Larian Studios Forums Divinity II The Dragon Knight Saga / Flames of Vengeance (English) Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga A Long Feedback from Down Under

Thank you for the welcome and replies to my long post.

Hi AlaCarcuss,

Thanks for your feedback. My mistake I guess re the turn based comment, but as you may have guessed I'm not into tactical pausing either or RTS team based games. The impression I got from playing Dragon Age briefly was turn based enough to know I didn't like it at all. I find pausing the game in the middle of combat to plan each move a chore rather than a pleasure. But as you say "horses for courses."

Now you could say that pausing a game to take a potion or enter inventory is no different, but there is a choice whether or not to do it and I don't most times. If I die that's a consequence of my actions and I try again. Gothic does that well. You can take a potion during a fight, but that won't pause the action and you will probably die while drinking it. A tactical withdrawal (ie running away a short distance) is often a better idea, but depends on the number of enemies.

With real time combat it really feels like you're fighting for your life (to me), that's if the game in question has a decent combat system of course. Then again, I'm not a good fighter either and I rely a lot on luck, and some skill. I did get pretty good in Risen though. In that game I felt every blow and blocking actually works. I'm not an expert on combat mechanics by any means and I don't bother with the fine statistics and numbers associated with weapons and armour because I find it boring.

I haven't played any of the early Fallout games or the RTS games you suggest because they are not to my taste. That has nothing to do with graphics or the isometric view (which I hate) but strategy to that degree isn't fun for me. I have plenty of old games with dated graphics that I still play occasionally. I dug out Arx Fatalis a couple of months ago and started it again. There's another rpg that was ahead of it's time. The magic system there really takes some thought and dedication and is quite unique.

I could write pages about the Gothic series and how they do everything right for the style of games they are. At least when Pirahna Bytes are involved, not JoWood. The attention to small details, like the animals sleeping at night, and more important things like factions, a real theft and consequence system and much more.

My preference is Gothic 2:NOTR, but I also enjoy Gothic 3 especially since the community made Enhancement Pack. It's like a new game, more balanced, virtually no stuttering and even has a version of HDR which looks pretty good. It's also as bug free as it's possible to be now and there is a new Content Mod that adds elements from G2 as well as re-texturing the whole game. They are big downloads though, but worth every bit of it.
Apologies if you already know about this and the Enhancement Pack:
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?t=886288

There is even a "remake" of Forsaken Gods almost ready for release. If they can redeem that game the community deserves ultimate praise. In fact they have created their own development team.
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/showthread.php?t=902795

I didn't elaborate too much on Oblivion because I actually have more complaints about it than is reasonable to print and I'm not too popular for my opinions in the community. Not that I care about popularity, but in most cases expressing an opinion that isn't totally positive is a big "no no" on most of it's fan forums. One reason why I'm reticent to join any forum these days, until I found this one and that changed my mind.

Given a choice of games it wouldn't be Oblivion I'd choose now in hindsight. I do find it playable with mods that change practically every vanilla aspect of it though, but I haven't played for over six months and if I do it will only be to update my own mods. My opinion of the vanilla game is they produced a virtual blank canvas with bare basics and let the community make it a real game, as much as the engine allows anyway. At least Bethesda gave us an editor to fix the game because they didn't. Otherwise it wouldn't be still getting the recognition it does.

I find it sad that many game developers now seem to settle for the casual approach. Yes, there's a demand for it, but they should also consider making it an optional choice for people who like older style gaming, otherwise I for one will have to rely on what I have now for replay value. That's why I love Larian's approach so much. No hand holding and you get to use the brain you were born with. I understand to a point why "casual" gaming is becoming so popular with time constraints and other stresses in real life, but on the other hand I find a game like DKS and Gothic etc are the ultimate stress relief.

Regards...Maigrets.