100+ crashes later

[merry andrew]

Congrats, Jora :D

 

[Jora]

1.8

The Megaupload still works.

 

[Jora]

Congrats, Jora :D

:D

 

[Jora]

SPOILERS

I finished the game yesterday. The final part (fighting your way through the monster-infested countryside) wasn't really exciting, but the corpse robber from the sewers coming to help me was a nice touch. The ending act was nicely down to earth. There was no big boss telling me he's been following my progress and sending his best level 1 assassins after me. Just the party, the blade, the altar and the sacrifice. I also loved the tight atmosphere of Jerrock where I didn't really know at first which side I should betray.

Why was House Baern mining the strange ore?

Oh, and as Andrew said, "the kind of game I always wanted to play but never did".

 

[Vault Dweller]

Despite all the technical issues, this is a really, really fine game.

Surprisingly fine game. When I finished it and compared my experience to playing other, professionally designed games, I was simply shocked. I couldn't believe it. A couple of guys, without much fuss made one of the finest games of the last 10 years where countless attempts to create a decent RPG by twenty-fifty people teams with multi-millions budgets failed miserably.

Here is an unrelated, but interesting fact. It took 6 people, including 2 guys for music and sound to make XCOM, another finest game ever made. Guess how many people it took to make XCOM Interceptor, the game that killed the series? Almost 30, plus two marketing managers, plus 3 creative services guys (it's funny that the first game didn't need any help in the creative department), plus 23 or 24 voice-over talents. Now compare the costs involved. Anyway...

The Barrier Fortress and the Citadel are among the best designed cities in RPGs. The character development system is simple but works well. The well made quests and the open world reminded me strongly of Arcanum, in a positive way.

Definitely.

The main plot is a great example of how to structure a storyline...

Indeed. Something that Bioware with all their resources had never managed to do.

 

[Mr Happy]

I absolutely love the character development system in this game. The use based and skill based combo really seems to come together flawlessly, and I adore the absence of levels. Its really the ideal way to go about it for this kind of game. Great combat system as well (though I wish you could initiate combat with anyone). PtD managed to top Daggerfall as the most bugs/crashes per game time ever, but the fact that the game is as enjoyable despite this is a testament to its quality. Never got around to beating it, but plan on giving it another go.

 

[Jora]

Yeah, it's quite amazing that there's not a single bad design decision in the game. Some of the combat areas (Monastery archives) are a little too long and the camera might frustrate beginners, but other than those minor issues there isn't much to complain about. Such a carefully made, solid game.

Some cool things about the storyline:

SPOILERS
- It branches immediately after you leave Kellen. You can reveal the identity of the remaining unknown Watcher agent as soon as you meet the contact in the Treefort Inn in Land's End

- It's an agent/spy story in a fantasy world!

- No main Foozle. Just the opposing side, whatever they are. I actually liked the vague explanation of their nature as somekind of a sin of the past. "The history does not forget"
SPOILERS

 

[Mr Happy]

I finally finished the game a few days ago. I'll agree that the final part wasn't the bst part of the game, but the more time I spent on this game, the higher it climbed on my list of best rpgs. I started it a long time ago, but recently started with a new party, and I must say, damn fine game. I would certainly buy another zero-sum with no hesitation.

I plan on giving more detailed feedback later, but I will say that as soon as I beat the game, the first thing I wanted to do was go back and try another party, and I have taken a habit of dropping the name and a link in discussions on other sites.

 

[Cassidy]

Currently downloading Prelude to Darkness 1.8 through a working Japanese Proxy Server because of MegaUpload BS about no regional bandwidth for free users. Hope it will be worth the effort.

If I only had my own website in a paid host, I would upload this game into it...

 

[laclongquan]

As the topic of crashes, lemme get them off my chest first:
(with a proviso that I toured around all the towns, do almost all the quests and are still at Dark Path)

+ As of v1.8, there's still many crashes. Not a game stopper though. No sweat, as this kind of quality could make me tolerate them. Barter crash are still there, but quite rare. crashes when the mouse move to the edge of the dungeons (sewers, caves) are there but not so rare.

+ Many exploits exist. One in particular is that dual weapons with main one being bow. you equip bow, then equip sword, the req for offhand is 40. Then if you attack by bow you also slash it with a sword. My Hyric is dual this way, but mainly for missle attacks plus one free swords attack.

+ One consistant crash associate with the exploit above. When I am in the Dark Path, attacking Dweller DIggers, if Hyric dual-attack Digger like that then it crashes.

+ Another rare but dangerous crash/freeze: When you click on the combat log to see previous damage, you may get stuck in that. Your mouse cant get outside of the vertical scroll bar and the only way is ctrl alt del out (or alt tab out) then ending the game. It's quite rare but I met it three times during my one hundred day game time.

 

[Zyrxil]

How can you alt tab? The game doesn't allow me to alt tab when it freezes, or even when it isn't frozen.

 

[cardtrick]

How can you alt tab? The game doesn't allow me to alt tab when it freezes, or even when it isn't frozen.

When it froze for me, an error message would pop up -- but it would pop up behind the fullscreen game. Then I could press alt-tab, which would switch focus to the error message, which I still couldn't see. I would then press space bar, which was equivalent to hitting "okay" on the invisible error message, and the game would shut down.

I really want to replay this someday, but I'm not sure I can handle the bugs again . . .

 

[Zyrxil]

Yeah, this is seriously trying. I can handle the graphics, I can handle the clunky interface, but the constant fear of crashes has me saving 5x more often than normal, and the inability to alt-tab is incredibly annoying for someone used to doing all the time, no matter what the game.

 

[Zhirzzh]

Yeah, this is seriously trying. I can handle the graphics, I can handle the clunky interface, but the constant fear of crashes has me saving 5x more often than normal, and the inability to alt-tab is incredibly annoying for someone used to doing all the time, no matter what the game.

Just set auto save to once every 5 min.

 

[Zyrxil]

A "5 years later" criticism list, because complaining on the internet is a god given right, even for free stuff:

-Huge delays whenever a skill goes up, for no good reason.

-10% of the time when combat mode starts, the game freezes.

-F1 while in a dialog breaks stuff. Comeon, how was this never fixed?

-Frequent corruption of 2d graphics, e.g. character portraits or buttons.

-If I can't control every single one of my characters' positions individually outside of battle, at least have them follow my lead character in the same order they are arranged in my character list, Exile/Avernum style, locked onto his back.

As it is, the only thing I can count on is my #1 character being in the front, with my other characters within 1 mile behind him, depending on the narrowness of the passage and the number of walls in the area.

-The help system is thorough, yet unintuitive. Popping up the huge help box every time you enter a new area/feature, but without any audio cues or even a huge "GLOSSARY" over the help box confuses players as they search for the barter window they expected to appear. Plus, the "close" blends in too well with the rest of the box (wouldn't even be a problem if Esc closed all boxes like you would expect).

-The help left side contents are also unintuitive. What topics appear in the list seem almost to be random sometimes.

-The "Highest AP goes" combat system breaks more than it fixes. To me, the ability to actually do something after moving (even if it's only 1 step) is worth more than having to deal with interrupts.

-A camera system worse than even NWN. E.g. - camera rotate when holding left click and mouse scrolling? Really? This means you're going to accidentally camera rotate when you're trying to move your characters when scrolling, and accidentally moving your characters when trying to rotate.

-In battle, the camera system/game engine makes it extremely hard to select tiles/monsters/characters with lots of other things next to them. If a character/tile/monster is surrounded in all 4 cardinal directions, it becomes impossible to select/move to that spot.

-I can't cast any spells outside of battle? Not even my heal spells? Same thing with bandages. This, plus the green bar (Willpower?) not regenerating unless I rest/bandage means the best way to heal is to get into battle with weak enemies, spend 10 rounds waiting for them to mosey over while casting Kiss of Goddess on my injured characters, then wipe them out to bandage.

-Contrary to all other games with an Alt-key highlight function, Alt only shows you the location of items, you can't interact or pickup items by mousing over the name. Also, names will overlap and not "push" each other away so they remain readable.

-Enter a building and all other polygons outside turn black. 3d engine issue? In any case, it doesn't jive with how everything, no matter how far away, how out of LOS, is visible with the Alt key.

-Random encounters with the nature skill result in 3 different ways to avoid it, 1 way to run into it anyway, and 0 ways to do anything interesting.

-Speaking of skills, it's not clear how to practice all skills. E.g.- How do you practice the nature skill? Just run into random encounters a few billion times?

-The Journal. First, it has no keyboard key for some reason. Second, it's a huge mishmash of ALL the quests you could possibly encounter in the game, with the names all in there before the characters even know the quests exist. Third, 90% of the time when "Journal Updated" appears in the message box, nothing new appears in the journal, what the hell?

-The Map: I can see where exactly I am on the Valley map, but can only guess at where I am on town maps?

-Hjor has an infinite Skill Point exploit.

 

[eth]

-If I can't control every single one of my characters' positions individually outside of battle, at least have them follow my lead character in the same order they are arranged in my character list, Exile/Avernum style, locked onto his back.

As it is, the only thing I can count on is my #1 character being in the front, with my other characters within 1 mile behind him, depending on the narrowness of the passage and the number of walls in the area.

That's why you have the key "collect party" or whatever it's called.

-A camera system worse than even NWN. E.g. - camera rotate when holding left click and mouse scrolling? Really? This means you're going to accidentally camera rotate when you're trying to move your characters when scrolling, and accidentally moving your characters when trying to rotate.

Try using the numpad keys to control the camera - it works fine.

-In battle, the camera system/game engine makes it extremely hard to select tiles/monsters/characters with lots of other things next to them. If a character/tile/monster is surrounded in all 4 cardinal directions, it becomes impossible to select/move to that spot.

Turn off that option from the options menu that makes you select characters even if you click on their bodies. I think it's called "full body selection" or something. And yes it works like a charm

-I can't cast any spells outside of battle? Not even my heal spells? Same thing with bandages. This, plus the green bar (Willpower?) not regenerating unless I rest/bandage means the best way to heal is to get into battle with weak enemies, spend 10 rounds waiting for them to mosey over while casting Kiss of Goddess on my injured characters, then wipe them out to bandage.

Make the character you want to cast a spell the team leader and voila you can cast.

-Random encounters with the nature skill result in 3 different ways to avoid it, 1 way to run into it anyway, and 0 ways to do anything interesting.

What you expected? Don't tell me you 're a practicer of rat speaking skills like that other guy on fallout.

-Speaking of skills, it's not clear how to practice all skills. E.g.- How do you practice the nature skill? Just run into random encounters a few billion times?

No. Use the skill points that you get from quests. I think its pretty clear.

-The Journal. First, it has no keyboard key for some reason. Second, it's a huge mishmash of ALL the quests you could possibly encounter in the game, with the names all in there before the characters even know the quests exist. Third, 90% of the time when "Journal Updated" appears in the message box, nothing new appears in the journal, what the hell?

Well its not like you really need a journal to play PtD at all. The quests that are complex are more than interesting to keep you going and solve them. Provided you pay attention when you talk to NPCs that's it