Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

[Lord Azlan]

Nice to have an honest review. Can't be easy to hold firm against the expected fan boy gushing sect.

Holding out for a stable version and looks like the manual is on its way. Could be nice to have it all up and ready for my next holiday in a month or so.

Going through the Blob genre like mad at the moment - Codex recommendation Starcrawlers looks to be of low quality at the moment - although I am only five hours in. It might pick up.

In my opinion, Lords of Xulima seems to be supreme blob at the moment.

Saluting the Codex for keeping news and promotion of the old style RPG alive, Grimoire for making it and Felipe for doing his stuff.

FP conveniently linked super duper demo which I tried but can't seem to get working. Crashing like crap all over the place.

Damn opening screens and obvious complexity in the game play is making me wet my pants.

I want it - in a month. Give it to me.

 

[Infinitron]

Those recommendations are written by the uncontrolled unconscious, they are manifestation of our unrestrained natural side. They are, as estimable surrealist Breton once wrote, “thought’s dictation, independent of any aesthetic or moral preoccupation.”

Ie, by Infinitron.

Rpguy It's 200 characters max.

 

[Lhynn]

Just came here to say one thing.
Fuck balance, theres no good reason it should exist on a single player game.

 

[Excidium II]

Just came here to say one thing.
Fuck balance, theres no good reason it should exist on a single player game.

BRB making a CRPG with 100 classes where only 1 is worth having.
BRB making a CRPG where the only wizard spells worth using are level 1 (oh wait that already exists, pre-2.0 poe)

 

[V_K]

Balance is one thing, but instakilling enemies that make all your character building irrelevant can only be defeated through cheesing and dumb luck are something else.

 

[Lord Andre]

Just came here to say one thing.
Fuck balance, theres no good reason it should exist on a single player game.

BRB making a CRPG with 100 classes where only 5 is worth having.
BRB making a CRPG where the only wizard spells worth using are level 1 (oh wait that already exists, pre-2.0 poe)

People would probably end up playing the other 99 since the good one would be considered broken...

Edit: changed your post I see...

 

[Darth Roxor]

Just came here to say one thing.
Fuck balance, theres no good reason it should exist on a single player game.

BRB making a CRPG with 100 classes where only 5 is worth having.
BRB making a CRPG where the only wizard spells worth using are level 1 (oh wait that already exists, pre-2.0 poe)

People would probably end up playing the other 99 since the good one would be considered broken...

100-5=99

 

[Lord Andre]

100-5=99

He changed it as I was typing. Now get back to finishing wizardry so you can then start on the grimoire review.

 

[Lhynn]

BRB making a CRPG with 100 classes where only 1 is worth having.

Fully expecting it to take players at least 100 hours to figure out whats best, having fun while doing it. And then make great guides about whats so great about their choice, and then finding 30 more guides about other class and item combinations that are as good or better.

Face it, banalce is pointless.

BRB making a CRPG where the only wizard spells worth using are level 1 (oh wait that already exists, pre-2.0 poe)

Going that retardedly hard on one extreme just proves my point. Also PoE would still be shit if it was balanced (which it fucking isnt, i dont know after how many patches), the problem with poe resided in lack of meaninful choices, non-existent exploration, bad gameplay and horrible writing. Could have perfect balance and it would still not be worth playing over literally hundreds of other titles.

 

[Excidium II]

You are mentally ill.

 

[Lhynn]

You still havent proved how balance would benefit a game.

 

[Excidium II]

You still havent proved how balance would benefit a game.

By making choices matter and thus fun to make you dumb nigger. Any game ever made is balanced to a degree the very moment you start making the rules.

 

[Lhynn]

Sure, the minimum degree being "not being broken". But theres no reason why a trained fighter shouldnt be better in a fight than a barbarian, or the other way around, it wouldnt make the game any less enjoyable if one was clearly better than the other.
As long as they offered different, and enjoyable mechanics, and that the gap between class features could be offset by gear/playerskill/player choices down the line/content, etc.
Balance is a retarded idea, it shouldnt exist, it unnecesarily constrains design. Just dont break your game, its not a hard goal to set for game design, anything more than this is just a waste of time that could be better spent hammering bugs or making new content.

 

[bataille]

Just came here to say one thing.
Fuck balance, theres no good reason it should exist on a single player game.

What about degrading otherwise nicely designed encounters? Like killing the necrospawn in one hit.
Or having to paralyze the samhian horror? The climactic battle that the game kept preparing you in a span of a few grand dungeons can't be resolved without a sucker punch.
It just feels wrong. You feel like you didn't deserve the victory, spoils, experience, renown since the tricks are so painfully obvious. Puzzles don't solve themselves, obstacles don't randomly vanish. Why the crescendos of dungeons, their boss encounters, should suddenly dissipate instead of peaking in a challenging situation?

 

[Lhynn]

Alright niggers, a sorcerer or a wild mage being better than a wizard doesnt ruin BG2. A thief being basically outpaced by every thief kit in the same game doesnt ruin it.

Harm doesnt ruin arcanum, dark elven dual wielding kama monks on nwn2 dont ruin the fucking game. Some weapon types being better than others in fallout 1&2 dont ruin the game. Some skills being useless in desu sex does not ruin the game. Some disciples being better than others in bloodlines is not fucking important.

I could keep going all afternoon giving examples of very unbalanced games where the lack of balance never diminished the enjoyment of the experience, not even one bit.

I cant muster one iota of a fuck for exile bows being complete shit and useless in a fight. I dont give a shit if pistols are better than heavy artillery in omerta.

It is completely irrelevant, it doesnt matter, enjoy the game, explore it. Rpgs are about choices, and some choices should be wrong, especially when we are talking about single player non competitive games.

 

[PEACH]

Samhain horror fight seems designed to get you to use cosmic gate I think, considering you get it sometime earlier in the dungeon (argosyre or perhaps elsewhere?) but I digress

Obviously you need a semblance of balance as has been stated prior, the main argument seems to be more so about where the line is cast and semantics about what balance is.

I'd think that if you're stuck cheesing any given boss without a prayer in the world that's clearly an issue, but things like bards / deep freeze / NPCs are a totally different story and can be avoided entirely if the aforementioned issue isn't stopping you altogether, at which point the problem probably extends further than the kind of balance a lot of people seem to be citing.

Doubt you'll ever get a consensus on the matter but for what it's worth, all I think is absolutely necessary is the freedom to make choices, even if that means choosing a lesser option rather than a greater one, so long as you're not funnelled into an ultimatum that stands as the only useful option

 

[cvv]

I'd just point out there's a difference between much sawyerist balance and boss fights being about who instakills who first. A lot of space in between to work with.

I personally got a very similar feeling of wonder and awe from Grimoire as I got from the defining games of my adolescence - Might and Magic 2, Wiz 7, Betrayal at Krondor. It's a priceless, ephemerous thing that no amount of balance could hope to approximate or satisfy.

And that's what's most important. Level progression, loot tables and boss crits can be recoded, factor X can't. It's either there from the get go or not at all.

 

[FrankHamilton]

I haven't been on the codex for the last 2 years and just thought about checking it out again after getting too drunk on a tuesday. Now I find that both Age of Decadence and Grimoire has been released, Infinitron is still a shill, Roguey is still a Josh Sawyer-obsessed contrarian and Darth Roxor is still a bro.

I just wanna say I love you guys, I thought this would still be a bitter place as I left but now I see that people from here actually went and changed the world for the better and brought incline.

I am downloading your game right now, Cleve. I won't have time to play it until the weekend, but I look forward to it.

 

[Sacred82]

 

[Lord Andre]

boss fights being about who instakills who first.

This is a perfectly viable way to design a boss battle as long as the game provides you with tools that allow you to influence the dice in meaningful ways.

It's only a problem if the game just gives you a button that says "press to flip coin".

Now if the game does give you those tools but you refuse to use them and then cry about muh balance then you're a popamoler dipshit.

In the case at hand it has yet to be determined beyond all doubt if Grimoire provides those tools. Some say it does, others say it doesn't...

 

[mogwaimon]

I don't understand why balance is such a dirty word around here. Yes, when you overly balance something to the point where nothing is special and everything is cookie cutter, it makes for a boring game. Yes, some of the most unbalanced games, i.e.....Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (Yes, I know it's not an RPG) turn out to be the most fun despite their complete clusterfuck systems. And yes, in an RPG sometimes you will get fights where you just get fucked over from the start because of some unlucky dice rolls, which can be infuriating.

But there has to be some middle ground between bland unidentifiable paste and "haha half your party is dead on turn 0 from dragonflies" or "Wow I've insta-killed the last boss on turn 1 on the hardest difficulty with an under-leveled party."

Maybe readjusting the EXP curve will fix this. Perhaps as has been said the proper pre-battle buffs were not cast at the time. One shouldn't make any snap decisions regarding game balance either, otherwise you just end up constantly patching shit out at the whims of a salty playerbase, but on the other hand if there's an issue one shouldn't stick their head in the sand and ignore it on the basis of "It's how the old games did it." or "There's nothing wrong, git gud."

 

[Lhynn]

Balance adds nothing to the experience, it just takes away from it. If it isnt broken, dont fix it. In a single player game, having one option that is clearly better than another doesnt ruin the game.

The moment you start balacing everything starts feeling the same, because thats ultimately the goal of balancing. You try to make two different things have the same impact on character development.
In a competitive environment you need balance because the feeling of a fair playing field is important. In a single player game it simply does not matter, focus your energy on the game being actually fun, on the content being actually engaging and on the encounters being actually challenging, varied and interesting.

Sawyerism is a waste of time.

 

[Lord Andre]

I don't understand why balance is such a dirty word around here.

Because a game is meant as a cathartic experience to be appreciated by those that have managed to spark a soul inside their prison of flesh.

The walking dead however, lacking the abstract sensory organ needed to marvel at the bridging between chaos and complexity will pitifully attempt to assay the artist's work through the inferior tools available to them - the stereotypes that have been beaten into their heads. When expected conformity refuses to materialize the zombies gasp in horror and cry for: MUH BALANCE !

Balance is mediocrity, mediocrity is balance, balance is death, stillness and the heat death of the universe. It must be fought against with all might so that joy and laughter may never disappear from our world. Amen.

 

[mogwaimon]

on the encounters being actually challenging, varied and interesting.

I agree with the rest of your post for the most part, but, and I want to tread carefully here because I haven't played the game yet, if the combat devolves to a point where there is only one or two viable options to win these fights, and those options remain the same throughout the game, does that not run counter to having challenging, varied, and interesting encounters? Again, I want to stress that I have not played the game and am only going by what others have reported, and we may find later on, as is the case in many other kneejerk reactions, that this simply is not true. But that doesn't mean it isn't a potential problem.

I don't understand why balance is such a dirty word around here.

Because a game is meant as a cathartic experience to be appreciated by those that have managed to spark a soul inside their prison of flesh.

The walking dead however, lacking the abstract sensory organ needed to marvel at the bridging between chaos and complexity will pitifully attempt to assay the artist's work through the inferior tools available to them - the stereotypes that have been beaten into their heads. When expected conformity refuses to materialize the zombies gasp in horror and cry for: MUH BALANCE !

Balance is mediocrity, mediocrity is balance, balance is death, stillness and the heat death of the universe. It must be fought against with all might so that joy and laughter may never disappear from our world. Amen.

You're equating any act of balancing with refusal to think outside of the box, and the need to have law and order in everything that ultimately creates a dull lifeless system. I believe there should be imbalances, but I also believe those imbalances should provide fun for the player. If the imbalances can't directly provide fun for the player and instead create an annoyance for them, then the imbalance should at least create some sort of depth to the systems involved.

If the imbalance provides no fun for the player, nor provides an interesting obstacle for the player to overcome and instead simplifies the experience to the point of boredom, then should it not be eliminated?

 

[Dorateen]

Start up Might & Magic II: Gates to Another World. Run into Cuisinarts with a low level party, get wiped. Realize later you can power up a fountain, or get just strong enough to outlast the Cuisinarts for a round until they frenzy, destroying themselves.

7 million experience points!

I don't mind that kind of imbalanced encounter, which can alter the gaming experience in a blink of an eye.