The Dark Eye Blackguards 2

[Bubbles]

Launch trailer:

At the least the trailer actually shows the battles as they are in the game; most of the other screenshots shown so far have nothing to do with what's in game. You can see the big siege battle at 0:55.

Please elaborate. How grimdark is it? I assume you play the German version. Does it suffer from the usual amateurish writing prevalent in German games?

Spoiler

Naurim and Zurbaran sold Takate into slavery, he escapes, heads up his own tribe, is seduced into following your promises of a glorious death (his tribe just disappears), and joins up with his old group with barely a comment. Now he just wants to die for some reason (I never found out why because his dialogue bugged out early and he started repeating the same line infinitely).

Naurim made money selling drugs and cheating his partner Niobe (who you're supposed to recognize like she's a major character), but Zurbaran arranges for his lair to get raided by Niobe's toops on your orders (this is not shown, but heavily implied). Later Niobe joins your camp and Naurim barely minds her being there while Zurbaran falls in love with her. They begin a tender relationship or he brutally manipulates her, depending on YOUR CHOICES.

Zurbaran was never a noble, but actually a slave. He has been recaptured into slavery by his former mistress and then sold to somebody else for a single copper coin. The protagonist knows all about this after never meeeting him before and having been locked in a dungeon with nothing but a book for four months (presumably it was the BG1 art book).

Your general is a follower of the god of carnage, who all your companions are convinced will eventually betray you (I assume he will in the final battle, but his stats suck anyway). You can have him kill, torture, maim various people on your behalf, which also makes him like you more. On the flip side, it's supposed to (!) make Niobe like you less, but you could just torture her into compliance.

In general, Naurim's and Takate's dialogues were heavily bugged, and Zurbaran never got a buff he was supposed to get (think DA:O style stat buffs for progressing through a relationship, although they seem to jump straight from 0/3 to 3/3), so I'm sure I've missed out on a ton of background knowledge.

The main protagonist is unsure if she's mad or dying or both, and is possibly being poisoned as well. It doesn't feel especially urgent though, since you can always see how many locations are left on the map and how long the story is still going to continue for.
There's also an early "twist" that's pretty meaningless, is never used to its full potential, and remains the only interesting story development until possibly the end battle.

Basically the main plot is "go to Mengbilla and kill the bad guy". It's barely enough for 18 hours.

By the way, with the mandatory quest prerequisites on the final mission, there are really barely any side quests to speak of. I think the average player would clear at least 90% of the map as part of playing the main quest and unlocking the paths to the final areas. There really aren't a lot of different paths through the overland world either.
The other quests are either "exhaust the dialogue options" or "let your bad dudes pillage this town" (no alternate quests for good guys, which at least spares you some combat).

 

[abnaxus]

If you're forced to play with womyn, they could at the very least have made Cassia hot.

 

[Bubbles]

Since it's close to launch, a short summary of the game's quirks that are unlikely to change with a release patch:

- going full spellcaster is by far the best PC option due to tons of mage-specific gear and only one other mage NPC (Zurby). I spent 90% of the game just hasting and healing people and had no problems on hard mode.
- I didn't go for group damage spells, but fireball is definitely a good option. You can expect to be able to hit 3-4 enemies with a single cast fairly regularly.
- in general, hard mode is quite easy. Apart from the boss fights, I never had to reload or even use any potions.
- current balance means increasing stamina and stamina regen is far less useful than base weapon skills, dodging, shields, etc. 10 extra stamina translates to one special attack with +5 damage and decreased hit chance, when base damage is around 11-12 at endgame. Hammer Blow costs a huge armount of extra xp to unlock and simply doubles the cost, the damage, and the decrease to hit chance. Now consider that damage resistance is strictly percentage based, so there are no DR thresholds to clear. Stamina is not good.
- spears still dr00l, and two-handed weapons aren't great either. It's fairly easy to find gear that gives you +10 to dodge/parry or attack, and being able to carry two pieces of gear makes a difference. I'd give Takate the sword skill, he runs out of things to spend points on fairly quickly anyway and there's at least half a dozen good shields in the game.
- training weapons on a mage is completely viable thanks to the simplified rules. However, it's not really necessary, since you want to use weak weapons that give mana regen anyway. One of those weapons is a dagger (which can be used with a shield that also has mana regen), the others are staves (now "two handed blunt weapons").

- occasionally you have to fight defensive battles that can be quite tedious, are tactically uninteresing, force you to use foot soldiers instead of your heroes (unless your heroes happen to be in the place that's being attacked) and give you absolutely nothing as a reward (to discourage you from farming them, obviously). In 17 hours of gameplay I've had to fight four of those.

- the changes in Blackguards 2 remind me a bit of Dragon Age 2, specifically the wave combat with relatively weak enemies (who later grow wings so they can fly straight to your mages), heavy repetition in combat (no repeated maps, but the bad guy only has the three base troops - archer/swordsman/spearman) and the relative linearity compared to its predecessor.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

Reading Darth Roxor and Bubbles posts in this thread depressed me a lot since I like SRPGs and want to give this game a chance

 

[xrm1]

Can you speed up combat animations in BG2?

 

[Whisper]

Damage spells are good? What spells you recommend picking (maxing)?

 

[Abu Antar]

I got my key. Will download when I have the time. I'm not thrilled by what I have read but I will play this anyway.

FFS, I registered the code to redeem my STEAM copy and this crap doesn't unlock for another 7 hours. I guess I have to try it out after work, or save it until this weekend.

 

[Bubbles]

Damage spells are good? What spells you recommend picking (maxing)?

Haste and one point in heal were the only ones I really used. Curing poison might have been useful as well, but very situational.
Although the increased volume of healing you get from upgrading the heal spell was useful in the late game, it doesn't have to be a priority. I thought increasing the healing spell to 3 might be nice for curing wounds, but that was never really an issue on hard mode. Maybe took six wounds total throughout the game. I don't actually know how wound taking is calculated now.

As for damage spells, I mentioned fireball because it's efficient and has some fringe utility in the most annoying battles. There's also a couple boss fights where being able to dispel is useful, but enemy mages are generally so dumb and so rare that the xp investment may not really be worth it.

Can you speed up combat animations in BG2?

Of course not, otherwise it would be a ten hour game.

 

[Infinitron]

Well, it's released: http://store.steampowered.com/app/314830/

Bit more expensive than the Humble Bundle pre-order was.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Well, it's released: http://store.steampowered.com/app/314830/

Bit more expensive than the Humble Bundle pre-order was.

They had a strange pricing model - the retail versions were 20€/30€ - while the digital versions were all 30€. I have the 30€ retail version which comes with a DRM free DVD and an additional Steam key.

 

[DramaticPopcorn]

They had a strange pricing model - the retail versions were 20€/30€ - while the digital versions were all 30€. I have the 30€ retail version which comes with a DRM free DVD and an additional Steam key.

Difference comes with retailer's margin policy which may not fall in line with developer's recommended retail prices.

 

[vonAchdorf]

Difference comes with retailer's margin policy which may not fall in line with developer's recommended retail prices.

Yes, but was talking about recommended retail prices. In retail they had a recommended 20€ tier, but not in digital.

 

[Turjan]

Yes, but was talking about recommended retail prices. In retail they had a recommended 20€ tier, but not in digital.

The 20€ retail tier was only released for the German version.

I may go and see whether they have it at a Saturn tomorrow.

 

[twincast]

Blackguards 2 will again be based on the RPG rulebook of The Dark Eye, but it will come along with some revisions, optimisations and simplifications. The gameplay will focus on turn-based battles once more – this time the players have to conquer Cassia’s lands and defend them against intruders when the need arises. As in a fraction-based game the enemies can recapture the territories from the Blackguards.
​

"Fraction-based game"? Really? Wow, I guess this means I'll get to exercise my math muscles again.

Oh them joys of linguistic false friends and lackluster proofreading.

By the way, for some reason the narration in the German trailer and the English one differ quite significantly, whereas the Japanese one is pretty much an exact translation of the English trailer but therefore suffers a bit from the mask appearing way after "madness" (due to respective standard syntax). Both text and (especially) voice sound: rather weird (Seriously, who approved that?) in the German version, cheesy in a good way in the English one and perfectly average (Kinda shrugworthy but thankfully not over the top.) in the Japanese trailer.

 

[Bubbles]

Release patch for the retail version is out, DRM-free as usual:

NEW FEATURES
- Pressing the "V" key (showing goals, interactive objects) is working also during deployment on the battlemap now.
- The status box has mouseover informations now
- Cities are more populated now

BLOCK

- Battle Prison of Assakal: fixed occasional soft freeze when AI picked up weapons
- Battle Marwans Palace pt 1: fixed win conditions
- Battle Marwans Palace pt 2: fixed possible blocker caused by incorrect cutscene trigger
- Battle Marwans Arena: corrected "petrified" flags so they are being considered for win and lose conditions
- Battle Dujar: fixed a dialogue trigger bug that made it impossible to reach the "creator"

MAJOR

- Effects: fixed a bug that prevented paralysis effects from ending
- Quest: fixed the quest "Everything shall be mine"
- Battle Mengbilla: fixed major bug that caused enemy troops to flee prematurely
- Battle Palace pt1: fixed narrator screen introduction
- GUI: fixed a potential malfunction with shop arrow buttons
- GUI: fixed initiative bar portraits of curiers
- Battle Arena: fixed dialogue triggering at the wrong time
- Monsters: corrected some issues with Great Petrifier's eternal petrification effect'
- Story: Corrected consequences on character stats through dialogue choices
- Story: Corrected cutscene/dialogue consequences on characters dead-or-alive states
- Battle Mengbilla: fixed a bug with the hint system
- Mercenaries: fixed multiple issues with the black-ogre, made him unavailable in missions where he is absolutely useless
- Character Values: fixed an issue with debuffs still sticking on immune characters
- Battle Fisher Settlement: fixed dialogues
- Battle El Halem : fixed consequences of previous sabotage fight
- Story: Fixed a major text bug in english version of dialogue with labyrinth guard
- GUI: fixed some issues with the saving screen
- Battlemaps: fixed scripted camera movement on special events
- Story: fixed consequences from failing an interrogation with a certain character
- Story: fixed eavesdropping event in the second Labyrinth map
- Battle El Halem Sabotage: Enemy guards now stop being reinforced if barracks are set on fire
- GUI: fixed -close- button in controls menu
- AI: fixed multiple bugs that caused AI controlled entities to never end their turns
- Balancing: significantly nerfed the gang of hunters in Battle Hunters Camp
- Battle Arena: fixed several block-path and height issues
- Battle Tykates: fixed LOS issues with Tykates cage
- Story: corrected consequences of major adversaries' deaths
- Battle Fisher Settlement: fixed dialogue issues leaving players with only one option to win the map
- Story: fixed wrong "City El Halem" cutscene trigger

http://forum.daedalic.de/viewtopic.php?f=229&t=5308

No major balance changes, so everything said on that issue still holds for the retail version.

 

[twincast]

Aventuria features every climate zone, human race and culture yet for some reason was made very small compared to the rest of the world. It's even fully above the equator.

Beware of rant.

Spoiler

Well, to be somewhat fair (regarding the equator bit, at least), the continent was created way before it was explicitly put on a globe roughly the size of Earth and the other continents were finally anything but vague rumors (and defined by people with way more common sense than the original designers), which in turn was some time before fans made sense of the climate zones via an ice age and developed the Google Earth plug-in/total conversion that your picture is a screenshot of.

And to be more precise, it features counterparts to pretty much all late medieval/early modern (mostly the latter) European cultures (including Lapps and Gypsies) other than Celtic/Gaelic (druids aside - hmm, can't really think of anything else decidedly "British", either) plus Arabs (both decadent Arabian Nights cities and anal monotheistic desert zealots), Amazonians (with some Sub-Saharan jungle tribes and lizard people with lost Central American temples mixed in), Caribbean colonies (which scour said Amazonians for slaves but are mostly continental), an essentially ancient Greek archipelago (ruled by cyclopes), a large culturally vaguely Japanese island (but with many other influences and not a single Asian phenotype in sight), mostly mountain-dwelling dwarves, über-perfect (tall, pretty, tree-hugging, free-loving, vegetarian, judgmental) hippie elves (who completely bore me to tears; the way more interesting high elves and their cities of splendor are sadly only a thing of the distant past - but hey, half-elves are fun) and a large valley of bloody brutal orcs that occasionally venture out to (usually successfully) plunder and (usually insuccessfully) conquer, while merely being the size of Central Europe. (Oh, and while their main Greek-based polytheistic pantheon has a certain Judeochristian touch to it, particularly the Church of Praios, the closest counterpart to Christianity is actually the dark cult around the by now long dead former big bad Borbarad prevalent in the (receding) Dark Lands. Heh.)

An easy fix to make the cultures (and the "vast" Khôm desert) believable would've been (and a not uncommon house rule is) to double all accounts of distance or (for the exact same effect) redefine an Aventurian mile as 2 km instead of 1 km, an Aventurian pace as 2 m instead of 1 m and so on. I say would've been because now that much of Myranor to the east and Rakshazar to the west have been defined (and the utterly incompetent less than stellar editorial team of the last few years even managed to screw up by making the official size of the "northern half" of the southern continent Uthuria way too large - and after much criticism merely quickly halfassedly revamped it to a size still too large, forcing the above fan project to retcon it themselves for their purposes), they'd pretty much need to enlarge the globe to still make sense of it. Well, I guess since the world hasn't been placed within a solar system for a long time now, gravity conundrums wouldn't come into play even on a theoretical basis.

And the stated reason was (and still is) "short travel times" between adventures (plus "it's always been this way").

 

[Bubbles]

Was finally able to start the endgame content. First battle was easy as usual but quite long, afterwards I chose to fight an optional escort quest battle which is literally impossible unless you

- get extremely lucky with the wave spawn point RNG
- spec Takate for range and give him a good bow and arrows.

Do I keep replaying this for hours until the right amount of spiders spawns in the right place? Do I load a three hour old save game and spec Takate differently? Do I replay the entire first battle again to choose the option that avoids the escort battle? Hard decisions - the hallmark of a great RPG.

 

[Bubbles]

RNG was kind to me after a few more tries. The less said about the final battle, the better (some of the dumbest AI in gaming, though it's probably intentional). Game feels quite rushed overall, I'd expect more patches soon. The epilogue was pretty fun though. I probably enjoyed it more than anything else in the game, although the actual gameplay was minimal.

Spoiler

abolishing the institution of marriage was my crowning achievement

I think BG2's biggest strength are the (German language) dialogues - some of the lines are quite evocative and the main voice actors are very good. Occasionally they manage to create quite a nice atmosphere apart from the usual slog. Faramud's actor stands out; he delivers his lines like a madman in a Brechtian radio play. Very nice break from the usual voice acting in games. You can do his missions even if you're playing a good guy as long as

Spoiler

you know that you can still change your reputation so that everybody loves you again during the epilogue

The actual story and character development, however, were pretty anemic and resolved quite abruptly. I didn't even get a final scene with some of the characters one would logically expect to have a final scene with. I wouldn't play this for the story.

Combat mostly feels like filler for the dialogues, but you can get to 2nd place on the GOTY list with that, so it's all good.

 

[Markman]

Lel, it just got stuck at the end of the 3rd level. "You won the battle" then nothing worked, had to alt-f4 to exit. Oh well, I'll try again when I'm back from work.

 

[Whisper]

Why would you need to spec Takate for range?

 

[veevoir]

How does it fare in terms of storytelling compared to B1? Is the story still an excuse to beat the living shit out of everything or did it get at least a bit more engaging?

Blackguards 1 fell a little flat in the story dept.

 

[trym88]

What's the consensus, is it worth pirating or not?

 

[Bubbles]

Why would you need to spec Takate for range?

Takate and someone else are on two separate platforms, and spiders randomly spawn on each platform. You need to survive for a certain amount of time. The other person is extremely weak and can barely defeat one spider before dying. If a third spider spawns on that platform within the first few turns (which is very likely, but can be avoided with lots of reloads), it's a basically game over unless Takate can kill it with, say, a ranged weapon.
And since weapon skills are no longer influenced by stats, you actually need to invest in ranged weapons to be able to hit anything.

 

[twincast]

Oh well, I'm sure I'll get some enjoyment out of it.

Although one has to wonder why they are so good at writing adventure games yet apparently so bad at writing role-playing games (never mind designing, those reasons are clear).

Still waiting for a sequel/conclusion to Sadja's story. ... In the meantime I have high hopes for The Devil's Men and low expectations (graphics aside) re Silence.

 

[Infinitron]

Isn't the protagonist of Blackguards 2 basically "grimdark Sadja on crack"?