Personally, I'm really looking forward to Divinity 2. It's been a long time since I've actually enjoyed a good aRPG, and it's one of the few games coming out in the near future that I am pretty sure will be worthwhile to actually finish. The others being Torchlight and Dragon Age.
There's some heated conversation here, so I'll go jump on the band wagon.
NWN2 - mess. I agree that the writing was interesting, but the story had no depth. Nothing in the game had depth. I'm not even going to go into character design and the game's style in general. But what really killed it for me was the fact that I had little say in who should be in my active party. And if I wanted to do a specific quest, I had to bring someone along. Ugh, come on. This, along with everything else, made me forget NWN2 ever existed.
NWN2: MotB - Yea, they finally realized that forcing party members onto you is not a good thing. But they added a mechanic that added nothing to the game other than frustration. Yea, I know it was modable. But I guess it just didn't click. However, the expansion was a great step up from the original.
Risen / Gothic / Elder Scrolls - not my thing. Too realistic in many aspects. For me, too much frustration: Can't do this, can't go into there, can't take that or you'll be punished. Makes sense, but, no. Fallout 3 was more forgiving, and I played that and Broken Steal with some fun, but it did get boring after a while. After you find your best armor and weapon - that's it, basically. Mods gave F3 life for a couple of more weeks, but meh. And in Risen, you can't even achieve a character with everything mastered. No thanks, this isn't what I'm looking for in a fantasy RPG.
Witcher - can this be really in comparison to the above? I mean.. the whole progression in terms of skills and equipment is incredibly shallow.
Sacred 2 - it's actually fun. I was lucky enough to never actually encounter any of the 'gamebreaking' bugs that people complained about. Its progression was good, high replay value due to difficulties. However, the item aspect really lacks. Every item you find scales to your level, so you end up basically wearing the same stuff you've been wearing, just finding some upgradeable replacement (of the same unique) at higher levels. Boring.
Drakensang - I actually want to play that. I can live with a non-existant story as long as it has good enough gameplay mechanics to keep me hooked. However, I read somewhere that it's lacking in terms of equipment, especially end game.
No other RPG comes to mind in recent years. With all that said, there hasn't been a really quality (a)RPG (for my tastes) that I would want to finish, let alone replay. A lot of people praise Titan Quest, but I just can't get over the design barrier. It has no design. Just a typical greek mythology setting with typical greek mythological beings. You see them in books, you see them everywhere. There is little fantasy of the designers put into the whole thing. Not to mention the horrible UI.
With all that said, Divinity 2 along with Torchlight and DA:O seem to be what I'm really looking for. Regarding Divnity 2 - Beautiful design (characters, setting, equipment), outstanding music (at least what I've heard from the 2 tracks on the site), excellent UI and the whole dragon thing sounds amazing.
There are, however, things that could ruin it - Since the game ends when you beat it, your only choice is to start over. However, if the story and gameplay is engaging enough (or at least doesn't have too many annoying aspects), I would be willing t replay it. And the lack of respawns. I hope there is enough monsters and XP around to achieve the level of mastery in all skills that I'm interested in.
I'm really looking forward to this game, and even if its replayability will be low (which I'm inclining to think is not), I am pretty sure that I will have a lot of fun with this game.
Last edited by SilverD; 05/10/09 08:03 PM.
