I'm almost done with the Nameless Isle, and I find myself playing less frequently and for shorter stretches. I am completely bored and disappointed. Here is why.

1) Lack of visual stimulus. Everything is static.
It gets really tedious to constantly look at my party of clay figurines that are so emotionless, and don't do anything other than move in 4 directions. No cut scenes or animations whatsoever. Nothing connects me to these characters, other than the narrator, which falls short. When narration is the only means of advancing the story, everything starts to feel stale. A 2017 game should be able to connect visually on some level.

I understand that DOS is supposed to mimic a tabletop board game, but Larian have taken that to such a literal extreme, that it seems unfulfilling on the computer monitor, especially in this day and age of computer animations. I still have such good memories from older series like Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Witcher (and no, there's no escaping from comparing any modern RPG to those classics). It almost feels like Larian is using that 'table top' mode as an excuse to rely solely on narration, which is a mistake in a modern video game. In DOS2 I have started to skip through the narrated dialog just to get things moving again. Even when I read everything, I don't remember it next time I play because it doesn't connect on any emotional level. It's not memorable. In many situations I don't even see any NPCs that are supposed to appear and talk to my guys.

Here is an example of my latest 'encounter' which is missing an NPC. In the image below I'm supposed to imagine some godess Xantezza appearing behind my party and talking to them. Well, having some voice tell me about an imaginary godess just doesn't cut it anymore.
[Linked Image]

2) The main story is unoriginal and very similar to DOS 1. From the getgo I've been constantly beaten over the head with the same old "you're the new divine and you're gonna save the world from the evil king, blah blah blah". While it's true that the characters are not as 1-dimensional as the source hunters in DOS 1, and are more nuanced and tragic, it's not enough to change the overall boring feel of the main story. Some of the side quests and incidental encounters are much more interesting than the main story line, especially the ones that deal with adult topics such as death, loss, etc.

3) My party builds were pretty much complete by about level 15-16, which was somewhere in Reaper's Coast. Nothing is evolving anymore. Nothing changes. My party gets stale, enemies are stale, combat is stale.
And after reading other players' complaints about how boring Arx is, I have literally nothing to look forward to in the next act.

4) There are no side activities in the DOS games. I miss being able to sit down in a tavern, play some cards, throw some dice, maybe get drunk, or have a fist fight with the local thugs. I can't settle down in a town, buy/build a home, relax, maybe do some gardening, or other mundane stuff unrelated to questing. It's all about the next quest. It's all just running around looking for the next fight which will be the same as the last one. I never feel like my characters belong anywhere. They don't develop any relationships with the local population. I miss the 'homey' feeling I had when I played Skyrim. These side activities really add character to a game.

I really enjoy the combat system in DOS 2, but that alone won't get me through the end of the game.

Last edited by 123xzcs; 29/01/18 08:32 PM.