Screenshot thread

[ERYFKRAD]

The name of that game starts with an N, ends with an X and has a O in the middle.

Nights Of Bollox?

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

After finishing Parasite Eve last year I finally grabbed the sequel instead of replaying other survival horrors of PS1 era. The first thing that I noticed is more action oriented gameplay that doesn't try to hide it with RPG elements like in the predecessor. Some people won't like it, but overall it feels smooth and polished so the reorientation doesn't really bother me. There is enough weapons variety, and the additional powers that can be unlocked via experience points really make a difference, especially the boss fights. The story starts nicely with a tutorial mini-hub where we can easily learn how to control Aya once again. Plus we have some puzzles in between fights that add variety into the whole mix. The backgrounds and the graphics are really good considering the hardware specification of Playstation, and the soundtrack is really memorable and sets the tone for each segment nicely. The penultimate boss fight was really intense and seeing him finally death was really intense and I've died a couple of times. I had a great time with PE II ...

and Aya of course (plus Flint as a side hero ).

Spoiler

 

[Siveon]

snip

What game? Probably a Japanese only game.

 

[Darth Roxor]

My face?

Yes, I remember.

We know our duty and we will do it.

 

[mck]

 

[Great Deceiver]

I had never played Heart of Winter before. It starts out pretty well but it's really uneven, after Burial Isle it's very easy and quite boring to be honest. Recycling midgame enemies from the base game was very odd.

 

[Darth Roxor]

the codex astartes names this manoeuvre steel rain

 

[felipepepe]

Started playing Rance X... after skipping two hundred billion lines of text I get to this boss:

And fuck, this is so good. A real challenge, with cool mechanics and a lot of choices. Why can't "normal" RPGs be this interesting?

 

[Great Deceiver]

HoW was very weak overall in my estimation. The last area was underwhelming with common Sahuagin that were easy to dispatch and the final boss just died to arrows like everything else. It would have been cool if they gave bosses some sort of invulnerability to missiles as per the arcane spell, except undispellable.

There's still Trials of the Luremaster to finish, but I honestly don't think I will. From what I've played of it, it's not very interesting.

Overall thoughts after 18 years is that IWD has aged very well and is great, but only the base game has very strong design. The original campaign has a great amount of variety in both enemies and locations, the story isn't incredible but it's very serviceable (especially the Elven tower, Michael Bell is amazing so his delivery elevates even trite material like this), items are both diverse and situational and it stands firmly as my very favourite IE game.

It's unfortunate that this doesn't extend to the expansion (or the bonus dungeon), but in future replays I'll stick to the base game.

 

[Jedi Exile]

I am sure I've seen that face before. Like, on my desktop?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I am sure I've seen that face before. Like, on my desktop?

 

[Nostaljaded]

Started playing Rance X... after skipping two hundred billion lines of text I get to this boss:

And fuck, this is so good. A real challenge, with cool mechanics and a lot of choices. Why can't "normal" RPGs be this interesting?

Still can't read Jap after staying there for a couple of months?

Even taking into account skipping of dialog lines (for whatever the reason), the party composition was so shitty which resulted in the above losing battle (in Turn 1 vs RedEye, 30-round, Sill with 7AP healing spell):

1. The auto-joined counter-RedEye character was not used
2. No character used from Favored Faction
3. Only 1 character (Kinkaid) used for Favored Elements
4. Leazas faction has 1, if not 2, auto-joined characters that are more suited for this battle than Kinkaid.

So not sure how 'a real challenge' comment could be concluded.

 

[felipepepe]

This was my first, blind try. Not everybody is so critically insecure that they power-game and rely on guides because they can't deal with failure.

And it's precisely because there's so many variables in such an early battle that this game is challenging.

 

[Great Deceiver]

After HoW, time to start IWD2.

 

[Citizen]

After HoW, time to start IWD2.

That widescreen mod looks surprisingly OK, no repeating textures on UI elements. But your fog seems screwed up.

 

[warpig]

the hell is wrong with dis qtie xDDD

Chu-Chu died on the cross for our sins :/ This is a DEEP game.

Just finished it...what a wild ride XDD

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Great Deceiver]

That widescreen mod looks surprisingly OK, no repeating textures on UI elements. But your fog seems screwed up.

Yeah, I fixed the fog in IWD1 by enabling hardware acceleration/OpenGL, but it doesn't seem to work in IWD2 (there are no options in the config executable and setting the 3D Acceleration=1 flag in the .ini doesn't do anything). I've tried the DDraw fix but it creates even more problems. I've also used other wrappers like DgVoodoo2, which fixes the fog but creates unbearable slowdown. Any thoughts?

Edit: fixed by using this wrapper:

http://bitpatch.com/ddwrapper.html

And setting the following flag in aqrit.cfg:

BltMirror = 1

Result:

Also, regarding the UI, I'm using this scaling fix after applying the regular WeiDU widescreen patch:

http://havredest.eklablog.fr/interfaces-pour-widescreen-a42876917

 

[Melcar]

IWD2 does not have hardware acceleration.

 

[Astral Rag]

 

[Great Deceiver]

IWD2 does not have hardware acceleration.

I really wonder why they took it out, it smooths things out considerably, especially the fog of war.

 

[Melcar]

IWD2 does not have hardware acceleration.

I really wonder why they took it out, it smooths things out considerably, especially the fog of war.

They did not have time to finish it, or something like that.

 

[Great Deceiver]

At least they're self-aware about the amount of banal/shit/boring/fetch quests in the starting town - even with a smartass quip about Easthaven, which also had a couple in the first game.

The ghost lady storyline was pretty decent, though!

 

[Nostaljaded]

This was my first, blind try. Not everybody is so critically insecure that they power-game and rely on guides because they can't deal with failure.

And it's precisely because there's so many variables in such an early battle that this game is challenging.

I'm playing blind as well, which is how a game should be played to enjoy to its fullest extent.
Started about a month ago, currently only at 1st run, 4th turn.


Your 'skipping of dialog lines and battle screenshot' conveys an impression of playing a totally foreign-language game while neither caring for the story nor understanding the game mechanics.

That's not how it's meant to be played™ to fully enjoy/appreciate a Rance game, not to mention it's the finale of a 10+ game series. I would advise to either level up your Jap before continuing or do a machine-translation.
(In Rance X, forming a proper [not talking about optimum here] party makes up a large part of understanding the game mechanics to deal with whatever the game throws at us.)

Don't spoil it yourself, we only get to savour a game's freshness/blind run once.

 

[Citizen]

At least they're self-aware about the amount of banal/shit/boring/fetch quests in the starting town - even with a smartass quip about Easthaven, which also had a couple in the first game.

The ghost lady storyline was pretty decent, though!

You showed him the cat?