PoE is total SHIT, therefore BUY IT NOW - Steam Curator Page X Review

[Immortal]

INB4 KingComrade wins the poll and we have to delete the review and curator page.

 

[Sensuki]

The problem for me is the type of "tricks" you're talking about, namely that they're all combat-build related.

The thing is, PoE is a 100% combat-oriented game. It's more of an Icewind Dale spiritual successor, actually. Sure, the game tries to emulate all that non-combaty feel with its choices in dialogues, but it's all pretty much bullshit that doesn't amount to anything. It's pretty much shit story, shit exploration, good combat kind of a game.

Thing is it's not a good combat game either. You seem to enjoy character building and crunching numbers though. That's different to good combat.

 

[Ninjerk]

The problem for me is the type of "tricks" you're talking about, namely that they're all combat-build related.

The thing is, PoE is a 100% combat-oriented game. It's more of an Icewind Dale spiritual successor, actually. Sure, the game tries to emulate all that non-combaty feel with its choices in dialogues, but it's all pretty much bullshit that doesn't amount to anything. It's pretty much shit story, shit exploration, good combat kind of a game.

Thing is it's not a good combat game either. You seem to enjoy character building and crunching numbers though. That's different to good combat.

Less than the sum of its parts seems like an oddly good descriptor.

 

[Immortal]

The problem for me is the type of "tricks" you're talking about, namely that they're all combat-build related.

The thing is, PoE is a 100% combat-oriented game. It's more of an Icewind Dale spiritual successor, actually. Sure, the game tries to emulate all that non-combaty feel with its choices in dialogues, but it's all pretty much bullshit that doesn't amount to anything. It's pretty much shit story, shit exploration, good combat kind of a game.

Thing is it's not a good combat game either. You seem to enjoy character building and crunching numbers though. That's different to good combat.

Less than the sum of its parts seems like an oddly good descriptor.

Some parts of PoE are really good.. the shit definitely drags it down.

 

[thesoup]

Felipe's review is also really gud, mostly favorable to roxor's due to saying about the same things but in a much more concise manner. Even if it isn't on the front page but just its own thread.

Criticizers are just the vocal minority..

Just like the critics of Skyrim, Fallout 3, Oblivion, Dragon Age: Origins, etc. Don't believe me? Head to metacritic. Congrats, PoE is in league with them.

 

[Hatred]

Not to mention that on the codex the criticizers aren't the vocal minority. Tbh its kind of making reading the forums a little bland because there are so few people actually defending the game and even fewer of them put out decent arguments.

 

[Gurkog]

Meh, PoE is a good initial installment that suffers birthing pains. They made a game way too large of scope when they should have focused entirely on make a concise introduction to the mechanics and setting. Save that 'epic' storyline faggotry for the expansion and sequels. Making the game as long as they did with early iteration on core systems just leads to a lot of mediocrity. A game 1/2 the length would have the infant systems not overstaying their welcome.

 

[Infinitron]

Wonder if infi is feeling the pressure right bout now.

Bwahahahaha I was sleeping

You wonder why no PoE fan wants to argue with you? Look at this fucking thread.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Wonder if infi is feeling the pressure right bout now.

Bwahahahaha I was sleeping

You wonder why no PoE fan wants to argue with you? Look at this fucking thread.

 

[Metal Hurlant]

Having finished the game, I'm disappointed with it overall. Reminds me of finding skid marks in your underwear. While you're enjoying yourself with expelling juicy farts (butt cheese) into your underwear over an extended period of time, you find out there's fecal matter that varies in thickness from thin to meaty in different parts, just like the game.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

He is just hoping someone will post some review (regardless of quality or when it comes out) that is positive so he can latch onto that. This isn't InfinitronCodex.. start a poll or something asshole.

IMO quality won't be in question in the slightest (considering who's writing it), regardless of how much one might agree or disagree with it. It will probably be fairly positive as well but that's fine by me as I still consider the game to be decent/good overall (just nowhere near being great and many of it's design decisions are not to my taste in the slightest) and more importantly, different views/opinions is what Codex is all about.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

I hit a lul in mid act 2 as well (i wasnt a fan of the end of the second act either). The game finishes strong in the 3rd act though. The second city is smaller but feels better done and the quests feel more even in quality.

You hit lull in the game you praise/defend to death? I thought you'd eat through the game first time and then replay it several times with different chars/party composition. I guess Josh wasn't joking about not wanting to make his games addictive.

 

[Klarion]

Here's a crazy question: if the roxor's review isn't the 'real' Codex review as you guys claim, why don't you remove it from Review section?

 

[Rake]

Here's a crazy question: if the roxor's review isn't the 'real' Codex review as you guys claim, why don't you remove it from Review section?

Infinitron wishes he could

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

On the other hand, the combat is pretty cool. Sure, compared to the BG, the mages got a bit more restricted in their options

Everyone is restricted in their options. It starts with something simple like the fact that you can't use all your resources, because it's not allowed to use items from your inventory and to switch weapons/quickitem slots in combat. It's great that you have healing potions or other potions/scrolls in your inventory that would be applicable in a certain situation, but unfortunately you're not allowed to use them. It logically follows that combat is not designed with "pulling all your tricks", "using all your tools" in mind.
Then there's the unfortunate fact that your options are limited, more limited than in the IE games, in the first place.
Take, for instance, the second quest for the Crucible Knights. All the adra robots went bonkers and attacked everbody, on PotD one of the more challenging scenarios in the game. It's difficult because those mobs have very high defenses and have one of the most powerful mage spells (chain-lightning) as a spell-like ability at will. They will chain-lightning you until the end of time if you let them, no restrictions. Sounds balanced. What would you do in an IE game? You would open your bag of holding and then clap yourself on the back for being smart enough to keep two pairs of boots of grounding (+50 electricity resistance). You will open your scroll case and happily notice that among all the green protection scrolls you've bought at the temples (just in case!) are also a bunch of scrolls of protection from lightning. Perhaps you will have your casters memorize additional spells to protect you from the elemental onslaught. You prepare according to the demands of the situation. But what do you do in PoE? You just fight the mobs until the health on your characters runs out, which will inevitably happen, then you must rest because you can't restore health. Not much choice here, so you go out of the building (loading screen) to Brackenbury district (loading screen) into the Inn (loading screen) to rest. Then you venture back through 3 loading screens, fight another bunch of mobs until you have to rest again. All that stuff is way more tedious than it has to be. It also turned out that the health/endurance separation causes you to have to rest more than you otherwise would have needed.

have no doubts, pure casters remain the most overpowered heroes in the game and, as I've said, all the complaints of game being too easy stems from having lots of them in the party),

I very much doubt that. If I were to make a party for maximum roflstomping, I'd take a tank, a priest (<- one caster) and 4 ranged rogues/rangers. There will be no concerns because things will just die too quickly to pose a threat. As usual in a MMO cRPG, most problems can be solved with more deeps.

but the rest of the crew got much more developed and now various melee & ranged warriors actually have some depth.

Unfortunately, taking into account the dual-/multi-class and prestige class options of the IE and 3rd ed DnD cRPGs, I have to say that PoE disappoints in that regard. Although I didn't play monk or barbarian, so just speaking for fighter and ranger here. I'm undecided on the Paladin, whether it's better, worse or similarily underwhelming as in DnD. I'd say better than 2ed DnD Paladins at least.

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Here's a crazy question: if the roxor's review isn't the 'real' Codex review as you guys claim, why don't you remove it from Review section?

It's real as any Codex review (and it's a good review), well except Kony's DA2 quickie I guess.

 

[Pope Amole II]

What would you do in an IE game? You would open your bag of holding and then clap yourself on the back for being smart enough to keep two pairs of boots of grounding (+50 electricity resistance). You will open your scroll case and happily notice that among all the green protection scrolls you've bought at the temples (just in case!) are also a bunch of scrolls of protection from lightning. Perhaps you will have your casters memorize additional spells to protect you from the elemental onslaught. You prepare according to the demands of the situation. But what do you do in PoE?

First, you can easily craft a full-set of lightning-proofed mail armor (or, even better, enhance some of the fine ones you've found so you have both proofed & +2 bonus). Your usual armor for the entire team is plate armor and it, of course, sucks vs lightning. So crafted mail will have 7 DR advatage over it (which is a lot). Second, animats have crap resists versus shock themselves (8 when everything else is either 16 or 20) so you craft some scrolls of the Crackling Bolt or Jolting Touch. And, of course, your casters just throw everything shock-based at them - actually, animats are only tanky because of their insane DR and die pretty fast to the lightning. Third, you switch to the shocking lash sidearms. Preferrably crushing. Fourth, if nothing else helps, there are always the Potions of Bulwark Against the Elements - 15 extra DR versus shock.

So yeah, no options at all.

 

[roshan]

Everyone is restricted in their options. It starts with something simple like the fact that you can't use all your resources, because it's not allowed to use items from your inventory and to switch weapons/quickitem slots in combat. It's great that you have healing potions or other potions/scrolls in your inventory that would be applicable in a certain situation, but unfortunately you're not allowed to use them. It logically follows that combat is not designed with "pulling all your tricks", "using all your tools" in mind.
Then there's the unfortunate fact that your options are limited, more limited than in the IE games, in the first place.
Take, for instance, the second quest for the Crucible Knights. All the adra robots went bonkers and attacked everbody, on PotD one of the more challenging scenarios in the game. It's difficult because those mobs have very high defenses and have one of the most powerful mage spells (chain-lightning) as a spell-like ability at will. They will chain-lightning you until the end of time if you let them, no restrictions. Sounds balanced. What would you do in an IE game? You would open your bag of holding and then clap yourself on the back for being smart enough to keep two pairs of boots of grounding (+50 electricity resistance). You will open your scroll case and happily notice that among all the green protection scrolls you've bought at the temples (just in case!) are also a bunch of scrolls of protection from lightning. Perhaps you will have your casters memorize additional spells to protect you from the elemental onslaught. You prepare according to the demands of the situation. But what do you do in PoE? You just fight the mobs until the health on your characters runs out, which will inevitably happen, then you must rest because you can't restore health. Not much choice here, so you go out of the building (loading screen) to Brackenbury district (loading screen) into the Inn (loading screen) to rest. Then you venture back through 3 loading screens, fight another bunch of mobs until you have to rest again. All that stuff is way more tedious than it has to be. It also turned out that the health/endurance separation causes you to have to rest more than you otherwise would have needed.

Yeah, and there's more examples of that sort of thing. Apparently some Codexers have claimed that certain monsters in the game are immune or resistant to certain types of damage and one must study the bestiary to learn their weaknesses. Now if this was really true (I certainly noticed nothing of the sort), what exactly would the point of such a system be when you can only equip two sets of weapons, and can't swap them out in battle? Usually you have one ranged weapon and one melee, so if you actually needed to shift from slashing to crushing damage, you would actually have to reload the game. And I thought the point of the game was to minimize reloading (and therefore to basically have no fail state)? You know the game has been created by fools when various design elements are openly in conflict not only with each other but also with the stated design goals.

Then there's the lack of bashing chests, the lack of ammo including specialist and magical ammo, the insignificance of stats, every spell works on every enemy so that they can be equally useless all the time, and so on. The entire game has been designed to limit options as much as possible so that you're forced into playing in the perverse way that JE Sawyer has envisioned.

 

[roshan]

What would you do in an IE game? You would open your bag of holding and then clap yourself on the back for being smart enough to keep two pairs of boots of grounding (+50 electricity resistance). You will open your scroll case and happily notice that among all the green protection scrolls you've bought at the temples (just in case!) are also a bunch of scrolls of protection from lightning. Perhaps you will have your casters memorize additional spells to protect you from the elemental onslaught. You prepare according to the demands of the situation. But what do you do in PoE?

First, you can easily craft a full-set of lightning-proofed mail armor (or, even better, enhance some of the fine ones you've found so you have both proofed & +2 bonus). Your usual armor for the entire team is plate armor and it, of course, sucks vs lightning. So crafted mail will have 7 DR advatage over it (which is a lot). Second, animats have crap resists versus shock themselves (8 when everything else is either 16 or 20) so you craft some scrolls of the Crackling Bolt or Jolting Touch. And, of course, your casters just throw everything shock-based at them - actually, animats are only tanky because of their insane DR and die pretty fast to the lightning. Third, you switch to the shocking lash sidearms. Preferrably crushing. Fourth, if nothing else helps, there are always the Potions of Bulwark Against the Elements - 15 extra DR versus shock.

So yeah, no options at all.

Oh wow very nice, all the checkboxes have been ticked, but when you put all those things in the game and then design the system and encounters such so that it is all superfluous and pointless, then it really doesn't count. The complaint is that the pool is disgustingly muddy, filled with trash and furthermore someone took a dump in it and you are basically pointing out that there's chlorine, bleach, hand sanitizer and even dishwashing liquid in it.

 

[Gord]

On the other hand, the combat is pretty cool. Sure, compared to the BG, the mages got a bit more restricted in their options

Everyone is restricted in their options. It starts with something simple like the fact that you can't use all your resources, because it's not allowed to use items from your inventory and to switch weapons/quickitem slots in combat. It's great that you have healing potions or other potions/scrolls in your inventory that would be applicable in a certain situation, but unfortunately you're not allowed to use them. It logically follows that combat is not designed with "pulling all your tricks", "using all your tools" in mind.
Then there's the unfortunate fact that your options are limited, more limited than in the IE games, in the first place.

That's true insofar as IE had relatively few restrictions in terms of using the items you carried with you. Although it results in pretty stupid situations (swapping a suit of platemail during combat). If you don't care about plausibility, that's no problem of course.

But as the Pope pointed out, you have plenty of ways to react to certain situations with armor/weapons, spells and consumables in PoE as well. Considering most encounters are thematically consistent within one map and the possibility of scouting ahead, you can easily prepare for a given fight with the right (even craftable) items.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

First, you can easily craft a full-set of lightning-proofed mail armor (or, even better, enhance some of the fine ones you've found so you have both proofed & +2 bonus). Your usual armor for the entire team is plate armor and it, of course, sucks vs lightning. So crafted mail will have 7 DR advatage over it (which is a lot). Second, animats have crap resists versus shock themselves (8 when everything else is either 16 or 20) so you craft some scrolls of the Crackling Bolt or Jolting Touch. And, of course, your casters just throw everything shock-based at them - actually, animats are only tanky because of their insane DR and die pretty fast to the lightning. Third, you switch to the shocking lash sidearms. Preferrably crushing. Fourth, if nothing else helps, there are always the Potions of Bulwark Against the Elements - 15 extra DR versus shock.

So yeah, no options at all.

Thanks, it's good to know that there are plenty of options to tackle certain encounters, like crafting a complete set of weapons and armors hand-tailored for said encounter for the entire party. I will assume you're doing this every time you face another enemy with specicific strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately I played the game wrong and had neither the ingredients nor the money to do so, probably because I foolishly spent resources to upgrade the keep or to buy a ring of wizardry. Still, I will keep it in mind. The potions I could and should have done though.

Yeah, and there's more examples of that sort of thing. Apparently some Codexers have claimed that certain monsters in the game are immune or resistant to certain types of damage and one must study the bestiary to learn their weaknesses. Now if this was really true (I certainly noticed nothing of the sort), what exactly would the point of such a system be when you can only equip two sets of weapons, and can't swap them out in battle? Usually you have one ranged weapon and one melee, so if you actually needed to shift from slashing to crushing damage, you would actually have to reload the game. And I thought the point of the game was to minimize reloading (and therefore to basically have no fail state)? You know the game has been created by fools when various design elements are openly in conflict not only with each other but also with the stated design goals.

Stacking debuffs on the weak defense of an enemy and then attacking that defense is not bad advice on principle but it's true that it just isn't necessary to win even the hardest encounters in PotD. As for weapons, I only noticed problems with my weapons of choice when fighting the adra automats in the Endless Paths, but again, I didn't actually bother to swap to crushing weapons, the fights just took a bit longer.

That's true insofar as IE had relatively few restrictions in terms of using the items you carried with you. Although it results in pretty stupid situations (swapping a suit of platemail during combat). If you don't care about plausibility, that's no problem of course.

I'm not 100% sure but I think you could swap equipment during combat except armor.

 

[Gord]

I'm not 100% sure but I think you could swap equipment during combat except armor.

I can't speak for all IE games, as it's been too long since I played most of them, but quickly checking in IWD (which is the only one I currently have installed), swapping my armor during combat seems to be possible.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

I'm not 100% sure but I think you could swap equipment during combat except armor.

I can't speak for all IE games, as it's been too long since I played most of them, but quickly checking in IWD (which is the only one I currently have installed), swapping my armor during combat seems to be possible.

Then it probably differed in different games, because I kinda seem to remember when reviving a character in combat I could pick up all his stuff and re-equip except the armor.

 

[roshan]

I'm not 100% sure but I think you could swap equipment during combat except armor.

I can't speak for all IE games, as it's been too long since I played most of them, but quickly checking in IWD (which is the only one I currently have installed), swapping my armor during combat seems to be possible.

BG2 didn't let you swap armor, in BG1 and the IWD games you could.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Thanks, it's good to know that there are plenty of options to tackle certain encounters, like crafting a complete set of weapons and armors hand-tailored for said encounter for the entire party. I will assume you're doing this every time you face another enemy with specicific strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately I played the game wrong and had neither the ingredients nor the money to do so, probably because I foolishly spent resources to upgrade the keep or to buy a ring of wizardry. Still, I will keep it in mind. The potions I could and should have done though.

Dude, please. I highly doubt that you've performed all the options you've chosen when you've played BG, each and every time you've encountered lightning-based enemy. So I was replying to you in kind. Not to mention that enchanting that armor is nothing difficult, economically-wise - in all the simple encounters, you're finding suits of fine armor by the dosens. They all sell for what, 200 copper a piece? Adding lightning-proofed is another 100 hundred + reagents (which are also not that expensive). All together that's 1800 gold for the party to be prepared for all further elemental encounters. And there's only 4 kinds of elements so 7200 for the whole game - that's hardly economically taxing.

Besides, you don't even need all that - there are, IIRC, 3 animat encounters there. 2 scrolls of crackling bolt (or even 1 if you have any lightning spells in your party) are enough to solve each. Crafting 6 scrolls shouldn't be anywhere near hard.