tfw here will never be Neverwinter Nights 3

It's more like old-school RPGs in that the game is absolutely brutal to begin with but becomes really easy to deal with after you jump that hurdle.

you'd have so much more success in your bitching if you could ever condense your tears into something more concise then "everything after X is shit!"

I get it, games today can be overly simple and voice acting is the bane of freedom. But how about you open with that instead?

That said, what I want from an rpg
>the freedom to play wherever I please on the morality spectrum
>magic that feels like magic (lichdom failed often here despite its claims)
>proper npc reactions. If the level 5 bandits want to attack me at 100 it should be clear they are terrified beyond all reason by my presence
>A high degree of customisation freedom. If I want to be a seven foot tall wizard, or zarya, that's by godammed right

Yes.
The Story is not realy a thing but then again the game also isnt cucked.

The sequal supposedly fixes the story issue, ive played a bit of it and it appears rather edgy for my taste, still it has the ridiculous sense of fantasy of the first one, if you dont like teleporting crocodiles you wont like the setting.

Apart from that tho it beats almost every other CRPG i can think of, simply by having a vastly superior combat system.

If id hav e to compare it to anything then id say imagine Temple of Elemental Evil actually worked.

>the game also isnt cucked

What did he mean by this?

Probably that it is not designed to beat you over the head with a political ideal.

If this is true, I will pick up the game because these last five years have made it impossible to take a shit without someone making it into a political statement.

What was the political anvil in the 'cucked' one then?

...

Veeky Forums folk looking for alternative ways to Veeky Forums because they are unable or unwilling to find a group seems fair game.

Also sending anyone to /v/ is just a form of punishment most don't deserve.

>RPGs then: ugly, unwieldy, awkward to play and 99% filler
>RPGs now: ugly, unwieldy, awkward to play and 99% filler
At least pick examples that work for your argument.

> 99% filler
> Planescape: Torment
You have to be 18 to post here.

>Implying DA:O was good.

Yeah, I didn't take a good look at it and though it was BG1.

Still, the best thing about that game was that you could talk your way out of playing most of it. The standing orders for RPG makers everywhere seem to have been 'shit out a clunky small-scale RTS then hire someone to cover it up with writing', and games that have less than stellar writing but some though put into what actually makes a video game good get laughed at by snorting grogs.
Case in point.

The system was always bad, and the games it produced were always bad games. The only thing that changed over the years is that the quality of writing is no longer able to mask the stench.

you know you call it a small scale RTS but i would actually like those games better if they had RTS like controlls.

DA:O was excellent.

If you were 12 when it came out maybe

Otherwise it was a mediocre effort that lost further points for trying too hard to be BG and not understanding that copy-pasting generic game design and stupidly simplifying the mechanics (like "skill rolls" that are a success/fail based on skill level instead of a more interesting "% of Success" system) was the totally wrong way to do that.

And a setting that, with every installment, reveals how utterly copy-pasted it is

Oh look, re-branded Orc Horde

That spends most of its time fighting the Dwarven kingdom when its not invading the humies

And Elves that live in ghettos and are stigmatized, but wait! Turns out they were really oppressive assholes themselves in their prime! (Hello Witcher-verse and a dozen other paint by number "original" depictions of elves)

True.

And still it was the single best fantasy thing to ever come out of Bioware's kitchen. Because it tried being a good game first and a pathetic replacement for literature second.

God you really did come from /v.
Look, devving today is easier than it literally has ever been, look up unity and start being the change in the world you want to see, you lazy fuck.
>BBBBUT I CAN'T CODE/ART/BREATHE
Then fucking learn.

There was a gravestone about a dude who killed himself after sleeping with a transvestite that got removed after some faggots cried, therefore other faggots decry the game as being irredeemable cucked garbage, in the end both of these people will continue to hate anything that doesn't directly cater or change to their whims, and neither will ever be happy.

>I keep playing games in a well defined genre and get mad as fuck when they aren't totally orignal

If you didn't enjoy DAO you may want to stop playing vidya,

Wasn't the author of that one who asked for it to be removed, and the whole thing was a non-issue that the developers had nothing to do with?

> Dragon Age Origins was the last good "old school" RPG,
Kill yourself nigger, then go play Divinity: Original Sin

I keep seeing people praise D:OS like it's the best thing ever, I don't get why. I loved the combat but that's it. The humour got old very quickly and the plot wasn't memorable.

While i did enjoy DAO i can't help but point out that it's stupidly simplified compared to actual old-school CRPGs.
Which sadly seems to be an ongoing trend in videogames.
I just can't really get into a game when i'm forced to build a character with only 3 classes with 10 skills each to choose from.
Aside from being boring as hell it also feels like the designers treating you like a retarded preschooler.
"Oh no, lets not give the player too many options. He won't know what to do with actual choices."

DAO actually was a huge failure in the creative department, though I feel most of it was EA breathing down their necks. A lot of things - like using blood magic in front of circle mages and templars causing a huge stink - were obviously planned and cut out of the game fairly late in development. We know Shale and Worthless Keep were cut content sold as DLC. And the deep roads has locations that seem as if they had been designed with unusual care even though they contain nothing out of the ordinary.

Not that I'll excuse them for any of it. They sold out to EA. No quarter after that.

Yeah, I agree. I'd wholeheartedly recommend D:OS to anyone, but everything aside from the combat is pretty mediocre. Not really something I'd recommend to Veeky Forums if someone here was looking for an RPG

>single best fantasy from Bioware

You take that back right now

Divinity Original Sin was a wonderful game, but that was almost entirely on the merits of its combat system being A+ good.

The writing in that game varied from mediocre to absolutely grating, at times. I want to reiterate that I liked the game, but I sincerely wonder if anyone who played it all the way through didn't find the script needlessly verbose to the detriment of most of the humor they were trying to convey. I love cRPGs so this isn't an aversion to reading, but goddamn there wasn't a single character in that game who didn't stretch every sentence of information into a goddamn semi-prosaic paragraph.

>he doesn't know about Age of Decadence

You suck OP and I laugh at you

I notice that /v/ and Veeky Forums tend to really dislike Pillars of Eternity (and most recently, Tyranny) in spite of a pretty great reception from everywhere else. This doesn't explicitly seem like an issue of the games being dumbed down for "the casuals" in the same way something like the Dragon Age franchise might, so I've always been really curious as to why PoE is perceived as missing the mark around here.

Oh man I sure do love failure on a single skill check during dialog instantly killing my character and kicking me back to the main menu

my nigga

I've been following Larian since DD so Larian writing doesn't even remotely bother me, and honestly, PoE's dry writing combined with mediocre combat was far worse than even the worst parts of D:OS.

That's wuxia though.
And it is the best. I've been replaying it recently, it's amazing how in the binary morality system you get some sub-moralities. I'm doing a Closed Fist run, and it seems you get three main attitudes : greed, bloodlust, and the actual philosophy of Closed Fist. I've never felt that free in a game with a morality system.

Even if it was a little Xianxia for me, there were definitely some quests in that game that were solid 10/10 god tiers

youtube.com/watch?v=HccNAt20LlQ

THIS FUCKING SHIT RIGHT HERE

NWN2 is not 'an actual old-school CRPG'.
> it also feels like the designers treating you like a retarded preschooler
Should they have lowered the bar even further for you? Because from your post I get the feeling that you didn't actually figure out how to use any of those 3 classes and their 10 skills. A two-hander warrior with templar and champion specs has more impact on the flow of combat than any fighter in any d&d-derived game ever made. Rogue is literally made out of combat options. Mages are badly made garbage that doesn't work well with anything that isn't another mage, but even they are bristling with useful toys. Then there's aggro management and the way AI prioritizes targets, and the cooldown-dictated tempo of combat you need to nail down if you want to survive on higher difficulties. This game is mechanically complex in a good way. And it has enough depth to allow for experimentations. You can play without a mage. You can play with just the mages. You can play all rogues and all warriors if you like, and you have the tools to make that work built into the classes themselves. And of course there's the builds for each of the classes, which dictate what they do how they do it. You can have a tank rogue, a scout rogue, an assassin rogue and a sniper rogue and all four of those will play differently.

Okay, second best.

At the very least, Storm of Zehir definitely felt like it had a lot more in common with old school RPGs than anything else.

Man, I really wished any of this shit had carried over into the subsequent games.

You could basically sleepwalk your way through Inquisition, for all the tactics mattered in that one.

I can't speak for the entire two boards but PoE is just utterly mediocre. One thing that I particularly dislike about it is its antagonist. I really feel like they tried to do something like Irenicus without understanding why he worked. He looks down on you from start to end, not caring about you in anyway ; Irenicus did too, but you get to prove him wrong, prove yourself. There's nothing compelling about this villain. I can't relate to him, I can't hate him, he's just annoying.
The "twist", if I can call it that, is very strange with how normal it is. the gods aren't real ! Or rather; they exist but they weren't originally gods, some people helped them gain power to keep people under control, give them morals to follow How does that invalidate the gods ? Why does every character treat it as a life changing revelation ?
I also felt you were restricted in the opinions you could express, most options seemed to be "saying nice things in various ways" or "I'm going to murder you".
Some things weren't too bad, I liked bits of the lore, I wish they'd done more with it. I also really like the Watcher mechanic and it should have made the villain more compelling because of his link to us, but they didn't go far enough with it.

Really I wouldn't hate the game so much if people didn't hype it up saying it was the new Baldur's Gate. I think other anons must feel the same way.

>Play an Arcane Warrior in DA:O
>Make a sword swinging mage with like 10 buffs active at all times with mana left over for a few spells in between sword swings.
>Wear the best armor and legendary sword. Basically solo game on nightmare

DA:O started my love for mages. Played a mage in every game that let me do it, no matter if they were over/under balanced. Also gave me a deeper love for Paladins too.

>They nerfed arcane warrior hard after Origins

if by nerfed you mean completely removed, then yes.

>They nerfed arcane warrior hard after Origins

Since mage made the best warriors in the game, it kinda had to happen.

Well, DAO made me hate mages. They constantly stepped on rogues' and warriors' toes by interfering with their ability to do their jobs, were less useful than either in many situations, and unless you cheesed hard they were guaranteed to become a constant liability on higher levels while giving nothing useful in return.

>the best warriors
Warriors that have no activated abilities and kill slower than starvation. AW had unmatched survivability... which worked best when they were used as mages, because you never had to care about aggro or friendly fire when dropping anvils on the enemy. If you had your AW swinging a sword instead of an actual warrior you failed at everything that has a fail condition.

>NWN2 is not 'an actual old-school CRPG'
I never mentioned NWN2. The game itself is actually pretty bad from a technical perspective, as we're the official campaigns.
It was saved by the toolkit and lots of great fan-made modules though. Same as NWN.

As for the supposed complexity of DAO, yeah, no. That's bullshit. The game was easy even on the highest difficulty, the combat was repetitive and the story was decent at best, if you ignore that it's basically made up of a bunch of rebranded genre classics mashed together.
And "i play with two classes instead of 3, or even just one class, woo" is not mechanically complex or any kind of depth. It just makes it even simpler and more boring, and claiming otherwise is frankly pathetic.

Its in inquisition, but sucks. Not even close to worth it.

Nope.

"Combat Magic
While this mode is active, the arcane warrior channels magic inward, trading increased fatigue for an attack bonus and the ability to use Spellpower to determine combat damage. Aura of Might and Fade Shroud improve the effects. Additionally, regardless of whether the mode is active, an arcane warrior who has learned this spell may use the magic attribute to satisfy the strength requirement to equip higher-level weapons or armor."

Loved DA:O, don't know why they had to diddle with a great formula. All they had to do was port that game with newer graphics and a different story.

>isnt cucked.
Are you talking about the same story that starts with the ultimate supremely barbaric barbarian woman and continues with the broken-leg male rogue crybaby?

>as we're the official campaigns.
Base campaign is a deconstruction of the classic fantasy tropes. Hit or miss. Mask of the Betrayer is PST-tier. Storm of Zehir is IWD2 clone.

We seem to have a fundamental disagreement on the meaning of words 'complex' and 'depth', if you think DAO was a step backwards compared to its predecessors.
>I never mentioned NWN2
The only basis for your complaint about the lack of character options compared to older games I could come up with was the multiclassing mash in NWN2.

Don't both of those characters die less than twenty minutes in anyway

Warriors don't do autoattacks for combat damage. Warriors take and hold aggro and do tactical disabling. What you played was a rogue that can't backstab, scout or snipe and has pathetic dps.

Remember the final boss of Awakening? Yeah, after she wiped my squad for the second time on Nightmare, I just stopped reviving them. After SOLOING THE FINAL BOSS AS A MELEE MAGE, took a moment to realize just what kind of monster I had created.

And made a rogue because god damn Arcane Warrior needed to be nerfed

You'd be wrong sir. I dealt ridiculous damage and could have solo'd the game had I not liked some of the characters.

Should this thread still be up when I get home I will post my dps and stats. DA:O is one of the games I kept my end save on even though its been years.

Mages were the most fun when you mixed spells together.

>Rune of Repulsion + Rune of Paralysis

store.steampowered.com/app/272270/
You're welcome.

I never said they don't break the game. I said they are shit at doing the warriors job and supremely good at being mages, so it's stupid to have them swing swords at things.

AW. Untouchable. Use your mana to sustain Fade Shroud. Turn on blood magic. Bring down the rain of fire. Turn off blood magic. Heal up. You don't care about health or enemies or aggro because you're untouchable. Turn on blood magic again. You've cleared the map by the time the guy with the sword has finished slaying a pig. Alternatively, just support your teammates and give no fucks about anything. Or summon an uber-skeleton and watch it commit unspeakable proctologies. Or play ping pong using darkspawn, glyphs and stone fist. Any use of an AW is better than having him pretend to be a warrior.

Your "dumbing down" is my "Thank fuck they polished up this utterly nonsensical mechanic that grinded the fucking game to a halt and/or completely busted the entire game's semblance of challenge in my attempt to understand it so I can enjoy the entire game instead of entire game but this fucking whacked thing that adds nothing but frustration even IF you understand it"

>store.steampowered.com/app/272270/
I'd wait for the full release before getting too excited, desu

I remember that Awakening boss. Only creature to kill my AW. Thing was terrible to beat, required several attempts.

Also, mixing spells was the best.

The fact that it's even being made is exciting. But yes, hold full opinion until release.

>Mask of the Betrayer
>bad

Whatever damage you've dealt it's not going to compare to what a properly built rogue should be doing. They will have as much points in dexterity as you will have in magic, and they will have backstab, sneak attack, activated abilities and better armor penetration. Mage trying to be a warrior is a wasted party slot, and mage trying to compete in dps with rogues is a wasted party slot.

Vulnerability + life drain doubles drain effectiveness.

Death cloud + death hex just kills most things.

Sleep + horror.

Also forcecage + crushing prison. Save your friend's ass AND use him as a warhead.

That combo allowed rogues to backstab ANYTHING, even if they were immune to backstab/flanking.

Did it, now?

Paralysis explosion, the gift that keeps on giving. Now if only there was a way to make a rogue fireproof so he can wade into a beefed-up greasefire inferno to stab paralyzed people while they burn.

Tyranny was good though.

Wade's dragonscale armor + ring of ages + warden commander gauntlets + fire resist pot.

>trusting iNeptile

You're in for a good one

Here's my Arcane Warrior

616 Health
164 Mana
64 Armor
164 Defense
118 Spellpower
174.2 Damage

STR 35
DEX 50
WILL 64
MGC 128
CUN 33
CON 69

Mental Res Check: 98
Physical Res Check: 92
Fire Resistence: 46%
Cold 21%
Electric 21%
Nature 20%
Spirit 0%

These effects are always active:
Combat Magic
Arcane Shield
Rock Armor
Flame/Cold Weapons
Miasma
Haste
Elemental Mastery
Cleansing Aura
Draining Aura
Fade Shroud
Stotic

According to what I have in my quick spell slots I used these spells the most.

Arcane Bolt
Fireball
Lightning
Shock
Misdirection Hex
Death Hex

I had all of Spirit Healer, Arcane Warrior, Battlemage, and Power of Blood filled in my spells menu. Had most spells in Primal, the Heroic branch under Creation, and the first two branches under Enthropy.

Eh, doesn't have the same power as a pure DPS character, but can tanks some good damage and has a wide variety of spells to support with. Had "Staff of the Lost" as my back up if I needed to switch to magic.

Solo the game as a rogue, then you can talk.

>Blood Magic
Arcane Warrior was OP bullshit
Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage just shattered the game over its' knee
You didn't even need to level into Blood Mage beyond the first skill, you just needed to be able to cast from hitpoints and you broke the game.

i dont know what game you are talking about because i dont remember either of those characters from divinity original sin.