Gozma
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 1, 2012
- Messages
- 2,951
Lets talk about our playthroughs.
I hadn't played the game since the combat demo (which I haven't played in many years) and had avoided most spoilers.
I wanted to have a super-combat playthrough with a knuckledragging psychopath. I think mostly because I knew combat would be more systemic rather than stat-checky and would let me get a rough idea of how I'd want to play a non-combatant later on. Also I played a thug idiot in my original playthrough of PS:T and I thought the way that things fall into place on the wiser second playthrough is cool.
So, my plan was two-hander (axe), dodge, max AP. Stat spread was I think 8/10/6/7/4/4 (strength and per may be 1-2 off each). I got alchemy to 4 early on and didn't raise it more until I was about 30 minutes from the end of the game. Left everything else at 1, even though I'm fairly sure a few options would have paid for themselves - I just didn't want to bother min/maxing that kind of thing.
Initial class was drifter. I did the escort mission where you see Cado right off; killed the thugs but lost the guy, took his money and went back to the inn.
Bought all of Feng's shit. Don't even tell me it's fake junk. I bought it on the principle of "100 gold is nothing and this may get me a slide in the ending". Feng correctly priced his fake junk at the impulse buy level, much like Steam. I killed his competition for him after hearing out the transmutation stuff and considering it to be smart guy jibber jabber. If you're so smart, can you outsmart this axe?
Went with Mithridates (is that the name? The happy beared guy portrait), killed his thugs, then cut his throat. Axe smarter.
I loaned money to the guy that couldn't afford to get into Teron. When I went to collect, got his sidequest. When I got to the area I could see there were like 10 guys in iron there so I decided to parley. Went back to Teron with the "bandits". I decided to be an honest psycho at this point and side with the guy that initially sent me on the quest now that I wasn't in a surefire death situation. I kept him alive in the fight and didn't really learn much about what happened, but I got some cashola.
Poisoned the Aurelian site, killed them and the bandits for the Terminator title. Joined the Boatmen. I didn't find the papers on the spies. Didn't turn on the Boatmen. The fights at the end of the boatman questline were not an issue at all for such a combat monstar build.
Got to Maaduran, bought the armor I'd wear for the rest of the game (the gladiator's DR4 AP12 bit you get in front of the arena). Did all but the last Arena fight and the quests in the first map area of Maad right off, getting the steel axe I'd use for the rest of the game off the Butcher. The basic combat was about me having 9-10 dodge on a guy that can do aim:arm twice a turn for -20 attack each. Plus 5 point poison from a cheap 4 points of alchemy. Melee enemies typically killed themselves on counterattacks.
Continued with the Boatmens, despite not liking the guild master for not following the honorable path of being a murderer for cash. All the assassinations on the quest path were easy and I didn't listen to the marks atempts to cut deals - however, I couldn't figure out the trick on the first one with the thief guild guy; wish I'd had a chance for a big fight because this character could probably dozens of mid-skill melee plebs because he generates so much damage from counterattacks and the hardened steel axe dents on every attack.
Slums and Temple were no issue combat-wise but I didn't find anything going on. Tried to go into the Abyss; died. Reload, never mind the Abyss. I swam into the well deathtrap expecting to have to reload, but instead found mostly useless loot for this build. Went back and did the last fight in the arena (I'd actually put it off figuring it would be harder, and it was) with all the extra XP from the rest of Maaduran. Still had to reload 4-5 times because sometimes I'd just miss several 50% attacks in a row.
On to Gaazurwhatsit. The polish level of the game falls off here. I found it much harder to find people and navigate since more of the terrain seemed like random clutter compared to Maad/Teron and the verticality of the city made the camera act a little weird. I went and talked to the Boatmen guy. I didn't really like his angle so I thought I'd go back to the guild master in Maaduran who sent me find out about the guy and... she had no new dialog. Huge disappointment there. I was also disappointed by the lord there since he seemed so flaky when I was hoping it would be some hyper-charismatic Mohammed or Jesus type I could fall to my barbarian apeman knees and worship. I did the little nice-touch sidequest you get if you talk to the guards when you're the Maaduran arena champ.
*BUG* I sided with Hector/his crazy gal-pal in that questline (after starting off with the noble but abandoning him after the quest with the jeweller) but after we crucified that noble guy Hector wouldn't respond, so I dunno how that is supposed to end.
At some point I went back to Maaduran and started the power armor quest by finding an area of the city I'd never actually gone to before. Had some trouble with the power armor fight, but after pumping my alchemy a little bit more and digging into my stock of quicksilver it was no trouble. Was super disappointed that the power armor is useless for this character because it disables two-handers, but it's honestly what my barbarian apeman character deserves. I found one power cell at that Aurelian dig site with a big door I had no way to open, but I reloaded after putting it in the suit to see what happened in case it was good for something else. I didn't sell the suit because I thought it might get me into the Abyss, but when I tried to go back to it there was a single guard my character could kill in a split second saying I couldn't go.
Since I didn't want to do the Boatmen questline in G-town I decided to go to the endgame-seeming places. I did the one where you cross a poison lakebed with scorpions, which wasn't any particular issue with this character (I had like 50 unused cassava). To my surprise this led me to the final (? I think) area which I'd been theoretically chasing this whole time. I of course immediately tried to kill the alien god-demon thing and after a couple of tries I decided this character had no reasonable shot to win - it hit my 10 dodging self 100% of the time, doing about half my HP per turn, when I had like a 30% chance to hit him with a fast attack. I kind of accepted that as my "true ending" - this guy just came upon something he couldn't kill. However, I did try the "Heyyy... let's just forget we ever found this place" ending, which led to Aurelian starting a new kingdom. However, when the Boatmen slide tried to come up
*BUG* I just got a stuff be missing error message. So maybe that needs to be checked and have some placeholder written for the way I just kind of aborted that questline. No more slides, back to main menu.
So obviously I am missing about 90% of the context of the game because I played a chimp with no lore, lockpick, or conversation skills that skipped the last leg of the Boatmen questlines. Teron and Maaduran were great fun, the rest abrupt and weird (although the poor zealot stuff in G-town was cool until the Hector quest broke). I consider that to be pretty much in the Fallout tradition.
Edit - I thought the writing was very good on a per-piece basis, but it sometimes felt disjointed in overall narrative design, if that makes sense. I don't know how much of that I can blame on my character missing so much, though. Beautiful portraits. I thought Teron looked abnormally crappy compared to like Dead State because the ground texturing is kinda visually distracting. The crow/bird sounds in G-town are way too loud.
I hadn't played the game since the combat demo (which I haven't played in many years) and had avoided most spoilers.
I wanted to have a super-combat playthrough with a knuckledragging psychopath. I think mostly because I knew combat would be more systemic rather than stat-checky and would let me get a rough idea of how I'd want to play a non-combatant later on. Also I played a thug idiot in my original playthrough of PS:T and I thought the way that things fall into place on the wiser second playthrough is cool.
So, my plan was two-hander (axe), dodge, max AP. Stat spread was I think 8/10/6/7/4/4 (strength and per may be 1-2 off each). I got alchemy to 4 early on and didn't raise it more until I was about 30 minutes from the end of the game. Left everything else at 1, even though I'm fairly sure a few options would have paid for themselves - I just didn't want to bother min/maxing that kind of thing.
Initial class was drifter. I did the escort mission where you see Cado right off; killed the thugs but lost the guy, took his money and went back to the inn.
Bought all of Feng's shit. Don't even tell me it's fake junk. I bought it on the principle of "100 gold is nothing and this may get me a slide in the ending". Feng correctly priced his fake junk at the impulse buy level, much like Steam. I killed his competition for him after hearing out the transmutation stuff and considering it to be smart guy jibber jabber. If you're so smart, can you outsmart this axe?
Went with Mithridates (is that the name? The happy beared guy portrait), killed his thugs, then cut his throat. Axe smarter.
I loaned money to the guy that couldn't afford to get into Teron. When I went to collect, got his sidequest. When I got to the area I could see there were like 10 guys in iron there so I decided to parley. Went back to Teron with the "bandits". I decided to be an honest psycho at this point and side with the guy that initially sent me on the quest now that I wasn't in a surefire death situation. I kept him alive in the fight and didn't really learn much about what happened, but I got some cashola.
Poisoned the Aurelian site, killed them and the bandits for the Terminator title. Joined the Boatmen. I didn't find the papers on the spies. Didn't turn on the Boatmen. The fights at the end of the boatman questline were not an issue at all for such a combat monstar build.
Got to Maaduran, bought the armor I'd wear for the rest of the game (the gladiator's DR4 AP12 bit you get in front of the arena). Did all but the last Arena fight and the quests in the first map area of Maad right off, getting the steel axe I'd use for the rest of the game off the Butcher. The basic combat was about me having 9-10 dodge on a guy that can do aim:arm twice a turn for -20 attack each. Plus 5 point poison from a cheap 4 points of alchemy. Melee enemies typically killed themselves on counterattacks.
Continued with the Boatmens, despite not liking the guild master for not following the honorable path of being a murderer for cash. All the assassinations on the quest path were easy and I didn't listen to the marks atempts to cut deals - however, I couldn't figure out the trick on the first one with the thief guild guy; wish I'd had a chance for a big fight because this character could probably dozens of mid-skill melee plebs because he generates so much damage from counterattacks and the hardened steel axe dents on every attack.
Slums and Temple were no issue combat-wise but I didn't find anything going on. Tried to go into the Abyss; died. Reload, never mind the Abyss. I swam into the well deathtrap expecting to have to reload, but instead found mostly useless loot for this build. Went back and did the last fight in the arena (I'd actually put it off figuring it would be harder, and it was) with all the extra XP from the rest of Maaduran. Still had to reload 4-5 times because sometimes I'd just miss several 50% attacks in a row.
On to Gaazurwhatsit. The polish level of the game falls off here. I found it much harder to find people and navigate since more of the terrain seemed like random clutter compared to Maad/Teron and the verticality of the city made the camera act a little weird. I went and talked to the Boatmen guy. I didn't really like his angle so I thought I'd go back to the guild master in Maaduran who sent me find out about the guy and... she had no new dialog. Huge disappointment there. I was also disappointed by the lord there since he seemed so flaky when I was hoping it would be some hyper-charismatic Mohammed or Jesus type I could fall to my barbarian apeman knees and worship. I did the little nice-touch sidequest you get if you talk to the guards when you're the Maaduran arena champ.
*BUG* I sided with Hector/his crazy gal-pal in that questline (after starting off with the noble but abandoning him after the quest with the jeweller) but after we crucified that noble guy Hector wouldn't respond, so I dunno how that is supposed to end.
At some point I went back to Maaduran and started the power armor quest by finding an area of the city I'd never actually gone to before. Had some trouble with the power armor fight, but after pumping my alchemy a little bit more and digging into my stock of quicksilver it was no trouble. Was super disappointed that the power armor is useless for this character because it disables two-handers, but it's honestly what my barbarian apeman character deserves. I found one power cell at that Aurelian dig site with a big door I had no way to open, but I reloaded after putting it in the suit to see what happened in case it was good for something else. I didn't sell the suit because I thought it might get me into the Abyss, but when I tried to go back to it there was a single guard my character could kill in a split second saying I couldn't go.
Since I didn't want to do the Boatmen questline in G-town I decided to go to the endgame-seeming places. I did the one where you cross a poison lakebed with scorpions, which wasn't any particular issue with this character (I had like 50 unused cassava). To my surprise this led me to the final (? I think) area which I'd been theoretically chasing this whole time. I of course immediately tried to kill the alien god-demon thing and after a couple of tries I decided this character had no reasonable shot to win - it hit my 10 dodging self 100% of the time, doing about half my HP per turn, when I had like a 30% chance to hit him with a fast attack. I kind of accepted that as my "true ending" - this guy just came upon something he couldn't kill. However, I did try the "Heyyy... let's just forget we ever found this place" ending, which led to Aurelian starting a new kingdom. However, when the Boatmen slide tried to come up
*BUG* I just got a stuff be missing error message. So maybe that needs to be checked and have some placeholder written for the way I just kind of aborted that questline. No more slides, back to main menu.
So obviously I am missing about 90% of the context of the game because I played a chimp with no lore, lockpick, or conversation skills that skipped the last leg of the Boatmen questlines. Teron and Maaduran were great fun, the rest abrupt and weird (although the poor zealot stuff in G-town was cool until the Hector quest broke). I consider that to be pretty much in the Fallout tradition.
Edit - I thought the writing was very good on a per-piece basis, but it sometimes felt disjointed in overall narrative design, if that makes sense. I don't know how much of that I can blame on my character missing so much, though. Beautiful portraits. I thought Teron looked abnormally crappy compared to like Dead State because the ground texturing is kinda visually distracting. The crow/bird sounds in G-town are way too loud.
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