Mortmal
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2009
- Messages
- 9,397
Here we go again, nitpicking everything about BG3 but pretending that KotC2 is fine and doesn't need a plot. You start in a small village, then you explore the sewers, which already doesn't make sense for such a medieval village. In these sewers, there are armies of goblins with magic weapons battling, ancient dragons beneath ruins with mummies, and extraplanar levels. Eventually, you end up teleported to some castle without even knowing why for the final battle. You don't need a big plot for a dungeon crawler, I agree, but there's still a minimum of coherence to maintain.KotC2 doesn't need a complex plot or anything like that. The Augury of Chaos campaign is a structured combat dungeon and there is no illusion from anyone here that you play it for any reason other than its superb combat. It does exactly what it's designed for. It's encounter balance is excellent since most encounters are difficult while being reasonable enough for a player who is able to figure out a strategy for the encounter. The AI is excellent, still the best AI in any tactical game to this day. Your characters going through the dungeon is the plot and there doesn't have to be anything else.It's exactly what I am speaking about. Flaws are a lot more numerous than this, much, much more so, from the plot and writing to the encounter balance and presentation. And the budget has nothing to do with that. While BG3 has some flaws, they are very minor and nitpicking in comparison.KotC2's flaw is its engine and its limitations. It's not so much of a problem if you're just looking for a tactical dungeon crawler. But that's what it was designed for. I've never played CoL though.Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.
Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.
This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.
People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.
Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.
The writing is passable in KotC2 and there's little enough of it that you can ignore it.
The problem with KotC2's presentation is the 3d sprites and 2.5d map added into to Augury which clashes with the original token/grid art style of the campaign. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that. Though if you ask me, the biggest mistake was not just using the soulful sprites and textures from KotC1 for everything. There is nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that.
BG3's encounter balance is non-existent since most of the encounters are extremely easy even on Tactician difficulty. This is even if you don't exploit the gimmicks that made their way into the game from DOS2. The plot itself which is retarded from the beginning is a huge flaw. Invasion of the body snatchers was a shit movie and recreating its plotline in this game was retarded. And then you get the terrible globohomo writing and gay cutscenes that happen everywhere--a major flaw in itself. The game would have been better off without those things, especially without the cutscenes.
The attempt at photorealistic 3d graphics is always a mistake. It tends to be nothing but a waste of disc space and is always ugly.
As for the battle balance, KotC2 was unplayable at release and still turns down 99% of people. The fact is, no one plays it anymore. Regarding BG3 combat, it's not as unbalanced as you make it out to be; it may require some tweaking. If you follow the good path and do both the underworld and high mountains, you gain too much XP early, as I noticed in my second playthrough. This is easily fixable and doesn't make the game unenjoyable, you still stay in same encounter level tiers. Tactician mode, if you are reasonable with rests and don't save scum, is fine enough.
As for photorealistic 3D graphics being a mistake, it's only a problem when you don't have the budget, and mostly for indies. I can't help but picture a Codexer's kid spitting out caviar handed to him by Sven on a silver spoon. I could play with much lower-quality graphics, using pogs (with good art) and a 2D map. But why complain when you have actor performances with photorealistic graphics and superb 3D dioramas