Various OTHER Games

[Silver Sorrow]

Continued from my Skyrim mod thread.

I've been playing a lot of Kingdoms of Amalur lately; I'd been meaning to finish it, but I never could get into it. So this time I tried the Might/Sorcery (Battlemage) route...and I still had some combat problems. My chosen weapon style, Greatsword, is good for slow-moving targets, but crap when it comes to wolves and the Thresh and so on. My secondary weapon is the staff, which is okay.

Still, pretty awful for the typical combat scenario, which is being gang-massacred by multiple bad guys. My favorite encounter is two to four heavy-hitters augmented by two to four wolves that lunge-lock me while the heavies stomp me into a sticky red goo.

Obviously I was going about this all wrong. I had evenly divided my skills by focusing on both might and sorcery, essentially halving my effectiveness. So I found a Fateweaver in Didenhall -- or whatever, I can't remember these goofy-ass fantasy names** -- and respec'd my character. I dumped all of my points into sorcery this time and focused on chakrams while minoring in the staff. So far it's going swimmingly.
[** For example: every time I see "Dokkalfar," I recall Dan Aykroyd's "dickfer" joke in "Spies Like Us."]

Tomorrow I might brave Deus Ex HR again, as well as the Witcher. I never could get very far into either one due to technical problems. I also plan on cleaning my bathroom and finding 600+ threadcount Egyptian Cotton sheets for under $100. Or I may try to set more realistic goals for myself, such as teaching goats to play the banjo.

[Silver Sorrow]

The goats are showing remarkable aptitude for the banjo under my tutelage, despite the fact that I don't know how to play the banjo at all. Their outstanding progress has caught the eye of a thieving bastard...uh...manager, and he's already booked them for a sold-out tour of the southeastern US under the name of "The Dueling Baaaaaaaaaanjos." Trite, I admit, but who am I to judge stupid names? As their mentor and the sole individual who made their success possible, I will of course be receiving zero profits from any and all of their future endeavors (their lawyers were quite clear on this) and I have sworn to see them added to Golden Corral's "Goat-Tastic Summer Buffet!" promotion, each one with a shiny red apple stuffed in its mouth.

Anyway.

Amalur has been giving me problems lately. Things were going well after my switch to a sorcerer...sorceress, actually. My character is resolutely female. But after a while, things began falling apart, bug-wise. A couple of times I've stumbled across things like a script bug that would render a monster briefly invulnerable and, in my favorite example, an NPC to whom I was supposed to talk about a quest simply wandered off without engaging in conversation after I hit the talk key. No way out of THAT one; that was one of those fun little ctrl+alt+del moments.

Today I encountered THREE lovely bugs:

1. My Fate meter was stuck at 99%. I countered this by turning off the tutorial mode and entering a dungeon. I'm not sure if I reloaded or not. Still, it was fixed.

2. In a House of Ballads quest I was supposed to use a resurrection potion on my NPC "friend." Didn't work. The solution I found was to exit the dungeon, then re-enter and try to resurrect the guy. This worked nicely.

3. Currently, my Fate meter is stuck at 0%. Reloading has not helped. I may have to visit a Fateweaver and reset my skills and crap.

In the meantime, dinner is late in arriving and I'm woozy from hunger. Let's hope that I don't have to scrounge for rats again.

EDIT: The rats were very tasty, thank you.

In regards to #3: I figured it out, finally. The monsters I was fighting had grayed-out names; this means that while you get XP for killing them, they don't add anything to your Fate meter. (They were respawned monsters and not a new encounter.) While this seems to suck, it does keep you from Fate-farming (so to speak) monsters, as they tend to respawn in a surprisingly short amount of time.

[bobdog]

Amalur was basically fun, but as i got into the last lands across the ocean, I skipped all but the main questline as I was getting a little bored. But lots of playtime, definitely.

[Silver Sorrow]

I'm at the point where I usually just ignore any NPCs between me and the MQ; that means a minimum of sidequests I have to slog through. There's like nine kajillion ways of keeping me from finishing this game, not that I'm in a huge rush to do so. It definitely is a fun game, once I figured out how to keep my exasperation with the combat minimized...

So I finally got to Mel Senshir. That Balor fight was fan-friggin'-tastic.   I keep seeing things in this game that should be seriously considered by Bethesda for the next TES game...but I'll come back to that later.

The worst thing was trudging through the lefthand side of the map in search of Prismere gear. Then I read somewhere that once you reach Mel Senshir, the stuff's practically falling from the sky, so to speak. Right off the boat I bought a Prismere cuirass and a big damn Prismere hammer** for under 200k; in Rathir, there was an enchanted cuirass for sale for 500k+, which means that either my Mercantile skill needs some improvement (which it does, somewhat), or someone wants me to get to the right side of the map pronto.
[** It had more oomph than the Mystic Hammer I got from the Warsworn questline (25% damage against Niskaru? Sold!), but I still used the Mystic Hammer against the Balor...just seemed appropriate.]

So...

...I have to admit that I find this WAY cooler than Daedric.

[Silver Sorrow]

So. A month after I dropped $30 catching up on all the DLC for Amalur, what happens? The friggin' thing goes on sale on Steam. $11.99 for the whole package. After sitting in my wishlist for a year, they finally put it on sale.

Even though it matters very little in the Grand Scheme of Things, I can't help but feel a little bitter about it. Well...I *would*, but I feel nothing anymore. Call it "spiritual nerve damage."

I've also reinstalled Morrowind -- I still type it "Mowwowinf" -- with the MGSO mod, and I had plenty of adventures during that process, by which I mean nothing especially interesting happened.

Well. Time to chew on my wrists again!

[Starfox]

Just begun Amalur (and yeah I bought the whole pack cheap -- that compensates for the times I've been in your situation  which I agree is always raging but sadly unavoidable; at least until Steam decides to reimburse gamers who already bought a game full price when it goes on sale... chances of that happening? So remote that it does not even compute).

Anyway... I'm too early in the game to know what type of character is the most comfortable. I tried the first boss with the staff (poor), the sword (better but still not there) and the daggers (surprisingly excellent; attacks were so fast with a good amount of staggering criticals that the troll barely had any time to land a blow). Not sure but right now I'm inclined to go the path of the rogue maybe using magic as a side gun.

But so far so good 

[bobdog]

I generally went rogue with 2 blades plus magic. Later in the game, you'll get some exotic dual blades that are even cooler. But I think I did need staff or hammer for like rock trolls. Basically, see what works best against different enemies.

[Silver Sorrow]

The worst part is that I bought all of the DLC for the Origin version...and then it all goes on sale on Steam. I've spent way more on this game than I ever intended.

Right now -- where I've stalled, thanks to MW -- I'm a pure Might goofus. I'm around level 33, so the various abilities are necessary to becoming a nigh-invulnerable tank. Especially useful against hordes of enemies who like nothing better than to take turns staggering the hapless player before he or she has a chance to counter-attack or even dodge, for god's sake.

I tried reverting back to a mage, just to see what would happen. Turns out that the Tuatha are quite adept at making a squishy even squishier. 

Went back to Might. Still takes three seconds short of an eternity to kill a Prismere Troll, even with my best hammer. I think the game has balance issues.

Just for fun, I might try out Finesse later.

[Starfox]

Well it works pretty well for me with a dual-blades rogue and a bit of magic for medium distance or groups (Mark of Flames works well and does not tax the mana pool an awful lot like some other spells do). Add a rogue/sorcerer destiny and I'm all set up. Trolls pose a problem yeah, because they are apparently immune to piercing damage and that's the majority of the damage type the rogue does. But magic is here to save the day; up until now Mark of Flames works pretty well against trolls -- that may not be the case later in the game, we'll see.

The main advantage of the rogue is that they have the fastest attack rate of the three classes. So most of my fights I spend them staggering my opponents then dealing them another blow before they have time to recover and ending up not being hit in the process (which is good). Well OK, when there are a lot of opponents I tend to dodge/run a lot to get in the best position to strike, or to switch quickly from the opponent I'm currently attacking to the one that tries to sneak up on me from behind thinking I'm too busy notice. Though it is cool, I tend to keep "reckoning" for the very tough fights with either a super-boss or far to much opponents to handle.

With Might one can become a tank but I imagine that one gets hit a lot more than being a rogue. So all in all what you gain on one side you lose on the other. Since I hate getting staggered all the time I prefer to stick with my rogue 

I found myself on very low health only once against the guy with the special boots that is a) invisible and b) a rogue to spice up things. Boy that fight was a pain in the ass.

But then again I'm only level 15 so I guess much may change in the future 

I tried the bow but all in all I find it much inefficient. Plus it's super hard to find a decent bow. The one provided by the DLC at the beginning is fairly good but it's a low level so it doesn't last long.

About DLCs... Are they like Skyrim where you can start them whenever you want even after the endgame? Or like Fallout New Vegas where you must do them before?

[bobdog]

I think i did use a bow against long-distance foes, and then switched to dual blades when they got close. That seemed fairly effective, if I remember properly.

[Silver Sorrow]

I have trouble with bows in third person...archery was a bit too awkward. I'll work with them some more, but...oh, well. I think the problem, in this case, is my own fault.

The greatest weapon of the Might character is a fully-upgraded Relentless Assult (plus Vengeance & Bloodlust); this makes you invulnerable to staggering and uninterruptable...but it doesn't always work, for some reason. The Bolgan -- the giant red guys -- have this uncanny knack of somehow dispelling Relentless Assault. Not just being able to interrupt my attacks (which is one of their known abilities), but dispel it *entirely*. 

As for the DLC: I've read that you can play them after the MQ is finished; I also understand that if you play them when you're a level 30+ juggernaut of pain, the rewards won't be all that astounding. (Example: "Junk. I can smith something twice as good with novice crap.") So I guess they intend you to play the DLC whenever you meet the requirements, i.e., level 10.

However: I don't know for sure, though; I have yet to play the DLC, even though I wasted all that cash on them...alas, I guess I'll need to start another character and find out for sure.   Miss Jenkins! Hold my calls. CALLS. Calls, I said. C-A-L-L-S. That's going to leave a mark.

[Silver Sorrow]

So I finished the thing. That is, I finished the MQ. You can go off and do other things after that, so it isn't like FNV. 

I started a Finesse [Rogue] character, and so far encounters are more interesting; with daggers I can usually react to those damned sprites before they have a chance to stagger-lock me.

Let's see...reinstalling VTMB, DAO...getting back into the Witcher...

[Silver Sorrow]

Found this concerning KoA DLC:

Dead Kel is suited for players at level 10 and above. Teeth of Naros doesn't have a specific level cap. The Developers said you can start it right at the beginning if you want.

So...yay.

I'm getting used to the bow, even though it sometimes targets nearby crates, or worse, nothing, instead of monsters.

Incidentally, whoever decided to put all those goddamn spiders in the game deserves a swift kick in the nuts.

[Starfox]

Believe it or not I'm level 32 and I have yet to grab a boat to Mel Senshir. There's so many things to do in this game that I was level 25 before even getting to the plains of Erathell and Detyre. And that's a problem... In fact the real problem is the "Level cap per area" system that is quite the same as Borderlands meaning that once you're done with an area and that the opponents names turn to grey, there's no incentive to make you stay in or even revisit an area because the opponents won't generate any real XP and the equipment you find in those areas will always be crap considering your level. It also means that although you can visit any zone in the order you wish, there is a "logical" (for the devs) order to do it if you don't want to be stripped out of the fun. Doing quests in Rathir then going back to Detyre pose a problem because with the XP gained with Rathir quests Detyre opponents no more pose any threat to you.

Which puzzle me is that they knew how to "pump up" the opponents levels during quests so the player always find at least a measure of challenge. So why not do it for the whole game (like Skyrim)?

Also of note, aside from the differences in architecture, player houses are very poor. What amuses me is that the guys selling you extensions always propose to "increase the storage space". Good joke. What storage space? It's not like if the dressers, armoires and chests in the houses were actually of any use (the very limited player's stash aside -- I use it mainly for books). So that's something for the devs to keep in mind for the next game. At least put in there a usable bookshelf dammit.

Oh yeah and like Skyrim a number of quest objects tend to stay in your inventory even when the linked quest is over. One cannot sell them, drop them or destroy them.

And I encountered a quest that is bugged and cannot be finished if you don't do things exactly like the quest says; the problem here is that nothing prevents you to do things as you want. It involves 3 stave that you have to reforge. If you reforge even just one of them (that can easily be done) before the quest tells you to do so, the game doesn't acknowledge it. So you can try to re-salvage the staff you reforged to reforge it again... that doesn't work because you don't retrieve the necessary component to reforge the staff. Result -- nice staff for you... And a quest that will never be complete.

Aside from those points I'm still having fun.

[Silver Sorrow]

Amalur is one of those games that needed a modding community, if only to fix the worst bugs. Sadly, I don't think (the state of) Rhode Island is going to hire a few programmers to make that happen, so we're stuck with it, bugs and all. 

I would've liked to see the enemies not spawn after they become irrelevant to your level and/or the story; I'm not a fan of the miraculously repopulated area concept. (Skyrim, for example...and Oblivion before it...hey! it's been a couple of days, let's refill the bandit meter...)

I admit, I'm something of a collector. When I find a unique item, such as one of the nine kajillion armor sets that I will never EVER complete, I store it. But the stash won't let me keep everything. Would it have been so hard to make more than one storage chest? It's one of those shortsighted design flaws that makes this game more irritating than it should be. RPGs are for the masochist in all of us, but this is a little more painful than I like. Could've been worse, though; there was Morrowind, which had no storage space that made sense.

Still, I suppose there's the merchant-as-a-storage-chest route: sell everything to a merchant, who will keep it all in inventory forever, probably. I don't trust it, though...it makes me nervous knowing that the game might bug out and my low-level-but-unique Gloves Of Random Fantasy Naming Convention (which I cannot use, due to my current class restrictions) may disappear from the world entirely and they'll be gone forever and I can't get them back.

I'm not kidding. That bothers me. 

With that said, this game really needed a console. Still can't get that last piece of armor you've been trying to find for the past 60 hours of gameplay? Bring down that console and reward yourself for surviving the crucible of the devs' shortcomings.

Currently, I'm roughly 3/4ths of the way through Dragon Age. Again.

But this time, I'm playing as a dude. Less fuss about outfits and accessories. Just throw on a dress a robe A ROBE and kill something.

Anyway, I forgot how much I missed DAO, and how frustrating it could be, if...IF...I played through normally, without cheating. But I'm not playing "normally."

Finished Redcliffe, the Circle, the Brecilian Forest, the Warden and Ostagar DLCs, and now I'm off to Orzammar. After that, it's finding the Urn, kicking Cauthrien & Loghain's respective asses, possibly defiling Morrigan in ways even she might find offensive, killing the Archdemon...and THEN playing through Awakening. Then on to DA2.

Within all that is a trip or two to Santa Monica to retrieve the Fleet-Footed God's boom-boom from a pack of bat-wielding beach demons.