I am replaying it and I'm going to post my thoughts here, and you guys can agree with the keen observations or disagree like losers. Lets begin!
1) The graphics still look really nice. HD texture mods and stuff help. On a SSD I can get from desktop to game in a few seconds even with about 20 mods. Game and engine is slick.
2) The story and dialogue is good, for a game, and I like how it zooms in on their faces. It is cinematic and almost makes me give a shit, which is pretty amazing, for a game. The music is decent too, game has pretty good production values. edit: The world really is to my liking, I know it is simple but I like that. King is nice guy, Logain is evil bastard, Templars mean well but are puritanical and misguided and therefore harmful, darkspawn and archdemon is generic and cliched yet does the job and it did creep my out sufficiently to think of them all just emerging out of the ground to take over. Elves (my character) and Morrigan and various others live mostly outside the influence of all this lot, but get involved to help. I feel with stories in games that they are never good enough that I want them to be elaborate, so I prefer them to be to the point. It doesn't get more to the point than this and it somehow still manages to set the mood of impending doom and it motivates me to want to save the day. I dig it, and that is really rare for a game.
3) I have played it twice and this, my third time, I am in a whole new starting area with new story and characters and whatnot, I appreciate that. Also being a Mage previously you had to play in the Mage Tower which you then had to visit, in depth, later on. At least with the start I am on this time, no content is reused.
4) There is a LOT of stuff missing from the vanilla game that a few mods could restore... How ridiculous to develop content that the players don't even get to enjoy when a small patch could have fixed it. Some of it is really fun too, bosses in otherwise bland areas, this would have really affected the overall popularity and it was all in the game just not enabled. Crazy.
5) I think this may be one of the best RPGs, for me anyway, on paper at least, because it does tactical RPG combat but in a more exciting real time way. I usually play RPGs as a Mage and this time I went with a rogue, and I really have to stealth early and then in combat, quickly run to the back of the pack of enemies and gank archers and mages and stuff as fast as I can. It is exciting and actiony, yet with the depth of most CRPGs. Mostly. My only real issue with the combat and character building is that the game ends once it starts getting good. It really need a sequel, and not the dumb shit we got disguised as sequels.
6) I don't really like the rest/regen mechanic. There is no resting between fights, you just stand around for a moment and everything regens really quickly outside combat. I feel like it dumbs the game down a bit because you never have to fight at half steam, you take every single fight, trash included, at 100% health and mana. Balancing rests in Kingmaker could be a bit of a chore I suppose, but I think throwing away resource management entirely is a step too far, even though I like the action-ification of a traditional RPG.
7) The combat is so fucking satisfying to me. It is so much better than D&D, enemies are strong and come in large numbers, spell mashing will probably lead to at the least a character regularly needed injury kits. And reloads. But if you play well you win. This is not an easy game or simple. Spell combos really help, and they were doing this long before DoS. Most RPGs are too easy. This plays in a fun way too. It feels like D&D but it is a more exciting version of it.
8) I love the Tactics thing. When I first saw it I felt uncomfortable with the idea, make a game single character or a party game, make your mind on which. If it is group, I want to control them, not have them follow me and fight automatically so there is no point them even being there. But on a lot of fights in RPGs it is repetitive, healer uses heal, wiz uses nuke, tank uses bash, having to do this in a million fights is annoying as fuck and the reason I just uninstalled Wizardry 8 for the fourth and final time. Tactics in this game lets them do the basics without endless micro, but at least in tough fights I can set them to do only what I want them to do.
9) It would be so nice if games would let the player choose a party of 4 or a party of 6 at the start, and adjust the difficulty automatically. Maybe it could be tied to difficulty levels, if you are new-ish to RPGs, you pick 4 and it is a bit simpler. If you want more, you pick 6.
10) I think games like this with quite fun and distinct classes (and not that many of them), should let you control one of each of them early in the game. Then later when you set your party you know what you want. It almost does this, in the elven start I get a warrior buddy at first, then he gets replaced with a basic mage, and then when you go to the wilds and find Morrigan, you get a bunch of warrior types.
11) Got a lot of mods. Auto loot, and 20% faster run speed removes about 90% of the tedium.
12) The camera is good. It is 3rd person for exploring and most things which is immersive and good, and I can zoom out and upwards if I need finer control to look down. I wish I could tilt the top down view to look forward though.
13) I really want to bone a Dalish Elf. Something something bushy forest.
14) THE FADE IS FUCKING AWESOME! Yes you have to repeat some areas and there are puzzles which dumb people struggle with, but it is really fun to play. Turn into the fire guy and fireball a huge group of enemies, then turn into the magic immune guy to imprison tough things and heal yourself. I suspect a lot of the people who didn't enjoy the Fade didn't know that your hotbar changes with each illusion. So you can win against anything with the right choice, and if you don't notice the hotbar change, people would try to play the whole thing as their own character and only use the illusions for the walking through fire bits etc.
1) The graphics still look really nice. HD texture mods and stuff help. On a SSD I can get from desktop to game in a few seconds even with about 20 mods. Game and engine is slick.
2) The story and dialogue is good, for a game, and I like how it zooms in on their faces. It is cinematic and almost makes me give a shit, which is pretty amazing, for a game. The music is decent too, game has pretty good production values. edit: The world really is to my liking, I know it is simple but I like that. King is nice guy, Logain is evil bastard, Templars mean well but are puritanical and misguided and therefore harmful, darkspawn and archdemon is generic and cliched yet does the job and it did creep my out sufficiently to think of them all just emerging out of the ground to take over. Elves (my character) and Morrigan and various others live mostly outside the influence of all this lot, but get involved to help. I feel with stories in games that they are never good enough that I want them to be elaborate, so I prefer them to be to the point. It doesn't get more to the point than this and it somehow still manages to set the mood of impending doom and it motivates me to want to save the day. I dig it, and that is really rare for a game.
3) I have played it twice and this, my third time, I am in a whole new starting area with new story and characters and whatnot, I appreciate that. Also being a Mage previously you had to play in the Mage Tower which you then had to visit, in depth, later on. At least with the start I am on this time, no content is reused.
4) There is a LOT of stuff missing from the vanilla game that a few mods could restore... How ridiculous to develop content that the players don't even get to enjoy when a small patch could have fixed it. Some of it is really fun too, bosses in otherwise bland areas, this would have really affected the overall popularity and it was all in the game just not enabled. Crazy.
5) I think this may be one of the best RPGs, for me anyway, on paper at least, because it does tactical RPG combat but in a more exciting real time way. I usually play RPGs as a Mage and this time I went with a rogue, and I really have to stealth early and then in combat, quickly run to the back of the pack of enemies and gank archers and mages and stuff as fast as I can. It is exciting and actiony, yet with the depth of most CRPGs. Mostly. My only real issue with the combat and character building is that the game ends once it starts getting good. It really need a sequel, and not the dumb shit we got disguised as sequels.
6) I don't really like the rest/regen mechanic. There is no resting between fights, you just stand around for a moment and everything regens really quickly outside combat. I feel like it dumbs the game down a bit because you never have to fight at half steam, you take every single fight, trash included, at 100% health and mana. Balancing rests in Kingmaker could be a bit of a chore I suppose, but I think throwing away resource management entirely is a step too far, even though I like the action-ification of a traditional RPG.
7) The combat is so fucking satisfying to me. It is so much better than D&D, enemies are strong and come in large numbers, spell mashing will probably lead to at the least a character regularly needed injury kits. And reloads. But if you play well you win. This is not an easy game or simple. Spell combos really help, and they were doing this long before DoS. Most RPGs are too easy. This plays in a fun way too. It feels like D&D but it is a more exciting version of it.
8) I love the Tactics thing. When I first saw it I felt uncomfortable with the idea, make a game single character or a party game, make your mind on which. If it is group, I want to control them, not have them follow me and fight automatically so there is no point them even being there. But on a lot of fights in RPGs it is repetitive, healer uses heal, wiz uses nuke, tank uses bash, having to do this in a million fights is annoying as fuck and the reason I just uninstalled Wizardry 8 for the fourth and final time. Tactics in this game lets them do the basics without endless micro, but at least in tough fights I can set them to do only what I want them to do.
9) It would be so nice if games would let the player choose a party of 4 or a party of 6 at the start, and adjust the difficulty automatically. Maybe it could be tied to difficulty levels, if you are new-ish to RPGs, you pick 4 and it is a bit simpler. If you want more, you pick 6.
10) I think games like this with quite fun and distinct classes (and not that many of them), should let you control one of each of them early in the game. Then later when you set your party you know what you want. It almost does this, in the elven start I get a warrior buddy at first, then he gets replaced with a basic mage, and then when you go to the wilds and find Morrigan, you get a bunch of warrior types.
11) Got a lot of mods. Auto loot, and 20% faster run speed removes about 90% of the tedium.
12) The camera is good. It is 3rd person for exploring and most things which is immersive and good, and I can zoom out and upwards if I need finer control to look down. I wish I could tilt the top down view to look forward though.
13) I really want to bone a Dalish Elf. Something something bushy forest.
14) THE FADE IS FUCKING AWESOME! Yes you have to repeat some areas and there are puzzles which dumb people struggle with, but it is really fun to play. Turn into the fire guy and fireball a huge group of enemies, then turn into the magic immune guy to imprison tough things and heal yourself. I suspect a lot of the people who didn't enjoy the Fade didn't know that your hotbar changes with each illusion. So you can win against anything with the right choice, and if you don't notice the hotbar change, people would try to play the whole thing as their own character and only use the illusions for the walking through fire bits etc.
