Dear old Winterfox/Lesifoere gets an appropriate mention in a Larian game. She would have enjoyed playing this.
Finished on hard all the way through. There were a couple of places where I really loathed the +25% to enemy health, but overall they were good tweaks. It's keen how this is the opposite of D&D in that the -10% means nothing in the hit-heavy early game, but the gulf gradually increases as you go on (of course stun/freeze/knockdown/petrify make the hit roll irrelevant and blessing/precision give a massive +30% to accuracy. That's the equivalent of a +6 spell in D&D which is crazy).
The character system is as messy as I thought it would be, but as I mentioned in an another thread, it feels like a much better execution of what Bioware wanted to do with Dragon Age (see: spell/cross-class combos). The only thing I'd say DA:O has over it is the separation of combat and non-combat skills. This isn't Fallout, so putting points into the likes of lockpicking, pickpocketing, bartering, and charisma is only going to hurt you since you spend far more time in wilderness areas than you do in towns, and whatever randomized loot you acquire with those skills likely isn't going to give you any kind of edge you could get by putting those points elsewhere.
There are some pretty great spells though, and my ranger and melee fighter were definitely valuable parts of the team (though a melee rogue seems like it'd be difficult to play, stench likely mandatory). I was pretty impressed with how every skill has a few great low-level spells to make one-point sinks a worthwhile investment, though the highest level elemental spells were all extremely disappointing because they're all unreliable AoEs. Fix that for the EE Larian, because at it is now, none of those spells are worth the AP (also a thing to include for the EE: automatic health regeneration).
Incidentally, I don't know if Stabbey was wrong or if there was a stealth fix, but there were a few tenebrium weapons that required 4 or 5 points so that ability is all right... except for the fact that the endgame enemies have 200 resist to it and I bought an awesome tenebrium weapon just for that fight
I was totally right about how this is nothing but a series of corridor maps, which makes it funny how people who had actually played it claimed I didn't know what I was talking about. The price of full 3D graphics. I did think it was a great idea how they deliberately decided to use the big bosses as just-plot gates as opposed to area gates, since this means you can just put a more-demanding fight on hold while you go mop up stuff elsewhere until you're capable. I had to do this with King Boreas, the bane of my existence.
I actually liked the writing more than I thought I would. As expected, I liked the funny parts the best and thought the exposition was the least interesting, except when characters were talking about their personal tragedies, like the Icara/Leandra/Zandalor deal. I was impressed with how Madora's (intentional) obnoxiousness was given a tragic expalanation, though I think it's kind of a shame how even if you convince her to sympathize him, you gotta kill that orc anyway to clear the quest off your log. Jahan was eh. I didn't interact with the DLC companions so no comment there.
As for the content, this turned out to be the best combat crawl I've played yet (to quote Josh Sawyer, "I can take a ride through paradise in a crappy Chevy Cavalier. My environment does not diminish the crappy nature of the Cavalier.") They did a good job with those post-release balance tweaks because I enjoyed virtually every fight with my cautious, conservative and crafting-free playstyle, with just a few obnoxious exceptions. Since Larian eschewed strategic gameplay (very likely the right call), it did have some pacing problems, even in Cyseal, where you have to go from one demanding fight to another without any exploration/puzzles/dialogue/a filler battle to break the routine. And yeah, after spending over an hour killing Cassandra (at least half that time mopping up all the damn undead she spawned) and over an hour killing Balberith (most of the time spent taking out the other creatures one at a time before demolishing him), I took a look at what was surrounding the Source Temple and said hell no. Thankfully, invisibility and stealth meant I could bypass all those fights. I ended up hitting level 20 anyway, so unless you're the most severe of xp junkies, you don't even "need" to fight those guys.
I did have to use
degenerate tactics a few times, but eh, without those easy outs I would have been brickwalled or maybe forced to spend points I was reluctant to spend (as I said, conservative). My go-tos were covering an area in oil and setting it ablaze, covering a chokepoint in ice for slippage, retreating to choke points (hear this is pretty useful in Pillars of Eternity too) and blocking said choke points with summons and/or furniture (it looks dumb but it's hilarious and I only did it thrice). When I fought Braccus Rex I wished this had an Arcanum-esque magic lock spell, because that damn monster would keep opening the door and I'd just close it again.
The battles I enjoyed most were the ones where the enemies had comparable or slightly greater amounts of health than you; naturally, the ones I liked least were where you have one with tons of health. The enemy damage values were acceptably high throughout, as was their ability use. I understand this wasn't the case post-Cyseal on release, so thanks for the post-release balancing. Glad I waited.
I beat the Void Dragon on the first go and had zero trouble with Astarte's health, so of course I felt appropriately smug, having remembered all the posters who struggled with that fight. I'm sure some of youse can be delighted with my nigh-eternal struggle with Boreas.
This was Larian's Hitman: Blood Money in more ways than one. Hopefully their next one won't be their Absolution. Forktong has me ignored, so someone else will have to tell him I said he and Larian did a good job, and that I'm very likely to buy/preorder future Larian products.
