Multiple ways the final scene is really bad -- not to mention on easiest setting either I or the zepp (usually the zepp) dies.
1) Big error in game design. No way, anyone in their right mind would an escorted load get AHEAD of it's main protection. Would never happen in a million years. They'd hang way behind, and let their mobile forces(or force in this case) take out the front lines BEFORE advancing. They don't even slow down when experiencing damage. They just keep plodding merrily forward even if they are ahead of me --- like the designers gave them a 50 IQ. What's up with that. Certainly the designers could do alot better. I can't say enough about how bad this decisionis: completely unrealistic -- but, it should never have gotten even this far, due to an earlier, non-realistic decision:
2) Zandalor's been out of it, at the least, he's in no position to command or plan anything without my input -- especially if I'm his only forward force. He should have let me give the say so when the ship should launch -- because in any real world scenario -- again, you would have your forward forced clear the path before the vital cargo even launches. This was a huge tactical mistake that would never have been made by even the stupidest of commanders -- but the designers built it in, like it's the best they could come up with. These are, completely, non-thought, out tactics -- sorta like there ARE no tactics -- but it's a 'last gasp' suicide mission! But...then why are we sending a zeppelin anyway???...
3) I carried the weapon of mass destruction (Wrth'o'Patrch )back up from the deepest dungeons in my backpack along with probably 70 other items. It doesn't need a zeppelin -- a much smarter plan would be to have the dragon carry the bomb and drop it and forgo the need for a fragile zeppelin to carry the only hope for the whole war. Send the zepp as backup, but again, they need to stay back and out of the main range of any firepower -- they could support, but their loss would not be critical to the war effort -- the dragon is much better equipped and could easily carry 1 item. So again -- poor tactics.
4) Then there's the structure of the whole 2nd part of the game. VERY poor design decision -- you spend the entire game building up your character to the finest most polished piece you believe you can do -- all skills, and stats honed to perfection, and then, for the final mission, you force the player to throw away ALL their work -- NOTHING carries over except healing/mana potions -- I DID try an increase-all armor by 17 points -- did nothing for my defense. I also had +26 STRngth, DEX and INTlgnc potions that *should* have been able to be applicable to the dragon form -- but were also forfeit. In this game it would have been better to be a dragon RIDER than turned into a dragon -- since my character could deal out more damage/round than the dragon, and take alot more damage. There's also no reason why my dragon couldn't, *AT LEAST* strap a belt or necklace around a paw or neck. 4(b) The 2nd-part of this complete play dichotomy -- you force players into an unfamiliar interface that's been unused for, AT least, the entire game, (minimally a few days for the fastest players, but more likely numbered in weeks to possibly months since they played the last game).
5) There are a bunch of salt-in-the-wound items,
(a) like ignoring skill bonuses of any of the armor items. I should have had +1 in multiple skill areas, but was limited to the hit-point-bonus and the choice of +40 damage OR +40 defense (what's with that?! what happened to *balance +20/+20?!) worse, I become a dragon, and unlike in the former game,
(b) I can't go back to my dragon castle -- that's bad, since half my dragon armor set is in my chest (except for the items I actually was wearing on my dragon when I left the last game -- which, magically, are all unequipped and replaced with the stock-defaults -- so no way to actually all my armor other than to restore from an earlier save -- AT least, I could hit ESC in the long movie cutscene (YEAY! -- please add that for all timed pauses (in dialogues, and the ultra-lame intro for Larian and and players -- I don't need to be forced to watch & wait for it every time the game crashes.
(c) Besides the previously mentioned poor controls for flying -- flying isn't walking,
(d) A DRAGON is a living object -- it's not an undead creature. There is NO reason why a dragon should lose all ability to heal unless you have a skill for it.
The idea that a dragon is unable regenerate EVEN as WELL as a level 1 PLAYER, is absurd! (e) Some or all 'passive' skills should carry over. Especially 'regen' ability, 'reflect'...etc. Some may not make sense, but many would -- mana efficiency, magic damage bonus(destruction), but mostly thinking about regen -- since that's so starkly awful.
---It really is more like the designers tried to make the final battle be one where the player was thrown into an unfamiliar situation with no experience other than from the previous game -- which would be some time back -- and NO benefits from the entire game that they had built up. There was not 1 dragon skill book in this entire game.
Seemed like the end must have been added with very little thought -- like they ran out of budget and needed to finish it and get it out the door. Your play testers are obviously a very non-representative bunch -- they get to play alot, and probably had alot of practice flying as a dragon in testing -- but not so with real life players. That's often a problem in game testing -- such testing is usually limited to people who are veteran gamers. Of course they will tend to find everything easier. That can't possibly be a representative sample.
I sorry I'm being harsh but I am trying to offer constructive criticism in many areas that would be low-cost changes. I do want to be clear that there are many
good things about the game that no other game has offered -- the graphics are up in the best of the best. Period. Those alone make the game worth buying, BUT it's hell to play, and not that fun -- for me it has little to no replay value -- some -- as others have covered -- due to the immaturity of the development unit in not having a well developed (fully fleshed out) game engine and world system. My expectations were set for another Oblivion -- (mostly due to the DnD setting), when if they were set for Mass Effect(+II), I would have been less disappointed, though the gameplay was much too hard on 'casual' for a casual gamer. That said -- I played through on 'normal' for much of the final half of the game (exception of the final mission which is unfinished on 'casual').
If the final mission had any 'tactical' decisions available (fixing the above numbered items, for example), that might have solved difficulty problems without introducing further scalability options, but about those....
On scalability:I keep hearing some people here talk about how hard it is to 'scale' difficult. Bovine excrement! Scale regen(hits & mana) from 10x - .1x (slider adjustable, not 4 stops). Scale monster damage from .01x to 100x. Scale player damage amounts (mag/rang/mel), 10x -> .1x. 1 slider could control all three. As for puzzles -- those require more work, but at the very least, you could have a press 'h' for hint - press again, more hint, press again, more, press again give explicit answer -- and/or add a quest compass that points the direction to your next quest goal (have 2 pointers, 1 for main quest, and add a 'selectable' side quest that would get 'primary' status, just for compass purposes (and maybe hint purposes -- and select main quest as primary for hints on it).
These are all low cost scalability additions. I may be misremembering, but I seem to remember another DnD game, Oblivion, might have had a .001 -> 1000x on it's difficulty scale. That really can accommodate a large range of players (of course they also had the in-game console you could access to set stats to your likely, including gold, game position, equipment, etc...ultra, ULTRA sweet -- that and the extensibility! Some of the extensions were awesome. The companions in Divinity-II generally fought better (at least if they had magic as well and were sufficient level) than ones in Obliv -- they were generally too 'stupid'. I do think you toned down the companion damage a bit too much -- TWO level 40 demon types should be able to kill non-boss opponents monsters in no more than about 120-160% of what it would take a human player of same level, but my 2 demons were often wailing against 1 monster for many rounds w/o killing it before I'd step in and finish them in 1 swing (they did knock them down). But scaling companion monster's damage could be another area for scaling -- again, maybe 5-10x current, to .1x current.
In any event, I don't think there's any excuse for lack of scalability when some of the options, like multipliers, should be trivial to implement. However, the best options would require addressing some of the more serious gameplay/strategic flaws. I don't know how easy any of them would be to do in a patch -- depends on the flexibility of the game scripting engine, I suppose.
Options allowing the player to go ahead of the dirigible, or give the player control of when the dirigible progresses forward, could be done with no additional voicing.
Would it be too much to hope for anything along those lines to be fixed, or would that be something for another game?
If you are interested, I might be interested in giving feedback on some future games as well as patches/changes to this one depending on what you want and/or are offering...
Astara
