NovaCN wrote on 2022-01-16, 15:10:

I know the games are supposed to be really good (the third especially) and I would love to see more of these characters and world, but between the above and not really knowing how well the developers necessarily understood the themes (and for lack of a better word, politics) of the source material I really love, I'm given pause. Curious what you all think, and again I apologize for rambling on for so long.

I haven't seen the show, but have played the games and read the books, so here's my take on the games setting wise:

The Witcher 1 was the first game CD Projekt Red developed and while they were ambitious with some aspects of the game (a bit too much actually.. the game got released as a janky mess and in some parts still is) they clearly didn't want to tie the game to the book storyline and has very little to do with it. Just the familiar world and some characters from the books with a (pretty bad) story they themselves cooked up. They also don't explain in any way how Geralt is alive again, he just shows up with an amnesia and then the game story kicks off. It's actually really odd if you read the books first and then play the game as the few familiar characters from the books don't explain anything to Geralt, they pretty much just say "oh you're alive!" and then go on like the books don't exist, nobody thinks to mention Ciri or Yennefer to Geralt. The game does otherwise have lots of nods to the books, some happenings from them are actually pretty much recreated or partly mirrored in the game. The game feels like a bit janky tribute to the books that has a heart of gold, made by a bunch of fans who were inexperienced and didn't dare to mess with the official storyline. I think they did succeed well enough in the end considering it's their first game, I do think they got the world and setting dialed in pretty well, but the story... just try not to think it as continuation of the books.

The Witcher 2 had much bigger production values and the writing got way better, but unfortunately I also do think they tried too hard. I just don't enjoy playing it which is a shame as the story is A LOT better than in the first game and is much closer to the politics and themes of the books. It's still a sequel to the first game and not the books though, the world sees some continuation but Geralts storyline from the books does not.

The Witcher 3 finally stopped prancing around the books and continues the story of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer and is the only game where you really do benefit from reading the books first. I do have a list of things I don't like about the game, mainly to do with the open world design, but the setting, story, quests and characters and interaction with them are so well done that I really do highly recommend the game if you like the books.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-01-16, 15:10:

I may be the only Witcher fan in the world who's read all the books but never got around to playing the games.

Nope, there is also me. As well as all the friends and family who had read the books on my recommendation. 😀

NovaCN wrote on 2022-01-16, 15:10:

I have mixed feelings on the Netflix show. It's fine in its own right, and the themes are all there, but they've skipped over some of the best material from the early short stories and invented so much filler. Almost nothing in season 2 was actually in the books.

Yes, as a fan of the books, that is my major problem with Season 2. On the other hand, taken as its own work, detached from the source plot, many fans praised Season 2 for being more coherent and without the mixed up past/present plotlines. So it may be better as a cinematic work, but way less loyal to the source.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-01-16, 15:10:

I know the games are supposed to be really good (the third especially) and I would love to see more of these characters and world, but between the above and not really knowing how well the developers necessarily understood the themes (and for lack of a better word, politics) of the source material I really love, I'm given pause.

I haven't played the games myself, but read a bit on some of the plotlines. I suppose you should look at them the same way you look at the show - as another set of stories (parallel / alternate / side timelines) set in the Witcher universe. Not something that is supposed to follow the books to the T, but something new created around the same concepts. Then it's OK. (see also Sombrero's detailed breakdown of each game in the post above)

Hit a difficulty wall in Truxton, and have slackened off my daily plays a bit. The rote-memory aspect of these shmups is both a blessing and a curse. It means that being in the zone is *really* being in the zone, but at certain points the sheer unbroken dynamic of memory attrition can become grating.

Inspired by some recent talk here of late, I yesterday setup and began the CDROM version of Lands of Lore on a K6/2 DOS machine. First time I've played it since, probably 1994-95. First time with the MIDI soundtrack on my SC-55mkII. Perhaps also first time with the full voicing of the CDROM version too, as I presume it was the floppy version I played back in the 90's.

I've done hardly anything in the game so far. Just a one hour taster of mindlessly blasting through the first few areas, a refresher for the game's general feel and mechanics. Chose the magic user character, since I suspect my younger self's playthroughs would have involved the bog-standard Balanced or Strong characters. After awhile, got stopped in my tracks by "the orcs" 🤣 at which point I remembered the value of savegames. Haven't quite remembered (or researched) how the magic system in this game works yet, beyond the simple I/II/III/IV options in combat, and the standard camp-to-regain function.

A fun novelty to hear Patrick Stewart's voice, of course. The flipside being, as is often the case with highly-recognisable celebrity voicings, that while he speaks I spend half the time thinking "wow! the glory! Patrick Stewart! wow!", rather than actually listening to the story and what his character is saying. 🤣

Another level down in Heretic. Only two more before I finish Episode 5. The full play took quite a while.

This thread reminds me I never actually finished Lands of Lore 1 despite it being my favorite Eye of the Beholder clone.. I remember the difficulty curve shooting up insanely at some point, while explring a white tower of some sort. There was this enemy type that would cast an offensive spell at you in the shape of a snake or something and it would basically wreck your entire party! The rest scumming grew tedious after a while and I quit. Time to replay?

Also, is it worth playing this game as any character other than Conrad?

appiah4 wrote on 2022-01-17, 08:52:

Also, is it worth playing this game as any character other than Conrad?

The personality of Ak'Shel seems fun, from my playthrough thus far. And the challenge with a less-balanced character may be enjoyable. Having said that, I think I have the monsters set on Easy, as it's already quite hard enough! Guess I just like the character. He's not just another boring "musclebound white quarterback" -type to roleplay, as Conrad and Michael seem to be.

Did another couple hours today, got into it properly. It's quite immersive, moreso than I expected. The soundtrack and voice acting are nice. Good story. Combat, ok, but we'll see how that goes in the long run. A bit of frantic healing and flailing of limbs so far. But it seems I will be spending quite a few hours in it.

I did read through a few "tips for first time players" (I am not a first time player, but with 25 year gap, I might as well be), and saw mention of a Cloud thing, infamous level ?3? was it? Sounds fun/bad.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-01-17, 08:52:

This thread reminds me I never actually finished Lands of Lore 1 despite it being my favorite Eye of the Beholder clone.. I remember the difficulty curve shooting up insanely at some point, while explring a white tower of some sort. There was this enemy type that would cast an offensive spell at you in the shape of a snake or something and it would basically wreck your entire party! The rest scumming grew tedious after a while and I quit. Time to replay?

I decided to rewrite this reply to be more informative just because I'm a bit bored.

The White Tower has these ghost enemies (the snake spell guys you mentioned) who hit really hard and if memory serves, also drain your mana limiting your usage of the healing spell. I don't remember did normal weapons do any damage to them or seriously reduced damage leaving only Emerald weapons (Emerald swords?) that do work against the ghosts, but even they do so little damage that the tower becomes a horrible slog. I know because that's how I got though it years ago when I played the game (only to run completely out of steam at the very last area of the game and quit right at the end 😒)

Except little did I know that the game has these Vaelan's Cubes (had to google the name) that are extremely effective against those ghosts, I learned that long after playing the game. I don't remember were the levels designed in such a way that it might lead you to White Tower before getting your first Vaelan's Cube or did the game lure you into using the Cube (and thus losing it) before going to the Tower or what, but in any case I think a lot of people ended up doing the Tower the hard way. And of course the game doesn't in any way hint that the Cube could be useful against those ghosts.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-01-16, 16:57:

The Witcher 1 was the first game CD Projekt Red developed and while they were ambitious with some aspects of the game (a bit too much actually.. the game got released as a janky mess and in some parts still is) they clearly didn't want to tie the game to the book storyline and has very little to do with it. Just the familiar world and some characters from the books with a (pretty bad) story they themselves cooked up. They also don't explain in any way how Geralt is alive again, he just shows up with an amnesia and then the game story kicks off. It's actually really odd if you read the books first and then play the game as the few familiar characters from the books don't explain anything to Geralt, they pretty much just say "oh you're alive!" and then go on like the books don't exist, nobody thinks to mention Ciri or Yennefer to Geralt. The game does otherwise have lots of nods to the books, some happenings from them are actually pretty much recreated or partly mirrored in the game. The game feels like a bit janky tribute to the books that has a heart of gold, made by a bunch of fans who were inexperienced and didn't dare to mess with the official storyline. I think they did succeed well enough in the end considering it's their first game, I do think they got the world and setting dialed in pretty well, but the story... just try not to think it as continuation of the books.

The Witcher 2 had much bigger production values and the writing got way better, but unfortunately I also do think they tried too hard. I just don't enjoy playing it which is a shame as the story is A LOT better than in the first game and is much closer to the politics and themes of the books. It's still a sequel to the first game and not the books though, the world sees some continuation but Geralts storyline from the books does not.

The Witcher 3 finally stopped prancing around the books and continues the story of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer and is the only game where you really do benefit from reading the books first. I do have a list of things I don't like about the game, mainly to do with the open world design, but the setting, story, quests and characters and interaction with them are so well done that I really do highly recommend the game if you like the books.

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-16, 18:29:

I haven't played the games myself, but read a bit on some of the plotlines. I suppose you should look at them the same way you look at the show - as another set of stories (parallel / alternate / side timelines) set in the Witcher universe. Not something that is supposed to follow the books to the T, but something new created around the same concepts. Then it's OK. (see also Sombrero's detailed breakdown of each game in the post above)

Thanks for the details. I already got the games on GOG years ago and just never got around to them for reasons I already stated, so I'll have to move them near the top of my list now. Even if it seems unlikely they'll have, say, the same intimate understanding of the real-world manifestations of bigotry, the interconnections of race and class politics, and how it all ties back to systems of oppressive control. It's just pretty rare to start with to find a work of fantasy that really gets these things the way The Witcher does. I'll try at least the first one out after I finish the Steam games a couple friends got me for the holidays last year.

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-16, 18:29:

Yes, as a fan of the books, that is my major problem with Season 2. On the other hand, taken as its own work, detached from the source plot, many fans praised Season 2 for being more coherent and without the mixed up past/present plotlines. So it may be better as a cinematic work, but way less loyal to the source.

Oh it took a bit of thought but I did eventually figure out what I think they were trying to do with season 2: using it as a means to really highlight the Conjunction of the Spheres, that one huge aspect of the worldbuilding that the books mentioned a few times but didn't really take the time to spotlight. Which works fine in a book, but in a television show you can't just briefly gloss over something that important, especially when it's so critical to understanding one of the major themes of the story (numerous parallel worlds merged together, bringing numerous fantasy races and monsters together, but the world they ended up on wasn't a human world, it belonged to the elves. The elves, who can be read similarly to Jews or Roma based on the way humans perceive them and the stereotypes used against them, but also have some parallels to Native Americans--it was their land first. The Conjunction of the Spheres primes you to look for these sorts of allegories). So I suspect the show's writers came up with season 2's plot as a way to put the Conjunction of the Spheres front and center for a while to make sure the viewer is aware of it without it just being a massive exposition dump not directly related to the goings-on in the story.
Also we get more time seeing Geralt and Ciri together, something the books had a pretty notable lack of since her training was glossed over in a couple chapters at most. Not a bad thing to better establish their parent/child relationship early on, I think. I still would have preferred if they'd just adapted the rest of the short stories but dropped Ciri into the middle of them (like S2E1 did with "A Grain of Truth"). Could've been pretty interesting to see what she thinks of Essi Daven and the incident with Sh'eenaz and the merfolk, or let her watch Geralt and Istredd's pathetic pissing match over Yennefer (in a story that perfectly encapsulates who Yen is as a character). Plus I just really want to see Dudu Biberveldt from the best of all the short stories (in my opinion), which could have done so much to make up for the bad taste the doppler from season 1 left in my mouth.
...Now that I see this all typed out, it's a lot longer than I expected going in. Whoops.

NovaCN wrote on 2022-01-17, 14:25:

Thanks for the details. I already got the games on GOG years ago and just never got around to them for reasons I already stated, […]
Show full quote

Sombrero wrote on 2022-01-16, 16:57:

The Witcher 1 was the first game CD Projekt Red developed and while they were ambitious with some aspects of the game (a bit too much actually.. the game got released as a janky mess and in some parts still is) they clearly didn't want to tie the game to the book storyline and has very little to do with it. Just the familiar world and some characters from the books with a (pretty bad) story they themselves cooked up. They also don't explain in any way how Geralt is alive again, he just shows up with an amnesia and then the game story kicks off. It's actually really odd if you read the books first and then play the game as the few familiar characters from the books don't explain anything to Geralt, they pretty much just say "oh you're alive!" and then go on like the books don't exist, nobody thinks to mention Ciri or Yennefer to Geralt. The game does otherwise have lots of nods to the books, some happenings from them are actually pretty much recreated or partly mirrored in the game. The game feels like a bit janky tribute to the books that has a heart of gold, made by a bunch of fans who were inexperienced and didn't dare to mess with the official storyline. I think they did succeed well enough in the end considering it's their first game, I do think they got the world and setting dialed in pretty well, but the story... just try not to think it as continuation of the books.

The Witcher 2 had much bigger production values and the writing got way better, but unfortunately I also do think they tried too hard. I just don't enjoy playing it which is a shame as the story is A LOT better than in the first game and is much closer to the politics and themes of the books. It's still a sequel to the first game and not the books though, the world sees some continuation but Geralts storyline from the books does not.

The Witcher 3 finally stopped prancing around the books and continues the story of Geralt, Ciri and Yennefer and is the only game where you really do benefit from reading the books first. I do have a list of things I don't like about the game, mainly to do with the open world design, but the setting, story, quests and characters and interaction with them are so well done that I really do highly recommend the game if you like the books.

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-16, 18:29:

I haven't played the games myself, but read a bit on some of the plotlines. I suppose you should look at them the same way you look at the show - as another set of stories (parallel / alternate / side timelines) set in the Witcher universe. Not something that is supposed to follow the books to the T, but something new created around the same concepts. Then it's OK. (see also Sombrero's detailed breakdown of each game in the post above)

Thanks for the details. I already got the games on GOG years ago and just never got around to them for reasons I already stated, so I'll have to move them near the top of my list now. Even if it seems unlikely they'll have, say, the same intimate understanding of the real-world manifestations of bigotry, the interconnections of race and class politics, and how it all ties back to systems of oppressive control. It's just pretty rare to start with to find a work of fantasy that really gets these things the way The Witcher does. I'll try at least the first one out after I finish the Steam games a couple friends got me for the holidays last year.

dr_st wrote on 2022-01-16, 18:29:

Yes, as a fan of the books, that is my major problem with Season 2. On the other hand, taken as its own work, detached from the source plot, many fans praised Season 2 for being more coherent and without the mixed up past/present plotlines. So it may be better as a cinematic work, but way less loyal to the source.

Oh it took a bit of thought but I did eventually figure out what I think they were trying to do with season 2: using it as a means to really highlight the Conjunction of the Spheres, that one huge aspect of the worldbuilding that the books mentioned a few times but didn't really take the time to spotlight. Which works fine in a book, but in a television show you can't just briefly gloss over something that important, especially when it's so critical to understanding one of the major themes of the story (numerous parallel worlds merged together, bringing numerous fantasy races and monsters together, but the world they ended up on wasn't a human world, it belonged to the elves. The elves, who can be read similarly to Jews or Roma based on the way humans perceive them and the stereotypes used against them, but also have some parallels to Native Americans--it was their land first. The Conjunction of the Spheres primes you to look for these sorts of allegories). So I suspect the show's writers came up with season 2's plot as a way to put the Conjunction of the Spheres front and center for a while to make sure the viewer is aware of it without it just being a massive exposition dump not directly related to the goings-on in the story.
Also we get more time seeing Geralt and Ciri together, something the books had a pretty notable lack of since her training was glossed over in a couple chapters at most. Not a bad thing to better establish their parent/child relationship early on, I think. I still would have preferred if they'd just adapted the rest of the short stories but dropped Ciri into the middle of them (like S2E1 did with "A Grain of Truth"). Could've been pretty interesting to see what she thinks of Essi Daven and the incident with Sh'eenaz and the merfolk, or let her watch Geralt and Istredd's pathetic pissing match over Yennefer (in a story that perfectly encapsulates who Yen is as a character). Plus I just really want to see Dudu Biberveldt from the best of all the short stories (in my opinion), which could have done so much to make up for the bad taste the doppler from season 1 left in my mouth.
...Now that I see this all typed out, it's a lot longer than I expected going in. Whoops.

Just be aware that the first game -Enhanced Edition has issues, I've tried a number of times to play it and it simply wont render correctly on my 2080ti, tired it on the 3080ti and got the same result, seems to be an issue with it being a DX9 game and well neither GPU can do DX9 without being emulated through DX11 and the game simply doesnt like it. it only renders the first inch of the picture and leaves me with a black box in the middle of it, different drivers dont fix it either.

So if you have a DX9/DX10 GPU handy I would play it on that, The Witcher 2 and 3 work fine on DX12 GPUs. Perhaps I am missing something and you can figure it out but I remember the first game was always a bit buggy.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-17, 15:24:

Just be aware that the first game -Enhanced Edition has issues, I've tried a number of times to play it and it simply wont render correctly on my 2080ti, tired it on the 3080ti and got the same result, seems to be an issue with it being a DX9 game and well neither GPU can do DX9 without being emulated through DX11 and the game simply doesnt like it. it only renders the first inch of the picture and leaves me with a black box in the middle of it, different drivers dont fix it either.

So if you have a DX9/DX10 GPU handy I would play it on that, The Witcher 2 and 3 work fine on DX12 GPUs. Perhaps I am missing something and you can figure it out but I remember the first game was always a bit buggy.

Huh, new GPU's don't support DX9 on hardware anymore? You sure, couldn't find any info about that?

If you go to dxdiag -> Display 1 and see the Drivers box what it says it supports on the Feature Levels?

Sombrero wrote on 2022-01-17, 15:43:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-01-17, 15:24:

Just be aware that the first game -Enhanced Edition has issues, I've tried a number of times to play it and it simply wont render correctly on my 2080ti, tired it on the 3080ti and got the same result, seems to be an issue with it being a DX9 game and well neither GPU can do DX9 without being emulated through DX11 and the game simply doesnt like it. it only renders the first inch of the picture and leaves me with a black box in the middle of it, different drivers dont fix it either.

So if you have a DX9/DX10 GPU handy I would play it on that, The Witcher 2 and 3 work fine on DX12 GPUs. Perhaps I am missing something and you can figure it out but I remember the first game was always a bit buggy.

Huh, new GPU's don't support DX9 on hardware anymore? You sure, couldn't find any info about that?

If you go to dxdiag -> Display 1 and see the Drivers box what it says it supports on the Feature Levels?

DX9 is run through a emulation layer same for Direct Draw, been this way for a while, the GPU doesnt support 9.0 but 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3 are there.
Doing some digging it seems that Windows 10 and 11 use a DX9 compatibility layer instead of doing it via hardware, since im on Win11 perhaps this is the issue in which case its a MS issue and not the game.

It runs fine on my Windows 7 1070 rig.

God of War
Plays fine at 3840x1600 at Ultra on this 1080Ti w/ a gsync compatible monitor suprisingly enough. Thinking probably somewhere in the 40fps range but haven't verified.
Had to use steamless and a steam emulator to remove the steam requirement.
When I was backing up this game I was wondering why it was taking so long, looked at the number of files and the game contains 156,590 files in 69GB and 153, 497 of that are audio files. Crazy.
Currently in the giant mountain and playing on regular difficulty which is just fine with me. Tried harder than that starting out and since I didn't know what I was doing would die alot.
Also playing with Keyboard and Mouse which works fine although I do have difficulty switching to rage mode for some reason.

Mass Effect PC
Still playing this an hour or so every other day, and still enjoying it. I've got all the companions now, but so far have settled on using Tali and Wrex. Compared with ME2/3, ME1 feels a lot more like a "traditional" RPG, even a dungeon crawler at times complete with finding "treasure" boxes with what I assume is random loot. Good exploration so far, though the individual areas tend to generally be quite linear with just some minor branches here and there. I've found the combat to be just right in terms of difficulty on Normal, but companion AI is really poor; most battles end with both companions on the floor dead, but they still play an important role in drawing enemy fire until that point, so I guess it's fine.

Exile: Escape from the Pit (PC)
This series of games needs some workarounds to get working on modern Windows OS. You can either use Dosbox with Win 3.11 installed, run the game on a virtual Win 9x etc. installation, install a compatibility tool to allow 16-bit Windows applications to be installed and run on modern OS, or install Basilik II and emulate a classic Mac OS computer. I went with Doxbox, which seemed easiest.

The trilogy has also been remade as Avernum 1-3, and is currently being re-remake as Avernum remakes (lol). Those are decent enough remakes, but I feel that Exile is still the superior choice due to cuts made to Avernum (smaller party, less spells).

It feels a lot like playing Ultima 4-6 with combat slightly closer to an AD&D Gold Box game. The game has a rough start in that you characters are weak and poorly equipped, and everything costs money—equipment, food, training. Random battles outside of the towns tend not to give a lot of gold, but it's enough to keep your party fed. Most of the gold you receive comes from exploring the dungeons, so you are motivated to go out and explore.

The game has an automap, which is helpful, but no way to add labels to maps. I suppose you could take screenshots and use paint or whatever to manually do this.

So far, I am really enjoying this one. It promises to be a massive game, as I've explored only a corner of the world and have already put several hours into the game. It plays fast due to tile-based movement, and the world is full of content (three towns and three dungeons just in the corner of the world I've explored). It's also very open to exploration, and the game provides you with plenty of leads right from the start.

Oh yeah, I finished Resident Evil 4 and it holds up really well. Ended up going back through on Professional and then playing Separate Ways. After that, getting 5 stars on every stage of The Mercenaries felt way easier than I remembered, but now I've got everything unlocked for future runs if I come back to this again on PC, I guess. Took some getting used to the mouse and keyboard controls since I was used to the Wii version's motion controls from the last time I played it, but once I adapted it was even easier to pull off accurate shots than it ever was on the Wii. Wound up using the rifle a lot more as a result, and Regenerators were far less of a problem to deal with.
Anyway, great game, solid recommend if you want a vaguely horror-themed shooter with plenty of goofy nonsense.

Next up is Steins;Gate, a time travel visual novel that a close friend gave me as a present over the holidays. I've heard it's good!

Sombrero wrote on 2022-01-17, 09:28:

I decided to rewrite this reply to be more informative just because I'm a bit bored. […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2022-01-17, 08:52:

This thread reminds me I never actually finished Lands of Lore 1 despite it being my favorite Eye of the Beholder clone.. I remember the difficulty curve shooting up insanely at some point, while explring a white tower of some sort. There was this enemy type that would cast an offensive spell at you in the shape of a snake or something and it would basically wreck your entire party! The rest scumming grew tedious after a while and I quit. Time to replay?

I decided to rewrite this reply to be more informative just because I'm a bit bored.

The White Tower has these ghost enemies (the snake spell guys you mentioned) who hit really hard and if memory serves, also drain your mana limiting your usage of the healing spell. I don't remember did normal weapons do any damage to them or seriously reduced damage leaving only Emerald weapons (Emerald swords?) that do work against the ghosts, but even they do so little damage that the tower becomes a horrible slog. I know because that's how I got though it years ago when I played the game (only to run completely out of steam at the very last area of the game and quit right at the end 😒)

Except little did I know that the game has these Vaelan's Cubes (had to google the name) that are extremely effective against those ghosts, I learned that long after playing the game. I don't remember were the levels designed in such a way that it might lead you to White Tower before getting your first Vaelan's Cube or did the game lure you into using the Cube (and thus losing it) before going to the Tower or what, but in any case I think a lot of people ended up doing the Tower the hard way. And of course the game doesn't in any way hint that the Cube could be useful against those ghosts.

*FACEPALM*

That is about as stupid as the "Sticky Paper" in Eye of the Beholder 2's last level that would stick to your hand and could not ever be removed, even with Remove Curse..

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-01-18, 02:24:

Mass Effect PC
Still playing this an hour or so every other day, and still enjoying it. I've got all the companions now, but so far have settled on using Tali and Wrex. Compared with ME2/3, ME1 feels a lot more like a "traditional" RPG, even a dungeon crawler at times complete with finding "treasure" boxes with what I assume is random loot. Good exploration so far, though the individual areas tend to generally be quite linear with just some minor branches here and there. I've found the combat to be just right in terms of difficulty on Normal, but companion AI is really poor; most battles end with both companions on the floor dead, but they still play an important role in drawing enemy fire until that point, so I guess it's fine.

Do you give them orders? For me they've rarely fallen outside of boss fights. I've generally had a rotation of Garrus, Wrex, Tali and Liara. For some reason I remember Garrus is much more fun in the sequels.

Had another Lands of Lore session. Went through The Draracle's Cave section. Realised halfway through that (despite thinking I'd set the monsters to 'Wimpy') it was still set to Normal, which, while not that difficult, did result in the handing of - if not the entire ass - then at least one buttock back to me, on more than one occasion.

Things rightly set back to Non-grind mode, I continued on, completing that quest and sallying forth via the next set of not-so-friendly connecting walks through Square Forestville* and helpful Captain Dreads random sail-me-hithers, and then on to less green pastures. That'll do for today.

Putting aside the nostalgic blinkers for a moment: the combat is not that great. Just a rushed clickety-click across everyone's attack or spellcast icons as quickly as possible. The standard blobber way, but it's not quite as gripping at 40-something as it was at something-teen. Monsters in Wimpy mode helps a lot, and probably makes the difference between me bothering to continue, and not.

That aside, I'm still enjoying the general mechanic and nostalgia of the game. I might look some more at EOB2 to see exactly how they compare in a modern light, as I recall EOB2 being rather strong in atmosphere and setting, an extra darkness in tone to the game's feel, despite some technical age compared with LoL.

*Poor Timothy and the arrows! If only we had some kind of magical healing ability, right? "No no, leave him his dignity". Lol.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-18, 07:13:

Do you give them orders? For me they've rarely fallen outside of boss fights. I've generally had a rotation of Garrus, Wrex, Tali and Liara. For some reason I remember Garrus is much more fun in the sequels.

Not really, other than telling them to use their abilities now and then. I should maybe order them around more often?

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-01-18, 07:30:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-18, 07:13:

Do you give them orders? For me they've rarely fallen outside of boss fights. I've generally had a rotation of Garrus, Wrex, Tali and Liara. For some reason I remember Garrus is much more fun in the sequels.

Not really, other than telling them to use their abilities now and then. I should maybe order them around more often?

Yeah. As you recognized, the first game is much closer to classic CRPGs than the sequels and you benefit from playing it like one. They are an extension of you/Shepherd, you benefit from actively using tem.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-01-18, 07:39:

Yeah. As you recognized, the first game is much closer to classic CRPGs than the sequels and you benefit from playing it like one. They are an extension of you/Shepherd, you benefit from actively using tem.

Thanks for replying! I'll give that a try. 😀