. 🙁 The nostalgia of "Ultima" has taken its course and I'm left with what IMO is an old, creaky RPG. Yeah, I do miss the QoL features of more modern games. But you know what? I played through Wizardry 6 and 7 not too long ago and had a blast! So I guess it's more than QoL that is missing in this game for me.

Yesterday I started Tomb Raider. So far, I've completed two 45 minute sessions and it's pretty fun! I'm not too crazy about the controls, though. I'm finding myself quickly having to switch my right hand from the mouse to the keyboard for some of the mashing commands and that is rather clumsy. I've had to replay certain sequences several times (most recently, kneeing the Russian, biting his neck, then wrestling the gun from him and shooting him). Also, some of the commands that I've only used a few times (Survival Instinct for one), I've forgotten and missed clicking them at critical moments. I had to pull up a keyboard shortcut page on a fansite to keep myself reminded. And I peaked at some walkthroughs and realized there's a ton of stuff I've completely missed out on (shooting skulls, finding secret items, etc). I didn't even realize they were available to find! So going forward, I'll have to be more diligent about finding secrets. The story is very good so far and I love the "Lost"-like feel of the island.

I've been playing the first Dishonored game. I wouldn't say I'm any good at it, but I've managed to get quite far in the game. Runs quite nicely under proton, but then again it's not too demanding.

clueless1 wrote on 2022-11-10, 02:10:

Tomb Raider (2013)
I've been slowly losing interest in Ultima VI and I think I may be done with it. 🙁 The nostalgia of "Ultima" has taken its course and I'm left with what IMO is an old, creaky RPG. Yeah, I do miss the QoL features of more modern games. But you know what? I played through Wizardry 6 and 7 not too long ago and had a blast! So I guess it's more than QoL that is missing in this game for me.

Well.. Even though they are more or less contemporary games, Ultima and Wizardry could not be less alike. I think your withdrawal is not due to QoL as much as being able to immerse yourself in the world or not. Ultima games are pretty old and getting immersed in their world simulation requires being in the right mind and spirit. It's not as easy a task as it is with other sandbox RPG games from the 2000s onwards. And if you can't do that, they fall flat because the combat is mechanically about as satisfying as poking yourself in the eye with a blunt spoon, particularly after Ultima V. To be honest with you, I too find games like Wizardry easier to go back to and replay, and I would really not expect anyone who hasn't played it back then to really enjoy Ultima games today. I played V, VII and VIII in the day and I find them pretty fun to go back to these days, but playing VI I lose my interest very quickly as well..

That said, there is also something about Ultima VI that really doesn't work IMO. There is no sense of urgency or gripping plot to the whole thing.. It felt pretty climactic after V - In V, the stakes are super high and everything is against you: Lord British is gone, three evil dudes of immense power run the realm, you are our only hope! In VI: Oh look, Gargoyles. Do some private detective shit, and mess around with whatever you like if that pleases you. It just didn't work for me. VII is quite a return to form in terms of storytelling so you may want to try that.. Heck you may even find V more enjoyable with its turn based grid combat, that aged better than Ultima VI IMO.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-10, 06:39:

clueless1 wrote on 2022-11-10, 02:10:

Tomb Raider (2013)
I've been slowly losing interest in Ultima VI and I think I may be done with it. 🙁 The nostalgia of "Ultima" has taken its course and I'm left with what IMO is an old, creaky RPG. Yeah, I do miss the QoL features of more modern games. But you know what? I played through Wizardry 6 and 7 not too long ago and had a blast! So I guess it's more than QoL that is missing in this game for me.

Well.. Even though they are more or less contemporary games, Ultima and Wizardry could not be less alike. I think your withdrawal is not due to QoL as much as being able to immerse yourself in the world or not. Ultima games are pretty old and getting immersed in their world simulation requires being in the right mind and spirit. It's not as easy a task as it is with other sandbox RPG games from the 2000s onwards. And if you can't do that, they fall flat because the combat is mechanically about as satisfying as poking yourself in the eye with a blunt spoon, particularly after Ultima V. To be honest with you, I too find games like Wizardry easier to go back to and replay, and I would really not expect anyone who hasn't played it back then to really enjoy Ultima games today. I played V, VII and VIII in the day and I find them pretty fun to go back to these days, but playing VI I lose my interest very quickly as well..

That said, there is also something about Ultima VI that really doesn't work IMO. There is no sense of urgency or gripping plot to the whole thing.. It felt pretty climactic after V - In V, the stakes are super high and everything is against you: Lord British is gone, three evil dudes of immense power run the realm, you are our only hope! In VI: Oh look, Gargoyles. Do some private detective shit, and mess around with whatever you like if that pleases you. It just didn't work for me. VII is quite a return to form in terms of storytelling so you may want to try that.. Heck you may even find V more enjoyable with its turn based grid combat, that aged better than Ultima VI IMO.

Thanks, good points. I did not give my full Ultima background in the previous post, but I played U1-U5 when they were current (I was in middle-high school). It was my favorite series at the time (I also played the Wizardry series at the time and liked Ultima better back then). When U6 came out, I didn't have a PC and they didn't make a version for my Apple II. So when I got my first PC in the early 1990s, I went straight for U7. And I have replayed U7 already in 2017 and loved it. All that lines up with your comments above, which makes sense. So, the "Ultima" nostalgia was on my side, but the fact I'd never played U6 when it was current hurt my chances of becoming immersed in it.

Diablo
I completed this for the time just a minute ago. I played as a Rogue, and it was really a lot of fun! This is one I've always wanted to finish ever since it first came out, so it felt good to finally slay Diablo.

I must say that I really like how stingy the game is with magic equipment. When you find something cool, it's really quite an event, and you end up holding onto it for most of the game. Quite different from the modern Diablo clones, where you are finding new and better stuff every few minutes, and constantly replacing your equipment.

I didn't have much trouble at all completing the game, but I did run into one massive difficulty spike when the stairs from level 8 to level 9 put me in the middle of the level surrounded by what seemed like a dozen tough enemies (including two miniboss enemies), with half of them blasting me with lightning from range. I was able to get through it, but for a while I was wondering whether the game had randomly generated an impossible level! After that, the rest of the game was smooth sailing.

Anyway, Diablo is short and sweet, and GOG Galaxy reports that I spent 12 hours on the game, though that includes an aborted first attempt with another character. The winning run probably took just under 10 hours total.

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-11-10, 16:22:

Diablo I completed this for the time just a minute ago. I played as a Rogue, and it was really a lot of fun! This is one I've […]
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Diablo
I completed this for the time just a minute ago. I played as a Rogue, and it was really a lot of fun! This is one I've always wanted to finish ever since it first came out, so it felt good to finally slay Diablo.

I must say that I really like how stingy the game is with magic equipment. When you find something cool, it's really quite an event, and you end up holding onto it for most of the game. Quite different from the modern Diablo clones, where you are finding new and better stuff every few minutes, and constantly replacing your equipment.

I didn't have much trouble at all completing the game, but I did run into one massive difficulty spike when the stairs from level 8 to level 9 put me in the middle of the level surrounded by what seemed like a dozen tough enemies (including two miniboss enemies), with half of them blasting me with lightning from range. I was able to get through it, but for a while I was wondering whether the game had randomly generated an impossible level! After that, the rest of the game was smooth sailing.

Anyway, Diablo is short and sweet, and GOG Galaxy reports that I spent 12 hours on the game, though that includes an aborted first attempt with another character. The winning run probably took just under 10 hours total.

I felt exactly the same way about Diablo when I replayed it last year. You appreciate equipment so much more when you might find a new upgrade once per level, and there are only 16 levels. I've soured on the direction Diablo 2 took enormously over the years. I even have come to blame it's emphasis on loot piñatas with normalizing the conflation of compulsiveness with fun. I think it was the first enormously successful mainstream game which really keyed into that slot machine style of mental addiction in video games. Now it's hard to find a game made in the last 10 years which doesn't do that.

Re: the above, I do agree, I dislike some of the cynical compulsion aspects built into some modern gaming, and can see how Blizzard played a significant hand in evolving that. But I also think that 'everything in moderation' applies too. Personally I enjoyed Diablo 2's mechanisms, and don't retrospectively resent what it was in the slightest. At the time, it was a lot of fun, and did nothing any harm (except mouse buttons!). The fact the most cynical aspects of it were taken, and in subsequent games, blown up to be The Whole Thing, is the fault of those later generations.

Namrok wrote on 2022-11-10, 17:22:

I felt exactly the same way about Diablo when I replayed it last year. You appreciate equipment so much more when you might find a new upgrade once per level, and there are only 16 levels. I've soured on the direction Diablo 2 took enormously over the years. I even have come to blame it's emphasis on loot piñatas with normalizing the conflation of compulsiveness with fun. I think it was the first enormously successful mainstream game which really keyed into that slot machine style of mental addiction in video games. Now it's hard to find a game made in the last 10 years which doesn't do that.

Agreed 100%. I've tried getting into the genre over the years, and have spent many hours on games like Diablo II, Titan's Quest, Path of Exile, and Grim Dawn. With the exception of Grim Dawn, I always end up getting bored 10-20 hours in or so, because it stops feeling like playing a game, and more like scratching some lottery tickets. I never got really far into the first Diablo game back in the day, so I had wrongfully assumed that all that stuff was there from the beginning... so Diablo was really a pleasant surprise. I didn't even mind having to click each time I wanted to attack... it made it feel more like playing an action game and less like playing a slot machine (nice term!). Maybe we should be calling all these games "Diablo II clones" rather than "Diablo clones." 😉

I know that these games are now generally designed to be pretty easy on the default difficulty level, and are meant to be played on increasingly higher difficulty levels that eventually require you to carefully plan your build, but there's something to be said for the Diablo approach of a single difficulty level balanced properly, where you just roll with the punches and scrape by with whatever you happen to find.

clueless1 wrote on 2022-11-10, 02:10:

I've been slowly losing interest in Ultima VI and I think I may be done with it. 🙁 The nostalgia of "Ultima" has taken its course and I'm left with what IMO is an old, creaky RPG. Yeah, I do miss the QoL features of more modern games. But you know what? I played through Wizardry 6 and 7 not too long ago and had a blast! So I guess it's more than QoL that is missing in this game for me.

I think part of this might be that the first-person step-based RPGs are actually much easier to just jump in and play. It's easier to track where you've been, where you are, and where you need to go. They can be fun no matter how you approach them, whether taking notes and drawing maps on your own, following a walkthrough 100%, or anything in between, because the dungeon/world design is great, combat is quick and often interesting, and party building is addictive.

In contrast, I think that the Ultima games require you to really be immersed to get any fun out of them. They mostly all have terrible and slow/tedious combat and little to no character/party development, and so taking notes and solving the mystery is what the game is really all about. The keyword-based conversation system starting from Ultima IV is awesome for immersion, but can be annoying to track keywords, and frustrating if you miss some important clue.

I've only completed Ultimas I through IV, but of those I enjoyed III the most, and I think it's telling that it's basically Richard Garriott's response to Wizardry (complete with a character registry and permadeath!).

I guess I feel it's a little weird to target Diablo II in the "first enormously successful mainstream game which really keyed into a slot machine style of mental addiction in video games" sense, when that quote describes much of the world of video (particularly, arcade) games spanning the prior 2 to 3 decades. Which literally did evolve from slot machines, and literally were designed to be compulsive in order to obtain as many of your coins as possible.

Might as well call Diablo II "Gauntlet with lots of items", then, but we don't go unfairly placing the ills of modern gaming upon Gauntlet, and nor do I really feel Diablo II deserves any more than it's fair individual due.