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Elminage ORIGINAL - Priestess of Darkness and The Ring of the Gods

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
My grinding tolerance is rather low.

Didn't expect to see that phrase in a thread about a game like this.

Yeah, well, the fun part is beating these games with little to none grinding.
Some are way too easy, though. Operation Abyss comes to mind. Stranger of Sword City was also a little on the easy side on average. Some boss encounters were decently challenging, but the OP Divinity system solved all of them.
 

ilitarist

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I've only played SoSC out of those (and played Elminage Gothic for 3 minutes till the guy in the training center asked me if I wanted to train and murdered my party which made the game look like I Wanne Be The Guy the RPG) and to me it looked like you have to grind a lot. You meet some enemies you must not fight and you learn it because they oneshot some of your guys. Then they go to revive (and probably afterwards revive) and all that time you have to fight with backup guys, thus you can't really progress because you're asking for another oneshot with weakened party. Maybe it becomes easier later but it's not like the game was hard, it just could force you to lose a guy for couple of dozen fights.
 
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aweigh

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Haplo

mechanically speaking the reason monster-adventurers can become OP is because in elminage mechanics (And trad. wizardry as well) racial modifiers always stack unless specifically stated otherwise.

for normal characters this can most easily be seen by using the traditional Faerie race as an example: faeries get a bonus modifier to their base armor class in wizardry/elminage and this stacks with anything, however the game balances this by restricting AC-altering items (i.e. faerie equipment).

(basically

instead of having equipment invalidate the racial modifier they simply flat-out prohibit that interaction altogether by curating the items.

a red cap's (to use as an example) beheading chance is treated by the game the same way as the bonus to AC a faery char receives, as a racial modifier instead of a class modifier.

changing tack towards resistances: 100% means complete resistance to the thing, while 200% means the thing benefits you (like how fire elementals gain HP from fire element), and 300% which is game maximum means resistance + absorption + REFLECTION.

In the case of E: Gothic the only way to go past 100% using normal characters (that I can think of) is getting the super-rare drops of Rainbow Charms, and those are only for the elemental attributes.

in E: Original there are, in direct contrast to Gothic, multiple special items/equipment that have 100% and beyond of something, like those death staffs that drop like candy in DRagon Fang for example.
 
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aweigh

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stuff like restricting max of swallow-return in E: Gothic has no mechanical reason beyond them simply wanting to make the game 'harder' than previous elminage games, and/or wanting to hew closer to traditional wizardry.

(like how in E: Gothic most blunt-weaponry and staves are S-range, which hews closer to classic Wizardry scenarios 1-5)
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
I've only played SoSC out of those (and played Elminage Gothic for 3 minutes till the guy in the training center asked me if I wanted to train and murdered my party which made the game look like I Wanne Be The Guy the RPG) and to me it looked like you have to grind a lot. You meet some enemies you must not fight and you learn it because they oneshot some of your guys. Then they go to revive (and probably afterwards revive) and all that time you have to fight with backup guys, thus you can't really progress because you're asking for another oneshot with weakened party. Maybe it becomes easier later but it's not like the game was hard, it just could force you to lose a guy for couple of dozen fights.

Elminage is not SoSC, you don't loose hearts, you don't really need backup guys - unless you're playing Ironman or hate save abuse or something. You should have a backup Alchemist (to enchant items) and Bishop (to Identify low quality items for free... otherwise identification will be very expensive), if they are not in your "core" party, but they can never leave the town.

The training guy isn't that tough, only has AC that's difficult to hit for a starter party. Still, if you manage to disable him with spells (sleep for example), he's a sitting duck. But he's probably not intended to train novice parties. It's much easier to just go trough the first dungeon. He's very useful to quickly bring new or multiclassed characters up to speed - to level 6 or so.
You team them up with one other character, who butchers the training guy in 1-2 rounds for easy xp.

And you don't really meet many enemies you should avoid, at least before the final, third, post-game dungeon. There StarGazers or the like can really spoil your day. Oh, there are also the so called "Floor Masters", bosses, who roam the last floor of each dungeon. Early on you should generally avoid those guys too. You can sometimes cheese them with Charm so they perform Seppuku, but its not advised. Later on you might be able to steal their equipment and/or they can serve you as excellent summons.

Enemies have deadly abilities later on, but it's generally possible to counter their abilities. For example the RedCaps from the Great Tree have a high-ish behead chance and come in packs. But their accuracy sucks, so if your front liners have decent armor and maybe you cast the cleric AC boosting spell once or twice, they are almost unable to hit you.
Early Lizardman have spears, with M-range, so they can instagib your squishy backrow characters. But you can have your frontmen defend the most vulnerable/important ones.

I guess the poison-breathing enemies from the basement of the Great Tree could initially be a problem, as you need decent HP to survive them. But you can visit other locations, level up a bit and come back.

In general it is very important to prioritize threats and focus fire the most dangerous and/or squishy enemies. That is also the reason offense-heavy parties are much superior to defensive ones IMO. Both you and your enemies have access to deadly abilities... its much safer to eliminate the big threats first then hope you'll pass the behead/instant death save.
 
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ilitarist

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I gave Elminage Gothic another try and I can see this game is more fair than it looks but I don't enjoy it much. UI and sounds make me uncomfortable, handheld roots are very obvious and using keyboard/mouse and playing on big 4K screen is obnoxious.

I really like the idea of blobber but sadly I can't get into any modern ones apart from M&MXL.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
You could try Elminage Original.
The UI is similar, but you do get a minimap (or rather are given materials and can craft one at the start of the game) and the automap use is unlimited.

Its considerably easier then Gothic and the enemy design is worse (most lack specific strengths & weaknesses), but on the upside the game flow (quests, NPC interactions, event chains) is much better.
Also while the maps aren't as difficult as some of Gothic maps, their design actually resembles places that could exist somewhere and aren't simply mazes with corridors and doors. Some also have interesting puzzles. And you get access to almost all maps immediately after clearing the tutorial dungeon!

Plus all the items have nice pictures (even monster weapons, even weird stuff like succubi kiss), which adds a lot to joy of finding/stealing phat lewt.

I personally think Elminage Original is considerably more accessible then Gothic.


If monsters had more unique strenghts & weaknesess and the difficulty ramped up a bit more in midgame, I think it would be my preferred Elminage game.
 

ilitarist

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It's not about the difficulty. It's about bad mouse support, huge buttons, unintuitive controls in general. Each battle I have to select an option with my mouse and click it and click on the enemy. Even SotSC was much easier to control, Space or Enter selected default options, not even talking about M&MXL that allowed to put spells on a special panel, here spell selection looks like it'd require 4 clicks to cast any spell. Also sounds on every click. And it looks as if I'd upscaled the image designed for my phone.

I may be fine with gameplay, everything else irritates me. This must be that intolerance and grudgingness that comes with the age. 28 years turned me into a monster.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Well, I remember Gothic controls feeling much better when I switched to exclusive keyboard controls. Sure, it's very clunky, old school style, particularly transferring items between characters and/or warehouse, but it works well enough. More importantly there are options to change combat speed, remove animations, as well as commands to repeat last round's orders/have everybody attack/manually set turn order. So the combat is really fast.

Many dungeons have a very devious design (but teleport spells make it MUCH easier... seriously, getting Diomente is a priority). Class system is very good with a lot of depth, ex skills and mastery abilities (well, except being kinda forced to use a Bishop and Alchemist). And enemy design is top notch also, with unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Original graphics are quite a bit sharper and do look better. On the downside, the included portraits suck in Original. And the UI is mostly the same. There even seems to be no option to set up custom turn order.

Well, perhaps its just not for you.

Will have to wait a bit for another game as fun as M&M XL, I suppose. I'm also a fan of that game.
 

ilitarist

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M&M franchise seems to be killed off by Ubisoft, Heroes 7 were panned and standalone expansion was ignored (you probably never heard of it, but they made standalone expansion... about Dwarves. The most exciting faction you can think off). Even if it wasn't it'd be hard to believe that Ubisoft would let its devs make a good game again. Till then I'll probably replay M&MXL or try to properly launch Wizardry 8 on a modern PC.
 
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aweigh

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ilitarist

blobbers dont benefit much from mouse-support, which is why wizardry didnt use a mouse til 6 and it was via Patched version

blobber genre is older than mouse as a commercial input device so, if thats yhour complaint, you dont know anything about anything..................

i play blobbers keyboard-only, the way they were designed
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
M&M franchise seems to be killed off by Ubisoft, Heroes 7 were panned and standalone expansion was ignored (you probably never heard of it, but they made standalone expansion... about Dwarves. The most exciting faction you can think off). Even if it wasn't it'd be hard to believe that Ubisoft would let its devs make a good game again. Till then I'll probably replay M&MXL or try to properly launch Wizardry 8 on a modern PC.

Eh, I kinda gave up on HoMM after V. HP bloat and making factions more samey again is NOT the way to go. Also hated HoMM VI over-the-top graphic design. HoMM VII looked like an abortion on most fronts.

And after experiencing the HoMM V awesome (if sometimes unbalanced) initiative system plus deep faction+hero specialization, it would be hard to go back to inferior systems.
 

ilitarist

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ilitarist

blobbers dont benefit much from mouse-support, which is why wizardry didnt use a mouse til 6 and it was via Patched version

blobber genre is older than mouse as a commercial input device so, if thats yhour complaint, you dont know anything about anything..................

i play blobbers keyboard-only, the way they were designed

What.

Wizardry 8 utilizes mouse just fine allowing you to quickly select actions for every character and use inventory with much more comfort than with keyboard. Don't understand how you can say the genre doesn't benefit much from mouse support when the genre is about managing lot of equipable/usable items and applying abilities from huge lists. Can't see how keyboard can be better than mouse even if you apply proper hotkeys and context search and so on. E:G supports mouse and I would expect it would allow me to navigate the world and select basic action with keyboard AND navigate big menus like spells or inventory with mouse. SoSC allows for that. But here it doesn't really work. You have press what, Enter to select option? I'd probably use gamepad if I'd continue to play because this game was obviously designed for that, not the keyboard.
 

ilitarist

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Eh, I kinda gave up on HoMM after V. HP bloat and making factions more samey again is NOT the way to go. Also hated HoMM VI over-the-top graphic design. HoMM VII looked like an abortion on most fronts.

And after experiencing the HoMM V awesome (if sometimes unbalanced) initiative system plus deep faction+hero specialization, it would be hard to go back to inferior systems.

HoMM6 actually made factions more unique and added many unorthodox units. And it was part of a problem. There was a lot of interplay between faction abilities and units so it doesn't make sense to add units from other factions to your army. Plus there are no neutral dwellings and you can convert enemy castles and the pool of creatures is the same for every castle - so you have one hero with main army, no need to find clever use for additional troops, no need to raise secondary heroes as specialists using secondary troops. They even allowed heroes to run around without army at all underlining the fact you only want your single hero to fight. I haven't played HoMM7 and I'm not sure what went wrong with it besides bugs, and I'm intrigued about it because on paper it looks like they had the right idea.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Eh, for me such a game without V's initiative system will never be the same.
Although I also loved the unique/exclusive heroes and unique faction abilities from V. And their synergies with units and spells.
 

Haplo

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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
It is much less intimidating and more accessible indeed. I wouldn't say it's been toned down though, as this is the Original Elminage game :)

The game/story flow is significantly better also.
Sometimes I wished for more challenge and enemy variety though (and more variety in their strengths & weaknesses).
 

victim

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It is much less intimidating and more accessible indeed. I wouldn't say it's been toned down though, as this is the Original Elminage game :)

The game/story flow is significantly better also.
Sometimes I wished for more challenge and enemy variety though (and more variety in their strengths & weaknesses).

I found the story flow in EO confusing because there were times when I thought I could advance but the dungeons were segmented by area and I had no shot vs the harder areas. I didn't enjoy the grinding enough to get all the way through it -- I think I stopped when I ended up grinding for AoE weapons.
 

Dorarnae

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I found the story flow in EO confusing because there were times when I thought I could advance but the dungeons were segmented by area and I had no shot vs the harder areas. I didn't enjoy the grinding enough to get all the way through it -- I think I stopped when I ended up grinding for AoE weapons.

AoE weapon? you mean flamberge? Usually with the one you can buy in the store is enough with a dragonewt char who can do breath attack.
Elminage original isn't that gind heavy. I can finish the main quest in about 15 hours and the post game in 30-35 hours. (ok I know the game well but still).
 

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I love this game but whoever designed the inventory should be shot. Not only am I making mule characters like in Diablo 2, but if you fully deck out a character you have exactly 2 slots left over for loot (3 if you use 2h weapons).

1JfYumH.jpg


aweigh you seem like the resident elminage expert, how do I not go back to town every 3-4 fights to sell all my shit?


Having said that, this game is amazing. And not just because of the wiz style class system that is extremely fun to tinker with but also because the game does a great job of making you feel like you're on some grand adventure despite the minimalism. Games like these are very rare and it's almost like I'm a kid again playing Morrowind or BG2.

:love:

I forgot yesterday was mother's day because i was too busy playing this all day
 

Ventidius

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the game does a great job of making you feel like you're on some grand adventure despite the minimalism. Games like these are very rare and it's almost like I'm a kid again playing Morrowind or BG2

Indeed, this game and Dragon's Dogma are the only recent games that have given me that feeling.
 

Dorarnae

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I love this game but whoever designed the inventory should be shot. Not only am I making mule characters like in Diablo 2, but if you fully deck out a character you have exactly 2 slots left over for loot (3 if you use 2h weapons).



aweigh you seem like the resident elminage expert, how do I not go back to town every 3-4 fights to sell all my shit?


Having said that, this game is amazing. And not just because of the wiz style class system that is extremely fun to tinker with but also because the game does a great job of making you feel like you're on some grand adventure despite the minimalism. Games like these are very rare and it's almost like I'm a kid again playing Morrowind or BG2.

:love:

I forgot yesterday was mother's day because i was too busy playing this all day

You can get a bishop to identify your item and drop the useless crap and have less gear on your mage, like all they need are items to boost their elemental dmg and that's it. not like 1AC armor will save their butt so I don't really see the point of wearing much armor on caster...
 

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