ScottishMartialArts said:
Black Isle: At least Black Isle games were fun polished and playable to the point that I had motivation to finish them, I can't say the same for anything out of Troika. If you want to tear apart every minute issue in Black Isle Games it's easy to do so, that doesn't change the fact that Troika games are generally held as being inferior and that when Black Isle was in it's heyday there was always a quality CRPG coming out.
Yeah, sure, if you're still living in the 1990s. The only games they made after that were IWD and IWD2. If we're talking about games they published, then there's BG2 and.. LIONHEART. And what a fine piece of work Lionheart turned out to be.
Both Lionheart and IWD2 both tanked harder than anything Troika has done, just in case you still want to go on about sales.
Arcanum- The Combat System was broken pure and simple, character system was highly imbalanced.
Granted, but the combat system's fault was really that of the character system.
However, Black Isle never came up with a character system, ever! Or a combat system, or a setting. The only thing close to original Black Isle ever did was TORN, and it was reusing SPECIAL, a generic fantasy setting, and Infinity Engine style combat mechanics, all under a Lithtech Engine hood.
Oh, one more thing about broken character systems.. IWD2's implimentation of 3E anyone?
ToEE: Complete lack of a story, barely existant NPC interaction, and rules issues (identify anyone?).
There was a story, it just didn't break to a movie periodically to tell you what it was. You had to talk to various people, check out the books and things left around, and various other things. It sounds to me that you didn't do much NPC interaction or else you'd know that.
And the identify spell actually requires a pearl to cast, which is 100gp. It's a D&D rule.
Bloodlines: Combat system that lacked any sort of feel or responsiveness, barely functional AI, and level design that had more in common with the first effort of an amateur Half-Life modder than a professional design house.
The combat itself was fine. The only real problem with the combat is that unlike in the town areas where you got to use all your nifty skills, combat and stealth were about it when it came to the main story mission.
Those are all near fatal problems that arn't even remotely related to bugs. When you toss in the higher than average bug level and complete lack of polish you get decidedly mediocre games.
Higher than average? Compared to Black Isle's games? Fallout 2 is one of the buggiest CRPGs ever made. PST is still getting fan patches after six years since it's release. IWD, despite being a horribly simple title to make, even required various patchings. Same goes for IWD2, but at least it was a little more ambitious of a title.
NeutralMilkHotel said:
No.
