I think it's ridiculous to claim that you NEED a ranger in your party to beat the game. The survival skill is wholly unnecessary if you have maxed hide or move silently and if you don't mind being slow every now and again. I soloed the game with a Yuan-ti rogue starting with 18 Dex, maxed out hide and move silently, bought the boots and cloak of elvenkind, took the stealthy feat to make up for the ECL adjustment, and was NEVER spotted on the overland map except in the scripted part with the snaketongue bandits. And this was all without grinding. I was able to sneak through the entire game all the way to the final encounter, where I was summarily slaughtered and had to load my game and grind for a lot of levels so that I could win.
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Review Darth Roxor looks at Storm of Zehir @ the Codex
- Thread starter DarkUnderlord
- Start date
ricolikesrice
Arcane
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
- Messages
- 1,231
the problem with the OM isnt the random encounters - its that there s not much else to it than that.
fine, you are able to avoid all the combat -or most of it- if the party leader has high hide or move silently - even the most idiotic bioware forum frequenters gets that - so the "moron indicator" bullshit is just that - bullshit. and then ? whats left of the OM that makes it the great feature obsidian was talking about ? anyone of the SoZ-Lovers care to explain, cause this shitty review for a shitty expansion certainly didnt ....
...is it the hand full of "goody-huts" that spawn (ruins for some xp, traps for stuff to sell, etc. etc.) if you have points in whatever skill is necessary for them to spawn ?
yeah, getting extra loot from time to time sure is brilliant design to make non-combat skills feel more important ..... or maybe its just an all too-easy cop-out "hey look at us, we have 1000s of skillchecks, our game is a true cRPG !"
...is it the hand full of "unique-encounters" of which more than half are again free-exp if you have proper skills and the other half being yet another combat encounter without much else to it. (fucking stupid how neither drow nor the other elves would even talk to you after helping them - same goes for the thayan slaver event if i remember right...)
maybe my standards are too high since i played much better games like Realms of fucking Arcania but when a game focuses around an overland map, travel and exploration i do expect a little more than loot-freebies, tons of boring combat (not talking about the OM here, which luckily can be avoided )and a dozen copypasta mini-dungeons.
what i expected:
-outdoors skills that help your party survive the dangerous environment so your ranger would really feel important where a ranger-less party might be playable but suffer from a lot of "enviromental damage" ( tripping, sinking, poisons, diseases etc. etc. ), not just a sheer ammount of trash mobs battling you.
instead .... sure you can avoid encounters, but most people dont avoid them because they are dangerous (99% of the time they arent) but because they are coupled with at least 2 loading screens, 1-2 minutes of unchallenging auto-attack combat, bleak generic environments .... need i say more ?
-some sense to the worldmap. memorable regions where in 2 years you could talk along this line " remember the west coast of samarach ? beeing hunted by the patrols since one of my choices made me unpopular there .... not finding a safe spot to rest for more than 2 hours in days ..... running really low on food/drink as noone would sell to me and my ranger had a disease making him unable to hunt.... and then i finally stumbled upon this safe-looking cave but it turned out to be ..... blah blah blah" i hope you get my idea.
didnt expect a generic copypasta jungle disneyland where those with proper skills would stumble upon loot every 100 meters, where every part of the map is forgetable and the only difference between a road and deep jungle is how fast you move within.....
and where most locations beat even oblivion in genericness....
If i wanted a game with minimal story, minimal CnC and tons of combat i d play a MMORPG - most of them at least have interesting, varied locations and more entertaining combat than SoZ could ever dream of.
as it stands SoZ is easily the worst NWN campain ever released and yes that includes the NWN1 OC. comming from the awesome MOTB .... SoZ was a bigger shock than what happened between Morrowind and Oblivion.
maybe OE should stick to what they do best: good writing, more CnC then everybody else in the genre .... and not fool around with games that live of their combat or exploration aspects, because they fucking suck at it. its as if the designer of the orc caves was given full reign over this terrible expansion.
could the praise of some codexers (luckily not all fell for this shit) be linked to a sozzy (ex-)DEVGURL posting around here, kinda like with assassins creed ?
fine, you are able to avoid all the combat -or most of it- if the party leader has high hide or move silently - even the most idiotic bioware forum frequenters gets that - so the "moron indicator" bullshit is just that - bullshit. and then ? whats left of the OM that makes it the great feature obsidian was talking about ? anyone of the SoZ-Lovers care to explain, cause this shitty review for a shitty expansion certainly didnt ....
...is it the hand full of "goody-huts" that spawn (ruins for some xp, traps for stuff to sell, etc. etc.) if you have points in whatever skill is necessary for them to spawn ?
yeah, getting extra loot from time to time sure is brilliant design to make non-combat skills feel more important ..... or maybe its just an all too-easy cop-out "hey look at us, we have 1000s of skillchecks, our game is a true cRPG !"
...is it the hand full of "unique-encounters" of which more than half are again free-exp if you have proper skills and the other half being yet another combat encounter without much else to it. (fucking stupid how neither drow nor the other elves would even talk to you after helping them - same goes for the thayan slaver event if i remember right...)
maybe my standards are too high since i played much better games like Realms of fucking Arcania but when a game focuses around an overland map, travel and exploration i do expect a little more than loot-freebies, tons of boring combat (not talking about the OM here, which luckily can be avoided )and a dozen copypasta mini-dungeons.
what i expected:
-outdoors skills that help your party survive the dangerous environment so your ranger would really feel important where a ranger-less party might be playable but suffer from a lot of "enviromental damage" ( tripping, sinking, poisons, diseases etc. etc. ), not just a sheer ammount of trash mobs battling you.
instead .... sure you can avoid encounters, but most people dont avoid them because they are dangerous (99% of the time they arent) but because they are coupled with at least 2 loading screens, 1-2 minutes of unchallenging auto-attack combat, bleak generic environments .... need i say more ?
-some sense to the worldmap. memorable regions where in 2 years you could talk along this line " remember the west coast of samarach ? beeing hunted by the patrols since one of my choices made me unpopular there .... not finding a safe spot to rest for more than 2 hours in days ..... running really low on food/drink as noone would sell to me and my ranger had a disease making him unable to hunt.... and then i finally stumbled upon this safe-looking cave but it turned out to be ..... blah blah blah" i hope you get my idea.
didnt expect a generic copypasta jungle disneyland where those with proper skills would stumble upon loot every 100 meters, where every part of the map is forgetable and the only difference between a road and deep jungle is how fast you move within.....
and where most locations beat even oblivion in genericness....
If i wanted a game with minimal story, minimal CnC and tons of combat i d play a MMORPG - most of them at least have interesting, varied locations and more entertaining combat than SoZ could ever dream of.
as it stands SoZ is easily the worst NWN campain ever released and yes that includes the NWN1 OC. comming from the awesome MOTB .... SoZ was a bigger shock than what happened between Morrowind and Oblivion.
maybe OE should stick to what they do best: good writing, more CnC then everybody else in the genre .... and not fool around with games that live of their combat or exploration aspects, because they fucking suck at it. its as if the designer of the orc caves was given full reign over this terrible expansion.
could the praise of some codexers (luckily not all fell for this shit) be linked to a sozzy (ex-)DEVGURL posting around here, kinda like with assassins creed ?
I'm tempted to quote your post, shorten it to a single sentence saying "I can't believe SoZ is not Realms of Arkania :<" and type 'fixed' under it.
Really? All the people running around, whining how they spend 99% of their game watching loading times because they get constantly attacked on the overland map led me to believe otherwise.
Maybe the fact that your travels are actually interactive and something might happen during them, contrary to what we have been served lately 'click on city/planet/whatever x to get there'?
O schnapps.
And what is really so fucking wrong about that? Mind telling me? So, what you're saying is that without the... 'goody-huts', the game would have been better? Sure thing chap, but without them, I can bet you'd also be the first one to whine how there's a tonnage of useless skills a la IWD2, where stuff like survival was an utter waste of skill points, while here, *everything* counts. Everything. And not only on the overland map.
Of course, if you're some strange masochist who doesn't like getting rewarded for putting points in certain skills, then I suppose these mechanisms might enrage you a lot, yes.
Yes, there is a handful of unique encounters, and I pointed that out in my review too, but then, if you look at them in the 'free exp or another fight if you have skillz!1' category, we might as well put almost every possible encounter ever made in it. Let's take Fallouts for example - there are ALSO a handful of unique encounters (even less in Fallout 1), and pretty much all of them are ALSO 'get moar free exp or stuff' if you want to look at them this way.
Elves don't say anything, yes. Drows have a one-liner, yes. That is bad, yes. There are conversations for both sides during the thayan slaver event, though.
Yeah, let's compare every possible game that comes out to classics that have come out 15 years ago and are even totally unrelated. Ok, I'll write a new review where I'll write how much SoZ sucks because it doesn't have Betrayal At Krondor level writing and plot!
Agreed, that all would be nice to have.
Weren't random encounters in Fallouts pretty much almost the same (minus the loading screens)? In Baldur's Gates? Face it, random encounters are quite OFTEN done like that. They are a nuisance that almost always give you the 'not again...' impression when you stumble upon one. It's actually great that you can interactively avoid them in SoZ, and even talk yourself out of them or try running away further if they manage to catch you.
I had something similar to that in northern Samarach, when my party was almost half dead, with all non-useless spells wasted, and resting being constantly in 'imminent danger', and I had to walk from the end-game dungeon back to southern Samarach, constantly having to avoid Fell Trolls and Megaraptors which have high probability of spotting you on the map, but then again, it only happened in that region, and again, I pointed out in my review that the difficulty on the OM is rather badly done and awfully inconsistent
Every 100 meters? Hardly
If you say so.
Yeah, I suppose the day and night grinding you have to do in almost every mmorpg there is also makes it better than soz, am I right?
Oh god, another butthurt motb fanboy. Comparing soz to motb is pointless for god's fucking sake, and especially later comparing these to to Morrowind and Oblivion. Soz and motb are two different games, just like Baldur's Gate is different to IWD even though they have the same engine, but the gameplay is vastly different and the focus is on other things, while Oblivion is dumbed down Morrowind.
Following that logic, you must be a dedicated misogynist and your buckets of generic rage are linked with a particular DEVGURL posting around here, amirite?
ricolikesrice said:
Really? All the people running around, whining how they spend 99% of their game watching loading times because they get constantly attacked on the overland map led me to believe otherwise.
Maybe the fact that your travels are actually interactive and something might happen during them, contrary to what we have been served lately 'click on city/planet/whatever x to get there'?
O schnapps.
And what is really so fucking wrong about that? Mind telling me? So, what you're saying is that without the... 'goody-huts', the game would have been better? Sure thing chap, but without them, I can bet you'd also be the first one to whine how there's a tonnage of useless skills a la IWD2, where stuff like survival was an utter waste of skill points, while here, *everything* counts. Everything. And not only on the overland map.
Of course, if you're some strange masochist who doesn't like getting rewarded for putting points in certain skills, then I suppose these mechanisms might enrage you a lot, yes.
Yes, there is a handful of unique encounters, and I pointed that out in my review too, but then, if you look at them in the 'free exp or another fight if you have skillz!1' category, we might as well put almost every possible encounter ever made in it. Let's take Fallouts for example - there are ALSO a handful of unique encounters (even less in Fallout 1), and pretty much all of them are ALSO 'get moar free exp or stuff' if you want to look at them this way.
Elves don't say anything, yes. Drows have a one-liner, yes. That is bad, yes. There are conversations for both sides during the thayan slaver event, though.
Yeah, let's compare every possible game that comes out to classics that have come out 15 years ago and are even totally unrelated. Ok, I'll write a new review where I'll write how much SoZ sucks because it doesn't have Betrayal At Krondor level writing and plot!
Agreed, that all would be nice to have.
Weren't random encounters in Fallouts pretty much almost the same (minus the loading screens)? In Baldur's Gates? Face it, random encounters are quite OFTEN done like that. They are a nuisance that almost always give you the 'not again...' impression when you stumble upon one. It's actually great that you can interactively avoid them in SoZ, and even talk yourself out of them or try running away further if they manage to catch you.
I had something similar to that in northern Samarach, when my party was almost half dead, with all non-useless spells wasted, and resting being constantly in 'imminent danger', and I had to walk from the end-game dungeon back to southern Samarach, constantly having to avoid Fell Trolls and Megaraptors which have high probability of spotting you on the map, but then again, it only happened in that region, and again, I pointed out in my review that the difficulty on the OM is rather badly done and awfully inconsistent
Every 100 meters? Hardly
If you say so.
Yeah, I suppose the day and night grinding you have to do in almost every mmorpg there is also makes it better than soz, am I right?
Oh god, another butthurt motb fanboy. Comparing soz to motb is pointless for god's fucking sake, and especially later comparing these to to Morrowind and Oblivion. Soz and motb are two different games, just like Baldur's Gate is different to IWD even though they have the same engine, but the gameplay is vastly different and the focus is on other things, while Oblivion is dumbed down Morrowind.
Following that logic, you must be a dedicated misogynist and your buckets of generic rage are linked with a particular DEVGURL posting around here, amirite?
Joe Krow
Erudite
So people are whining because they need some form of wilderness survival skill to survive in the wilderness? That's just stupid. Next they'll complain because their diplomat needs persuasion skills. What's this place come to?
Actually, I got a reward from the Drow and I have a vague memory of speaking with the elves (though not sure on that one). For the Drow, the High Priestess must probably be alive and it's possible you need a Drow in the party as well. She rewarded my female Drow with something (can't remember what it was), though she wasn't happy about it.
Starwars said:
Well, I kind of thought the priestess needs to be alive, since the one-liner I got said something like 'The priestess is dead, now we must go back to the Underdark. Farewell', but I'm quite sure I didn't get any dialogue with the elves.
Volourn
Pretty Princess
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2003
- Messages
- 24,924
"Wow. I don't think I've ever seen Gromnir defend himself and his opinions so badly."
He's not even in dagner so no he's not defending himself. He's defending an opinion. OMG!
"people are whining because they need some form of wilderness survival skill to survive in the wilderness?"
Except, you don't need wilderness skill to survive SOZ's wilderness. Dumbass.
"Oh god, another butthurt motb fanboy. Comparing soz to motb is pointless for god's fucking sake, and especially later comparing these to to Morrowind and Oblivion. Soz and motb are two different games, just like Baldur's Gate is different to IWD even though they have the same engine, but the gameplay is vastly different and the focus is on other things, while Oblivion is dumbed down Morrowind."
STFU! You can defiitely comapre the two.
He's not even in dagner so no he's not defending himself. He's defending an opinion. OMG!
"people are whining because they need some form of wilderness survival skill to survive in the wilderness?"
Except, you don't need wilderness skill to survive SOZ's wilderness. Dumbass.
"Oh god, another butthurt motb fanboy. Comparing soz to motb is pointless for god's fucking sake, and especially later comparing these to to Morrowind and Oblivion. Soz and motb are two different games, just like Baldur's Gate is different to IWD even though they have the same engine, but the gameplay is vastly different and the focus is on other things, while Oblivion is dumbed down Morrowind."
STFU! You can defiitely comapre the two.
Joe Krow
Erudite
Then stop whining you silly bitch.
David Xachaturian
Scholar
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2008
- Messages
- 191
Happy New Year, crazy Americans.
Carlos' Bitch1
Arcane
Quite a good review. I have to say I agree with most of the points and am enjoying myself with the game. It could have more and bigger locations, no doubt about it, but for the price, I don't mind it at all.
The only thing I really don't like is impossible to fix; it is clear Obsidian have attempted to make a tactical RPG. It doesn't work with this engine. These engines have been made for Bioware story games, not tactical RPG's, and while I respect and love where Obsidian wanted to take things, I say go and create a turn based combat engine and make your tactical, old school RPG. Don't use this engine for it.
The only thing I really don't like is impossible to fix; it is clear Obsidian have attempted to make a tactical RPG. It doesn't work with this engine. These engines have been made for Bioware story games, not tactical RPG's, and while I respect and love where Obsidian wanted to take things, I say go and create a turn based combat engine and make your tactical, old school RPG. Don't use this engine for it.
Severian Silk
Guest
Volourn's longest post, evar.Volourn said:
Wyrmlord
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2008
- Messages
- 28,886
Yup, that's what they were trying to do, but they had no other option.Blackadder said:
The market for oldschool turn-based tactical RPGs is so small, it could only warrant a small budget, and hence it was better for them to make it as an expansion to an existing game.
ricolikesrice
Arcane
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
- Messages
- 1,231
Darth Roxor said:
wish you did, you were somewhat entertaining when you posted only one-liners, now reading your shitty SoZ review or that quotefest above its all too apparent you really suck at argueing your points and should probably stop posting more than 1 sentence per post until you learn to properly read & understand what other people are writing.
for instance i never mentioned fallout to have a good travel system (actually i didnt mention Fallout at all ) nor did i compared MOTB to SoZ (small lession in reading comprehension: "SoZ was a shock after MOTB" doesnt really sound like i m comparing either games, does it ?)
so as usual you re pulling stuff out of your ass to look all clever and witty instead of actually trying to bring across your point why in your opinion SoZ is a good game - which you utterly failed at so far.
i did get a good laugh out of that "you cannot compare RoA to SoZ" thing though - hello, are you batshit insane ? RoA is pretty much the cRPG with the best exploration/travel system there is, just like PS:T has the best Writing/Story and just like Fallout has the most CnC. all of these games are old .... that doesnt excuse that 10 years later games are made that apart from better graphics are dumbed down beyond imagination.
when people compare a story-focused MOTB to the story-focus-masterpiece PS:T i dont see anything wrong in comparing travel-focus-masterpiece RoA with travel-focused SoZ, even if it isnt a direct sequel. From someone like Obsidian i expected a bit more than MMORPG gameplay minus anything that makes even that remotely fun from time to time.
And i find posters like Darth Doublestandards in general fucking annoying. Probably the first to bitch about "Oblivion had such shitty dungeons, i fucking loathed them" but when its from the right people then that turns into "dungeons are a bit underdeveloped, could have been more". i mean what the fuck ? same crap as in the mainstream press.
ricolikesrice said:
k.
And? I mentioned it as another example. Following your logic I could now start yelling that I never mentioned RoA anywhere, so you should stfu about it.
'SoZ was a shock after MOTB' doesn't sound like comparing, yes.
But: 'comming from the awesome MOTB .... SoZ was a bigger shock than what happened between Morrowind and Oblivion. '
This sure does, because with that sentence structure, you're implying that the 'shitty soz' is a dumbed down version of the 'awesome motb', since later on you compare that to another situation of Oblivion being Morrowind's retarded inbred brother which leads to the conclusion that you find both situations to be of similar nature, so thus, in fact, you are comparing soz to motb.
Ok, I thought writing down six pages of both praise and criticism + getting involved in some utterly pointless flamewars that seem to go on in absolute circles actually says a lot.
Excuse me, but there are four issues right here:
1. I never played RoA so I have no idea how it may compare to SoZ, so no matter how much you write down here how the first one is superior to the second in every possible aspect, it won't affect me in the least possible way, because I have no opinion whatsoever on Realms of Arkania
2. Games with overland exploration systems have been dead for almost a decade now, and the fact that there is a 'grand comeback' in the (flawed, yes, I fucking acknowledge that there is a lot of place for improvements, mr 'ur_reading comprehension_sux', and I have that stated more than once) form of SoZ is enough of a reason in my book for small rejoicing.
3. If everything was to be compared to classics, writing down long reviews about various aspects of certain games would be almost absolutely pointless, because you could just write down one sentence: Game_x did it better or get a table instead with two columns: classic game_x, new game_y, and then start comparing each feature, and at the end write down the very same, simple conclusion: game_x did it better all those years ago, there's absolutely no point playing game_y because game_x is oh so much better.
4. Examples can be quoted, but never should anything be absolutely compared to them in 100%. In other words, using the previous examples 'game_x did it better, sure, but game_y is also rather good at what it does and it brings a breath of fresh air, even though it's inferior to a CLASSIC' (because, if you didn't know, you could take almost anything, compare it to a game from 10-15 years ago and say that it's inferior to it in every single way). And here is your problem, and that problem is: 'I can't believe SoZ is not Realms of Arkania :< '.
Oh, and here's some more things:
On one hand, MotB can be partially compared to PS:T, because these actually ARE more or less related, because there's a similar dev team working on them, and it can be compared as in 'let's see if they can do what they did 8 years ago again' or 'hey, look, they're recycling ideas'. On the other hand however, can you see anyone comparing motb's story to the story-focus-masterpiece that is Betrayal at Krondor? No? I thought so, because guess what. They. Are. Totally. Unrelated.
A nice strawman you set up there, chap, but if I had to say that: Yes, Oblivion had shitty dungeons. And you know why? Because they were not underdeveloped, but because they were fucking screwed up and nearly pointless thanks to the game's overall mechanics. Dungeons in soz leave room for further development, and it would be really nice if they would be bigger, yes, but at the same time, going into them is usually worth the while, and if you go, for example, to the shadow cult without preparations or lacking in experience, you're fried. And in Oblivion? With level scaled enemies, loot, and almost everything looking the same? Are you kidding me? To improve dungeons in soz, you'd need to open the toolset and add some rooms, floors whatever. To improve the dungeons of Oblivion, you need to set the whole game up on its head.
AlanC9
Liturgist
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2003
- Messages
- 505
Gromnir said:
Looking at this, the issue is simply that SoZ doesn't scale for level. At lower levels you will not pass hide checks that you'll pass a couple of levels later.
This results in a funny phenomenon. A party with a very good stealth leader will skip some REs, and get to the Sword Coast at a couple of levels lower than otherwise. So a good stealth leader becomes bad for a couple of levels.
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