It's a mix of both - yes, the text is written in an older, more passive style, however that line "So why there's so much hate in you?" is grammatically incorrect any way you look at it. There are a lot of grammatical mistakes like that, which I think Schopenhauer might have been referring to.
Personally, the style and errors don't bother me at all - just the constant repetition.
It's a mix of both - yes, the text is written in an older, more passive style, however that line "So why there's so much hate in you?" is grammatically incorrect any way you look at it. There are a lot of grammatical mistakes like that, which I think Schopenhauer might have been referring to.
Personally, the style and errors don't bother me at all - just the constant repetition.
A lot of old English is pretty weird and has an impersonal manner of reference, like referring to people as things: That was a good king! - is a grammatically correct sentence in old English.
The low gear durability in this game on hard is crazy. Bring 3 swords and you'll break them all before you're halfway through a level. Have fun sloooowly walking back to the map edge to get back to town.
For anyone looking to stomp through it for the story to get their money's worth, Cheat Engine can be used to increase your stats way above the cap. Adjust individual stat values, not your points pool, and lower the stat to refresh the value displayed. You can disregard gear and punch everything to death. Sadly, even 10000 speed will only get you walking at about double speed and you still can't catch up to melee fleeing enemies, lol.
The writing does have some errors and I find the writing style overly verbose, but it's an interesting story so far.
The low gear durability in this game on hard is crazy. Bring 3 swords and you'll break them all before you're halfway through a level. Have fun sloooowly walking back to the map edge to get back to town.
For anyone looking to stomp through it for the story to get their money's worth, Cheat Engine can be used to increase your stats way above the cap. Adjust individual stat values, not your points pool, and lower the stat to refresh the value displayed. You can disregard gear and punch everything to death. Sadly, even 10000 speed will only get you walking at about double speed and you still can't catch up to melee fleeing enemies, lol.
The writing does have some errors and I find the writing style overly verbose, but it's an interesting story so far.
You can't change it after character creation, it's just a choice when you start a new game. The durability values are probably the same, but everything survives twice as long since the enemies have double HP, therefore more wear and tear due to longer fights.
You can't change it after character creation, it's just a choice when you start a new game. The durability values are probably the same, but everything survives twice as long since the enemies have double HP, therefore more wear and tear due to longer fights.
Oh, I just cheated up my stats to the natural caps to try it out. Your gear still wears out really quickly. I imagine a real Hard run would rely on a whole lot of abusing game mechanics, save scumming, luring enemies near the map borders and running back to town after every few kills.
I was going to wait and see if it drops on Steam this sale any lower, but I doubt it. So I may grab the bundle from Bundlestars. Do they give you keys for each individual game or is just one key like with Humble? I already have some of the games in the bundle, so giving them away would be nice.
Gonna fire this game up soon, really excited to dive in. I have been in a mood for an old school RPG, so it's either this or a Spiderweb game this weekend.
I was going to wait and see if it drops on Steam this sale any lower, but I doubt it. So I may grab the bundle from Bundlestars. Do they give you keys for each individual game or is just one key like with Humble? I already have some of the games in the bundle, so giving them away would be nice.
Gonna fire this game up soon, really excited to dive in. I have been in a mood for an old school RPG, so it's either this or a Spiderweb game this weekend.
It's a mix of both - yes, the text is written in an older, more passive style, however that line "So why there's so much hate in you?" is grammatically incorrect any way you look at it. There are a lot of grammatical mistakes like that, which I think Schopenhauer might have been referring to.
Personally, the style and errors don't bother me at all - just the constant repetition.
Yes, that was more or less my point. I understand that they were going for a medieval flavor with the text, but I was unwilling at the time to use that fact as a crutch to help rationalize the translated scripts many shortcomings.
That said it has been almost two years since I played the game. I was really looking forward to it when it was initially released, maybe I should give it another shot.
Started the game last night after snagging it and a few other bundles from Bundle Stars. So far I am digging it but have only played an hour or so. I started in easy as a thief, since I hear the game can be brutal going by this thread. I just hope it isn't too easy as I hate easy modes in games.
Killed the bats no problem right away and gained a couple levels. Got my first companion and will dive back in tonight.
I've got about 4-5 hours into the game now, slowly making my way around the areas in Hillsbrandt, and I just got my first companion. I've read people getting companions earlier, and I could've sworn I've talked to everyone, but I never got the option to hire or ask anyone to join my team.
I just
got the landschect guy from the village the Orcs raised, after I took down Julian and rescued Natalia. He kicks ass, though it weirds me out it'll cost 500 gp to keep him around after every 100 slain enemies (according to him, anyways)
. I'm quite enjoying the game, but those first few levels are kind of brutal until you start getting some better gear, money, and access to spells. It seems like Ranged/Spells > Melee so far, as you can keep your distance and kite enemies.
I've got about 4-5 hours into the game now, slowly making my way around the areas in Hillsbrandt, and I just got my first companion. I've read people getting companions earlier, and I could've sworn I've talked to everyone, but I never got the option to hire or ask anyone to join my team.
I just
got the landschect guy from the village the Orcs raised, after I took down Julian and rescued Natalia. He kicks ass, though it weirds me out it'll cost 500 gp to keep him around after every 100 slain enemies (according to him, anyways)
. I'm quite enjoying the game, but those first few levels are kind of brutal until you start getting some better gear, money, and access to spells. It seems like Ranged/Spells > Melee so far, as you can keep your distance and kite enemies.
If you want a spoiler where to find another 2 companions:
Speak to the dog in the basement of the sheriff house in the first city
In the same city, upper right corner outside the city walls, there is a d'arvias (quest NPC). Talk to him, get his quest, then return to the brotherhood building in the city where someone will talk to you
The Paladin seems to be at a huge disadvantage. The Stamina loss when you get hit is absurd and poison makes zero sense. The only way I can manage is to abuse of the Seal mechanic which makes me a half-assed caster.
The Paladin seems to be at a huge disadvantage. The Stamina loss when you get hit is absurd and poison makes zero sense. The only way I can manage is to abuse of the Seal mechanic which makes me a half-assed caster.
Magic caster seems to be the best choice tbh, as you wont get any magic caster as companion (soon), which puts you at an advantage for all those "immune to physical damage" enemies. Someone 1-2 pages ago was very satisfied with his Paladin Strength build, but I am rocking a rogue and I am pretty glad I have ranged combat via my bow for kiting.
It shows off where all the loot is, some details on what to do, where keys are, etc. It's been immensely helpful as I was clearing through Act 1.
Speaking of which, I think I'm finally closing on the end of Act 1 (after about 20 hours of gameplay). I just
accused the Judge of being a heretic, and now he's gone from his usual place. I spent the morning before going to work asking NPCs in Hillbrandt where he went off to. I remember seeing his name on the Dragon Rock map from the link above, so I guess he went off to the ritual site.
I like the game, and have been addicted to its old school PC RPG goodness, but there are several things that bug me about the gameplay (playing as a melee Paladin by the way):
1. Chalk me up as a stamina complainer - I never really like stamina systems in any game. Having to chug potions for health and mana I can deal with, but having to chug stamina potions to restore an unnecessary stamina system is ridiculous. Especially when getting ganged up on can quickly deplete your stamina, meaning your attack and defense gets lowered, which means you die even quicker unless you're hammering on your stamina potion hotbutton. I'm dealing with it the best way I can, but I don't really like it.
2. While I find a lot of the descriptions of your stats and skills good when you mouse over them, there could've been a bit more detail to make certain things more transparent. For example, knowing how many skill points you have to dump into a skill to get to the next level. It starts off simple - one point per level, but then it goes up to 2 points per level at (if I recall) skill level 5, then at some certain point it goes up to 3 points, and then 4. Nothing in the skill descriptions warns you about this, so I got caught in my pre-level planning not knowing how many levels and skill points I'll actually need to get to the next milestone in a skill. Unless I'm missing a description somewhere in the game, of course. Also, I would've appreciated if weapons also had a description saying if it was one handed or two handed - though you can quickly tell certain weapons are two handed if it actually says it's two handed (i.e. two handed sword).
3. I wanted to make a pure melee paladin, but quickly found out you absolutely need some kind of magic skill, specifically Magic of Miracles - Levitate. I came across several environmental effects that just absolutely destroyed me if I tried to make a run across them, and even if I did make it across I was generally greeted with low HP and Stamina and a bunch of monsters. On top of this, most of the AoE damage you can do come from spells or symbols. So I throw myself into the fray having to splash damage symbol magic then melee enemies down. This game is heavily biased towards magic over melee. Enemies with magic are very dangerous, and I've been focusing on getting my resistances up.
4. While I do like how Perception highlights clickables in blue, and traps in red, would've it killed the developers to allow ALT to also just highlight those clickables ala Baldur's Gate? I like how it highlights names and items (though I play with item names enabled), but having to pixel hunt for caches and clickables is driving me insane. Baldur's Gate did it right but just highlighting EVERYthing and not wasting my time.
5. I'm a player who enjoys manually doing everything myself, so I don't particularly like the AI party system in this game. On top of that, you can't even equip them with items. All of this awesome excess equipment I've been finding could've been equipped on them, but nope, I gotta sell it all because I can't equip my party members. At least they had the foresight to add in the AI party commands, but even they don't work 100%. I have to hammer on the Charge! command to get my party to stop attacking something and follow me. When I tell them to Stay Here, they wander around in a small area rather than staying put, which has on occasion drawn enemies towards them and they have wandered into environmental damage pools (I have since learned to keep them away from those). There are times when I just want to click on them individually and set them somewhere to ambush enemies (like I could in the Infinity Engine games) but can't and it's frustrating to me. On top of this, my melee party members keep getting in the way of my clicking and I frequently accidentally talk to them mid-combat which breaks up the flow of combat.
6. Am I missing a light source in dungeons? There's this really dark "fog of war" blackness that keeps me from attacking enemies on the screen in dungeons until they're right in my character's light source. I know there are enemies off in the distance because their names show up when I hold down alt, but I can't attack them until I get close. I guess what I'm saying is that the dungeons are a bit too dark for my own taste, but I can see what they were going with it.
I kind of rambled there, but hey, whatever, had to get that off my chest. I am enjoying the game, even if it can get frustrating, and I'm glad it was brought up here, otherwise I would never have even heard of it.
I kind of rambled there, but hey, whatever, had to get that off my chest. I am enjoying the game, even if it can get frustrating, and I'm glad it was brought up here, otherwise I would never have even heard of it.
Yep, all fair criticisms. It has too many issues to be among the better games in the genre, but its still very much worthwhile. I definitely wish it was more balanced/better polished, though.
Boy my patience is starting to wear thin on this game. Here's some reasons why:
1. I've had several game crashes from out of nowhere.
2. Red boxes showing up on my hot bar and on the ground that require a game restart
3. Sometimes the mouse cursor won't align properly on my icons, or on buttons that scroll through menus which requires a game restart.
4. I've encountered an egregious bug dealing with my Paladin's Enemy Estimation skill, which I had been relying on a lot (even got up to skill level 12). I used on an enemy during combat precisely when Olfghard came up to get his payment for 100 kills, and after the conversation, it completely stopped working. I can place it on my hotbar and light it up for activation but right clicking to actually use the skill does nothing. I can use any other spell or symbol on my hotbar and use them, but not my Enemy Estimation. I've tried game restarts, setting it to different parts of the hotbar, trying to activate it right from the skillbook, all leading to failure. That's a lot of points and planning down the drain for a skill I think is vital to my survival, and it pisses me the fuck off to no end.
5. Act 2 is balls hard. I thought Act 1 was a good challenge, but then Act 2's like "NOPE! HERE'S SOME GOD DAMN UNDEAD MONKS, EVER INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT GHOSTS, PHANTOMS, FEARS, AND OH HEY GOOD LUCK AGAINST FAE'DARLION!!! AAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAH!" I mean, holy shit that fight was insane. It took me several tries, and a lot of trickery just to beat that guy and his army of Fear spirits. So frustrating. I had to unleash six genies and spam the healing shrine for my winning bout while casting the strongest symbols I had just to get out of it alive.
Boy my patience is starting to wear thin on this game. Here's some reasons why:
1. I've had several game crashes from out of nowhere.
2. Red boxes showing up on my hot bar and on the ground that require a game restart
3. Sometimes the mouse cursor won't align properly on my icons, or on buttons that scroll through menus which requires a game restart.
4. I've encountered an egregious bug dealing with my Paladin's Enemy Estimation skill, which I had been relying on a lot (even got up to skill level 12). I used on an enemy during combat precisely when Olfghard came up to get his payment for 100 kills, and after the conversation, it completely stopped working. I can place it on my hotbar and light it up for activation but right clicking to actually use the skill does nothing. I can use any other spell or symbol on my hotbar and use them, but not my Enemy Estimation. I've tried game restarts, setting it to different parts of the hotbar, trying to activate it right from the skillbook, all leading to failure. That's a lot of points and planning down the drain for a skill I think is vital to my survival, and it pisses me the fuck off to no end.
5. Act 2 is balls hard. I thought Act 1 was a good challenge, but then Act 2's like "NOPE! HERE'S SOME GOD DAMN UNDEAD MONKS, EVER INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT GHOSTS, PHANTOMS, FEARS, AND OH HEY GOOD LUCK AGAINST FAE'DARLION!!! AAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAH!" I mean, holy shit that fight was insane. It took me several tries, and a lot of trickery just to beat that guy and his army of Fear spirits. So frustrating. I had to unleash six genies and spam the healing shrine for my winning bout while casting the strongest symbols I had just to get out of it alive.
Yeah, those technical issues are incredible annoying, but the FAE fight was very easy actually if I am thinking of the right one. Most of these TOO HARD TO DO-fights actually have some tricks attached to them, in this case you could have
lured them to a life fountain and spam HP restore on the fountain while your companions whittle away the bosses HP
, which is actually... a smart little combat puzzle.I do agree about the rest though, thankfully I never encountered any technical issues.
Also, for some reason, Act2 felt WAY easier than Act1 for me so far, with the exception of those black super ghosts, which are ridiculously hard.
I'd love the game if the story and characters had more personality. The world is detailed but is a faily cookie cutter medieval era setting. Most of the characters have little to no interactions beyond quests and you never seem to interact in any meaningful ways with your companions.
I just finished Act 1 and I feel mostly done with the game. I don't particularly care about the story since it's not really interesting. I don't care about my "relationship" with any NPC. The combat is fine but the massive difficulty spike are getting on my nerves. Inventory management is a giant pain in the butt.
I just don't see any reason to go along since I feel like the game has shown most of it's features and does't seem to be improving on any of them.
I'd love the game if the story and characters had more personality. The world is detailed but is a faily cookie cutter medieval era setting. Most of the characters have little to no interactions beyond quests and you never seem to interact in any meaningful ways with your companions.
I just finished Act 1 and I feel mostly done with the game. I don't particularly care about the story since it's not really interesting. I don't care about my "relationship" with any NPC. The combat is fine but the massive difficulty spike are getting on my nerves. Inventory management is a giant pain in the butt.
I just don't see any reason to go along since I feel like the game has shown most of it's features and does't seem to be improving on any of them.
I would actually say that Act I in itself feels like a pretty complete game for what it is. I stopped playing myself in the middle of Act II personally, because the game didnt do enough in my opinion to keep the experience fresh enough. Its still an admirable effort overall, and I still loved the time I spent with it though.
But currently, I cant stop playing Tales of Maj'Eyal when I find the time Which reminds me that I wanted to make a thread for "Best roguelike you ever played" with actual in depth discussions. We'll see how that turns out.
Whelp, I managed to hold out during the summer sale, but for a dollar, there's no reason not to add this to the pile now too. I should hopefully get around to even playing it someday.
Considering you couldn't even be bothered to finish the game and it has apparently a host of technical issues I'd think that the game shouldn't be recommended at all simply because there are other, better games to play.
For example, your "solution" that you spoilered is straight - up shit design. It's literally "find the exploit in our broken game to continue". That's not a puzzle, it's a failure.
Considering you couldn't even be bothered to finish the game and it has apparently a host of technical issues I'd think that the game shouldn't be recommended at all simply because there are other, better games to play.
For example, your "solution" that you spoilered is straight - up shit design. It's literally "find the exploit in our broken game to continue". That's not a puzzle, it's a failure.
You are free to have your opinion, and I am free to have mine. I do enjoy games that let me exploit game mechanics in a way that feels unintended to come up with ways to beat certain areas/encounters and Inquisitor is certainly full of it. I did warn people enough that the game has a multitude of issues that will likely only appeal to a very small percentage of gamers, but that doesnt make it a failure. I enjoyed it because it felt different from games that are structured in a more balanced/polished way, it just felt ... different enough to be refreshingly enjoyable despite its shortcomings. Its not the best RPG in the world, but its certainly worth $1.
On top of that, you apparently didnt even play it at all, so I am not quite sure what makes you qualified enough to judge whether a game is straight up badly designed/a failure or not.
Oh and speaking of your arguments: I very, very, very rarely have finished games in the past few years. Considering I put 30 hours into Inquisitor, it did quite well to engage me actually.
I just noticed this myself looking through the week-long deals. Added to the wishlist during the summer sale, picked up for 99 cents! Well actually 85 cents because of my hard-earned card sale cash.
*edit* Or I would, except the Steam store is down.
Yeah, those technical issues are incredible annoying, but the FAE fight was very easy actually if I am thinking of the right one. Most of these TOO HARD TO DO-fights actually have some tricks attached to them, in this case you could have
lured them to a life fountain and spam HP restore on the fountain while your companions whittle away the bosses HP
, which is actually... a smart little combat puzzle.I do agree about the rest though, thankfully I never encountered any technical issues.
Also, for some reason, Act2 felt WAY easier than Act1 for me so far, with the exception of those black super ghosts, which are ridiculously hard.
If you re-read what I said about my experience with the fight, that's exactly what I did, and it still wasn't enough until I unleashed a bunch of genies. The problem isn't the boss himself, it's his army of Fears (the super black ghosts you spoke of) that do an insane amount of damage on top of making everything around them insane. The reason I lost so much was because my companions (and even the genies) became insane and started running around without doing any damage. The healing shrine does not heal insanity.
I'll be persevering through the game to complete it. I've invested too much time at this point to just walk a way. At this point I am
supposed to find Frederick's grave in the cemetery to find a way to exorcise the woman in the jail cell
. Before I do that though, I'm going through the Coliseium dungeon looking for the Chalice of Metamorphis. It's a neat dungeon, and the third level has these stone faces you have to solve riddles to continue through the dungeon (similar to Irenicus' dungeon in BG2).
Also, the reason I'm finding Act 2 harder is because it's filled with a lot of undead. Before I lost the use of my Enemy Estimation skill due to that stupid bug, I did manage to check out the resistances of a lot of enemies I've faced. The undead range from 70-90% physical damage resistance, and since my Paladin is built for hard hitting melee attacks, it makes it difficult since I'm not doing much damage. I'm reduced to spamming symbol magic, which does work well if I've got a high damaging symbol (but it's expensive). Against anything that's not the undead, I rip through them like a hot knife through butter.
Oh, and I played and completed Divine Divinity, its expansion, and Divinity 2 a long time ago. I'm looking forward to picking up Divinity: Original Sin on the next Steam sale.
I'll be persevering through the game to complete it. I've invested too much time at this point to just walk a way. At this point I am
supposed to find Frederick's grave in the cemetery to find a way to exorcise the woman in the jail cell
. Before I do that though, I'm going through the Coliseium dungeon looking for the Chalice of Metamorphis. It's a neat dungeon, and the third level has these stone faces you have to solve riddles to continue through the dungeon (similar to Irenicus' dungeon in BG2).
Oh, weird. I simply spammed that healing statue, and I didnt have much issue with it, they were insane for a few turns, but then came back to do some more damage. Rinse & repeat. It felt quite easy once I had them there, but maybe I had better resistances or something.
I did it. It took 76 hours to do it, but I did it. I finished Inquisitor. I could rant on this game (both with positivity and negativity) for a very long time, but I won't. I'll just point out a few likes, things I was so-so on, and a few dislikes. Overall, I liked the game, but BOY this game sure could use some more modern conveniences and mods to fix a ton of things.
Likes:
1. 'Dat gothic setting. I love the artwork in this game. It's very Diablo 1/2-esque in its imagery. Lots of blood, lots of corpses, disturbing imagery, torture, burnings...a pregnant woman is poisoned and killed at one point even! If you're into dark, gothic stuff, this game has that in spades.
2. The overarching heretical plot is pretty interesting and the best part of the game is when you're tracking down the heretics and exposing them. This does have a downside though, which I will get to in just a moment.
3. Lots of character customization - all three of the classes can cast spells to some degree. Each class has their own special abilities. Every stat in the game is useful to every class, so you're not going to be going pure strength on a Paladin, or pure Dexterity on the Rogue, or pure Intelligence on the Priest. By the end of the game, I had high stats in everything.
Meh/So-So
1. The combat, especially melee combat, is kind of boring. I played a melee Paladin build and fights were a basic "click once a dude, wait until dude is dead". Even my special melee power (Divine Strike) was a clickable thing that just powered up my basic attack. I think playing a kiting bow Rogue or a spellcaster would've been far more entertaining.
2. The act structure was also bland. You start off in Hillsbrandt (Act 1) and with some surrounding areas. Act 1 is very, very good. It has good pacing to the plot, and it eases you into the quests. There's lots of stuff to do (it took about 21 hours to beat Act 1), and in it of itself, could've been an entire game on its own.
Then they just double it for Act 2.
Then they just quadruple it for Act 3.
Seriously, the game just keeps getting bigger, and bigger, trying to throw more stuff at you, and I think the game suffers for it. The last quarter of the last Act is basically as long as the entirety of Diablo 1, throwing four dungeons at you with 4+ floors each (about 20 floors). There are way too many areas in the game with too many floors to get through. I don't mind a game with a good amount of content to it, but this was just excessive.
3. The loot system is...well...it's there. The stats are randomly generated on items, even unique items, so you're at the mercy of RNG for good stuff. Even stores randomly generate items to the point where you go into their menu, see what they have, close out of the menu, go back in and it'll generate new loot. You have to do this in order to get the good kind of affixes. It was somewhat disappointing to find uniques only to have crappy attributes on them (oh hey, just like Diablo!). I'm more of a fan of loot systems with static values over randomly generated attributes.
Dislikes:
1. Remember what I said about that decent story? Well, the ending blows. It blows HARD. So not worth the 70+ hours I invested into it. Every Act ended well, always adding a little bit more to the story. The final heretical mastermind behind the entire game treats you like a damn idiot, "Ohhh, you exposed this entire plot and you still don't know what's going on? Boooh---aaarrgh, you done killed me!". The final portion of plot is straight up taken out of Diablo 1. Immediately killing the final boss, it throws you into a poorly rendered cutscene that ends in a minute explaining nothing and trying to set up a sequel. Boo.
2. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME AS A MELEE PALADIN LIKE I DID. Holy crap is this game stacked against physical damage. There are a TON of enemies that have 50-99% physical damage reduction. Elemental damage and spells is the way to play this game. Getting surrounded as a melee fighter also meant I had my stamina drained supremely quickly, and getting hit hard or very quickly also meant I was semi-stunned and couldn't do anything. I had to stock up magical symbols just to thin the crowds. This game is so stacked against melee fighting it's ridiculous.
3. The biggest threat in this game are all of the things that waste your god damn time. The biggest offenders here are locked things and trapped things. There are locked chests, doors, caches, etc everywhere to the point that playing anything other than the Rogue with high Perception and Lockpicking is a detriment to having fun. I kid you not, at least 5 hours total of my play time has to go just bashing things open. The longest I clocked my character just trying to smash open a chest (with hits missing for some reason) is almost three minutes. Against a chest! THAT WAS EMPTY. Jesus...
Ohhh and god damn traps to. The worst of them are the frost bolt ones that do an automatic 2 minute slow on you. Slow makes you move slowly and halves your attack rate. On top of this, there is another ailment called Exhaustion which makes you move slowly and attack slowly as well. At one point I had Slow and Exhaustion on for two minutes, and I had to literally just stand around for two minutes, not doing anything, waiting for the timers to tick off. I really should've invested in some magic to see if there was anything in the Spell schools that would cure me.
The other medium complaint I have is the inventory system. It's archaic, slow, cumbersome, and dumb, dumb, dumb. There was no reason why it had to be the way it was.
*sigh*
In conclusion, the game is decent, but it has a lot of problems. If you do get this game, play as a Rogue, pump up Perception/Lockpicking, and invest in magic (Rogue is second best caster).
I did it. It took 76 hours to do it, but I did it. I finished Inquisitor. I could rant on this game (both with positivity and negativity) for a very long time, but I won't. I'll just point out a few likes, things I was so-so on, and a few dislikes. Overall, I liked the game, but BOY this game sure could use some more modern conveniences and mods to fix a ton of things.
Likes:
1. 'Dat gothic setting. I love the artwork in this game. It's very Diablo 1/2-esque in its imagery. Lots of blood, lots of corpses, disturbing imagery, torture, burnings...a pregnant woman is poisoned and killed at one point even! If you're into dark, gothic stuff, this game has that in spades.
2. The overarching heretical plot is pretty interesting and the best part of the game is when you're tracking down the heretics and exposing them. This does have a downside though, which I will get to in just a moment.
3. Lots of character customization - all three of the classes can cast spells to some degree. Each class has their own special abilities. Every stat in the game is useful to every class, so you're not going to be going pure strength on a Paladin, or pure Dexterity on the Rogue, or pure Intelligence on the Priest. By the end of the game, I had high stats in everything.
Meh/So-So
1. The combat, especially melee combat, is kind of boring. I played a melee Paladin build and fights were a basic "click once a dude, wait until dude is dead". Even my special melee power (Divine Strike) was a clickable thing that just powered up my basic attack. I think playing a kiting bow Rogue or a spellcaster would've been far more entertaining.
2. The act structure was also bland. You start off in Hillsbrandt (Act 1) and with some surrounding areas. Act 1 is very, very good. It has good pacing to the plot, and it eases you into the quests. There's lots of stuff to do (it took about 21 hours to beat Act 1), and in it of itself, could've been an entire game on its own.
Then they just double it for Act 2.
Then they just quadruple it for Act 3.
Seriously, the game just keeps getting bigger, and bigger, trying to throw more stuff at you, and I think the game suffers for it. The last quarter of the last Act is basically as long as the entirety of Diablo 1, throwing four dungeons at you with 4+ floors each (about 20 floors). There are way too many areas in the game with too many floors to get through. I don't mind a game with a good amount of content to it, but this was just excessive.
3. The loot system is...well...it's there. The stats are randomly generated on items, even unique items, so you're at the mercy of RNG for good stuff. Even stores randomly generate items to the point where you go into their menu, see what they have, close out of the menu, go back in and it'll generate new loot. You have to do this in order to get the good kind of affixes. It was somewhat disappointing to find uniques only to have crappy attributes on them (oh hey, just like Diablo!). I'm more of a fan of loot systems with static values over randomly generated attributes.
Dislikes:
1. Remember what I said about that decent story? Well, the ending blows. It blows HARD. So not worth the 70+ hours I invested into it. Every Act ended well, always adding a little bit more to the story. The final heretical mastermind behind the entire game treats you like a damn idiot, "Ohhh, you exposed this entire plot and you still don't know what's going on? Boooh---aaarrgh, you done killed me!". The final portion of plot is straight up taken out of Diablo 1. Immediately killing the final boss, it throws you into a poorly rendered cutscene that ends in a minute explaining nothing and trying to set up a sequel. Boo.
2. DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME AS A MELEE PALADIN LIKE I DID. Holy crap is this game stacked against physical damage. There are a TON of enemies that have 50-99% physical damage reduction. Elemental damage and spells is the way to play this game. Getting surrounded as a melee fighter also meant I had my stamina drained supremely quickly, and getting hit hard or very quickly also meant I was semi-stunned and couldn't do anything. I had to stock up magical symbols just to thin the crowds. This game is so stacked against melee fighting it's ridiculous.
3. The biggest threat in this game are all of the things that waste your god damn time. The biggest offenders here are locked things and trapped things. There are locked chests, doors, caches, etc everywhere to the point that playing anything other than the Rogue with high Perception and Lockpicking is a detriment to having fun. I kid you not, at least 5 hours total of my play time has to go just bashing things open. The longest I clocked my character just trying to smash open a chest (with hits missing for some reason) is almost three minutes. Against a chest! THAT WAS EMPTY. Jesus...
Ohhh and god damn traps to. The worst of them are the frost bolt ones that do an automatic 2 minute slow on you. Slow makes you move slowly and halves your attack rate. On top of this, there is another ailment called Exhaustion which makes you move slowly and attack slowly as well. At one point I had Slow and Exhaustion on for two minutes, and I had to literally just stand around for two minutes, not doing anything, waiting for the timers to tick off. I really should've invested in some magic to see if there was anything in the Spell schools that would cure me.
The other medium complaint I have is the inventory system. It's archaic, slow, cumbersome, and dumb, dumb, dumb. There was no reason why it had to be the way it was.
*sigh*
In conclusion, the game is decent, but it has a lot of problems. If you do get this game, play as a Rogue, pump up Perception/Lockpicking, and invest in magic (Rogue is second best caster).
Great writeup and more or less how I feel about the game now. I certainly didnt regret getting it for cheap, and playing it for what I got from it in enjoyment, though.
Glad someone here pumped through it though, and justified the impression I got from ending the game in act 2, after I enjoyed act 1 immensely in itself which felt like a whole game to me, with the further acts just regurgitating the same concepts. I'll stick with recommending it for the first act I think.
Yeah, I was just a little behind you when you stopped playing the game.
Had it not been for the excellent stickied posts on the GoG forums that have (almost) fully detailed maps of (almost) every area, and quest guides, I likely would not have finished this game, or at the very least, not have finished the game as "quickly" as I did. Seriously, this game really does like to just waste the player's time on a bunch of stupid things. There was a point, half way through the game, that I nearly restarted as a Rogue just so I could get access to lockpicking and save myself time on bashing things open.
Which reminds me that I wanted to make a thread for "Best roguelike you ever played" with actual in depth discussions. We'll see how that turns out.
