Act 1 complete ! Onward into the city!
I’m not sure how far I’ll get. The UI and its clunkiness, the quality of animations in 2019, etc. are pretty off-putting to me (a confessed graphics whore). So much so I installed Tides of Numenera since I bought it two years ago and never played it.
That’s literally the best dialog scene in all of PoE1 vs. some dialog in BG2 that I’ve hardly ever heard because I never have Korgan in my party.
As terrible as Korgan is, he’s a lot more interesting than Sagani.
That’s not PoE’s best. Eder might be my all-time fav companion in any RPG.
Got to admit that is one of my favorite exchanges in PoE, paired against one of the less bad banters on the BG2 link I found.
I never used Korgan either. Was there anymore to him than grouchy mercenary dwarf? I quite liked Sagani though.
Korgan is fabulous. Shoddily made, indeed. Gutter water, I heard you man.
Imoen is kinda meh, whatever. She’s more of a MacGuffin than a proper NPC.
Eder is fabulous. Sagani I liked okay; she’s not super deep but her story is far from bad if you spend the time with it.
Eder and Aloth are the best characters in POE1. I found Durance just tedious (most likely due to that massive info dump/conversation options that you get first meeting him and later on, that I confess I just turned off my brain). The banter with Eder and Sagani in POE is the only memorable one that I recall and in general the banter is few and far between. Not even close to dragon age levels of banter. I am quite surprised that anyone would remember these games for the banter, it seems to me that there was more banter in the BG series but my memory is foggy and the banter didnt seem to be particularily memorable.
Every Dragon Age game is far from perfect, some more than others, and each one differently so. But they each have some of the best companions in any RPGs I’ve played.
Scuzz
3171
I would agree with that. You change party members around just to hear the banter.
vyshka
3172
@Scotch_Lufkin thanks for mentioning the Dragonlance books. I just finished Dragons of Autumn Twilight and have started Dragons of Winter Night.
You’re very welcome! I’m enjoying them quite a bit myself, I’m about half way through Winter Night!
Finally playing White March (1) and I’m impressed with the amount and quality of substance to this DLC. All of the maps are dense with quests/tasks and interesting creatures, as well as situations that feel dynamic and varied.
One aspect of Pillars 1 that I don’t really enjoy are the weapons/armor - I tend to just stick with the default armor an NPC comes equipped with and enchant it when possible. And once I give a character a weapon specialty I just give that character the best weapons I can find within that category that give them the ability to inflict each of the core piercing/crushing/slashing damage types - the damage variations are too insignificant, and effects of reload/attack speed are too esoteric to make more frequent swapping (and re-enchanting) seem worthwhile, and I almost never remember to use spell effects on weapons/armor that need to be manually triggered. Pillars weapons/armor have more traits to consider, but are also so balanced that they’re just less interesting and memorable than the items in the Baldur’s Gate series (as discussed above), for instance.
But I find a lot of the items in White March to be interesting (and I’m not talking about the new soulbound twist) - maybe that’s partly the result of increased familiarity with the game and its systems, but I don’t think that’s entirely the reason - they seem more creative and imbued with increased utility.
Love the dragon storyline in this one (haven’t done the Sky Dragon quest yet, but have completed the Endless Paths), as well as the stories surrounding the other NPCs and characters out in the non-town areas.
DLC/expansions for RPGs are difficult, since it’s difficult to lure players back for a brief revisit of a game theyve completed, and they can suffer from power creep and being detached from the main storyline, but developers are doing a far better job on expansion content for RPGs over the past 10 years than they did in the early years of computer RPG expansions.
Scuzz
3175
How do you “use” a pet? I have a couple but can’t figure out what to do with them.
So this really is a thing? The Chanter the game gives you seems pretty useless.
There is a pet slot in the inventory for your main character.
Scuzz
3177
Thanks. I will look again more carefully. I think I have three different pets.
Scuzz
3178
I seem to have a bug and my experience points have stopped, just before my main character would go to level up from 5-6. No matter how many things I kill I stay 10 points shy of leveling up, I am at 20990 and need 21000.
This could be a game ender.
Killing things doesn’t give you experience points every time. You only get XP for kill milestones (coincides with increasing the amount of info in the bestiary)
Complete a quest to be sure it’s actually an issue.
Scuzz
3180
I notice the Quest points in the text screen, but I thought you always got some kind of points for killing enemies. I first noticed not getting the points when fighting Leaden Key assassins when emerging from the area below Caed Nua. I would think they would be worth something.
But I get what you are saying. If I complete a quest I should see when I get the points. I do remember getting them when completing Kana’s quest line not too long before this.
malkav11
3181
Nope. You only get exp for learning something about enemies, and you stop doing that after you’ve killed X number of them, which is generally well under the number of that enemy in the game. And I think the assassins count as their race rather than a distinct enemy type. Or maybe every human-analogue race in the game is under one entry, I forget.
Scuzz
3182
Yea, I finally found a wiki that spelled out how you get experience points and it seems you two are right. I have been playing this for 30 hours and just figured that out. So I guess killing things is secondary to actually doing something. :)
Well, at least I know the game ain’t broke and for that I am happy. There have been a few things it has taken me a while to figure out (like there are no health potions in the game, what RPG doesn’t have health potions) but once I figured them out I understood what the game wanted. Somehow I just missed this until now.
