If it comes from Bioware, I’ll pass. They haven’t made a game I’ve really liked since BG2.
Hopefully, the new media (screenshots/vids) will be more enticing. The 2 or 3 released so far don’t excite me. It just looks like Bioware’s boring art direction yet again. That worked when they were making Star Wars and D&D games (both licenses with cliche styles), but it does nothing for their original IP. Now that EA owns them, I doubt we’ll see that improve. : /
Even though Mass Effect technically looks impressive, I can’t help but cringe at how bland and typical it looks. I’m picking ME up for the PC, so I’ll find out if it plays as bland as it looks.
star ocean 2 have very little customization?? have you played the game?? from weapon to armor to accessory, crafting, pickpocketing, photo, cooking…
Please not the whole thing. Maybe just a little of the excess…
Scheduled for a September release, now (delayed from a Spring release).
Sacred was one of those impressive Diablo-clones that tried to do something different and offered enough in a seamless (and huge) world to make it stand out as a quality game. Something akin to Divine Divinity (another good RPG). Hopefully, any changes they made to Sacred 2 will only improve on the gameplay as it’s one of only a few RPGs I’m really looking forward to playing this year (MEPC and FO3 being the other two).
Sacred 1’s world was definitely its main appeal for me - for an action-RPG, it was gigantic and far more interesting than the generic screens that typically represent an action-RPG’s “world”. But I also thought it was way too combat intensive, which made it hard to enjoy checking out the cool world, and the actual combat wasn’t that much fun, which is obviously an issue in an action-RPG. Agree that Divine Divinity similarly tried to offer a more fleshed out world (and more RPG elements in general) than most other action-RPG, Diablo clones.
I saw a bunch of stuff for Sacred 2 about a year ago, and I definitely think the designers have some solid ideas for improving the experience. I’m getting a much closer look at the game shortly, so I’ll let people know how it’s looking.
Mordrak, I wouldn’t worry about those old Dragon’s Age screens, etc. - those are so old and superseded at this point that they’re more misleading than indicative of anything you can expect in the game. It’s definitely gone through some “zigs and zags” in design during its lengthy development.
Divine Divinity and Sacred definitely both took stabs at similar territory (Diablo-style action RPG with much more depth of story and world interaction) but Divine Divinity hit that target and Sacred whiffed.
I beat both Star Ocean 2 and 3. Most of that stuff isn’t part of the battle system.
what?? 3/4 of the skills you learn have an major effect on character stats, as well some characters even learn spell/skill from items they can craft… weapon and armor doesn’t affect combat???
Will we ever get a proper sequel to Divine Divinity?
Yeah… Sacred had some cool things going for it, but Divine Divinity was a great RPG in my opinion.
Stepping in to say that FF12’s combat was horrible, goddamn.
Amen brother. It reminded me a lot of combat in MMRPGs. The combat was very similar to combat in games like Shadowrun/Dark Age of Camelot, etc. And there are a lot of people who like that kind of combat I guess. I just didn’t care for it at all. Even though older turn based FF titles might have had more random encounters where you have to keep mashing A to get through a fight until you can get to a boss fight, FF12 still felt like more of a grind to me in terms of combat even though the AI commands I had in place did all the fighting for me. There was just … so … much… fighting. It really felt like the MMO grind to me, brought to me in a single player game without all the social interactions and jokes and other good things that come with an MMO.
That’s interesting. It’s good to hear those early screenshots aren’t representative. Hopefully, Dragon Age is zig zaging its way to being a great game. Heh.
It’s clear they deliberately tried to imitate FFXI MMO combat in FFXII. There are some in-joke references in the game to FFXI systems. That combat wasn’t the worst thing ever, but it was rather boring, and combined with the unimaginative and terribly unbalanced character development grid, and the totally inept story that they completely forgot about 1/3 of the way through the game (I think when they fired the original CD), FFXII adds up to a big high-production-value mess.
Right, that’s why it’s one of the top ten best selling games on PS2, was literally showered with awards from every critic.
I enjoy FF12’s combat system and gameplay, I don’t particular cares much regarding the storyline though it’s not as HORRIBLY DOOMED as you make it out to be.
Claiming that other people liked it isn’t really much of an argument.
50 Million Elvis fans can’t be wrong.
It is when the original claim is that the game is a mess. A lot of people love it. I loved it. It was a very successful game. Now I’ll grant that many people didn’t like the combat. But I thought it had the best combat system of any Final Fantasy game (excluding Tactics).
Your claims about Bioware are well put. All you said was that you didn’t like those games. That’s a fair assessment. It’s the claims that suggest that the game is broken or horrible that seem a bit out of place.