Played it - my two cents

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 12:27 pm

I'm mainly going to put my criticisms of the game - if you want to know what's good about it, you can read the other threads on here. There are things I like about the game - don't get the wrong impression - but there are also many things I don't. Also, I appreciate it when any game company comes out with single-player RPG's - there aren't enough of 'em!

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs
At least 3 quests broken (or almost) in my game due to bugs.
One was a stairway that failed to appear in Iona's dungeon. After much searching on Larian, I found others who had experienced this as well - it seemed that reloading the game made the stairway appear, but it was maddening to search and search for it for hours.
Another was a merchant named Mpenzak who is involved in 3 quests. After the 1st quest involving him, he disappeared from the game entirely, resulting in 2 broken quests. (one of which prevented me from getting some great armor). I was not the only one with this problem.
Tingalf quest unresolved - common bug - for more info search on larian's website.
Crash to desktop problem during scrying (in endgame) - a known bug
There are many other bugs - larian is coming out with another patch eventually.

Game Instability
Freezes about 50% of the time upon character death.
Freezes occasionally during trading.
Random freezes.
I have a hard time understanding all the freezes - this game is a lot less resource intensive than the BG series, and the graphics are about the same, but I never had crashes with BG, PS:2 or Fallout series. All of which look about the same as this game.
The crashes occured more frequently in the last third of the game, and I suspect that that is the section that was tested the least. Once again, the people who buy games these days are the ones who finish out the beta testing.

Peeves
Game is too dark for my poor old eyes and there is no control to increase brightness.
ALT key seldom reveals location of doors, chests, cabinets, entrances, etc., and they are often obscured or hidden, resulting in lost game time of tedious searching.
Unlike BG2, you are able to sell items that are crucial to quests, therefore losing them. There is no shadowkeeper to restore lost items. A fix is available - but I tried it and kept ending up with corrupt save games. No Holy Weapon, sob.
Despite the fact that you can play as different types of characters (warrior, mage, thief), and can approach the quests in any order you want, the plot is still very linear. For example, in BG you will end up with a different plot depending on certain moral choices you make - in DD, it doesn't matter.
Shopping is no fun - in BG, I looked forward to coming up with the money to buy certain items (like the rod of resurrection). There were few interesting items to buy. I now have like $300k, and it just seems pointless.
Too much experience given for hack 'n slash, not enough for completing quests. (and there were not enough interesting quests). For example, if you completed like 5 quests, you would not get enough experience to level up, but if you cleared a part of the map, you would. To me, that was just boring.

Honestly, the game is crashing so much now, and the very last section of it (wastelands) seems to be all hack and slash. I'm wondering whether I should bother to finish it. I doubt I would replay, since the story would be exactly the same.

How does it stack up against other RPG's?
BG series - not as good by a long shot
Fallout series - though they are linear too, the storyline and NPC's are way more interesting
IWD series - about the same
PS:2 - about the same
Morrowwind - hmmm
Arcanum - about the same
I have to point out though that Bioware and Black Isle release much less bug-ridden games.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 12:50 pm

Mostly fair points but I thought i should point out the lack of loading within a great deal of the game, comparing graphics is perhaps appropriate but if you go back and play BG/2 again you will notice how much loading there is, same with Morrowind and pretty much any other game, load load load.

As for whether you should carry on? Well I mostly like to copmlete things (I am a bit of a perfectionist) so I would have said yes. The end plot is kind of what you would expect. It quite often crashes when you move the mouse while quick saving. Since you have checked out Larian's site there is little in the way of tech support I can give.

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 1:06 pm

Hey Sleepy!
Ya - I can't remember the load times with BG (I seem to remember a green circle...). I guess since the game looks so similar to BG or IWD, I kind of expect that it would not crash my computer so often, since those games never did. I just love that Infinity Engine! Why don't other developers use it?

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 2:15 pm

Originally posted by VoodooDali
Hey Sleepy!
Ya - I can't remember the load times with BG (I seem to remember a green circle...). I guess since the game looks so similar to BG or IWD, I kind of expect that it would not crash my computer so often, since those games never did. I just love that Infinity Engine! Why don't other developers use it?

Good to see you back around

Well they were certainly there, every other section one moved through. I must admit the crashes became more and more infuriating as I went on, although after a while and the patch they seemed to fix themselves to some degree.

I have no idea, I suppose it takes a lot of art work that most developers are perhaps not so interested in using. It also uses pixels rather than polygons and newer graphics cards have no real effect on pixels.

fable · Post by **fable** » Mon Feb 03, 2003 6:07 pm

I'm sorry to see that the designers have yet to address the crash bugs. When I was playing, I always restarted Windows after a session. It cleared out all the memory leaks.

Skuld · Post by **Skuld** » Sun Feb 09, 2003 10:16 pm

So I just bought the game today, only it was just $30 and IWDII was still $40. Here's what I think after only playing for a short while(maybe an hour or 3... lost track): It has a Diablo feel to me... the way the item descriptions are written, the look of the game overall, and a few other things; it takes up too much damn space on my computer; the walking is sooo slowww, and running wastes Stamina. That's about it for now, maybe I'll have some more gripes at a later date.

fable · Post by **fable** » Sun Feb 09, 2003 10:34 pm

@Skuld, I commented as much in a review, and said that it seemed to be far more true of the first town than after you leave it. I thought it might have been the intention of the development team early on, who then changed their approach. Got a reply from one of the developers at Larian, thanking me for having figured that out. He said that this was exactly what happened: that they started out to do a Diablo clone, then changed it dramatically after adding new people who were more familiar with a host of RPG games.

So it will improve, once you get outside the town.

Skuld · Post by **Skuld** » Mon Feb 10, 2003 9:53 am

Thanks... this game might be worth playing after all.

VoodooDali · Post by **VoodooDali** » Thu Feb 13, 2003 9:43 pm

Originally posted by fable
@Skuld, I commented as much in a review, and said that it seemed to be far more true of the first town than after you leave it. I thought it might have been the intention of the development team early on, who then changed their approach. Got a reply from one of the developers at Larian, thanking me for having figured that out. He said that this was exactly what happened: that they started out to do a Diablo clone, then changed it dramatically after adding new people who were more familiar with a host of RPG games.

So it will improve, once you get outside the town.

Yes, the game does indeed improve once you get outside of Aleroth. However, the endgame is really bad! I had the feeling the developers just lost interest in the story...and it turns into a neverending hack 'n' slash. But- at least the endgame is a minor portion of the overall game.

Mr Sleep · Post by **Mr Sleep** » Mon Feb 17, 2003 6:45 am

Originally posted by VoodooDali
Yes, the game does indeed improve once you get outside of Aleroth. However, the endgame is really bad! I had the feeling the developers just lost interest in the story...and it turns into a neverending hack 'n' slash. But- at least the endgame is a minor portion of the overall game.

I must admit the endgame did bore me a little and the last battle is a bit dissapointing, your probably right Vdali, or they were rushed - by their production house - into finishing it which is just as likely.

Skuld · Post by **Skuld** » Mon Feb 17, 2003 11:10 pm

OK. So I've had the game for about a week and have been playing it about every other day and here's what I think. Sure it's a diabloesque dungeon crawl type game, but it's got a decent story which is pretty damn cool. I like the skills system in the sense that you can give your warrior, mage or survivor abilities if you really felt the need. So I think it's a damn good game for the $30 I spent on it. I can't stand the Diablo games, and I've been able to play only IE games for the past two years. But given that it has the ability to tear me away from the BG series for over a week definately gets a plus on my list. Essentially I think this game's a dungeon crawl with a story, and slightly better then the IWD series. Forgive me if this post doesn't make a whole lot of sense because classes were canceled today and tomorrow and I've had a few. Basically it's a damn good game for the $30 I paid for it. And after a few visits to the Larian boards I found the answers I'd been lookin for.