Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Lionheart

Ok so I havent been here in a week or so because first I went out of town and then I came back and bought Lionheart. Divnity fans which I hope you all are will be consumed by this game. Its divinity with choosable races(4) and the leveling system which I loved in divinity is very similar in Lionheart. Lets put it this way I have a fighter that can cast awesome support spells and still pick locks and find traps fairly well. The only complaints that I have is that the minimap cant be noted and....well thats it really. The story is based on an alternate history. Stemming from the crusades....very cool. Two very enthusiastic thumbs up. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Really Nero?
What about the pause button that doesn't work? Or the crasy fast way the enemies can run, the fighting in general?
I have ben looking around on their forum...i have heard a ton of negative things. You like it?

I played the full game too, hated it.

See, lets start with what they did right:
Barcelona, the city itself looks nice, there's some NPC interaction and even one or two funny things (going to Leo's workship and using the organ for example if you love music).

However, then you get the npc's that stick along with you:
-They make the game crash if you take them further than intended
-There is no interaction with them, you can talk to them before they join, but once joined, they just follow you and fight. All you can do is tell them to wait, or keep following.
-They attack the enemy kamikaze style, not listening to your sneaky style or ranged attacks. No, instead, they unsleah entire hords upon you, causing them to die within moments.
-If an NPC joined you with a quest, don't worry, besides the chance it'll make the game crash, they never come back to it.

There's the story:
-They refer to China, yet you never go there
-They refer to the battle between the Spanish and English armada (you talk to a few spanish captains and so), yet you never get involved in it
-They even talk about the "new world", yet you never go there

There's combat:
-Yes you got magic, it's also useless since all spells either don't do enough damage to kill even weak creatures, or take at least 3 seconds to reload (usually a combination of both). The only useful spells seem to be in the Fire branch, or in the healing branch.
-You can handle one or two enemies on your own, but if you walk ahead too much (say, by one or two steps), the entire bunch will sack on you, killing you with ease.
-There's healing potions, a spell (if you take it) and "spirits" floating around *certain* killed enemies that restore health. There's quite a few blue spirits floating around too, giving mana. There's no resting option however. No more health potions? Used all blue spirits? Too bad, you'll have to wait a few minutes/hours now to regain all those things.

There's a few other things:
-No humour, the SPECIAL system lead to funny descriptions of perks and skill, none of that in Lionheart, the only humour I saw so far was in Leo's workshop.
-Automap sucks, utterly. You can't add notes, nor do any notes get added automatically, leaving you clueless unless you're good at remembering maps - thank god they're not that big huh?
-No nametags, anywhere. You have to press "tab" (the key) every time (after reloading for example, the option doesn't get saved) to see names on NPC's. Certain shops have signs, but you can't read em, if you're lucky, it has a nametag with "tab" on, if you're not, you'll either have to figure out the nametag, or go inside and risk it. I have gotten attacked on several occassions by entering houses without me knowing what was inside (they could for example say either a streetname and number, or the family that lives there (Arcanum did it, BG2 did it, why not Lionheart?)

There's more things, but I can't remember all of them from the top of my head... I did hear the rumour that a bit after Barcelona, the game turns into a very lineair dungeon crawler, with no roleplaying anymore, just hack 'n slash.

All in all, it feels like Lionheart was rushed, because Interplay needs money. So all in all, I concur with much of the negativity. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />

I’m playing the demo right now.
And I’m disappointed in different things.
The biggest part is the combat. Enemies are too fast.
Another thing I dislike is the way the screen moves around the character.
1) you take a free look, and you have to scroll with the mouse , which gives a time lagg feeling to me, it's to slow. Especially when an enemy finds you and you have to go back in the centre of the character.
2) the fixt view let's you see just a bit of the landscape. it's totally useless in my opinion.

I’m playing as a mage character , and going to try a warrior also.
What I did find out is I maxed out my barter skills, and STILL I get expensive prices. Ok it’s the beginning of the game but what if I start I warrior? Then I can not buy equipment at all ….

I get that feeling of..
MMM it's not bad but it isn't good either...

Hit F2 to toggle most of the interface bar off and on. Whenever you interact with another character, though, the interface is turned on and left that way.
You can also edit the Lionheart.CFG file to increase the resolution, but that produces lots of graphical artifacts.

aha, thanks @Raze i'm going to try that out.
that large border at the bottem was also a bugger..

the resolution is good enough,
i find my character small enough as it is...

I have bought the game too, in the start i really enjoyed the game, instead of staying in the wilderness like in the demo, you come into Barcelona where you can do some quests and even do a whole bunch without fighting. And there is a little bit humour in the game, like the crazy man in Barcelona, enjoyed to hunt a imaginary monster with him in Barcelona.

But (yes there is a but) after playing almost all the quests in Barcelona at least those i could do at that moment, i decided to go explore the world, together with the crazy man (one of the reasons i have to go and a the other quest as well), leaving to the west of Barcelona, you come at the crosspoint, the same place as in the demo, and doing there the quests, i decided to explore further the world and from then there on, I only got 2 quests or so, ok I've played only a few hours after done the crosspoints, but it seems that it has turned into a pure action RPG, with a few quests, It could be that there are some other towns, but i didn't found them, or didn't heared of them either.

Also do i not know what my exact quest is, the only thing i know is that i have been tainted by a spirit, and am capable of magic. But what my mission is or so, don't know that.

I played the demo version, and although the graphics are not bad at all, the layout design is laughable. Firstly the lower third (almost half) of the screen is hidden by the interface and a very small area is visible from the world’s map. Enemies with ranged weapons shoot at you off the screen and you have no way to target them accordingly.
Your character cannot run but the foes seem to be only running or better said sliding. The pause key (spacebar) is disabled during dialogues while the game is not disabled and anything could happen while you are thinking about the odds of answers. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />

The forests are graphically generated in a fabulous quality. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/up.gif" alt="" />

The game design on the layout problem was not bad but not good either.
The world had been cut down to rectangles with portals between them or roads connected at the edge of the screen and no scrolling was available.

The characters are based on two T3D models, one for the male and one for the female. Customisation seems to be focused on the head style and the colours of jackets.
The inventory was well laid out, with a strip for body equipment at the bottom, which one could hardly know exactly what is that, especially that there is no popup statistics on items. A similar strip is permanently visible to be populated with items you wish to use during battle, like potions etc.
The skill system is all open from start, but 15 skill points are to be added for your distribution on every event of promotion without a clue on the level of points that promotes your skill to the next level up. This means that one could end up distributing a lot of points without gaining any effective skill results.

This game was hardly beta-tested at all and I would rate the playability very low.
Ranged weapons are meaningless when all your melee wielding foes could come making you in their reach in less than a second from whence they were in your reach and your character is forced to shoot at point blank most of the time. So it takes the pleasure away completely.

The game has no Game-Speed-Control and it is too fast to play without having stress and committing every silly mistake that exists in the dictionary of silly mistakes. The quest interface compared to that of <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> is an absolute failure, but it is not absolutely bad either.
My all in all decision is that I would not buy the game.
Cheers.

Oh yes I forgot to mention this. Like MasterD evil sais, playing a mage is almost not possible. You are really fast death playing a mage, especially when you make a pure mage. So you can make really different characters but it is really not balanced. So a whole part of the characters creation falls of.

I liked the demo very mutch and i already descided that i'll get the full version. But i cant find it anywere around here <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/sad.gif" alt="" />.

Normaly it comes out around here at september 12th. (At least thats what the site sais).

the automap sucks, i'd like to place my own notes on the map to spot some important places, etc. hope the dev. fix this.
but i enjoy playing the game.

thats what the patch is for....

Hmm! Ill wait and see what happens patchwise. Maybe by the time Ive finished Gothic 2 they'll have patched Lionheart to a playable level?

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/kitty.gif" alt="" /> *Gives arhu mouth to mouth just to show DAD it wasnt a one off* <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/silly.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />

I played the demo, and am not impressed.

The enemies seem to be wearing boots of speed, or have perma-haste of some kind on them. They always run faster than my character. What's up with that?

Like others said, playing a magic-user is a passive suicide. The spells don't do enough damage, and the initial healing spells are quite laughable. I selected a pre-generated character, who's something of a fighter/mage. She gets mopped up very easily at every turn. It seems the enemies are several levels too high for a starting character.

The interface reminds me of Fallout 2. I hate Fallout 2. Enough said.

The only thing that I liked was the demonic spirit.

What really bugged me also was that my avatar’s animation not being smooth and that the character’s height was below the fair threshold OR SIMPLY BAD. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />

I was sure, that I will buy Lionheart, until I looked into review at Gamespot.

here it is

<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/down.gif" alt="" />

Shame on Black Isle guys at Reflexive Ent.! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cry.gif" alt="" />

The year 2003 is an RPG time mark. Any game that restricts its resolution to 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 MUST fail.

which is why blizzard has yet 2 give any news on diablo 3. old diablo 2 is maxed at 800 X 600.

& regarding lionheart, well, i've played only the demo & so far i survived being an ice mage sylvant, unarmed melee feralkin, lightning mage sylvant & archer human. heck i exported the characters & replayed the demo till my PCs reached level 9-10. damn tough & yet possible, that's for sure but then it's just the maps available in the demo. are there tougher fights in the full game?

i think i'm a rare case, much like joliekiller, as i liked the game enough 2 want the full version. maybe it's because RRR is still too far away & there aren't any good games now. i've played most & i'll never play turn-based(never good in that mode).

IGN has a review on the game as well & it's true that skill points should be invested in combat-based skills or u're dead. so that ends the possibility of being a merchant or thief or a diplomat of some sort in the game. sigh....

may larians take note & learn from major screw up done by Black Isle, one of the premiere of RPG. & not to talk too much on unreleased game till the gamers taste it. hype kills many games before & many more will fall in its hands. so please be careful not to hype the game too much by saying it's revolutionary & life-changing or words to that effect.

Edit: guys, this comes from the IGN review of lionheart;
"Divine Divinity attempted a similar mix of roleplaying and action elements. It accomplished this better than Lionheart by interspersing numerous distinctive cities and battlefields, and by cutting some slack in battle to the player who after all, comes to these games as a roleplaying fan. So there were always a small number of monsters on screen at any time; and if they started to gather in your area, attracted by the noise, you could always outrun them. The enormous amount of enemies converging on you in Lionheart are something else entirely. You can't outpace them, either. Similarly, you could quickly move the edges of your screen in Divine Divinity using the mouse, and get a sense about what was lurking at the edge of your field of vision. In Lionheart, the screen moves sluggishly, and with a pronounced lag when you hit its edge with your mouse. Since nothing else in the game is slow, it's almost as though it were an aesthetic choice. If so, it was a bad one."

Is there gore in Lionheart, like it was in fallout2 ? I mean finishing animations and stuff?

not in the demo, nope.