Uh oh. Last night I was working on the murder investigation and was at the mortician’s house talking to him. He was acting pretty sketchy, and when I ended conversation with him I moved towards the back room of his workshop he went nuts and engaged my party in combat. Needless to say it did not end well for him, but now I’m worried I may have broken the quest or will have screwed myself with reputation in the town (murdering citizens is never a good thing). Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d saved for quite some time…
Nope, you’re fine.
Whew! Thank you. It was late and I just saved and quit (after looting his house of course…may as well take it all the way). I was worried I’d load up the save to find an angry town out for blood.
I have tried to play this one about three times. I really like it, but always end up stuck in some unbeatable combat situation or not being able to move the story forward. I did manage to get to the next town each time. Walking speed is really an issue for me with all the backtracking needed.
Sequel is definitely better in that pacing is better, at least in the beginning. But again, stuck in a battle I can’t win even after retrying a dozen times, so quit in frustration.
I really want to love these games. The combat system, art design, voice acting, all do it for me but I guess I’m not picking up the intricacies of the battle system (admittedly, I know I should be doing more to maximize elemental effects/damage).
I don’t remember having any problems using keyboard and mouse controls. I used them with Pillars as well without a problem.
I didn’t mean I had problems with the controls in Pillars, just that the map / view there was a flat 2D view & not a rotatable 3D view.
How anyone makes it past that first city is beyond me…I’ve tried 4 times now lol. I really despise needle in a haystack with vague clues type of gameplay, so it really killed it for me. That’s a shame, because I really enjoyed the combat, skills etc.
When I first started playing this, and before I got to that first city, I was convinced this was a game I’d play for hundreds of hours, as I love party building games, but I just can’t get around that portion of the game.
Yes, the initial city is a too big to navigate. It gets better, actually, so why not look up a wiki to guide you through, at least until you found out clues to the murder.
I usually look at a few things and then head out of cities in games like this. In D:OS you will find directions where you die pretty quickly, but there are several directions to go. All you need is a few levels and a full party (with the understanding of how to use the magic) and you quickly become competitive.
It does feel more than a little overwhelming right now. I have probably 20 active quests in my log, with another dozen already completed. Some of them give you virtually zero idea of what to do next, so you just kind of ignore them and hope you stumble across the answer while exploring.
I have found 4 additional party members so far though, a wizard, a marksman, a rogue and a knight. My two mains are a battlemage and an enchanter, so I’ve kept the marksman and rogue for now and sent the knight and wizard back to the Hall of Heroes. I may swap the marksman for the wizard though, as I think the combinations possible between the magic schools (enchanter, battlemage and wizard) would be more effective than the ranged combat.
Marksman also gets a bunch of status cures and buffs, FWIW. And there are a lot of handy magic arrows. Also, that is the full companion list.
Hmm…status cures and buffs would be nice. I do seem to find myself on fire A LOT…thankfully my enchanter has the Rain spell. I have no such quick remedy for poison, cold or any other condition though.
I found the key to being OP in this game is to give every character a few AOE spells. By about the 2/3 point in the game you can do that and every fight starts with attacks of mass destruction. :)
I found this game to be really tough at first, both a combination of interface/spell questions, and simple logistical stuff like, “how many Resurrect scrolls do I dare expend before I decide to reload after this battle?” etc., and getting used to the fact that you’re often outgunned in individual battles and have to use the environment creatively to make it through. Also, the wacky humor is a bit offputting initially, and I don’t love the use of battles to gate the gameworld. I felt boxed into Cyseal surrounded by encounters that I had little chance of winning, and XP was hard to scrounge. Plus I never seemed to have enough action points, which made combat more frustrating than fun. I say all this as someone who is right smack dab in the middle of the game’s core demographic.
I’m up to Silverglen now and feeling the power curve is becoming more manageable. The game is very generous with loot, and I’m starting to unlock some of the more enjoyable abilities, dabbling in crafting, and developing telekinesis on one of the characters. I’m still confused as hell about a lot of the quest lines (that fucking murder seems unsolvable) but at least there is some sense of progress happening. And the more ability to you have to manipulate your environment, the more you appreciate the way so many objects can be moved around and the way various elements interact with each other.
Anyway, I’m glad to be sticking it out. It’s a lot of fun and now I’ll be able to move on to DOS II with a clean conscience. Still coulda done without the Rock Paper Scissors, though.
The DD setting is kind of generic. I was kind of disappointed after waiting so long for an EPIC TURN-BASED FANTASY RPGEE!1 Maybe Pillars II turn-based mode will be better when I finally get around to playing it… dunno.
It’s generic and extremely tongue-in-cheek. Definitely a game where the interest is more in the systems than the lore. Awful purty, though.
Eh, I didn’t like the art either. (Again, compare with Pillars.)
Different brain space for me. Painted Infinity Engine-style backdrop versus fully 3D interactable world. In the context of the latter, I find DOS quite nice to look at.
Me too. It has a tough learning curve. But once you get you and your party to a certain level and start to understand some of the environmental stuff it becomes much easier. In fact by about 50-60% thru my party was pretty damn powerful. The game let’s you give each member of your party spell casting abilities, even your tanks, without costing them much, which makes battles so much easier later on.
If you do take the time to craft you can really help yourself with potions and spells.
I couldn’t play this type of game all the time, but every now and then I love going back to this style.
It reminds me of how I used to play the Infinity Engine games, where I’d scroll way over to the other side of a map, then click there, and go make coffee or something while my guys pathed over.
I am loving D:OS so far and excited that the sequel is supposed to be even better. I haven’t enjoyed a CRPG this much since I retro-played Ultima VI a couple of years ago.
That said, I’m getting increasingly stuck. Like, the available number of places to go starts to diminish, and there are no new places to scoop up XP, etc. The game has a couple of annoying habits, 1) it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between an ignorable side quest and something that’s essential to progressing toward victory, and 2) Occasionally you’ll be moving along smoothly and the game will throw a bunch of enemies at you that are several levels higher than your party.
I’ve reached a point where my only available progression paths appear to be 1) A Knight’s Tomb with an insta-kill trap situation so nasty I suspect the area is optional, 2) A tunnel full of +3 level mushroom guys that the game tells me I should flee from (my characters are level 15), 3) Solving a puzzle that I don’t know how to solve in order to open a 2nd barrier inside the King of Hiberheim’s castle, which again I suspect isn’t the main progression but only a side quest.
I guess I will just FAQ my way to solve the barrier puzzle, hope it garners me enough XP to at least bump up to 16, and then fight those mushroom people as best I can. But my motivation is starting to teeter at this point, which is too bad. Either way it’s been a fun ride.