[Poll] Troika

[Jvegi]

Indigo Gaming 3 part restrospective on Arcanum, ToEE and Bloodlines

Another one who hasn't realized the function of the "h" key, yet still decided to make a video about the game.

 

[Carrion]

People severely overstate the shittiness of Arcanum's combat. It isn't great, but it's inoffensive. In real time, it's over very quickly and wastes none of your time. Even in turn based it's pretty quick because most enemies aren't bloated, except for those fucking stone and magma golems. And even those are quicker to take down than many enemies in other RPGs with bad combat.

I have fond memories of running away from the Black Mountain golems in real-time, and at the same time furiously clicking on the golems as quickly as I could, hitting them with my chakram like it was a machinegun.

 

[overly excitable young man]

All three games are incredibly unfinished but the unfinishedness of ToEE doesnt stand as much in the way of enyoing it than the other two.

With Arcanum you see how unfinished and rushed the whole second half of the world map is.
And because the game drags on so much that is where the game loses a lot of players.

VtM:B is played because of storyfag reasons and to experience World of Darkness as crpg.
So it's kinda sad when you cut out almost all clan related stuff that makes World of Darkness great and force the player in retarded linear combat.
At Hollywood sewers you lose the majority of players.

Everything crappy in ToEE is skippable (like the stupid towns) or it's some crappy mechanic (like that you cant buy highest quality weapons in vanilla) that you can just ignore.
The lackluster elemental plains in the temple are sad but at least they are finished very fast and you dont have to look back.
But the core mechanics remain untouched.

All in all the unfinished or unoptimized content in ToEE has much less influence on the game than in VtM:B or Arcanum.

 

[fantadomat]

Arcanum > combat isn't very good
Bloodlines > combat sucks

So, there's that.

I think you're being too kind with Arcanum. The combat is terrible, turn-based or not.

People severely overstate the shittiness of Arcanum's combat. It isn't great, but it's inoffensive. In real time, it's over very quickly and wastes none of your time. Even in turn based it's pretty quick because most enemies aren't bloated, except for those fucking stone and magma golems. And even those are quicker to take down than many enemies in other RPGs with bad combat.

Not really,the combat is fine,you are just bad at it. Playing too much TB games lowers your hand-eye coordination and reflexes.

 

[overly excitable young man]

Only special breed of retards would call Arcanums combat "fine".

You know nothing about games. Let a goat finish and make cheese out of it or whatever you mongrels do in your free time!

 

[gurugeorge]

Arcanum is extremely lovable in terms of setting, lore, immersion and story - but the combat is dopey and irritating.

Never played Bloodlines, vampires are gay.

ToEE however, is god-tier in terms of faithful D&D implementation and edge-of-the-seat turn-based gameplay, once most of the worst bugs are sorted out (as with basic Co8).

 

[JarlFrank]

I wonder if the people who think Arcanum's combat is "irritating" think NWN's combat is fine in comparison

 

[overly excitable young man]

Cause only one thing in the world can be shitty, moron.

 

[Ontopoly]

Hard to decide because they're all very flawed in separate ways. ToEE is still the most faithful adaptation of D&D ever created, so I guess I'll give it to that.

As if being faithful to some table top shit has ever been an accomplishment... Video games have elevated dnd to levels unimaginable. Took the numbers and spells which are the only good part and tossed the rest

 

[Doktor Best]

Arcanum is the Skyrim of RPGs

And you are the adopted one in your family.

His condition is the Dark Souls of retardation.

 

[fantadomat]

Cause only one thing in the world can be shitty, moron.

Yes,it is a century old codexian tradition!

 

[Roguey]

I wonder if the people who think Arcanum's combat is "irritating" think NWN's combat is fine in comparison

Depends on the module, but when it comes to systems, third edition still beats Tim Cain's poorly thought out homebrew.

 

[JarlFrank]

I wonder if the people who think Arcanum's combat is "irritating" think NWN's combat is fine in comparison

Depends on the module, but when it comes to systems, third edition still beats Tim Cain's poorly thought out homebrew.

Yeah but NWN's incredible slowness that is only bearable with Cheat Engine's speedhack is way worse out of the box, regardless of system, than Arcanum's lightning-fast combat.

 

[Roguey]

Yeah but NWN's incredible slowness that is only bearable with Cheat Engine's speedhack is way worse out of the box, regardless of system, than Arcanum's lightning-fast combat.

Everything happens in six second rounds in NWN, same as the Infinity engine games. Cutting that down to three like kotor did would make it a pause-fest, not particularly suitable for their multiplayer goals. I never minded.

 

[gurugeorge]

I wonder if the people who think Arcanum's combat is "irritating" think NWN's combat is fine in comparison

NWN's is pretty bad but tolerable. The real stinker, unfortunately, is NWN2 - for all the camera versions and options, I've never been able to get that game set up in a satisfactory enough form to play. You can invert y axis in Character mode but not the other modes? wtf - and that's just one tiny problem.

 

[Ladonna]

While I completed all of their games, I found Arcanum to be the best by far. As clunky as combat in it was, there were plenty of options to use, and the called shots made a difference in spite of their feeling of 'added at the last minute'. The world and history building was excellent, and the choices available unbeatable. There will probably never be another game like Arcanum, and it falls into that special category where you can tell a few people invested everything into a project. If only they had more time to finish it up without publisher constraints...imagine how much better it could have been on top of its brilliance?

Anyway, I voted for the current winner of course.

TOEE I found to be a tech demo. It had an excellent 'system', ready for modules. Unfortunately, the one they provided is somewhat soulless and there was little dragging me past the first levels of the Temple. The first few quests outside of town, especially the Moat House, were great. The Temple quickly bored me to tears though. Thankfully, the Co8 additions made the game shine much more brightly, but still, it is a system still waiting to be let out. If only it could have had yearly releases of new adventures, similar to Goldbox, it could have come into its own. Ah well.

Vampire was a fun romp. A lot of people seem to complain about the sewers and the ending, but I didn't find it especially repulsive. The fighting system wasn't too bad overall, and once I was reasonably skilled with both melee and ranged, I could deal with most of the things that were thrown at me. The hubs were, overall, fun to play through. And the characters well written. Plenty of fun.

And that is it! Pretty sad they only had the three. I think Troika really could have made something of themselves in this new era of crowd funding.

 

[Dux]

ToEE was a pretty straightforward ride for me, no big problems that I can recall. I was playing with Temple+.

Bloodlines, on the other hand, is like a nefarious drinking game where you'd take a shot every time the engine or AI shits itself. You'd die of alcohol poisoning pretty fucking quickly, and this is with the unofficial patch. I like Bloodlines but it is without a doubt one of the buggiest, clunkiest games that I have ever played.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I like Arcanum combat. First time I played it, I played it three times back to back: human warlock, dwarven technician and half-orc swordfighter. Without big party (Virgil, mutt and someone else), with lots of combat. It was awesome, combat in Arcanum is interesting and variative

 

[CappenVarra]

if Arcanum sang the blues, you'd want to listen

 

[Cat Dude]

Any game where i can play as a black men

And their lovers must be white chicks.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Any game where i can play as a black men

And their lovers must be white chicks.

Wrong website, i believe ...

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

"Least flawed" Tetris best game ever with that metric.

Arcanum was their best. Bloodlines their most accessible/widely appealing game, the first/third person action rpg format would've lent itself well to console ports/remake.

 

[King Crispy]

I was playing with Temple+.

Hah!

When I was a kid we had to walk to the Moathouse, in the snow, uphill BOTH WAYS, every day.

 

[Ontopoly]

I remember playing Arcanum and just spamming fireball at my feet in real time as fast as I could. Surprisingly works.

 

[Max Damage]

If we're talking about unmodded, out of the box Troika games, I enjoyed Bloodlines the most. Also, best OST