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[toastyToast]

Finally left town so I'm getting into the combat. I thought I'd have a bit of synergy with my Fighter knocking down everything then taking advantage of Bully with him and my Ranger. The problem is my Ranger is faster so that doesn't really working out the way I intended and knockdown doesn't last longer than that one turn. What other debuffs are there that I can make use of?

 

[elithrar]

Finally left town so I'm getting into the combat. I thought I'd have a bit of synergy with my Fighter knocking down everything then taking advantage of Bully with him and my Ranger. The problem is my Ranger is faster so that doesn't really working out the way I intended and knockdown doesn't last longer than that one turn. What other debuffs are there that I can make use of?

Melee characters generally take a little while to both a) get started in a fight and b) mature.

With a few more levels and a good team behind them to buff them with Oath of Desecration, Haste, Fortify and some +resists, you'll find your Ranger will fall well behind in raw damage. After a turn or so to setup, your melee character will be standing in the thick of it landing Attacks of Opportunity and hitting *very* hard.

Rangers (well, someone w/ points in Marksman) are useful because special arrows are *really* useful in this game.

 

[Yoda]

Finally finished my first playthrough. Took me 66 hours total; I did most side-quests and didn't read any guides/tip forums minus asking about death knights.

Overall I was very impressed with the game as a whole. It had more than enough content and there is clearly some replay value as I'm sure I missed plenty of little easter eggs/smaller quests in the world. The combat was very finely tuned early on, but later in the game it showed that they didn't get around to putting the ample amount of effort into tuning to make the game engaging. While this could be due to how many different possibilities there are for character progression, the game does lose a bit of its luster when the fights aren't challenging in the slightest due certain builds simply scaling too damn well. Even if you were to intentionally avoid the "overpowered classes" the later fights make use of "bad-guy closets" a bit too much imo.

Spoiler

This is especially true for the final fight.

Spoiler

Another area that felt weak was the story. I really liked how they got it started with the murder investigation and things branching off from there. Playing detective in the world given how interactive it is was really fun. However once the murder ended it simply got too supernatural for its own good. I liked the concept of the white witch being linked to Leandra but it simply was very enticing because the writing for this part of the story was rather... silly. Nailing writing when it comes to magical stuff is hard because deus ex machina can really kill any kind of dramatic tension that might be building. Also... "the god box"? lol. Companions being more fleshed out and central to the story would really go a long way too.

I think an easy solution to character balance would be across to board nerfs to every single spell/stat weight in the game and add an extra character slot to make up for it. This would force more tactical play as opposed to being able to drop meteor shower a pack of mobs with your melee toons ontop and them take no damage due to that man-at-arms level 5 ability which gives them insane resists.

Despite those shortcomings I enjoyed literally everything else solid 9/10 game.

 

[Yoda]

It got a good review at PCGamer.

But then when you see this:

Makes you shake your head in disappointment. Also the Witcher 2 got a 89 still lower than DA2.

I still can't believe DA:2 got that score... I don't buy the publishers buy reviews conspiracy nonsense but that one really makes you wonder...

 

[Arulan]

A fixed seed for the loot would be nice but for the most part doesn't this only affect those who attempt to cheat the system via reloading? There are some case exceptions such as dying in a fight and having to reload.

I think a semi-random loot system works best in the majority of cases. You can still have the advantages of certain hand-placed items while keeping the rest of it random. The random loot should still be constrained within specific parameters (loot tables) however. For example some containers have a higher chance of better loot, and the type of loot found should make some sense within context of the location and the container it was found in. Some containers could always contain a subset of items such as fruits for certain barrels or a specific quality level for a rare chest while allocating any additional loot as random.

I'm still relatively early in my playthrough but so far I do not dislike the random loot.

 

[Tommyhawk]

Two more reviews:

PCGamesN gave the game a 9/10 and Gamestar (a German print magazine) gave the game a 87.

I played this game for about 48h (I've completed two big maps so far and still have more than enough to do in the Luculla Forest) and I've never felt bored. There is so much cool stuff to explore and the quests aren't just the typical "fetch X amount of something / kill X creatures" but they always tell interesting stories.
It's really heart warming to see that the game gets universal praise from both the players and the press.

 

[BPoole]

I am hooked on this. Played from 10pm to 6am. I haven't done that since Mass Effect 2. I normally can only play a game for an hour or so before taking a break.

 

[Shake Appeal]

I'm going away for the weekend, and all I can think about is Divinity. And I'm only about 17 hours in.

 

[TheContact]

In the second map regarding Frederick

Spoiler

I stumbled upon him in a ditch after his Imp pushed him and left him to die. He said he needed a blood stone to heal him and all mine were at the homestead. I went and did another quest and then went to homestead to grab a blood stone. I went to Frederick but he was dead. I still have the quest but it doesn't mention anything about him dying. Is there a way to complete it?

 

[Zakalwe]

In the second map regarding Frederick

Spoiler

I stumbled upon him in a ditch after his Imp pushed him and left him to die. He said he needed a blood stone to heal him and all mine were at the homestead. I went and did another quest and then went to homestead to grab a blood stone. I went to Frederick but he was dead. I still have the quest but it doesn't mention anything about him dying. Is there a way to complete it?

You can still

Spoiler

find his imp

...

 

[Chaos17]

Just in case there is someone else hre who finds the randomized loot one glaring flaw of this game, I'd like to point that I just started a feedback thread about it on the Larian forum (mmh, I hope it sin't against the rule to point it).
I could have probably argued my point a bit better, but right now I still feel sleepy, I'm going to work in minutes and I guess I covered the basics of what my argument for hand-placed loot, anyway.

IF it's done like in Diablo 3 : class based and no pissibility to refresh then there is no problem but it's not the case in Divinity. Larian need to change this.

 

[erragal]

Just in case there is someone else hre who finds the randomized loot one glaring flaw of this game, I'd like to point that I just started a feedback thread about it on the Larian forum (mmh, I hope it sin't against the rulers to point it).
I could have probably argued my point a bit better, but right now I still feel sleepy, I'm going to work in minutes and I guess I covered the basics of what my argument for hand-placed loot, anyway.

Random loot is not a mistake. It's an intentional design decision that forces adaptability.

It forced people out of their comfort zone. There are fixed items, crafted items, and the ability to boost items.

You want an entirely fixed experience that allows you to know every detail of your journey before you complete it.

It would destroy the game. It would turn it into yet another ocd planners paradise with no incentive for tactical variability.

Don't worry I'll be over to the larian forums where I can be much more blunt later.

 

[LurkerPrime]

If there were no randomized loot, then there'd be a lot more situations where very specific builds are favoured; Instead of, "every build works" it would suddenly become "go to X with Y for Z." Everyone would suddenly know the best weapons in the game, and they won't be crafted weapons (because they can never be crafted weapons). This would cause a domino effect that would create favoured and unfavoured builds, party compositions, and strategies. The game would ultimately become more linear, because a specific progression of events (putting you near item Z) would always be favoured over strategies that didn't.

While random loot has its flaws, I think pre-defined loot would be worse - a major regression in Divinity: Original Sin's very open and freeing design.

Don't listen to TucoBenedictoPacifico's madness, Larian. (Even though I doubt he can beat them in rock, paper, scissors.)

 

[Linearskillz]

In my mind the only flaw with the current implementation of random loot is that you can save scum to get what you want. It should use a fixed seed so you always get the same result. If min-maxing is all you care about then I can see how it might suck to you but the game offers so many tactical options that the idea that you're at a disadvantage because don't have the same gear and skills as everyone else is wrong.

I'm on my second play through right now and I'm very much enjoying the randomization that makes this experience different than the last.

 

[Sentenza]

Random loot is not a mistake. It's an intentional design decision

Of course it is, and it's an incredibly shitty one.

Don't listen to TucoBenedictoPacifico's madness, Larian. (Even though I doubt he can beat them in rock, paper, scissors.)

I hate all you guys and your terrible taste for game mechanics.

 

[Sentenza]

EDIT .double.

 

[LurkerPrime]

In my mind the only flaw with the current implementation of random loot is that you can save scum to get what you want. It should use a fixed seed so you always get the same result. If min-maxing is all you care about then I can see how it might suck to you but the game offers so many tactical options that the idea that you're at a disadvantage because don't have the same gear and skills as everyone else is wrong.

I'm on my second play through right now and I'm very much enjoying the randomization that makes this experience different than last.

The problem with this mindset is that it compromises all aspects of the game if you choose to truly enforce it. Save scumming would still exist in quick saves, which would be solved by allowing only autosaves, which would necessitate a more linear, fixed progression, which would demand a less open world, and online DRM & account-based game management would help minimize the last vestiges of cheating, both online and offline. Essentially, this line of thinking would turn DOS into an Ubisoft open world game.

It's simply a bad path to take. Cheating of any kind is there for those that choose to use it, designing the game specifically to avoid deliberate cheating is a fool's errand that diminishes (and compromises) the game's design to begin with.

An important thing to keep in mind is that players deciding to cheat are not diminishing your game or your accomplishments in said game - there may even be a time when you decide to do it for one reason or another. I say we live and let live.

I hate all you guys and your terrible taste for game mechanics.

I don't hate the janken minigame, so you're not entirely wrong.

 

[erragal]

Of course it is, and it's an incredibly shitty one.


I hate all you guys and your terrible taste for game mechanics.

Good argument. Succinct and informs me of your comprehension level fully. It's always nice when fools reveal themselves with buffoonery to take the attention off their poorly reasoned, self-serving positions.

 

[Sentenza]

Good argument. Succinct and informs me of your comprehension level fully. It's always nice when fools reveal themselves with buffoonery to take the attention off their poorly reasoned, self-serving positions.

Well, I was actually joking.
Beside... Aren't you already being annoying enough with your assuming, patronizing tone over the Larian forum? i already answered you there just few seconds ago.

 

[Dario ff]

Man, there's quite a lot of well-done programming in this game that constantly impresses me:

- Very seamless terrain streaming: The performance is still being optimized, but I've never seen terrain popping in except for the northern part of Cyseal. If there's multiple LOD levels I can't really tell, all I've seen so far is just it loading the higher quality textures.

- Pathfinding: Can walk from one edge of the map to the other while avoiding already-detected traps and hazards without ever getting stuck in a wall so far. This is kinda expected since the older games had to implement quite a few hacky workarounds to pathfinding AI so the performance was good in older systems, but I'm still really surprised at how good it works here. Navigating an area like Black Cove completely unharmed after the whole place was secured is just really impressive to me.

- I have no idea how huge these save-files must be, because they save literally everything. I haven't been able to break the game at all yet by reloading while doing anything, and all the corpses and items scattered across the world are all still in their spots. I heard some people broke NPCs scripting, but I've tried saving/reloading during lots of scripted sequences and I couldn't get them to break either. It puts it into perspective quite a bit when lots of AAA games lately are afraid of giving you anything else than Autosaves or checkpoint-based systems.

- A vector-based combat system with AI that works well with it and with terrain as complex as this is no small feat.

These aren't really anything ground-breaking, but the polish and attention to detail on these aspects help the game shine a lot.

TL;DR; I'm surprised a cRPG actually works as intended for more than 90% of the time.

Actually, what I'd like to argue for is randomization but with the random key fixed at game creation time. And maybe a more tuned loot engine / tables in order to better fit a given party's needs.

I argued for this a while back, but I mostly want the fixed key not because of the save scumming (I've never bothered with that so far when it comes to loot), but rather the accidents that happen sometimes. I had found a really sweet legendary armor in a chest once, but it seems a trap was triggered by someone else and it killed my party. That's fine and all, but once I tried again after disarming it I only got a blue from that chest.

 

[Zakalwe]

Man, there's quite a lot of well-done programming in this game that constantly impresses me:

- Very seamless terrain streaming: The performance is still being optimized, but I've never seen terrain popping in except for the northern part of Cyseal. If there's multiple LOD levels I can't really tell, all I've seen so far is just it loading the higher quality textures.

- Pathfinding: Can walk from one edge of the map to the other while avoiding already-detected traps and hazards without ever getting stuck in a wall so far. This is kinda expected since the older games had to implement quite a few hacky workarounds to pathfinding AI so the performance was good in older systems, but I'm still really surprised at how good it works here. Navigating an area like Black Cove completely unharmed after the whole place was secured is just really impressive to me.

- I have no idea how huge these save-files must be, because they save literally everything. I haven't been able to break the game at all yet by reloading while doing anything, and all the corpses and items scattered across the world are all still in their spots. I heard some people broke NPCs scripting, but I've tried saving/reloading during lots of scripted sequences and I couldn't get them to break either. It puts it into perspective quite a bit when lots of AAA games lately are afraid of giving you anything else than Autosaves or checkpoint-based systems.

- A vector-based combat system with AI that works well with it and with terrain as complex as this is no small feat.

These aren't really anything ground-breaking, but the polish and attention to detail on these aspects help the game shine a lot.

TL;DR; I'm surprised a cRPG actually works as intended for more than 90% of the time.

Yep. I was chatting with a friend on steam last night who was telling me he's being put off by the game because it's too trough around the edges. I know it could use a few QoL updates here and there, but I really feel like we were playing different games.

I expected this game to be janky. For the most part it's the opposite.

 

[duckroll]

Oh man. I just completed the Kitty Love and Love at the Lighthouse quests. Sooooo good. What I'm really impressed by is how the quests all intersect when it makes sense to, and it really builds a more interesting scenario. The entire Black Cove segment feels like a concluding point to a huge chunk of optional sidequests for the region and it's really satisfying seeing how several subplots all come together - the sunken ship, the rumors about pirates, the orc attacks, etc. But the cherry on top of it all has to be the pirate captain's name.

Spoiler

Pontius Pirate? Really? REALLY? This is totally an Eastern-European game. Lol. /dead

 

[Zakalwe]

Oh man. I just completed the Kitty Love and Love at the Lighthouse quests. Sooooo good. What I'm really impressed by is how the quests all intersect when it makes sense to, and it really builds a more interesting scenario. The entire Black Cove segment feels like a concluding point to a huge chunk of optional sidequests for the region and it's really satisfying seeing how several subplots all come together - the sunken ship, the rumors about pirates, the orc attacks, etc. But the cherry on top of it all has to be the pirate captain's name.

Spoiler

Pontius Pirate? Really? REALLY? This is totally an Eastern-European game. Lol. /dead

People were talking like it was an effort to get you to play. Was that because you don't usually enjoy these types of games?

I only ask because I have a few friends who are enjoying it despite not being fans of the genre. It seems to be crossing over well, just curious which parts are the drawing force specifically.

 

[Zukuu]

Onward to the Larian forum for discussion!
(I'm an OG there xD. Created my account in 2010)

 

[mkenyon]

Of course it is, and it's an incredibly shitty one.

I hate all you guys and your terrible taste for game mechanics.

I think I've found the first thing I disagree with you about here.

Randomized loot is pretty perfect for this game.

From what I've experienced so far, a lot of the game feels like an exercise in spontaneous planning and flexible strategy. It gives an even more unique feel to a play through which I think will increase replay value as well.

 

[Torraz]

Any reason to not kill friendly NPCs for extra EXP? Killing some NPCs in the top of the inn resulted in some skill books and no one else seems to mind.

Oh and talking to a friendly NPC while taking on the rest results them in not joining combat (at the cost of one of your units also not being available for use)

 

[Sentenza]

I think I've found the first thing I disagree with you about here.

Randomized loot is pretty perfect for this game.

From what I've experienced so far, a lot of the game feels like an exercise in spontaneous planning and flexible strategy. It gives an even more unique feel to a play through which I think will increase replay value as well.

Eh, whaat can I say? I really, really don't like compulsive rewarding at every step in RPGs.
I like when special items are unique, carefully dosed in numbers, deliberately placed, designed to stand out and properly balanced.
Once again, stuff like Baldur's Gate II comes to mind.

 

[duckroll]

My input on the itemization in the game is that it is the one real flaw I feel the game has in what is otherwise a top-tier crafted CRPG. It's not a major flaw because it doesn't really wreck the game, and certain key items are still placed in a designed way. It does disappoint me that looting containers and chests is basically a randomized affair. I don't mind the randomized drops and identification of equipment that much at all, because there's still a sense of satisfaction knowing that when you beat certain major enemies you will always get a fixed number of rare items.

What I dislike is that by randomizing container contents, it takes a little away from the identity of an area. Designed content can give a good sense of who was in a place, and what they would generally store in a container. To be fair to the game, they still do quite a bit of that, and it's not totally random, but here and there, I come across moments where I feel the randomization made the design a little lazier than it would otherwise be. I can understand why they did it, because it's a huge game and the choice is between allocating extra manpower to deliberately designing and placing stuff in specific containers all over the game to make sure they're worth looting, or randomizing it because otherwise having tons of empty containers all over the game would be stupid. Still, in a perfect scenario, I think not randomizing container contents would make it a stronger game.

 

[epmode]

It's pretty much guaranteed that someone will put out a complete loot restructure mod and I'm looking forward to trying it out but I'd rather Larian did it.

Speaking of loot, I miss the unique items from the Infinity Engine games. Item descriptions and unique abilities could be a good fit in Original Sin as well.

 

[Finn of Ooo]

I'll leave my take on random loot, I don't mind it but I like having hand placed items in the world. I don't mind variety but I like beig able to plan my character somewhat cause min maxing is fun to me.

 

[Zukuu]

I'll leave my take on random loot, I don't mind it but I like having hand placed items in the world. I don't mind variety but I like beig able to plan my character somewhat cause min maxing is fun to me.

Just picture Dark Souls with random loot. :3

 

[Noaloha]

 

[Gurrry]

Ive been playing this game but I get lost quite often. Im supposed to

Spoiler

bring items to the talking dog so that I can find out who killed Jake

but I dont understand what im supposed to be taking from these 4 suspects, not to mention, I dont even know where some of them are.

I do like that its not holding my hand, but jesus it gets tiring walking around the same places over and over.

 

[epmode]

It's not the same

Ive been playing this game but I get lost quite often. Im supposed to

Spoiler

bring items to the talking dog so that I can find out who killed Jake

but I dont understand what im supposed to be taking from these 4 suspects, not to mention, I dont even know where some of them are.

Spoiler

Look for smelly stuff. I believe each item can be found where the characters live.

Also, I'm pretty sure there's another way to solve that quest. For people without

Spoiler

Pet Pal

.

 

[kinaesthete]

Not sure about random loot in this game yet. On one hand, I've fucking HATED like all games that use it as a core mechanic (the Diablos, Borderlands, etc) since it watered down the already banal combat in those games into some kind of actiony calculator simulator where you can rarely make interesting tactical decisions because every part of your character and the enemies are just masses of numbers that noone could be expected to parse in real time. That and the constant dripfeed of tiny little stat upgrades felt like exercises in tedium and certainly not "'rewarding" to me in any case. Divinity OS seems like it could be my first exception to that rule because the combat is turn-based and intricate enough to where damage output and Higher Numbers are very low in the order of importance, far below positioning, use of elements, status effects, etc... On the other hand, I can't say that I've found any "interesting" loot that would significantly change the way I approach encounters yet, but I'm playing on Normal and haven't left the Cyseal hub area yet so...

Apart from the loot I'm loving the shit out of this game and it kind of came out of nowhere for me, I hadn't played a turn-based party cRPG since NWN like 10 years ago so I dunno if this game is par for the course in terms of how deep the systems are, but I'm blown away regardless of how novel it is.

 

[Chaos17]

Any reason to not kill friendly NPCs for extra EXP? Killing some NPCs in the top of the inn resulted in some skill books and no one else seems to mind.

Oh and talking to a friendly NPC while taking on the rest results them in not joining combat (at the cost of one of your units also not being available for use)

If you want to out lvl the last boss, then go ahead
I only killed mobs and not all of them (thank god) and I ended up one lvl higher than the last boss.
That was not epic...

 

[LurkerPrime]

Ive been playing this game but I get lost quite often. Im supposed to

Spoiler

bring items to the talking dog so that I can find out who killed Jake

but I dont understand what im supposed to be taking from these 4 suspects, not to mention, I dont even know where some of them are.

I do like that its not holding my hand, but jesus it gets tiring walking around the same places over and over.

That's rather circumstantial

Spoiler

, evidence from a dog (note: you're actually animal-talking). You should seek out more concrete evidence. Who do you think did it at this stage, and how would you go about proving it?

The crime scene holds great clues, you should visit it if you haven't. (It's in the inn FYI).

 

[Sentenza]

Ive been playing this game but I get lost quite often. Im supposed to

Spoiler

bring items to the talking dog so that I can find out who killed Jake

but I dont understand what im supposed to be taking from these 4 suspects, not to mention, I dont even know where some of them are.

I do like that its not holding my hand, but jesus it gets tiring walking around the same places over and over.

Smelly items. It's not even particularly oscure. It's stated quite clearly.
Now, it's not always easy to find them but that's pretty much the point.

 

[Torraz]

If you want to out lvl the last boss, then go ahead
I only killed mobs and not all of them (thank god) and I ended up one lvl higher than the last boss.
That was not epic...

Thank you for the warning!

Only considered it due to some people posting here being underlevelled and now know how/where to proceed.

 

[Gurrry]

Ok Ill go check out everything again. I feel like I know who it is, but he wasnt one of the 4 suggested suspects... (im thinking its the most obvious person).

Also - I have yet to really come across any substantial gear for my party. I havent seen anyone who sells weapons or spells, or a blacksmith for that matter. Am I just blind? Or do I need to get out of this first town first?

 

[LurkerPrime]

Ok Ill go check out everything again. I feel like I know who it is, but he wasnt one of the 4 suggested suspects... (im thinking its the most obvious person).

Also - I have yet to really come across any substantial gear for my party. I havent seen anyone who sells weapons or spells, or a blacksmith for that matter. Am I just blind? Or do I need to get out of this first town first?

You're just blind, unfortunately.

The legion's storeroom has someone selling gear, Esmerelda's shop sells gear, a handful of characters in town sell skillbooks and some gear, and of course the town market square has a bunch of shopkeeps as well.

 

[duckroll]

You're just blind, unfortunately.

He may be, but I've been there. I went all over town looking for a shovel everywhere, and no one sold one. But there was one right in the graveyard. Every since then, I've trained myself to pay more attention to the environment in general, rather than thinking that certain things can only be attained in certain ways. Lol.

 

[Gurrry]

You're just blind, unfortunately.

The legion's storeroom has someone selling gear, Esmerelda's shop sells gear, a handful of characters in town sell skillbooks and some gear, and of course the town market square has a bunch of shopkeeps as well.

Hahaha apparently I am. I didnt realize you could buy things from all the people in the town market. Wow.

I have alot to learn about this game. Trying to tackle this and SC2 is like taking on a whole semester at college.. lol

 

[Cyrano]

Actually, what I'd like to argue for is randomization but with the random key fixed at game creation time. And maybe a more tuned loot engine / tables in order to better fit a given party's needs.

The reason I like having randomness is because I think it makes the incredibly versatile battle system of the game shine even more. Since you have to more or less deal with what you are given, everyone will find some unique ways of accomplishing their goals, instead of a "perfect" gameplan developing after some time (like e.g. for the IE games).

The issue still remains that if you're going to have a random loot system, you can't have a random battle system, and if you're going to have a random battle system, you can't have a random loot system. The two really play against one another. Save scumming makes it worse because I've won battles simply because the randomness fell in my favor at a crucial time. I hate that feeling. I didn't earn it, I just got lucky. (I always restart battles from the beginning if I lose though; I'm not even sure it's possible to save scumm in the middle of a battle?)

Still, as a person who loves the Souls series, I find it really hard to defend randomness instead of... you know, design. As a person who likes watching speedruns, RNG is frustrating.

 

[LurkerPrime]

He may be, but I've been there. I went all over town looking for a shovel everywhere, and no one sold one. But there was one right in the graveyard. Every since then, I've trained myself to pay more attention to the environment in general, rather than thinking that certain things can only be attained in certain ways. Lol.

Hahaha apparently I am. I didnt realize you could buy things from all the people in the town market. Wow.

I have alot to learn about this game. Trying to tackle this and SC2 is like taking on a whole semester at college.. lol

We've all been there. It took me a good hour or two to even realise you could trade with anyone, so I'm sure we all have "it was in front of us the whole time" stories by now. Such is the nature of this crazy game.

The issue still remains that if you're going to have a random loot system, you can't have a random battle system, and if you're going to have a random battle system, you can't have a random loot system. The two really play against one another. Save scumming makes it worse because I've won battles simply because the randomness fell in my favor at a crucial time. I hate that feeling. I didn't earn it, I just got lucky. (I always restart battles from the beginning if I lose though; I'm not even sure it's possible to save scumm in the middle of a battle?)

Still, as a person who loves the Souls series, I find it really hard to defend randomness instead of... you know, design. As a person who likes watching speedruns, RNG is frustrating.

The game's battles are set, but how you engage them is not. Simply fighting them from a different angle can completely change the way the battle plays out. And tactics vary heavily depending on party composition.

This ain't no Fire Emblem, where battles can be almost puzzle-like in their design.

Strategy games like XCOM bank very heavily on randomness and chance, and are good games because of it. It means players always need to expect the unexpected and have back-up plans in case the inevitable happens. Basically, randomness and good design can coexist.

 

[Sentenza]

What really surprise me, every time the itemization topic is argued, are people who try to claim that randomness does incentives "replayability", when in my personal experience it's always been the opposite.
When I think an RPG is good enough to deserve a second playthorugh, the last thing I want is the "thrill" to end up with an entirely different itemization and having to improvise from there, honestly.
In fact, on the opposite, I love to plan ahead things like "I'm going to build a party where the warrior uses weapon X and the cleric weapon Y" (i.e. BGII/ToEE) or "I'm going with a dex build based on that weapon and that armour" (i.e. Dark Souls), maybe even having it as an influence on the order I will address content.

Games like TES or Borderlands, on the other hand... I always feel like I got nothing, as "special items" are not special at all and they feel to me just like a foggy blob of random crap that can happen in your hands anywhere, at any time.

 

[Cyrano]

The game's battles are set, but how you engage them is not. Simply fighting them from a different angle can completely change the way the battle plays out. And tactics vary heavily depending on party composition.

This ain't no Fire Emblem, where battles can be almost puzzle-like in their design.

If an enemy swings at me, and one of those three is a critical instead of a normal hit, that can kill me, forcing a restart, no matter what I do. I can't control that. I can't prevent criticals. Similarly, if I get a critical where I normally would have not won otherwise, it feels even more like luck. I'm not denying that there are tactics, I'm stating that I hate things that no amount of tactics can account for (and there's a lot more too, particularly regarding status effects). Dark Souls does this really smartly, where there are thresholds rather than something simply being more or less likely. I'm aware there are talents that can completely mitigate these, but they are much later in the game. I don't like playing through 2/3s of a game before I finally have some control against the random elements of a game.

D&D dice rolling is just an awful, awful way to design a game (it's bad in D&D too, and unless you have a good DM who understands this, encounters will be soulless and miserable).

Also, sneaking is too good in this game, but it's funny enough that I don't care I think. Peripheral vision, how does it work?

 

[Gurrry]

What do the "!" above your party member's head indicate?

 

[Dario ff]

What do the "!" above your party member's head indicate?

That you can talk to them and they have something important to tell you, or just some banter.

 

[Noaloha]

What really surprise me, every time the itemization topic is argued, are people who try to claim that randomness does incentives "replayability", when in my personal experience it's always been the opposite.
When I think an RPG is good enough to deserve a second playthorugh, the last thing I want is the "thrill" to end up with an entirely different itemization and having to improvise from there, honestly.

Okay, so the bolded there, that's your preference, but can we assume that you at least accept equal validity in the opposite preference? And, if so, is it so bad that this one cRPG caters to their preference rather your own?