CRPGs/WRPGs - Computer/Western Role-Playing Games - No Squares or Atluses allowed

[God of Nothing]

I strongly disagree. I actually found myself going around and having optional conversations with NPCs after major plot points just to see what they had to say.

I can't stress enough how uncommon that is for me - I find myself skimming through most RPGs just to get the vague gist of the text because that's all the quality of the writing warrants.

you left out the merchant npcs who just can't shut the fuck up

 

[Neodanthril]

Two Worlds Oblivion at home

AS a two worlds enjoyer that is a fair statement.

 

[Grub]

I used to play a lot of Neverwinter Nights when I was younger. The fact that it shipped with a full on campaign creator and a free online multiplayer mode where you could play custom campaigns and all kinds of shit was super cool for the time and I can't really think of any other rpgs that came with such a robust editor that gave you as much power and flexibility as the on the shipped with NWN.

 

[Give Them Enough Rope]

What will become of Rogue Trader after its two season passes and four pieces of DLC are over, though?
“I highly doubt that the fourth DLC will be the last for Rogue Trader”, Shestov says.

 

[Tor Lugosi]

What will become of Rogue Trader after its two season passes and four pieces of DLC are over, though?
“I highly doubt that the fourth DLC will be the last for Rogue Trader”, Shestov says.

Huh, I thought for sure the second season of DLC would be the last since they're already hyping up Dark Heresy and now that Expanse RPG. I remember them saying the same thing about WotR's DLC, though, hinting that they might do another season or another huge content update, but then eventually went "lol never mind."

 

[SIMIΔN]

What will become of Rogue Trader after its two season passes and four pieces of DLC are over, though?
“I highly doubt that the fourth DLC will be the last for Rogue Trader”, Shestov says.

That'll be hard to pull off.
The story and epilogue make adding stuff after the ending difficult, and even the first DLC was ridiculous how your small frigate somehow had space to hide a giant statue of Death and murder cult.

 

[Kerr Avon]

Neverwinter Nights 2 is getting some kind of enhanced re~release. Aspyr instead of Beamdog.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/KEWTd

 

[LongForgotten]

i didn't love or understand the switch in armor mechanics from DS 1 and DS 2. it was fun to mix and match everything possible to try and boost all your resistances as high as you could in 1 and potentially beat out status effects, and in 2 all that goes away just to have it all negated by the armor. It never felt good though because enemies almost always have more of it than you and with the split between magic and physical being so 50/50 you typically end up doing one or the other. It either meant my caster got demoted to supporting because there were so few enemies they could control with magic damage, whereas my physical characters got far more done because the essential targets had little physical armor. Felt like you either had to go all in magical or all in physical, and as a result any characters that are the opposite don't get to be as effective because of it.

Also DS 1 letting you get like a billion AP and lowering AP cost and cooldown on spells that were below your skill level was pure fun. Nothing like dishing out 4 different spells and obliterating people.

The retarded change in defensive mechanics from having multiple stats that resist different CC types to the armors is that they wanted to avoid CC spam. Which is hilarious and ironic, because the people at Larian did not play the game enough to realize that every encounter devolves to nuking the enemy with one damage type into CC into absolute rape so they never get a turn. Btw if you want to play DOS2 where you can use mixed-damage types you should play with the Epic Encounters 2 mod, it adds a bunch of stuff and fixes some of Larian's questionable decisions.

 

[Anon88]

That'll be hard to pull off.
The story and epilogue make adding stuff after the ending difficult, and even the first DLC was ridiculous how your small frigate somehow had space to hide a giant statue of Death and murder cult.

I read somewhere they're planning on following the structure of Void Shadows for all new DLC, so a new companion plus some new side quests in chapter 2 and 4. It's kind of a odd idea as the game is already really long.

Neverwinter Nights 2 is getting some kind of enhanced re~release. Aspyr instead of Beamdog.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/KEWTd

I love NWN2 and was actually quite excited when this was first leaked, but now I'm not even sure I'm going to bother to get it. The pre-order page on steam is so vague it makes you feel like it's just a rerelease and not a improved version at all. Not even a promise of the fan modules being compatible with it. I was really hoping for some of the cut content to be restored but it's looking like it's not happening.

 

[Kerr Avon]

I was really hoping for some of the cut content to be restored

Aspyr knows better than to promise that after their KOTOR 2 debacle a few years ago.

 

[Anon88]

Aspyr knows better than to promise that after their KOTOR 2 debacle a few years ago.

It's impressive that they messed that up so badly. All they needed to do was just steal the work the modders already did and call it a day, but they somehow failed to even do that. Really I'm not sure what I was even thinking expecting high quality from Aspyr of all places.

 

[Flatline]

Neverwinter Nights 2 is getting some kind of enhanced re~release. Aspyr instead of Beamdog.

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/KEWTd

Money grab.

 

[Kerr Avon]

Money grab.

100%. Interesting to see it get the Steam Deck verified tag tho.

 

[Michael Wade]

Just finished pillars of eternity. It feels like a very middle of the road CRPG. There was a decent chunk I liked and I there was a decent chunk I didn't care for.


Story: One of the great things of this game is the large amount of customization you can have on character background, nationality and motives for being in the land. I Picked Goldpact knight because the idea of a mercenary paladin appealed to me (although apparently Cipher's can read minds, and everybody's racist against the furry hobbits so I missed out on that). A lot of it is just narrative fluff, but I liked the lore and the atmosphere they were trying to go for, which was basically colonial new world / medieval fantasy. The style doesn't translate that well into the story but it aimed high. The greatest strength of the games writing is it's willingness to tackle dark topics without becoming needlessly edgy. You can still be a traditional hero, but you have to take into account that certain situations have details you need to parse though. ( the crazy lord hanging people may be better for long term stability then say his asshole brother.) The whole goal of the game is to stop a magical population limiter that's making children born without souls. You figure things out by having a special ability to see dead people and read souls, which is pretty cool. Where the game kinda falls apart in the endgame is in how it treats the gods or rather their origins

Spoiler

The gods are artificial constructs made of magic, and the villain makes a big point of how wrong it is to expose this fact and how necessary it was to make them. The counterarguments you can make to him against this are pretty weak. You cant argue that maybe he displaced the "real" god or gods. The whole thing felt like someone came up with a cool idea, and failed to weave a middle ground with it and give depth. It's not quite fedora atheist levels of cringe but it certainly can accommodate that perspective.

Overall it starts out strong, has good DLC, then it kinda pitters out and has a meh ending. I think the writing is decent, its just mostly B Tier with sprinklings of A tier and even S tier from party members.


Artstyle: It's bland. There isn't a single memorable design in this game aside from some party members and that is a large part of why I put it off buying for so dam long. The environments are not badly constructed, the ideas for the monster's are not terrible. It's just that nothing really looks unique by itself. There's no core identity to the game that screams "PILLARS OF ETERITY" besides its writing.


Choices: The game is billed as a choice based one, and that's... mildly true. You can get a good or evil rep and become famous, changing people's reactions to you and widening respect. However, when you really break it down, there's a surprising lack of ending choices beyond the major decisions at the end or allying with one of the major factions in the city. Lot of individual questlines dont really matter besides a handful. (sequel covered more individual quests then I saw in the ending slides for 1 but most of them still dont get coverage) One thing I REALLY hated was how inflexible some of the questlines were. When I was deciding who to aid in the defiance Bay questlines, I figured I could play for all sides and betray whoever I wanted at anytime. Nope, You can do one quest for each major faction before the second locks you into supporting them. You do get a lot of mileage with your party members though, and if you like playing as an asshole you can get a lot of them to commit suicide.

Party members: Half of them are really good and half them are meh. Some of the most based moments in the game are from bringing a crazed fire hobo priest alongside a magical conservative midwife and seeing the ambient dialogue. They kinda follow the early baldur's gate style though so there's not too much interaction aside from the one quest everyone gets and some obscure requirements you have to look up. My favorite character was Zahua from white marsh. Dude is literally a benevolent Kotomine Kirei with the same original voice actor no less. He will kill dam near everything for you with his bare hands.

Gameplay: its surprisingly hard on easy difficulty. Im a casual who plays for the story and there is a learning curve when you go into it. Basically injuries and stamina stack even on the lowest setting so you frequently need to rest, otherwise permadeath is still possible in the early game. There's a looot of stuff they don't really go into that can effect dialogue choices. Stuff like buying grappling hooks, torches, or even basic oil to put in your inventory. On top of that some of the storybook event requirements feel a bit ridiculous and redundant. For example, the White Marsh section has a moment early on where you can go into a burning house to save two people. You need to have the right stats to get into the house, not suffocate, dodge debris and finally carry out the woman AND magically put out the fire if you want to save the guy. It's requires a ridiculous amount of prep spec and... It's not worth a dam thing. Saving the guy doesn't get you anything and saving the chick gets you some accolades. Game is filled with moments like this that really make you question why the effort was even made. Also they decided to give you control of a castle which seems cool... and quickly devolves into busywork that wastes time. Get this, they allow you to go to the end tier bonus boss dungeon at the start of the game under your castle. I assumed it would a milk run to take care of, but noooo you've got 15 levels of high ass enemies you need to deal with if you want to clean out the curse of the castle.

Spoiler

and immediately get it all undone by the next game.

Performance issues: the PS5 version had a bad tendency to crash when loading a new area if I played it for too long. The save system was good enough to compensate for a while.... Until randomly a portion of my saves and all my auto saves were corrupted. Be sure to save more then once.


Side note: the game is filled with NPC's that don't talk to the player and only tell stories from their souls because the Kickstarter backers had that as a reward. It was extremely distracting and disorienting till I looked it up.

 

[SIMIΔN]

Characters got worse imo. They suffer from "I'm not the stereotype actually" syndrome.
"I'm succubus but I'm good", "I'm paladin but I am a chaotic retard", "I'm a gnome but I'm not a chaotic retard". You are playing as a holy commander during the day and a head of the freak cicrus troop during the night to the point where you ask "is anybody around me is normal?".

"I'm an angel's grandson but use my superhuman charisma to mindlessly party instead of being a paladin/anti-paladin".

The succubus' story was interesting but the conflict between evil intrinsic instincts and good morals is basically trying to deconstruct the game mechanics Owlcat themselves put there.

What paths have you been on? I picked Aeon basically Judge Dredd with superpowers.

 

[DefinitelyNotMe]

The succubus' story was interesting but the conflict between evil intrinsic instincts and good morals is basically trying to deconstruct the game mechanics Owlcat themselves put there.

at least she has justification of being mindraped by a god

What paths have you been on? I picked Aeon basically Judge Dredd with superpowers.

i started and dropped this game like a dozen times
but i did finish it once as azata and i think i played as some sort of slayer/bard/dragon disciple tank character
i did wanted to beat the legend with fighter 20/swordlord 10/duelist 10 but i just never grew hands long enough for that

 

[Froggy Fresh Sextape]

Older CRPGs were good just because of how janky the mechanics got.

Arcanum, you've got two builds. You want real-time combat? Just be a mage with Harm and click that button as fast as you can (you will probably pass out.) Turn-based? Melee mage with hasten + congeal time + dagger of speed + boots of speed and you are just slicing up people like Neo from the Matrix.

Later CRPGs did gross things like ask "well is this actually balanced?"

 

[StacticShock]

The easiest way to anger fans of said games and get guaranteed responses is to call Gothic Morrowind at home and Two Worlds Oblivion at home

you can't anger two worlds fans though, topware is ontop of that for years, gothic can be compared to witcher 2 in terms of shittiness.

 

[Dave.]

Decided to give BG1 Enhanced Edition a shot because it was cheap on steam and I kind of regret it to an extent because someone at Beamdog thinks their original do not steal companions are really cool. Really, really fucking cool. So cool they just grab my screen and interrupt my play sessions just so they can tell me how cool they are and/or tell me their really well written backstory as I’m trying to stop an iron crisis going on in a town.

Also their attempts to remaster the 3D cutscenes looks ugly. I really don’t know if Amber Scott has any writing credits on this edition, but man her fucking style is really well replicated in this remaster in that Scott has no fucking idea how RPGs, table top or computer, are supposed to be played or told. She genuinely thinks putting “cutscenes” in tabletop rpgs is good writing and pausing action to describe a character’s backstory is a good idea.

 

[hawkisnight]

I have been playing dungeon siege 1 recently and really like it. Real hack and slash. Feels like you go through thousand enemies. No loading screens makes the game feel large even if its mostly a corridor.

I love NWN2 and was actually quite excited when this was first leaked, but now I'm not even sure I'm going to bother to get it. The pre-order page on steam is so vague it makes you feel like it's just a rerelease and not a improved version at all. Not even a promise of the fan modules being compatible with it. I was really hoping for some of the cut content to be restored but it's looking like it's not happening.

Same here but I think I am going to get it just to see if they really fixed the camera and changed the UI. Restored content would be nice but if the things I mentioned are fixed I can get past it.