14) Not convinced by the argument that TOEE/BG is less repetitive, I think they are more repetitive. Mage Tower is not a great example either because it is so early in the game. Especially with my rogue main character who mostly has shitty passives. I have about 4 things to click.. But it does get better later on. It is no more repetitive than any other RPG, and in fact, I recently quit Kingmaker on chapter 4 because every fight was IDENTICAL and also couldn't be put into tactics either so you had to cast every single spell manually. This game is less repetitive than that because the trash fights mostly play out automated, and the boss fights are different every time. Yeah my Rogue and Warrior hit the same abilities every time, healer is a bit more reactive, but my control mage is different in every fight. Sometimes it is better to quickly blast down the boss, sometimes it is better to try to control him and kill all the trash first, sometimes he is immune to control, sometimes the boss's ally is immune to control and it is best to kill him first and sometimes there are so many and my healer can't keep up so I need to thin the numbers asap, sometimes the enemies have a strong healer that needs killing first, one fight the boss is basically untouchable because he teleports to 4 corners of the room constantly and creates a huge lightning storm on that spot each time, so if you try to chase him you die in seconds. This game is far less repetitive than other RPGs.
15)
Combat is terrible: 2 mages = autowin. You can have 2 very soon if you start as mage, you can have also 3 mages.
If you play with tanks and thieves only you must use "bombs" for some encounters, mass darkspawns are more difficult than bosses if you lack mages.
That doesn't make combat terrible. I agree 2 mages is too powerful though. My first play through was 2 mages, one had a big lightning storm, other had a big firestorm. I think one had the ice storm too, so 2 or 3 storms on top of a big group of mobs was the end of that battle. But you only get to that point nearer the end of the game, and you shouldn't dismiss the entire combat because of that one balance issue. I am playing it now with 0 storms because I went with rogue instead of mage on the hero character, and my only mage character (Morrigan) has only control spells.
16) This game is hard as balls now. I have a lot of mods that change all sorts of things so maybe one of those nerfed my mage and made enemies harder or something, or maybe not having 2 mages made a big difference. Some fights I do better than last time, but a lot of fights I get completely destroyed. My single healer just can't keep up with heals, and the others can't do enough damage to smack stuff down. There was a fight I had to abandon after 20 attempts, not sure if it is supposed to be beatable or if I am supposed to go back there later in the game or something. But damn... it was hard. It was in the elven forest region when hunting werewolves, I click a grave and a big bunch of enemies spawn, one yellow, several whites, but one orange which is super strong. It casts a spell that pulls all the characters towards him, then he does a big area attack that takes every character down to about 5% health. I can usually keep my healer and mage away, but my rogue and tank get pulled in and unless you pause that exact time and do a group heal or pop potions, they instantly die. But even after landing the heal/pots, the damage still continues and it is impossible to keep on top of it. And also my damage is barely touching the big guy. I tried ganking the yellow guy first but my team died to the orange guy before we could even kill him. Truly brutal fight, harder than any other RPG I've played and I've played them all. I will try again after I get a level or two, but it may just scale to my level and I may end up needing to pop every last scroll and potion to win that fight. All the other boss fights I've done so far have been perfect, I either win first time or after 1 or 2 reloads.
17) Mob variety is not a problem. Yes there is a lot of derkspern, but you are fighting an invasion so it makes sense, and at least they are varied in their type a bit. But there are also plenty of spiders, wolves, bears, bandits, and many other types of things. As someone above said, if you count the mob numbers, this game has more. It seems there are a lot of negative views of this game that are factually wrong.
18.) I kinda regret taking a rogue instead of mage. I did it because I wanted a different experience and it achieved that, so I'm ok with it. But it is a lot less fun to play than a mage. Although I think it will get better later on once he gets more things to click instead of so many passives. Also in my previous game I had Wynn as my healer and my main character was a nuker mage but I gave him a heal spell which helped out against swarms of enemies when the damage peaked at the start. I could spam healing just to survive the start of a battle and once a few of the enemies were dead, things settled down and mage could get back to nuking. I can't do that anymore because rogue so no heals, so I am using potions which I never used at all last time. Also on a couple of fights I have had a character get knocked out so I have had to use injury kits. I loot enough potions and kits that I keep about equal, but still, this play through is a lot tougher, more challenging, and different to my last play through.
19)
Ha!
I thought it was a serious post (I was even going to ask for the restorations mods) until this. You got me, mate.
What don't you like about the Fade exactly? My second play through I used a "Skip the Fade" mod, so I can understand not liking it. It must have been enough of a chore for me on my first play that I skipped it the second time. But this time I decided to do it because I had forgotten so much about it, and I realised how good it is. As someone said on the previous page, it is just a change from the rest of the game. I completed the whole thing in about 1-2 hours, I got about 10 permanent ability points, and I got to play what felt like an entirely new game, running around with one character, shapeshifting into different forms with their own unique hotbar, it was more like Shang Tsung from Mortal Kombat than it was an RPG and I enjoyed it. Again, I think anyone who doesn't like the Fade likely doesn't understand it. They likely tried to play it with their gimpy original character instead of using the shape shift forms which is the entire point.
20)
I think it is only shallower than D&D in the higher levels, but this game doesn't get to higher levels. I think if they made the BG2 equivalent of this game, it would have been amazing. Higher level characters with some more spells and things.
Awakening expansion would be the "high level" and it's completely broken (in terms of both mechanics and bugs lel). Liked it more than the original campaign, though.
Awakening was just more of the same, what I want is a true sequel that adds more levels and more abilities on top of what you got originally.
21)
Looks like anvi is fishing for an upgrade to the dumbfuck tag if you ask me. DAO's engine is just a bugprone, slow, and leaky sack of shit. Making DAO mods is a sufficient nuisance that there are almost no custom campaigns, so even though DAO's engine is supposed to be a significant upgrade on NWN's, the NWN modders stayed there. The graphics looked bland and meh even when it was released. They were serviceable, sure, but they definitely weren't impressive. When it comes to the writing, a lot of DAO party member dialogue is downright infantile. The story isn't particularly compelling either because there barely is any. You have to raise an army to deal with the darkspawn, oh, and there's a nominal villain too. That's about it. Then you have some subadventures. The game does a bad job of properly drawing you into the storyworld and basically encourages you to waste tons of time sidequesting minute optional shit even though you're supposedly racing against the clock to raise an army before the darkspawn kill everyone. Rogue stealth is a joke (it's basically an invisibility button, that's about it), combat is really easily broken, and Rogues and Warriors are indeed dull as fuck. They have barely any abilities with significant effects outside of damage. If you want to make a rogue feel less like dull shit, maybe fuck around with archery (it has better debuffing abilities) and start using traps and poisons. Warriors can at least make up a bit for their dull abilities with their specializations. The Fade is the most infamous level in the entire game, to the point that Skip the Fade is one of the most popular DAO mods.
That bit about the engine makes no sense, I played at release and now 90 years later and it is rock solid and never seen a problem with it. Maybe try removing all your toolbars from your desktop, grandma.
Not every game should have a huge part of its development time creating an editor that lets people make new content for the game. NWN is pretty unique in that respect so why would you expect everything to have the same feature? It has never been done since which suggests it wasn't worthwhile which if you think about the finances of it... makes sense. Why spend all that extra time making something that people don't care about when just having some mods is enough?
There is plenty of story, whether it is compelling or not is up to you, but it isn't any worse than any other RPGs imo. I agree the dialogue is infantile though, but I can't think of a single game that wasn't. The side quests are fine, they make them as something to do on the side of the main quest because that's what people seem to like... Why pick on this game for it when almost every RPG does it? Also at least in this game they involve hunting a werewolf in a well made (and hand made) dungeon forest, the equivalent in other games is always such garbage, even the likes of Pillars of Eternity.
Rogues and Warriors have a hell of a lot more than almost every RPG ever made. Do you really need someone to list the warrior and rogue abilities from BG2 and compare it to this? There is quality over quantity with this game though, each ability is important, taunt and de-taunt was nice to have, stuns can be used at the perfect time, and abilities work together to create a boost which hardly any RPGs do. You can also evolve them into sub classes, although admittedly 4 more abilities isn't much, but on top of what you already have it makes the melee in this game better than anything you could compare it to.
22) There are a lot of boss fights! This is the main thing that was missing from Kingmaker. All that time killing crap that dies in 2 seconds... This game is so much better, even trash you have to be wary of and the boss fights are really great. I just did the teleporting demon. I died first time. He teleports to corners of the room and does big lightning storm that hurts. I just couldn't heal through it, my only option was to keep everyone in the middle and shoot him from range which seemed to work.
