Malf on 19/12/2008 at 12:18
It comes from having played ToEE and realising just how exceptional D&D could be if it were turn-based.
As far as I'm concerned, while the game was buggy, the story non-existent and the voice acting appalling (especially considering it was made by Troika), the combat in ToEE was simply the best combat I've ever seen in a D&D game, and it really did make you pour over feat choices and how they would affect things such as the 5-step rule and attacks of opportunity.
To explain further why I think SoZ could have benefited from a more ToEE-like system, I have to explain some of the flaws in the NWN engine which didn't exist in the Infinity engine, which made real-time-with-pause bearable (but still no substitute for ToEE-style turn-based).
Marching order simply doesn't work in SoZ; trying to distinguish from front and back line is pointless as orders don't necessarily stick, and things quickly devolve into barely controlled chaos.
I suspect that this is a limitation of the Aurora 1 & 2 engines, especially when you consider that traditionally, in single-player mode, they always tried to keep the number of party members low until the Obsidian-developed NWN2. I'm thinking that it just wasn't built with large parties of player-controlled characters in mind, so when games are released on the engine that implement large parties, it goes to pot quite quickly.
Sure, you can pause and issue a bunch of orders hoping they'll stick (they won't), but for some reason, I find it nicer to deal with in a turn-based system, where each character is presented to you in turn.
Also, and this isn't a problem symptomatic of the system being real-time rather a game fault, in every encounter and dungeon, as soon as you attack one creature, all creatures in the entire encounter area activate and pile into battle. I'm thinking this is simply bad design on Obsidian's behalf, and that it really should have been caught in QA, but again, I can't help but feel that these massive brawls would have been easier and more fun to deal with in a turn-based system.
Going back to ToEE, one of my favourite battles is the one with 20-30 Bugbears, where spells that would be considered trash spells in NWN & BG become invaluable, such as Grease.
And how often do you use the old "Web/Fireball" one-two in the NWN games? I'm not even sure they actually work, but again, with a turn-based system, one of your casters can hit a large group of enemies with web, then the other can follow it up immediately after with Fireball. In the real-time-with-pause games, such tactical spell-casting becomes a lot harder, if not impossible due to enemies moving while you cast.
N'Al on 19/12/2008 at 14:03
Yeah, the whole issued orders not sticking thing is incredibly annoying. I really wonder why that doesn't work properly. :erg:
Koki on 19/12/2008 at 14:48
Web-Firewall is a cornerstone for all mage soloing in BG.
twisty on 20/12/2008 at 08:37
Quote Posted by Malf
Going back to ToEE, one of my favourite battles is the one with 20-30 Bugbears, where spells that would be considered trash spells in NWN & BG become invaluable, such as Grease.
Are you referring to the one on the second underground level of the temple, south of the prison cells? There are a few such encounters with Bugbears throughout the temple and they were all very challenging. What I loved about the game is that no two battles are ever the same. You could successfully complete a major battle, reload, try it again and end up with a completely different result. Often I would fight a battle and think that I had the enemy licked when all of a sudden their tactics would change -- such as one of them deciding to stop attacking their current target and choose a different one, such as a wizard, on the other side of the room -- and I would end up getting my ass kicked.
Some of my favourite battles were in the Nodes. The fight with the Balor was one of the hardest battles in the entire game and was extremely difficult to win without losing some or all of my party.
One of the hardest battles that I've ever fought in an RPG however is the one where you have to break the seals to the lowest levels of Watcher's Keep. I would love to fight that battle in TOEE's engine.
dvrabel on 22/12/2008 at 15:17
Despite being a huge D&D nerd I never got around to playing ToEE, so based on the recommendations here I tried the demo. How representative of the game is the demo?
There were some frustrating UI issues. How many of these are resolved in patches to the full game? I couldn't loot any bodies; it's hard to see what's going on when the monsters or PCs are behind walls or trees (Is there a rotate map option?); right click sometimes didn't work; and is there a button to highlight doors/loot?
I also think the encounter difficulty was too high on average. The party should expend 25% of their resources (HP, spells, etc.) per encounter on average Is the full game better balanced? This difficultly could have been because of the very poorly equipped party in the demo.
Malf on 23/12/2008 at 01:22
Never played the ToEE demo, but to address some of your issues:
Not being able to loot corpses was fixed in an official patch.
The world is hand drawn, much like the Baldur's Gate games, so no, you can't rotate the world.
I can't recall having a problem with right-click, so this was probably patched too.
And a button for highlighting loot? I honestly can't remember, sorry.
If you DO buy it, make sure to grab the Circle of Eight patch / mod from (
http://www.co8.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=31) here.
Fixes a LOT of stuff Troika weren't able to, and adds a lot of very professional features and scenarios.
Aerothorn on 23/12/2008 at 17:22
I'm not buying anything from Atari until Mask of the Betrayer works...it crashes as soon as I leave the first room, no matter what the settings are. Gonna contact support when I get back home.
