It is largely excellent. Some of the UI stuff is annoying, like the trade interface with vendors. If you switch to another character to see what they have equipped, say, you have to restart the trade session, and the game won’t simply take the best barter skill of your characters; you have to use the specific character to get the bonuses. So, you end up looking at the wares, figuring out what you want, exiting trade, shifting inventory around so the barter dude has it all, then going back to trade and doing your business. Awkward, if not terribly important.
Also, the game does a piss-poor job of guiding you as to when you are strong enough to do X or Y. Most of the time, it’s fine, as you just go oops and reload, but there are a few times, as in the battle on the Lady Vengeance, where at level 7 I got the “these foes are too strong” message, telling me I might want to flee, but I’m on the high seas and there’s no where to flee far as I can tell. Second time I did it, I was level 8, and still got the message. Trying to keep Malady alive is a bitch because the party starts scattered all over the boat and that doofus with Dallis keeps casting those human bomb things. Ugh.
Still, it’s the type of fight I don’t mind doing over some, because it’s pretty engaging.
That sounds like bad AI, not good AI :P. If he was being mind controlled, he should have been attacking you, not casting exactly the worst spell in that situation (from the pov of the enemy).
Yeah that’s the behavior I expected, but you could handwave it away with the explanation that the enemy is only controlling your movement, not your mind, or something. In any case, it was a pleasant surprise.
I’ve got a quicksave from the point I wiped the place out, I like your suggestion and think I’ll keep it and try it from there after I’ve completed the game in a more “traditional” fashion w/o wiping out the town.
The AI is pretty smart sometimes. I was fighting some guards on the balcony of the judge’s home at the entrance to the fort. It was a tough battle but the tide was starting to turn in our favor. I turn one of the guards into a chicken and he runs inside to the judge’s bedchamber. I’m thinking his absence from the fight will give me the advantage. A few turns later he returns to being human. However he doesn’t come right back into fight. He runs through the back door of the bed chamber and alerts another five guards further inside the fort. All six of them counter attack and wipe out my weakened party.
This is intentional as far as I can tell. If you want them in the fight you just manually take control of the ones not fighting and move them closer; if they’re close enough when the fight starts they’ll be in it. If not, they join the fight normally once you move them in.
Not aggroing if they aren’t close to the fight allows you to try positional tricks like putting a ranger into sneak mode for a big damage bonus right off the bat, or maybe your opponents are all fire damage and you have a fire immune character so you want the others staying out of it.
Yeah it’s similar to one character being in dialogue and still being able to move the others. For co-op. You don’t want characters outside the combat being locked into turn-based.
Hmm, I see that, but it seemed that I could not control or access the characters that were not in battle. Then again, often the game does not register clicks on the hotbar, either, so it’s entirely possible that I needed to click again on the character portrait or something.
Yeah, it seems to work most of the time, and you’re right, the F-keys are good.
Really, the only quibble I have generally is with pathfinding; sometimes, if you are all chained, and you’re having one character move around a table, say, to get to something, the rest of them sort of take a detour through the level, setting off traps and stuff. Not often, and it’s sort of hilarious.
I’ve noticed this is pretty bad sometimes when the party’s split, and you re-join them. I wish they’d stay put until I give a movement order, rather than suddenly try path back together…
Yes, and on one of my chars I’ve been pumping all my alt-points into the Lucky-whatever skill. About every 30 boxes/barrels I find a level appropriate purple. It’s great.
It’s based on pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons, where a single level of experience makes a big difference. If you are level 14 and you see a group of level 16 Magisters milling around, go away and come back later, because they will crush you (unless you play very well - the game also rewards smart, tactical thinking in that way).
That said, it’s not really quite that big of a gulf. In your example, a level 7 Rare item is compared to a level 8 Epic item, and the level 8 epic is only 2 more magic armor and some extra resistances. Then you jump TEN LEVELS to a level 18 Legendary item, and of course the numbers get crazier, but going from level 8 to level 18 is like 40 hours of gameplay, so it’s not quite so jarring a transition as all that.
If comparing same grade, 1 level literally is 20-30% more. You can take the L8 and multiply it by 1.3x up to L18 and you’ll see that’s true. It’s a big difference and I wish the game wasn’t balanced around such a fast escalation.
Level appropriate gearing is critically important esp on tactician.
30 hours in, and only just onto the last fight in Fort Joy! It’s very entertaining. :)
All Magisters are dead. I left ‘Kniles the Flenser’ for last, and revenge will be mine - his group is responsible for my only party wipe thus far a few hours back.
Yesterday I finally finished up the big boss fight and am off the island and in Driftwood now at level 10. The Alexander fight was going very well until a certain big surprise showed up. After that it got a little bit crazy. I like how some fights continue to be a challenge in this game, even after you get some of the better skills. That wasn’t the case in DOS1 where, after you got to a certain point fairly early on, almost all the fights became pretty trivial.
In addition to the combat, the writing and quests in this game are also a LOT better than the first game. All warts considered, I’m enjoying this more than any RPG I’ve played in a very long time. Larian did good. I really hope their mod tools are good/used and give the game long legs.
