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storm of zehir worth?

Andyman Messiah

Mr. Ed-ucated
Joined
Jan 27, 2004
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Narnia
Storm of Zehir is like a mechanical blueprint for an amazing RPG
Yes.

but nearly all of its content sucks ass.
I wouldn't say it sucks ass. It's 'mediocre' because it's almost if not totally lacking cutscenes and dialogue and romance and other shit people have grown accustomed to over the years. Zehir is more a traditional RPG. It keeps the small, cramped dungeons for the most part though, it's true. I can only say I liked the last dungeon. It's an okay campaign but it's a really far departure from something like Mask of the Betrayer or the Original Campaign so it's not for everyone.
 

Mozg

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2015
Messages
2,033
Really underrated game - reputation around here was single-handedly destroyed by Volourn coining the term 'sozzy' and using it repeatedly until it caught on.

Also that it wasn't more MotB. My reaction at the time was that MotB had heroically clawed itself over the leaden mass of completely mindless NwN2 RTwP to be a good game, and now here's a new expansion where that filler is supposed to be the content a la Icewind Dale.
 

Gord

Arcane
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Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
The nice thing about SoZ was that it conveyed a certain PnP feeling for me.
Especially those days when my old group would meet and the DM would just improvise along instead of doing some big prepared campaign.
 
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Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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It's 'mediocre' because it's almost if not totally lacking cutscenes and dialogue and romance and other shit people have grown accustomed to over the years..

My favourite RPG of the last 10 years is Blackguards, so this point falls pretty flat for me personally. That game would have been better without the few cutscenes that it did have.

I disliked Storm of Zehir because it plays pretty terribly when push comes to shove. It's not about not having the right kind of content, as you suggest, but about the content that is there being shallow. The combat plays pretty poorly and the dungeons are cramped. Since that makes up the bulk of what you're actually engaging in while playing the game, I don't like SoZ so much as I like the idea of it.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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By the way, speaking of content, the encounter design is actually fairly copy-pasted in most cases. There's a select few pretty good encounters, but I suspect a main reason that SoZ' great ideas peter out so fast is that a lot of the fights don't feel particularly hand-crafted or interesting.
 
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Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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My favourite RPG of the last 10 years is Blackguards, so this point falls pretty flat for me personally.

Yea, but the thing is that SoZ was released in 2008, which was deep in the dark age of RPG, so it got lots of brownie points for that. If released today, it would probably be much less cool when compared to stuff like Blaggardz etc.

Altho I still think the overland map and party dialogue remain p. cool. Not a whole lot of that happening in recent time (if at all).
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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I getcha, my post was simply in response to Andyman's point that SoZ somehow felt lackluster due to lack of biowarian content/fleshed out story, etc. I suspect that's true for some, but it definetely isn't for me.

EDIT:
Altho I still think the overland map and party dialogue remain p. cool. Not a whole lot of that happening in recent time (if at all).

Well, that and the character system. I think Jaedar is right in assuming that SoZ' version of NWN2's 3.5 is the most complex character customization in any cRPG? Or, well, it's up there at least
 

badler

Obsidian Entertainment
Developer
Joined
Jun 3, 2014
Messages
127
Some SoZ fun facts that I think I am remembering correctly (it's been a while):
  • It was called Storm of Zehir because Tony Evans really pushed for that name due to the acronym it would create. I am not sure if Tony would ever admit to that, but its true.
  • Because 4th Edition Forgotten Realms was going to change up the setting drastically we were in talks with WotC about doing some insane stuff with our story. I don't think any of it really panned out, but the initial talks of wholesale destruction of major FR landmarks was trippy at the time.
  • The crafting system was pretty much created by NChap over a weekend. He was just fed up with the NWN2 crafting system and decided to make one of his own. While it was really cool, it was a fucking nightmare to QA. Seriously, it was a kick in the nuts for QA. I had to place my best tester on it for weeks to work out most of the kinks and it put a serious dent in our available QA resources.
  • Speaking of QA, that game was a nightmare to QA. So many new systems were added that it was really difficult to get full coverage. Also, our patching/installation process went bonkers once we added SoZ into the mix. I want to say there were something like 20 different install paths depending on which products you had, which language you were using, and what version you were currently on when you started the patch. I'm glad I wasn't in charge of generating those patches.
  • I designed some special encounters for the game, but I am not sure if any of them made it in. One thing I remember designing had to do with a golem that was standing over a dead body. Something about needed to cast a protection from evil spell on the area to enter without it attacking the party. Anyways, Tony let some QA do minor design work like that. It was pretty cool of him.
  • The external bug database exploded at one point and I had to spend a few weeks reconstructing it from an incomplete backup. My job was to manage the bugs in the database, not the actual data, but after that I was constantly making manual backups because I was terrified it would happen again.
  • There was an actual bug that was written up (by external QA) that mentioned the sundial in Crossroad Keep (I think it was CK) was inaccurate. The tester wanted the shadow on the sundial to tell the correct time. I just about lost it that day. For the longest time I had that report printed out and posted on my wall.
 

Grunker

RPG Codex Ghost
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but the initial talks of wholesale destruction of major FR landmarks was trippy at the time

They ended up doing this with the Spellplague in one of the single-handedly most debilitating ultra-retcons to a setting ever. They basically just made FR a completely different world, and a pretty boring one at that. Anyway, SoZ did get to introduce some of this - your main quest was about Zehir replacing Sseth as God of the Yuan-Ti, for example.

FR has always been about "vanilla fantasy with wealth of diverse content." After the massive rewrite it basically just remains "vanilla fantasy." The old 2E FR supplements are some of the best P&P setting content you'll find. They're like oversized video game boxes with booklets, maps, all sorts of stuff, describing the culture, laws, people, politics and so on of the land. 3E's supplements weren't nearly as cool, but at least they didn't pretend like the 2E stuff never existed.

[/tangent]

There was an actual bug that was written up (by external QA) that mentioned the sundial in Crossroad Keep (I think it was CK) was inaccurate. The tester wanted the shadow on the sundial to tell the correct time. I just about lost it that day. For the longest time I had that report printed out and posted on my wall.

:lol:
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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There was an actual bug that was written up (by external QA) that mentioned the sundial in Crossroad Keep (I think it was CK) was inaccurate. The tester wanted the shadow on the sundial to tell the correct time. I just about lost it that day. For the longest time I had that report printed out and posted on my wall.

this is why obsidian will never be great
 
Self-Ejected

Lurker King

Self-Ejected
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Yea, but the thing is that SoZ was released in 2008, which was deep in the dark age of RPG, so it got lots of brownie points for that. If released today, it would probably be much less cool when compared to stuff like Blaggardz etc.

LOL, who gives a damn about the time it was released? If anything, we should go back and delete any indulgent compliments about shitty games that were released in times of drought. Ask VD if he would do the same positive review about DAO today? Hint: he would not.
 
Self-Ejected

Lurker King

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I started playing them a few years before AoD release, including this horrible storm of shitir! :D
 
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Chicago, IL, Kwa
I really like SoZ. It's a weird mutant offshoot of the NWN franchise (although so is MotB in its own way), but its hard not to respect the ambition and innovation present in its design, even if the implementation wasn't great. Doesn't hurt that the story and setting give me strong gold box vibes.

Haters gonna hate, but SoZ will always be a flawed gem in my eyes.
 
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I thought I wasn't going to like SoZ since... well... I didn't really like the OC because of the engine and just couldn't get into it (though I am re-playing it now) and I didn't play much of MotB (mostly because of the engine fatigue), but SoZ was definitely different. It was refreshing and interesting. There was a lot of content that you didn't actually have to do (you can beat the game at level 16, but there's level content over that level with ithilids and stuff) and I found the trading system somewhat interesting (until that point where you just get so much money that it just doesn't fucking matter anymore). It was the first neverwinter nights game that I finished.
 

deama

Prophet
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Guys, what about soloing in SoZ? I think you're not forced into making a party, but is it gonna be any good if you solo it?
 
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Guys, what about soloing in SoZ? I think you're not forced into making a party, but is it gonna be any good if you solo it?
I'm sure you could probably solo it, but it's not like BG where xp is divided between party members, you don't get any benefits for going solo.
 

Projas

Information Superhighwayman
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Guys, what about soloing in SoZ? I think you're not forced into making a party, but is it gonna be any good if you solo it?
I'm sure you could probably solo it, but it's not like BG where xp is divided between party members, you don't get any benefits for going solo.
Is it? I know this is the case in the OC and MotB, but I think SoZ actually divided XP between party members iirc.
 

ERYFKRAD

Barbarian
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It divides xp, you can always go solo, especially since you can load characters of just about any level.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
19,885
I soloed as a evil Wizard. It was loads of fun, especially the part where I got to sacrifice all recruitable NPCs to One of Many and got a huge XP boost for it that brought my Wizard into epic levels.
But I used a mod that makes it so buffs stay active for their real duration instead of just one map.
 

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