bryce777
Erudite
Ok, I have just replayed it (well most of it) for about the 6th time and I find I have the urge to write a mini review.
The good:
Amazing in the sense that it is the only game I have played where all of the stats are just as useful as any other stat. The only exception is beauty, really. For the right kind of character, all the others are of great use. You can make a successful character build on nearly any premise imaginable, including magic versus technology.
You can get really far in the game as a conversationalist, and the options are very satisfying. You also do not automatically know what the 'good' response is so even if you have the right skills you have to use your brain a little. I don't think any other game does as well on this front. A persuasive character can't really entirely avoid combat (except by running from wild animals a lot), but he can get together a group that can handle it for him. He could also use nonlethal combat if he chose. It is the only game I have played where all the noncombat options actually made sense and were actually more satisfying a lot of times than the other options available. You can also solve a lot of quests in ways that are not entirely obvious, as well. Such as building a big stone fence to solve a particular quest.
Technological stuff is just immensely fun. Digging through garbage and turning it into useful stuff is a great experience. The descriptions are great, it's fun to hunt for stuff - pretty much everything is great...until you realize most of the things you can make are totally worthless.
The bad:
Technology:
The technology is really fun, but it does not take much digging to realize that it is extremely unbalanced. For example you can make a balanced sword as a first level character, and it is the second best melee weapon in the game! Once you have this one, nothing you find comes CLOSE til near the end of the game and only one melee weapon is clearly superior. The reason that it is so strong is because it has a ludicrously unbalanced attack speed - you can get in 7-8 attacks per round, and when you have a high strength that lets you drop just about anything in the game in one round. Firearms are also broken because you can get a looking glass rifle only having about have the skills in the smithy tech. Worse than that, you can have an npc make them for you, and you can also obtain an elephant gun in several places which is slightly stronger than a looking glas rifle.
The only tech tree that is clearly worth it is explosives. Again, though, there is an ULIMATE WEAPON halfway down the tech tree; if you have stun grenades you can win any battle whatsoever with ease...especially if you have the balanced sword or looking glass rifle. The explosive grenades are really just useless in comparison though they sell for a ton of money. Dynamite is useful to blow up doors and such, though, I suppose. When throwing grenades, you can keep throwing til you run out, and then attack normally. It is severely broken.
Even worse, half the disciplines have no practial use whatsoever. The items you can build are so weak that it is pointless, especially since to get to the doctoral level in one you have to spend 7 character points...which means gaining seven levels then throwing the result out the window. Not to mention that you need to max your int before going to doctorate level in anything. All the venomed, charged, etc weapons are just totally worthless, and yet extremely difficult to build.
The game has a great character system...and you are not allowed to choose how your followers level. The leveling schemes, at best, can be referred to as "really fucking stupid". Want to use guns? Tough shit! There are only two characters who use guns and one does not join you til you have pretty much won the game, and the other betrays you later in the game. Don't want to pick locks yourself? Tough shit! Lots of locks have to be picked and there is only one npc who can help with that, and he is hard to get and will only stay if your party is evil (and unless you indiscriminantly slaughter every person alive it is hard to be evil in the game).
The realtime combat is unplayable. The turnbased combat would be ok, except it basically freezes for no reason every once in a while, especially if you have a bunch of followers, forcing you into realtime mode for a bit to clear it. The AI is REALLY bad for melee characters, who will run in really inefficient ways to the wrong enemy, and of course almost all of the npcs you can get ARE melee characters. The enemy ALWAYS seems to attack the main character, too, even when this makes zero sense. So forget about having a character who doesn't have dodge skills and wear armor.
Your idiot followers also decide what weapons and armor they want to use, and they choose this extremely idiotically so it is hard to have them carry around loot for you. They will start shooting a bow even though they have no skill in bows whatsoever. They also tend to pick up garbage from the floor too. For the longest time, virgil had zero stamina all the time. I had no idea why. I went to his inventory at some point, and he had picked up a 4000 stone monolith from a field somewhere. I got a good laugh, but that is pretty stupid.
It's not as nonlinear as people claim. Actually, it is not any more nonlinear than PST. The only difference is that the area you have access to at any one time is larger than in PST. You always go to this area, then that, then the next, etc. etc.
The interface is also pretty bad. You get used to a lot of its goofiness, but the fact you can have an area map OR a world map from a certain location, and not both, is annoying...especially since a lot of times it's totally unclear where you are supposed to go, but then you hit the map and it goes to the useless world map. It also gets annoying having to run to the edge of the city maps to get to the world map.
Also, a lot of times people attack you for no reason. Often this happens in conversations where you choose an option not realizing it will lead to combat, but other times people just attack out of the blue and then your idiot followers complain about assaulting an innocent.
Overall, I liked it a lot, but the problems it has keep it from being a game where I can't believe how awesome it is.
The good:
Amazing in the sense that it is the only game I have played where all of the stats are just as useful as any other stat. The only exception is beauty, really. For the right kind of character, all the others are of great use. You can make a successful character build on nearly any premise imaginable, including magic versus technology.
You can get really far in the game as a conversationalist, and the options are very satisfying. You also do not automatically know what the 'good' response is so even if you have the right skills you have to use your brain a little. I don't think any other game does as well on this front. A persuasive character can't really entirely avoid combat (except by running from wild animals a lot), but he can get together a group that can handle it for him. He could also use nonlethal combat if he chose. It is the only game I have played where all the noncombat options actually made sense and were actually more satisfying a lot of times than the other options available. You can also solve a lot of quests in ways that are not entirely obvious, as well. Such as building a big stone fence to solve a particular quest.
Technological stuff is just immensely fun. Digging through garbage and turning it into useful stuff is a great experience. The descriptions are great, it's fun to hunt for stuff - pretty much everything is great...until you realize most of the things you can make are totally worthless.
The bad:
Technology:
The technology is really fun, but it does not take much digging to realize that it is extremely unbalanced. For example you can make a balanced sword as a first level character, and it is the second best melee weapon in the game! Once you have this one, nothing you find comes CLOSE til near the end of the game and only one melee weapon is clearly superior. The reason that it is so strong is because it has a ludicrously unbalanced attack speed - you can get in 7-8 attacks per round, and when you have a high strength that lets you drop just about anything in the game in one round. Firearms are also broken because you can get a looking glass rifle only having about have the skills in the smithy tech. Worse than that, you can have an npc make them for you, and you can also obtain an elephant gun in several places which is slightly stronger than a looking glas rifle.
The only tech tree that is clearly worth it is explosives. Again, though, there is an ULIMATE WEAPON halfway down the tech tree; if you have stun grenades you can win any battle whatsoever with ease...especially if you have the balanced sword or looking glass rifle. The explosive grenades are really just useless in comparison though they sell for a ton of money. Dynamite is useful to blow up doors and such, though, I suppose. When throwing grenades, you can keep throwing til you run out, and then attack normally. It is severely broken.
Even worse, half the disciplines have no practial use whatsoever. The items you can build are so weak that it is pointless, especially since to get to the doctoral level in one you have to spend 7 character points...which means gaining seven levels then throwing the result out the window. Not to mention that you need to max your int before going to doctorate level in anything. All the venomed, charged, etc weapons are just totally worthless, and yet extremely difficult to build.
The game has a great character system...and you are not allowed to choose how your followers level. The leveling schemes, at best, can be referred to as "really fucking stupid". Want to use guns? Tough shit! There are only two characters who use guns and one does not join you til you have pretty much won the game, and the other betrays you later in the game. Don't want to pick locks yourself? Tough shit! Lots of locks have to be picked and there is only one npc who can help with that, and he is hard to get and will only stay if your party is evil (and unless you indiscriminantly slaughter every person alive it is hard to be evil in the game).
The realtime combat is unplayable. The turnbased combat would be ok, except it basically freezes for no reason every once in a while, especially if you have a bunch of followers, forcing you into realtime mode for a bit to clear it. The AI is REALLY bad for melee characters, who will run in really inefficient ways to the wrong enemy, and of course almost all of the npcs you can get ARE melee characters. The enemy ALWAYS seems to attack the main character, too, even when this makes zero sense. So forget about having a character who doesn't have dodge skills and wear armor.
Your idiot followers also decide what weapons and armor they want to use, and they choose this extremely idiotically so it is hard to have them carry around loot for you. They will start shooting a bow even though they have no skill in bows whatsoever. They also tend to pick up garbage from the floor too. For the longest time, virgil had zero stamina all the time. I had no idea why. I went to his inventory at some point, and he had picked up a 4000 stone monolith from a field somewhere. I got a good laugh, but that is pretty stupid.
It's not as nonlinear as people claim. Actually, it is not any more nonlinear than PST. The only difference is that the area you have access to at any one time is larger than in PST. You always go to this area, then that, then the next, etc. etc.
The interface is also pretty bad. You get used to a lot of its goofiness, but the fact you can have an area map OR a world map from a certain location, and not both, is annoying...especially since a lot of times it's totally unclear where you are supposed to go, but then you hit the map and it goes to the useless world map. It also gets annoying having to run to the edge of the city maps to get to the world map.
Also, a lot of times people attack you for no reason. Often this happens in conversations where you choose an option not realizing it will lead to combat, but other times people just attack out of the blue and then your idiot followers complain about assaulting an innocent.
Overall, I liked it a lot, but the problems it has keep it from being a game where I can't believe how awesome it is.
