ampersandrew @ ampersandrew @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

Combat is part of the game, and unavoidable combat at times is part of that too, but the option to do anything else was just so rare in Pillars 1. I do prefer turn-based combat, but RTWP is made more manageable when the information is more readable. Pillars 2, for instance, color codes all sorts of stuff in your combat log and zooms in on events like enemy kills. Those two things alone make it much easier to parse what's happening compared to its predecessor. And the amount of combat in Pillars 1, while it may be similar to Baldur's Gate 1 and, at times, BG2, still suffers from the same things those games do. If you're sitting at a tabletop setting and getting through a combat encounter, you'd probably feel like your DM was lazy if they just threw 4-6 trash mobs at you in between finding points of interest in a dungeon; it doesn't make for the best pacing. Again, Pillars 1 was very good, but it's also very restricted by comparison.

I just played through Pillars of Eternity, and though it's very good, I don't think it's even close to BG3. So many times there appeared to be a way to talk your way out of a thing, only for the NPC to decide that it can only be resolved via combat, and there was so much combat that it became exhausting. Your party would start taking damage that they shouldn't have just because you're advancing combat faster than you should out of decision fatigue. Even with liberal auto pause settings, 15 different events could trigger in combat in the blink of an eye, and it's very easy to miss what even happened. Leveling up most classes has minimal depth, and the way priests and druids in particular gain new spells is far less elegant than 5e's "upcasting".

For all those gripes, I still enjoyed it. And in the first 5 hours of Pillars of Eternity II, nearly all of those complaints are well addressed. Even with the vast improvement in the sequel thus far, I'd still say not only the production value of Baldur's Gate 3 is better but BG3 inherently benefits from the systemic framework Larian's had for about a decade now, allowing you to come up with creative solutions to problems. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I think it's a hard sell to say Pillars is more deserving of that success.

In my experience, Steam's recommendation engine has gotten way better over the years, and there's a good chance you can find something you were looking for just by filtering by the tags that interest you. I was looking for another co-op roguelike after Streets of Rogue, and those tags were enough to point me to Vagante, which I ended up liking even better.

Nah, shovelware doesn't survive very long. We learned this through the "indiepocalypse", where the number of games that could sustainably release and keep companies afloat eventually leveled out.

Dynamic difficulty feels cheap to me, and I imagine it does for the developers too, which is why they give you nearly perfect information in a way that a DM probably never would. When I played the RE2 remake, the one mod I wanted was one that would turn off dynamic difficulty; that mod would eventually exist, but after I had long since finished the game. At the time, there was little else besides mods that enhanced Claire's wet t-shirt physics.

I had completely discounted ever playing a story-driven game like an RPG in early access. And now I've played BG3, and I know there's enough systemic nonsense that I'll be lined up for day 1 of their early access for their next game.

It's getting bad press from reviewers who didn't enjoy it for 10 hours as well.

It's not that rare. You just have to expand your horizons beyond the AAA games with the most marketing.

Right. I'm afraid to start googling for the answer, but I suspect there's an Alex Jones type, or the equivalent that cares about video games, basically painting them as the George Soros of video games.

Yup. I think this is it, but you might find better scans elsewhere. It doesn't tell you everything, but it shows you most of the map and labels the first handful of dungeons. Even knowing where the first dungeon is is such a huge help, because then you get a new checkpoint when you die, and once you beat the dungeon, you get an extra heart container.

These aren't the reviews, they're the forums. Used to be you could ask a question and get an answer from a fan or often times the developers. Now it's just people crying about games being "woke", as though that word actually means anything anymore, even in a game as near-universally beloved as BG3. But you can find the same thing happening in Starfield, Suicide Squad, or even Skullgirls.

Not for the indie space.

Don’t tell the forums that, they’re convinced it’s an unplayable woke government ops

This is far too many Steam forums lately, and I don't know why or what hurt these people. If you ask the Steam forums, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed because it went woke and hired some diversity consultancy firm that only these people know the name of and hold up as the antichrist.

I'll give it a look. Thanks.

Gotcha. Is that in the game, or would I have to modify it externally?

It exists in at least the enhanced editions of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and I'm told the first Dragon Age had this too. Though to be honest, even with the ability to script AI behavior, I'll likely end up just setting tons of conditions for auto-pausing like I usually do in RTWP games so that I can decide what to do for each character whenever some condition in the battle changes.

I also played the original Zelda via emulation, but the physical game came with a map that makes the game much more feasible to get through on your own. Once I had that, I was golden.

Factorio is definitely the one I had in mind, especially since it's the game I've played most similar to Palworld, and that game is over for me once I've launched the rocket. I did do that twice though, with two very different factory designs. If I'm not compelled to play Palworld two different ways, I'll still have gotten my money's worth.

Live service games really did a number on people. Why does it matter if people stop playing Palworld between now and when those new people they hire can produce the things they're hired for?

Who cares if there's a huge player base a year from now? Really? This isn't "you're still alive as long as someone remembers your name", this is the game literally still exists and can be played. To play multiplayer, ping your friend on Discord and host it yourself, even if that's thirty years from now, but good luck doing that with The Finals or something. That game really will be dead in 30 years (maybe even 1 year). If Palworld's population is in single digits a year from now, they're still filthy rich, and people who bought the game still have access to it whenever they want. Nothing about the game is worse off for the population not being in the millions anymore.