RhodokMasterRaceOfficial
Arbiter
Really, I feel like a lot of this game's "impossible difficulty" in the reviews that I've read is exaggerated to an extreme. The people saying it's hard are either just retarded or are too used to games that don't really force them to problem solve or do something as simple as stick to a character archetype.
Combat is challenging, but not outright impossible or even merely difficult unlessyou're a fucking invalid the enemy stack has more than one ranged unit in it please fucking nerf archers/crossbowmen oh my fucking god those god damn cunts i swear to fuckin, or the Random Number Daddy God Generator decides to literally fuck you in the ass. With enough defence levels and an understanding of how to approach your opponents (I.E knowing to hit dodge enemies in the legs before doing anything else to them so they can't avoid you on the next turn and knowing to just power attack/headshot all blocking enemies) you might, at worst, be re-trying some fights to figure out what the correct opening moves are.
Admittedly crafting may have carried it for me in this regard in most of my MURDER playthroughs, since being decked out in full-meteor/blue steel will probably make you into a killing machine no matter what your build is. You can also just cheat by going for alchemy and TOSSING BOMBS AT EVERYONE, which is what I did in my thief playthroughs (although I keep getting stuck in the third town with those).
Dialogue seems to be mostly skill checks, which isn't very hard if you've got the metagame knowledge to know what speech skills need to be at what levels. There's really nothing to say about the difficulty of the dialogue path other than:
"If your character isn't built to be diplomatic then you're not going to have access to diplomatic options just fucking deal with it you prole"
My favourite character so far I think (until I finish my current playthrough as a martial-heavy 2h+dodge mercenary named "Cingeto", because murdering everything in sight is pretty hilarious) is probably one I did as a hybrid. It wasn't even hard, which struck me as bizarre when I finished it because all of the warnings I saw about doing so explicitly warn you not to unless you know what you're doing....which admittedly I did since I minmaxed and had a few playthroughs of metagame knowledge behind it.
The only stuff I got locked out of was the more advanced lore-related stuff, but that didn't bother me since that's not what my character was built to do. I built and played him as a charismatic army officer, not a scholar.
This is where the actual spoilers are:
My final thoughts on it, as I feel myself slowly exhausting character archetypes, are that it's a very solid offering. I'm actually struggling to find anything I'd say is actually bad about it other than nerf the fucking archers please.
The only things I can say I really dislike about this gameare fucking archers oh my fucking god are that some skills aren't checked often enough, charisma is just as much of a dump stat as it is in Fallout (since extra skill and training from dialogues that check it aren't frequent enough to balance it against just taking int and getting extra XP from everything else), that it doesn't seem like all of the endings actually say what happens to my character (unless I'm bad at reading, correct me if I am), and (as popamoler as this is going to sound) the weapon/armour variety is kinda lacking for what I want out of a pseudo-Hellenistic historical setting.
I'd love some more arena content (unless there's stuff after the three title defence fights when you become arena champion and I just have to wait longer), Kemnebi actually having more work for you at some point would be good also, and for there to be more stat checks for people who boosted something all the way to 10 at chargen.
Really almost all of my complaints are that there's not enough of the game for me to play. I seriously look forward to whatever's coming from Iron Tower next and I hope it's just as good as this was.
Discuss good hybrid builds and glorious battle theory.
Combat is challenging, but not outright impossible or even merely difficult unless
Admittedly crafting may have carried it for me in this regard in most of my MURDER playthroughs, since being decked out in full-meteor/blue steel will probably make you into a killing machine no matter what your build is. You can also just cheat by going for alchemy and TOSSING BOMBS AT EVERYONE, which is what I did in my thief playthroughs (although I keep getting stuck in the third town with those).
Dialogue seems to be mostly skill checks, which isn't very hard if you've got the metagame knowledge to know what speech skills need to be at what levels. There's really nothing to say about the difficulty of the dialogue path other than:
"If your character isn't built to be diplomatic then you're not going to have access to diplomatic options just fucking deal with it you prole"
My favourite character so far I think (until I finish my current playthrough as a martial-heavy 2h+dodge mercenary named "Cingeto", because murdering everything in sight is pretty hilarious) is probably one I did as a hybrid. It wasn't even hard, which struck me as bizarre when I finished it because all of the warnings I saw about doing so explicitly warn you not to unless you know what you're doing.
The only stuff I got locked out of was the more advanced lore-related stuff, but that didn't bother me since that's not what my character was built to do. I built and played him as a charismatic army officer, not a scholar.
This is where the actual spoilers are:
I started a drifter with 8/8/6/6/4/8 and did a hybrid MURDER TALK playthrough with the imperial guards, focused on block/sword along with diplomacy and level 10 in crafting.
With this character, I became arena champion, helped kemnebi, helped basil, and basically killed anybody I deemed beneath me (for roleplaying reasons), I even killed both of the demons, and killed all of the constructs in the first floor of the Hellgate (I only went there to get the meteor metal for my armour since I didn't have the lore to really do much else there other than murder and loot the robots. This is a bit meta, I know.) along with murdering all of the scorpions to reach the temple. The only thing I couldn't kill was Agathoth or however his name was spelled, so I went with the "sleeping dogs" ending out of spite.
I didn't even go pure murder though, and I managed to do some things which seem like they should've been pretty damn hard for a primarily combat-oriented man to face. At least, I figured these checks were hard because I was save-scumming and spending my skill-point stockpile to pass them. I managed to talk the raiders out of the monastery and talk the ordu into fucking off rather than attacking the pass, and I arranged the Daratan/Carrinas alliance rather than just stabbing Antidas in the head, I even talked Strabos into telling me everything he knows whilst still being able to talk Pavola into sending him guards afterwards (word of honour).
My body count was only a modest ~130 by the end of it, since I basically took any diplomatic solution I was offered, but was still willing and able to hack anybody who fucked with me to pieces. I'm actually tempted to try it again only minmaxed harder than the first time, maybe do a 7/8/6/6/6/7 so that I actually can do some of the other lore stuff
With this character, I became arena champion, helped kemnebi, helped basil, and basically killed anybody I deemed beneath me (for roleplaying reasons), I even killed both of the demons, and killed all of the constructs in the first floor of the Hellgate (I only went there to get the meteor metal for my armour since I didn't have the lore to really do much else there other than murder and loot the robots. This is a bit meta, I know.) along with murdering all of the scorpions to reach the temple. The only thing I couldn't kill was Agathoth or however his name was spelled, so I went with the "sleeping dogs" ending out of spite.
I didn't even go pure murder though, and I managed to do some things which seem like they should've been pretty damn hard for a primarily combat-oriented man to face. At least, I figured these checks were hard because I was save-scumming and spending my skill-point stockpile to pass them. I managed to talk the raiders out of the monastery and talk the ordu into fucking off rather than attacking the pass, and I arranged the Daratan/Carrinas alliance rather than just stabbing Antidas in the head, I even talked Strabos into telling me everything he knows whilst still being able to talk Pavola into sending him guards afterwards (word of honour).
My body count was only a modest ~130 by the end of it, since I basically took any diplomatic solution I was offered, but was still willing and able to hack anybody who fucked with me to pieces. I'm actually tempted to try it again only minmaxed harder than the first time, maybe do a 7/8/6/6/6/7 so that I actually can do some of the other lore stuff
The only things I can say I really dislike about this game
I'd love some more arena content (unless there's stuff after the three title defence fights when you become arena champion and I just have to wait longer), Kemnebi actually having more work for you at some point would be good also, and for there to be more stat checks for people who boosted something all the way to 10 at chargen.
Really almost all of my complaints are that there's not enough of the game for me to play. I seriously look forward to whatever's coming from Iron Tower next and I hope it's just as good as this was.
Discuss good hybrid builds and glorious battle theory.