I absolutely love the new steam screenshot feature.Eventhough I got this game on gamersgate, it works perfectly anyway:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197997325400/screenshots/
This game is so gorgeous!
Horse riding was a bit unusual, took me a minute to figure out. Now it’s easy.
You’re insane.
It gets lots of points for doing slightly different things - the savannah, the early towns, the Asian theme - but it also does that thing of having nearby stuff look pretty ok, and then distant stuff look a lot weaker. Thinking of the savannah in particular there.
The animation quirk I remember is how the big weapons are weightless, so he runs with some massive club in his hand as if it’s made of foam rubber…
It’s a gorgeous game on a high-end system. Better looking than any other open-world RPG, in any event.
I dunno, those rocks look a little low res. The second shot of Paul’s I looked at (looking down from a rock ledge) had some nasty blurry rocks on the left. Likewise the low res tree bridge.
Bah. You would need to see the game in motion :P
The caves are beautifully done as well. Just killed some necromancer there, quite difficult fight.
I played this quite a while, first as a mage and secondly as a fighter type. I never finished either game, and got to the oriental area with both characters.
With the mage I just ended up using a beefed up firebolt with extra bounces and a blinding effect, invisibility and a bunch of high level summons. BTW the AI is atrocious. Your pets are stupid, but so are the monsters, so it kind of balances out.
Each fight was generally me turning invisible if it was one of those, enter the door and you will be jumped right away type of things, then summon pets and then fire bolt stuff to death. You still had to deal with the occasional scripted mobs would go after you ignoring the fact that you were invisible. In this you would just run around and summon pets as the situation permits.
It got to be very tedious and boring. Sure there were a lot of other spell combos, but they are very manna inefficient and do not actually do a good job of wasting the bad guys. I balanced my stats between health and strength.
The Warrior:
I thought this guy would suck because of the tutorial on blocking, counter attacking and all that crazy stuff would just make it too difficult to play. It turns out to be effective you do not need that stuff. Just attack like crazy and you win.
I also thought I would go with sword and board. After some time, I think I am pretty certain that a shield = useless unless you actively block. I also noticed a lot of times the enemy would stand in their blocking stance a lot and wouldn’t actively attack you.
As it turned out my warrior is a wreaking machine and it is far easier to play then my mage.
Overall still the game was repetitive and dull for me. I may go back to it, but just looking at my quest list of go here and kill x over and over just saps my lack of motivation. The fights are not interesting and the scenery can only last so long. I paid full price for the game and I definitely feel that this game is not worth the asking price unless you are truly bored. Yes it is pretty, but that is all it has going for it. It is substandard in every other way.
Shields were actually changed in the big patch - they were originally passive only, i.e. you got a defensive bonus but the only thing you actually had to do with it was the shield-bash move. They changed that to involve active blocking, but I haven’t really played since then.
Sounds like you were playing a different game to be honest. I thought the quests were generally a cut above average. Shame they didn’t have a demo like the first game, but they seem to be struggling to even get the game into stores in some places so maybe that’s beyond the publisher…
No idea whats difficult about melee skills though. Right-click to block, and counter attack once someone hits your block.
I was leery about getting this till Desslock praised it in an article. I’m glad I downloaded the game. I’ve played around with 3 characters up to the Savannah and it’s been fun. I’m just doing a jack of all trades on normal. The fights are pretty easy and I’m about level 23-25 with my current character. I enjoy fighting all three ways.
To me, the only silly part of the game is the assassinations. You can only assassinate a humanoid creature that is standing perfectly still. They’re just spread around the game world to give an excuse to use the mechanic. You’ll find hundreds of daggers that serve no purpose other than to sell and to socket gems. It’s easy for me to forget to enchant my dagger when I upgrade the rest of my equipment. You’ll find more and more powerful daggers, but I’ve just kept the measly one I was first given and it still kills everything in one blow.
I really enjoy the crafting and lockpicking systems. It’s fun trying to mix and match gems to get good resistances set up. I’ve got about 25-30% resistance to everything. I can then cast a buff before battle to combat a particular strength of the enemy.
Quests are absolutely a blast in this game. There are many, many quests that are not combat related. Shopping in the bazaars is a lot of fun too. You can really get taken if you’re not careful who you sell to. A mage needs tons of cash to buy all the cards for spellcasting because they’re pretty rare in random treasure.
Hmmm, I don’t see a spoiler tag so I’ll ask this vaguely. There is a guy selling something pricey(50,000) in a tavern in Hatmandor. Has anyone bought this item and is it worth it?
Yes, and no, not really :)
But you have to do something with your money…
I basically treated my dagger as a third amulet. You can equip it along with any sword, bow, or staff, so it’s essentially a piece of armor. If you upgrade it enough, I think you can get up to three sockets for upgrade gems. I used them for attribute bonuses, since the dagger was always equipped.
Of course, you have to max out your upgrade and gem skills to get the best bang for your buck, but that shouldn’t be too difficult to do, as long as you’re not pumping points into useless skills (coughARCHERYcough).
You can actually socket up to 6 items on any fully upgraded equipment, iirc. You have to max armor and weapon upgrade skills along with metallurgy. It’s expensive to do that though.
No points in archery for me, Sammich. I use magic for ranged combat. What I’ve been doing since money is so plentiful later, is just respeccing when I want to do crafting. I’ll max out all the craft skills, upgrade all my junk and then respecc again and go back to my “mage with benefits” package. I’ll do this once every 5 or 6 levels, once I’ve filled my house with junk to dismantle. Once you max crafting it takes reams of materials to fully craft a piece of equipment. Also, not everything can be crafted to the max. There are many items that can only be upgraded to 2-3 slots. Armor has the best chance of going up to 6 slots or so. I’ve never actually counted…
I am playing this game… and wow!!.. Is a great game!.
Is somewhat like a mix of Gothic and Fallout New Vegas :D
I started doing a 1H + shield character with a lot of lockpicking and life regen. But 2H weapons seems very viable, so I am going that route. I have abandoned my horse, has you miss a lot of hunting and herbs going everywhere in horse. I am liking the story way more than in other games. The game is somewhat like 2011 Morrowind. A slow burn, and a lot of meat.
Started playing on the PS3 a few days ago. I am really liking it. The story is OK and there are some interesting (and not all the time stabby stabby) quests.
2 things I hate.
The Inventory (seriously? no sorting? no tabs?) is a chore to use. I find myself just disassembling almost everything just to maintain some kind of order in it or using the personal teleport and just dumping everything into my storage which is SO HUGE now I can’t find a damn thing in there either.
The Quest Log. Just remove the quest after it’s complete and you have claimed the reward. I take every side quest or BB job I come across and my quest log is getting unruly and harder to find active vs dead quests.
I’ll keep playing despite those 2 things though, for now.
A very late ‘+1’. I’d actually strongly recommend it at the giveaway price you can get it at know.
Still waiting for a price drop on two… my gaming budget is seriously overloaded at the mo. Glad people seem to be enjoying it.
Both those things were actually improved in the PC patch I remember… but not that much :) I always thought the inventory style was supposed to be console-friendly, but now I think about it, do you have to scroll around with a stick? Maybe the mouse was the better option there after all.
Hey Zepo1a, on the pc version at least, there is a little circle at the bottom of the quest log, that if checked, hides all completed quests. Look and see if it is there on the PS3 version. It’s not very big and I didn’t notice it for quite some time…
PC version I am playing has tabs in inventory, plus objects are sorted according to type (swords next to each other etc) and quests finished can be hidden in questlog as others noted.
I am in chapter 2 now, damn that New Ashos looks great.
I did all 10 tombs btw and that was pretty hardcore.