first of all: big kudos to Larian Studios for making such a great game.
Disclaimer: I played the game on tactician difficulty halfway through act 4 and am currently playing another game on tactician difficulty because i wanted to try another party/skill setup.
I want to take a bit of time to reflect on the game and here it goes:
1) Gameworld/story/acts:
First of all i am not so much of a fan of world-changing story arcs where the protagonist is super important, but i can live with the main story. the game world itself is just crafted superbly. my main issue is the shortness of act 3, quest density and quality take dive, although it is far from the decline of the last quarter of the predecessor (i have not played EE, as i understand it fixes some of those issues).
i really wish i could create a custom party without using bland henchmen. It would be nice if origin characters would not be tied to sex and race, but i can understand that this harder to implement. i would just love to play with 4 elves or 4 lizards etc.
2) Item progression and acquisition:
I really like how basic item stats progress, an item which is just 3 levels higher will provide significant bonuses to the character, i.e. finding new items is always relevant.
2.1 )My main complaint is item acquisition:
*about 90% of my items come from vendors, items i find usually have a bad stat combination or are under-levelled, because found/rewarded items usually confirm to area/enemy level whereas vendor items are always at character level. Because i am quite thorough i end up mostly above the level of my enemies. there are very few enemies that are well above my level making them worthwhile to kill and most of them are in act 2 (the fire witch, the troll, the dragon in act1).
i can't stress this enough, it is very problematic in my eyes when the item progression is basically collecting items in the game world to get money to buy the items you actually want. this makes difficult fights and quest really unrewarding.
*item secondary stats (i.e. everything besides magic and physical armour) are mostly random as far as i can tell. this means that most items you will find are not useful, and vendors refresh their inventories quite often giving you much more opportunity to "find" useful items for your party.
*most unique items are very underwhelming although there are exceptions
2.2) i think Larian could learn a lot from classical rpg's regarding item/quest rewards:
*unique items should have game-changing effects that can only be found on them, making it a hard choice of wearing old understated uniques, e.g.:
-your summons don't expire (they can still die from damage)
-permanent status effects, e.g. a ring that hastens you
-your fire damage inflicts decay instead of burning
...
basically item stats where you can build a character around, e.g. an early game ring that curses characters you heal might be a valid choice even in later stages of the game where you can find much more powerful rare items stat wise
*the most powerful items should be rewarded after long and difficult quests and the player should be able to manipulate some core stats he wants on those items. I think the crafting system would be a very elegant solution to this problem, e.g. if you kill the dragon in act 1 you don't get some random item that even if it has the right stats you probably won't wear shorty after the first third of act 2, instead you get dragon scales and teeth. you can now find either a recipe to craft some powerful items (depending on the item combination you can choose different variants, e.g. cold dragon scales + cloth + skill book = robe with cold immunity and a bonus to the skill books skill or cold dragon scales + metal + low tier skill scroll = scale armour with a lot of cold resistance and a chance to trigger the skill you used in the crafting process when you take vitality damage).
These are just some examples in any case the player get's a reward that he can tailor to his characters so completing difficult quests is actually rewarding. a good example in the current game is the armour of the eternals.
3) Character development:
I really like the openness of the skill system and the many combinations it allows, however there are some balancing issues:
-Summoning trivializes the game. in my second play-through i have a 4 man summoning party and nothing can stand before me, e.g. i killed the trolls at level 12. with summoning you have crowd controls (battering ram, inner demon, dominate mind), damage type variability, healing and tankiness all in one, with little weapon scaling (you don't need a new weapon every 2 levels). however it is also tedious to play mostly because of the usual rotation of summoning the incarnate and infusing it.
-Why does magic lack basic mobility skills (with the exception of air)? warfare has battering ram, phoenix dive and blitz attack, huntsman has tactical retreat, scoundrel has cloak and dagger etc. on the magic side you got warp infusion which comes quite late, planar gateway (costs source), teleport (can't teleport self) and nether swap (clunky if you just want to get across a chasm). unless you invest at least 2 points into huntsman/warfare/polymorph you really lack a basic movement skill
-Damage immunities/resistances make elemental damage clunky especially compared to physical damage. in my current game i play 4 summoners with pyrokinetic has secondary skills and yet i encounter enemies who have fire immunity auras. there should be options to circumvent enemy resistances, the current ones are a bit lacklustre:
-flay skin: long cooldown, short duration, not good enough against high resistances, does not scale with int
-decay: checks against physical armour, i.e. you have to remove the physical armour, apply decay and then you are able to damage fire immune enemies
I would suggest a simple skill:
Elemental inversion: exchange the element of you next x spells with the opposite damage type, i.e. fire spells deal water damage, air spells deal earth damage and so on. a pure fire caster would loose out on the pyrokinetic damage bonus yet you could still do something. this would also allow for some interesting character builds, e.g. a hydrosophist who uses fire skills.
-passive combat skills feel lacklustre, not so much in balance but in gameplay: leadership, two-handed, ranged, dual wielding, one-handed are good skills to invest your points into, but they don't really change gameplay. i would suggest some additional bonuses and minor skills for them, e.g.:
leadership lvl 1: if you recover from a status effect clear the same status effect of all party members within x-meters (range increased with level).
leadership lvl 5: if you use an ability reduce the ap cost of abilities of the same skill school for friendly characters in range of x-meters, e.g. your leader casts fireball and all party nearby party members can cast fire skills more easily. it keeps with the leadership theme (show them how it is done) yet makes it more tactical rewarding.
leadership lvl 7: on combat initiation all party members within x-meters get an immediate free move worth 1 AP (basically the leader gives a reaction move to the party, making ambushes a bit less troublesome)
leadership lvl 10: if you kill an enemy all party members within x-meters get 1 AP
-contrary to many posts i actually like the talents, some may be underwhelming but there are enough good ones to give you a choice.
-related to item rewards: lucky charm is a major chore. you need it on a dedicated looting character to find more items that you probably don't use but sell to buy the items you want from vendors. to optimize this you basically rerun every cleared area with a dedicated looter (most items give magic charm), loot every little box, just for more money and the faint hope of finding a decent item.
-persuasion checks should be possible for characters that have not initialized the conversation but are nearby. it works for identifying items (you don't have to select you loremaster), why can't it work for your persuader in conversations? the current implementation leads to a lot of needless busy work
4) difficulty:
*in general i really like that the game can be challenging at times, although a lot of the difficulty is knowledge based and not tactical (i.e. the game is much easier on a subsequent playthrough where you know the encounters).
i think it would be a good addition if encounters would a random subset of enemies, e.g. you may fight bishop alexander but the adds he has would be randomly chosen, on one playthrough it could be 4 mages on another a different mix.
*i am not a big fan of simple stat boost for enemies to make the game tougher, but it works. lower than tactician would be too easy for me.
*i would like to see more difficult side content, like the dragon in act1, the arena fights or the witch and the trolls in act 2
tldr:
game is great, but i would like to have:
-more options to deal with resistances/immunities
-a loot system that rewards difficult quests/combat instead of vendor camping
-change boring combat skills that just give dmg/stat boosts and make them more tactical involved
-unique items with unique character defining effects
-more and harder sidecontent
-origin stories that are not tied to sex or race for more party customization
-bring summoning in line balance wise and reduce the tedium of summoning
-some qol regarding civil abilities
Last edited by tesb; 16/11/17 01:48 PM.
