Oh, man, I do love PoE soundtrack. It’s probably the video game OST I tend to come back the most. Main theme is lovely, with a nice arc and growing instrumentation.
Though after multiple playthroughs, I find the middle act (Defience Bay and investigation) to just not be great. It’s spread so very thin, and plot progression really slows down.
I don’t remember combat being though in PoEs outside the Master Below. That was the encounter that forced me to sit down and learn the systems.
I guess I just prefer soundtracks from games like WOTR, RT, Cyberpunk or DAO; PoE is just tooooo
quiet by comparison.
Otherwise, yeah Act 2 is abit thin. Sidequests using the "more than meets the eye" approach keeps things interesting atleast, although the only thing thats managed to perk my interests is when I managed to make Durance crack; But I've played through most of PoE 2.
Atleast I've hit Lvl 7 so I can see what White March is like.
For combat, I think my main issue is that there is no easy way to tell how much stronger mob packs or certain areas are compared to you unlike PoE 2 or being able to view their level or stats.
This kinda feeds into that pacing issue, similar to DOS/DOS2 where one path goes to equal level mobs while the other leads to far higher ones where you hit that wall and have to go back.
On the other hand, I find that I need to engage more with it's systems and think more tactically, both of which I never really needed to do in Pathfinder (Baring Uber bosses and on Daring difficulty).
Also, paralysis/stun inducing enemies
shudderThankfully, PoE 2 seems to have improved on it so much that I think it's the best RTWP combat system.
I totally agree about that. As I said, seeing a lot of the discussions in this forum lately about certain kisses made me think. Is that really all, people want from a RPG this days? The perfect pixel sex?
Seems to be, I guess thats why Sawyer feels like he's out of touch with modern RPG fans. Meanwhile, you've got the BG3 and Dragon Age subreddits (not to mention these forums) just fawning over these new characters, and then you even have games like Warframe adding in romances, just because they can (and because BG3 showed the way) and where you will be rewarded with a kiss.
If you didn't read the PCGamer article, they dragged up a quote from him in 2006:
I don't hate love in game stories; I just hate reducing love to shallow, masturbatory fantasy indulgence.
I appreciate that people wanted more romance options in NWN2, but sometimes I think that people want there to be romance 'victory' conditions for all companions. I think that can diminish some characters ... That bugs me. I don't like the idea that you can 'win' everything or get everyone on your side.
