Decline Sword Coast Legends - RIP n-Space!

[Wirdschowerdn]

Might just as well play NWN OC.

 

[Drowed]

Current score on Steam 60% :D
50 reviews, 20 of those negative :D

Better than I thought. I expected 50% or less.

 

[Reinhardt]

BG1 also didn't have Orcs

Isn't Mulahey halfbreed?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Looking good for SCL, mainstream gaming journalist gives it a big thumbs up:

the game is epic. pluse its drizzt universe i dont care if its not DnD 5E or never winter bull crap
i get to see the sword coast i get to see alot of area where Drizzt travel i wish i get to go insaide Mithril Hall or help take back Gauntlgym from the drow that would be so epic.!!!!!!!!

 

[sstacks]

Because I know the ravening Codex hordes just can't get enough!

This episode: Spiders, mercenaries and necromancers, oh my! Ok, just one necromancer but he does threaten us with "soul-devourment." Plus there's an enraged halfling running around with a two-handed sword.

 

[Infinitron]

No newspost to support the incline?

Yeah, sorry, I was suffering from "newsposter's block" this morning: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/sword-coast-legends-released.104158/

 

[Konflyto]

Because I know the ravening Codex hordes just can't get enough!

This episode: Spiders, mercenaries and necromancers, oh my! Ok, just one necromancer but he does threaten us with "soul-devourment." Plus there's an enraged halfling running around with a two-handed sword.

 

[prodigydancer]

OK, I watched the remainder of Shane's LP #2. The best part is at about 26:50 when "Elite Mage" throws a fireball at the party and reflexively you think "oh, here comes FPK or at least it's gonna hurt like hell" and then the HP bars don't even budge...

 

[Shammy]

Because I know the ravening Codex hordes just can't get enough!

This episode: Spiders, mercenaries and necromancers, oh my! Ok, just one necromancer but he does threaten us with "soul-devourment." Plus there's an enraged halfling running around with a two-handed sword.

That writing. That voice over for the NPCS/PC. That one guy with the raspy ass voice from Witcher 3 who I hated.

It's worse than I ever imagined and I love it.

 

[Sothpaw]

Steam reviews actually do seem to get it right a decent amount of the time. 58% positive seems about right for how shitty the game looks.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Heck I wouldn't be against a good non-cRPG/D&D game set in the Forgotten Realms.Maybe a telltale adventure game type thing would be nice or even just a good dark soul-esque console type action/exploring game could be nice (if they so desperately want to be 'mainstream')

I'd be down for a Shadows over Mystara 2: Now in Forgotten Realms, if that's what they push.

 

[Klarion]

Man, this game got a good number of pre-orders: http://steamspy.com/app/325600

First single player D&D game since 2008. It's no wonder that it sold good on pre-order.

Reviews. Seems like they're reluctant to score it: http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/116307-sword-coast-legends-reviews.html

My theory is that no score means basically that it's crap. Nobody gives bad scores to titles like these, nobody dares...

 

[Irenaeus II]

I pre-ordered it 6 months ago or something. I'll never play it. Maybe I should think about a refund...

 

[Bumvelcrow]

I pre-ordered it 6 months ago or something. I'll never play it. Maybe I should think about a refund...

Donate it to somebody you dislike so they can review it.

 

[Irenaeus II]

Donate it to somebody you dislike so they can review it.

Roxor

You know what to do.

 

[Darth Roxor]

 

[Infinitron]

If you really want to give away a copy, pick Delterius or Grunker.

 

[Bubbles]

Hm, Grunker's PoE review was pretty lukewarm, and this kind of game is right up his alley nowadays. Not a bad suggestion at all.

 

[ArchAngel]

Better than I thought. I expected 50% or less.

There is time. It is now at 58% after 153 reviews and the most helpful review is a negative one :D

 

[Irenaeus II]

If you really want to give away a copy, pick Delterius or Grunker.

Delterius ignores me, so I guess there's only Grunker.

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

What about Blobert? He's been doing reviews lately and would do justice to the game.

 

[Bubbles]

Or Konjad. We still owe him a debt.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

What about Blobert? He's been doing reviews lately and would do justice to the game.

Good suggestion, if that could be the Official Codex Review.

 

[butchy]

I wish WotC would license the game to someone who actually wanted to make a real crpg out of it. Just think if the people who made this console game put all the resources they did into the multiplayer and dungeon making thing into making this a good actual 5th edition D&D game module for the pc instead of Dark Alliance 3 with multiplayer this would have sold like hotcakes on the PC. Actually, probably not. people have extremely poor taste in general so this was probably the way to go.

I hope it flops on consoles or WotC will probably never license to a real crpg maker. But I hope everything flops on consoles I am not singling this game out either.

There is this jrpg game that just released on steam and is selling for like $50 with a $20 or $30 item bundle thing. I honestly don't get people anymore. Why anyone would ever pay more than $5, or $15 tops for a jrpg console port beats me. I get it when it is some bullshit that gets everyone to hop on board the cool train so they think they are included in something "hot" like shitty console Dark Souls games...people like being part of the sheep herd and bleating with their like-minded crowd.

 

[Infinitron]

Impressions: Sword Coast Legends (Singleplayer)

We’ll have some thoughts on the multiplayer portion of just-released, latter-day Dungeons & Dragons RPG Sword Coast Legends [official site] – including the all-important DM mode – very soon, but while RPS gathers its party to sally forth, I thought I’d share some initial impressions on singleplayer.


Top-ish down, party-based roleplaying game Sword Coast Legends might just be a textbook example of how to make RPG purists very, very happy and at the same time very, very angry. On the one hand, it’s resolutely traditional: yer archetypal ragtag band of fantasy heroes roaming the land in order to defeat some great evil, in an almost perpetual state of jollity. (So far, at least – it’s possible everyone gets their legs cut off halfway through or something).

There’s none of the hand-wringing or love-wrangling of a latter-day BioWare game, and not even a whiff of vogueish proc-gen or permadeath. And while it regularly tries for in-world jokes, its tongue never goes anywhere near its cheek: this is straight-up, unreconstructed adventuring.

Which is very much the point: Sword Coast Legends seeks to be the heir apparent to Neverwinter Nights, that straight-down-the-line Forgotten Realms noughties RPG which eschewed the comparative complexity and darkness of its predecessor Baldur’s Gate II, in favour of being more of a Choose Your Own Adventure toolset. That side of things we’ll be getting to later, but right now – what if you prefer solo dungeoneering?

Sword Coast Legends is, so far as I can tell, the first new singleplayer D&D PC game since 2011’s poorly-received Atari offering, Daggerdale. There’s a full campaign in here, which can be played either solo or with chums; fully-voiced, prefab AI characters fill out the party if you’re doing the former.

Where Sword Coast Legends breaks with proud 90s tradition is in how it actually plays. You can do the whole pause-time ordering thing, while characters are meticulously built from a host of skills and abilities, but in goblin-twatting practice it leans more towards the Diablo side of things than Pillars of Eternity. It’s not a click-frenzy, particularly as you get a party of four to control, but it is primarily about repeatedly using a small handful of abilities and piling on until everyone falls over.

In my experience so far I’ve been favouring my own character, which I got to custom-create (although the hair options are woefully limited, I’m sad to report), leaving the rest of my party to auto-assist me, which they’re reasonably handy at.

I’m only using pause-time occasionally, and the entire pharmacy’s worth of potions I’m hauling about not at all. At higher difficulties (medium here) I’d probably depend on these things, but for now I’m very much hacking and slashing. It’s not the most thrilling hacking and slashing – there’s a mechanical quality to it in addition to the arguable lack of tactical complexity – but it’s serviceable. Things fall over quickly and the friendly AI seems to go town on using party members’ abilities. I’m not sure it feels particularly like D&D, though: the pace is too fast, and it feels more like hitpoint attrition than praying you get the result you need. Dungeon Siege is perhaps a better comparison than Diablo.

Something feels a bit off technically, too. For one thing, while I’m getting the hallowed 60 frames without issue, it’s making my PC run hotter than a Codex thread about Fallout 4, and my PC gets into a right old state if I dare to alt-tab. I’m also regularly finding that movement orders don’t always take immediately, but other than that I’ve not run into anything disastrous.

There’s a slightly perfunctory air to it all told, in both combat/movement mechanics and presentation, but it’s perhaps hard to ascertain how much of that is down to Sword Coast Legends itself and how much to the rather vanilla fantasy of the Forgotten Realms setting. The same, for instance, was true of the first Neverwinter Nights’ campaign. It was the later add-ons and the player-made stuff which made it sing.

Writing and voice-acting, meanwhile, is uneven but very much tries to have some fun. There have been a few deliberately silly quests – although only really in terms of text, with the actual structure sticking to routine go here/get that thus far – and there’s a playful sequence wherein a fight-loving halfling in your party runs ahead and slaughters all the baddies before you get there. Basically, if you thought Gimli was funny you’ll probably be happy here. Many of the main quests offer a murder/mercy option, which in turn leads to some branching consequence, but it’s straightforward stuff and at least some of the time you end up at the same essential outcome regardless. It’s nice to have the option to choose a general attitude, at least.

Sword Coast Legends’ singleplayer is unreconstructed fantasy, and extremely immediate with it, but you probably don’t want to be wearing your Planescape: Torment t-shirt while you play. In a way I’d rather be playing this than Pillars of Eternity, which I found to be far too ponderous, long and finicikity for my current time-starved existence, but at the same time I suspect I’ll bounce off its slightly rickety appearance and general air of beigeness before too long. That may chance if the Dungeon Master mode manages to be all it’s cracked up to be – and we’ll have more on that very soon.

it’s making my PC run hotter than a Codex thread about Fallout 4