Background
I am 44 years old, and I have been playing games since I can remember. I Love RPG but even more, I love strategy games. I enjoy a good story, graphics, and audio but what really gets me hooked is a game with great experience customization whether it be your characters, mods and some extent of build crafting/experimentation.
Some of my favorites of all time include Baldurs Gate Series, XCOM. I think I have some ridiculous hours put into those games. DOS 1 is up there for sure too. I played the game 2 twice which is quite a bit for me these days.
Let me get right to it. This game is absolutely amazing. It is the first game in a long time, and a pile of backlogged steam games that is keeping me up at night and affecting my job. It is just that good.
The 2 biggest things that stand out to me are for 1: simply put I feel like the combat/skills is simply a little bit better than DOS 1 in almost every single way. And DOS 1 set the bar high to me. Yeah, not every little thing is perfect but this game breaks the mold just enough to be exciting. There are a plethora of skills and combinations at your disposal so it almost seems overwhelming. This is a good thing.
More notable to me is the soundtrack. The music unlike any other game I have played in 2 decades absolutely makes the game. When I realized the instrument choices impact musical score overlays during battle I was mesmerized. This doesn't truly become noticeable until ( I will avoid spoilers ) you get to respec. Choose different instruments for your other party members and well...you will see. Brilliant...just Brilliant!!!!
Oh, and they voiced over everything? And quite nicely I must add. Wow....
Other thoughts, questions, and shortcomings...
No game is perfect and I think this game is some minor-moderate tweaks away from being even better.
First, the AP system. Not sure how I feel about this here. Limiting AP to 6 is a big departure from DOS1. I am finding it seems to cause fights to drag out a LONG time. You have some skills/talents to increase AP but....they are limited. So what I find happening is I have all these awesome skills at my disposal but I keep finding myself having to click upkeep and CC type abilities over and over.
When my Air/Water wizards turn comes up I would LIKE to cast something different but well, I'm always starting with like 4 ap so I guess its another restoration and replenish magic armor. I will not belabor this too much.
You have some things you can do like take Glass Canon. Um...has ANYONE made this talent work? I took it on a couple of my chars and it was a huge mistake. They become a shining beacon for "HEY STUN ME....I CANT RESIST IT!".
Rogues have a variety of tricks to reset and gain AP. And this works pretty well, love my rogue. However what happens is one quick kill on one enemy which is good but then shes low on AP and moving around the battle field is very costly ( I may need to use polymorph more? ). So my Rogue finds herself out of usefulness for 2 turns. Could I do some sort of kill quick then retreat then restart combat approach? Maybe....but it seems corny.
Moving around the battlefield seems like a major issue to me with this ap system. So, I know you can netherswap, teleport etc but those things STILL cost around 2AP.
Again I am absolutely loving combat so, nothing bad here but I just feel like a tweak or 2 is needed. Especially to glass cannon. There must be a way to not have this so gimped but no so overpowered like it was in DOS1 either?
Moreso with Talents I think we could use a little more variety. It is still one of the strong points of the game but when I look long and hard at my talents for my characters, there only seem to be a small number that are really worth taking in practice.
Let's take another talent that I think could be much more useful with small tweaks - five-star diner. First, I do not think this affects potions and it should ( maybe not double ). Second, Geomancer gives a bonus to armor potions so if they tweaked this here a Geomancer could kind of become an alchemist. How about this, change this talent or create a new talent that doubles the effects of potions, but does not allow that character to use scrolls or food. Or maybe after the potion wears off give them some negative stat affect for 1 turn. Like a brief hangover :)
Another random minor complaint - can we tone down the fire? I mean every fight I feel like the battlefield gets engulfed in flames and the graphics are so thick that I can't see anything. So I have to hit the "O" button so I can see outlines. Hurts my old eyes :)
Random note on combat combos - anyone else using rupture/chicken? Seems pretty obvious but I typically open with my RANGER not rogue. All he has to do is hit a guy once. Then my rogue goes in and typically one backstab and the armor is gone. Then I adrenaline/Rupture/chicken. Then you watch the enemy on his turn run around the map bleeding and dying. I don't know if it is the most effective use, but I sure love it ...every time!
What else? Just loving this game. I rarely would think this on my first playthrough but I really want to use the other 2 companions that I dropped. Anyone try the 6 man party mod on tactician? Wondering if the difficulty balances out. I am playing on Classic, and seems just right. I rarely lose a fight but I do need to be smart, and sometimes they drag out ( not in a bad way ).
I am reading complaints on the initiative system, and the armor stat pumping approach on Tactician. I can't comment on either yet. To be honestly I have not really figured out completely how initiative works. If I was to pump wits on all my characters, would they all take their turn before any enemy for example?
I have seen complaints that the game is great until driftwood. I am really not having this experience. So far Driftwood has been awesome..and huge. Is it maybe slightly less perfected than Fort Joy? Maybe a little. And it lacks a classic NPC like the cheese vendor for sure. :)
That's about it.
Lorian, please keep improving the game. What you have done here is nothing short of amazing.
