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On February 24 2012 23:38 Tula wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2012 15:50 Euronyme wrote:On February 24 2012 15:25 Ganfei2 wrote:
I read through the last 20pages of so of this thread.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this game is ridiculously easy. When I googled it to see if anyone was talking about it, all these stupid threads where people say the game is hard pop up.
I've been playing on hard, with a pure magic, and never even come close to dying ever. I 1 shot KO everything on my screen at level 24. I never use potions, never craft potions or items, never use my block key (at ALL, too lazy), and it's still ridiculously easy.
I got meteor at like level 23 and it 1 hit KO's everything except the orange-named bosses, who are taken to like 5% hp.
Also, the reckoning mode or whatever it's called where everything goes bullet time is basically "press-to-win" key. I just save it for fights or big mobs and use it for the bonus xp/free win on bosses.
The game was really fun up until this point but I'm getting bored and it's become ridiculously easy rather than just easy. I take literally no damage from everything. My gear gives me like 50% damage reduction + maxed sphere thing. I have -50% all mana costs and +250% magic damage. I have yet to craft anything. I have never socketed a gem, but I do combine the shards and sell them to make money (so now I have about 1.5 million gold at level 24 from selling gems to Nanne, the gnome in the first town who gives you bonus money if you've done her quest. Too bad gold is worthless when nobody sells anything particularly good and the shop inventories are static).
I think it's a credit to the game producers or designers or whoever is responsible for that stuff that the game is still a really fun game despite all these flaws. However, it has/had potential to be super super super good and that's disappointing. Maybe mods will come out, or something.
There could be so much more depth. I always find myself disappointed in the modern "RPGs" when there are 5 spells total, 10 weapons total, and 3 skill trees total. Quest storylines are not fleshed out, there's not that much depth to the item system, etc. I also hate it when games make crafting an option and then make crafted stuff a huge amount better than anything you can find.
I'm also getting tired of walking around so much. Skyrim fixed that, sorta, by giving most of the dungeons a quick-escape at the end (while less "immersive," I appreciate that time-saver). Some dungeons have that in Amalur but 90% of the time I have to run all the way backwards out of the long as fuck dungeon to get out.
Also who the fuck is building hundreds of these enormous 2 mile long cave complexes with gigantic city ruins and huge bridges over abyssal chasms and shit? Oh yes! The fucking caves that you have to walk back through.. Jesus christ.. Does anyone know if there is an auto walk button? My fingers started to hurt because I had held down the W key for too long :/ If you want a challenge I would suggest playing rogue. They do shit damage. Found it pretty tricky with some boss fights actually when I didn't have reckoning or enough heal potions. Rule of thumb is that a rogue crits what a warrior auto hits. Atleast that's how it was for me, and I didn't crit much :p Well it is fairly easy to "break" a rogue char as well. Stock up on crit chance and crit damage and you will crit for a ton quite often. To be honest I am not bothered about the difficulty (that being too easy), it has always been easy to break a game if you maximise your builds in an RPG. You can either go the route Demon Souls did (if you don't max your char you die all the time) or go for a more casual approach. So far I have played 45 hours on my first character, and only the last 4 felt "broken" since i had reached level 40 and respecced to a major mage/finesse char to finish the game. I'd like 3 things to make this game better: A hotkey for "add to junk" (so that i don't need to right click almost everything i want to pick up) A delay on healing potions on the hardest difficulty More diverse enemy resistances in the later levels (meaning: enemy A immune to fire, enemy B with high armor, enemy C caster with high immunities and great dodging skills etc.) The first one would be a minor interface thing that made life easier while the later two should make the endgame significantly harder.
It's not an issue of exploiting the game or maximising builds, though. I personally USUALLY don't care about combat in RPGs. I play them for the story and finding items and stuff like that. In this game, combat is front and center. Like I said, I have been enjoying the game even though I find it easy. But with the addition of meteor and other higher level spells it's become a cakewalk. I haven't done anything whatsoever to exploit potential advantages. I have a pure mage, have never crafted anything, only use the items I find, and have had 0 difficulty.
A temporary solution is simply not to use the better spells. But my chakram are overpowered too. They stun everything. My fights are generally just me pressing mouse 1 until I win, and if I want it to go faster I press mouse 2 and get a 2.5k damage meteor on enemies with 900 max hp.
It's just bad balance, and in single player RPG type games I usually don't even mind that. But it's so overwhelming in this game that even someone as lenient as I am is becoming a little bored.
The main quest is interesting me and I've done the warsworn and fae faction quest lines, but I haven't yet found another sidequest that was actually intriguing, yet. I have like 30 quests on my sidebar that I just haven't gotten around to yet but they're all things like "deliver these notices to these guys" and "find 10 of this root." Sadly, my completionist nature dictates that I have to do all of them.
Stressing this again: I've enjoyed the game. It's fun to play. But I'm getting bored around level 25. I don't like the idea of self-imposed constraints just to improve the playability of the game.
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I was really on the fence about buying this game when all the major SC2 personalities spent a day marathonning about it, looked amazing. Now that some time has passed not buying it seems to have been the right decision, $60 a bit overpriced and lack of difficulty seem to be the two major things in my eyes.
To be fair I would have probably bought it but NONE of these guys continued streaming it the following day... not JP, not WHEAT, not Day9. No mentions of it after the big "advertisement day", gave me the notion they TRULY didn't feel it was spectacular so I didn't buy it.
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One of the best parts of th game are the fate shift kill animation
I just killed a gnome guy and my hero punted him into the air and then used a baseball bat type thing to smack him away
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This game would have been amazing if it'd been released in 2008. But it's 2012 and everything about it feels incredibly dated.
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On February 25 2012 06:25 LuckoftheIrish wrote:
This game would have been amazing if it'd been released in 2008. But it's 2012 and everything about it feels incredibly dated.
For me personally something being dated isn't an issue if it's good, especially in the RPG genre. It would be awesome to have a "new" Baldur's Gate 2.
There are a lot of comparisons between Amalur and WoW that I've seen, is that because of the graphics style? The play style?
I've never played WoW and have actually only ever seen it being played through youtube, as nobody I know plays it either, so I can't speak on it myself.
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The stupidest part about some of these western "choose your path" style rpgs is when they give you different speech choices but they all lead to the same shit. It's kinda dumb. This game had way too many of those. Hell, I'm sure many of them even gave the same response.
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On February 25 2012 11:16 Ganfei2 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 06:25 LuckoftheIrish wrote:
This game would have been amazing if it'd been released in 2008. But it's 2012 and everything about it feels incredibly dated. For me personally something being dated isn't an issue if it's good, especially in the RPG genre. It would be awesome to have a "new" Baldur's Gate 2. There are a lot of comparisons between Amalur and WoW that I've seen, is that because of the graphics style? The play style? I've never played WoW and have actually only ever seen it being played through youtube, as nobody I know plays it either, so I can't speak on it myself.
Graphically, it's very similar to WoW or the Fable series. Compare Fable 2 with Kingdoms of Amalur. By comparison, this is Skyrim. Saturation levels are much lower, and overall the graphical feeling is much grittier and realistic. WoW, the Fable series and KoA use a much 'cheerier' style with high saturation and lots of outdoor brightness, creating a more cartoon fantasy style. One isn't necessarily better than the other, though.
KoA is also the the game that's supposed to create a world. It's Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, because there are other games planned to take place using the same world and lore. One of those games will be an MMO, and it's easy to see some influences, especially in the quest marker system. Characters have giant fat question marks and exclamation points over their heads, and the world feels pretty empty despite lots of terrain features and NPCs. A lot of that is because the story is really, really bad and the NPC interaction is shallow. It reminds me a lot of playing Everquest, actually: "what quest" "what sword" "what this" "what that." I'm not interested in anything they say. The voice acting and stilted writing don't help. It feels like you should be interacting with other players, but of course there aren't any. It doesn't help that there's no character to play. In conversations with NPCs, you select a fact you want to know more about. The NPC tells you about that fact in two or three sentences. Then you select another fact. Then the NPC tells you about their quest. Then you say "Yes, I'll help you." or "No, I won't help you." That's the entire extent of conversation. Contrast that to literally every other RPG made in the last decade, where the main character is bursting with personality that comes out in dialog. Shepherd has a lot of shit to say. Some of it is rude, some is wickedly funny. So does Darth Revan from KotOR. So does the Exile from KotOR 2. So does the Warden from DAO, and so on and so forth.
When I say it's dated, I don't mean in the way BG2 or PS:T or other games are dated. A better word might be stale. It uses the old menu-style system from older RPGs (except when it uses a Mass Effect-style wheel. Seriously, multiple different UIs within a single conversation). It has a power system pretty similar in execution to the one in Fable 1. It's hard to point to anything outside of the combat and say 'that's innovative' or 'that's groundbreaking and will be copied' or even 'that's at all new.' Hell, it's hard to look at anything and say 'that's good.' Combat button-pressing is pretty similar to Fable or Jade Empire.
Combat (which is fun, and the only reason to play, really) is hard to evaluate because of the relative difficulty. Everything is easy. I've yet to hear anyone say they think the game is hard. Even in the begining of the game, when you should be at your (relatively) weakest, your only spell (which the game forces you to have) kills everything that's not a boss in one to three hits.
There's not really any good reason to continue to play it, other than that... eh. I guess the combat is kinda fun when I want a silly button presser. It's like playing Dynasty Warriors or something. If you go in with high expectations, you'll be disappointed. If you go in thinking 'I'm gonna press square a lot and kill stuff and skip a bunch of cutscenes and have an ok time' then you'll enjoy yourself.
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On February 25 2012 12:10 Itsmedudeman wrote:
The stupidest part about some of these western "choose your path" style rpgs is when they give you different speech choices but they all lead to the same shit. It's kinda dumb. This game had way too many of those. Hell, I'm sure many of them even gave the same response.
There aren't even any speech choices, really. Bioware are the kings of the false speech option (ME2 was particularly bad) but here you don't really have any dialog choices other than 'ask about bit of lore x' or 'accept/decline quest.'
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Spoiler (involves arriving on Eastern continent):
+ Show Spoiler +
So I killed the Balor guy. I'm playing on hard difficulty with a pure magic guy. I was having a hard time dealing damage to him when he suddenly put his head on the ramparts. I cast one meteor and it killed him in one hit. IS THIS A BUG? Or can I seriously kill this giant boss creature in one spell??? The fight proceeded to one of those "press the buttons as they flash on the screen" cutscenes and I killed him. I was kind of confused...ridiculous. My meteor only did 2.1k damage to him too, but apparently it's enough to 1 hit KO him?
I also lol'd when the scene ended and I talked to the commander guy and my reward was 30k gold (meh) and...1x scrabblestone powder, the most common reagent in the game. Awesome reward.
I do agree about it being outdated. I see a lot of potential for story and lore expansion that isn't being taken advantage of. At the same time, i see the market that they have to deal with. Releasing a game with "too much reading" does lower the number of players who will play it, sadly.
Given that there is a lot of this button mashing combat, though, I think that if they had added some more "reading" to the game it wouldn't have gone amiss. Those who want to can just skip it all anyways.
There are so many non-main-story quests that could be "epic," and have really cool backgrounds, but then fail to deliver. Additionally, when the game is so easy, virtually every quest becomes a fetch quest because there is no challenge in doing anything. It doesn't help that the quest-giver for every quest just says "I want you to do this" and then you go kill a dungeon and get the prize at the end.
I did try re-speccing into a might character for awhile but found it boring. It took longer to kill enemies but it was no more difficult than my mage. I never took any damage or was in any danger of dying; the most annoying thing was actually drinking a mana pot every 20 minutes after I'd used up my 400 mana pool on 25 mana cost abilities.
The game is fun for what it offers. It's just unfortunate that tehre is so much room for additional content that could have elevated the game from where it is to something much greater.
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In a nutshell I would say they did great with the art (if you like the style), so-so with combat (good mechanics but bad balance) and terrible with the writing and interface. Very entertaining for a while but with little lasting value.
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Has anyone found out anything about how to automatically sprint all the time? I see no point whatsoever in walking, and usually you have to press like num lock or some shit to actually be slow, but in this game you're a turtle by default.
Auto walk would be awesome as well.
Edit. The pain of holding ctrl with my pinkie constantly is actually the thing I'll remember most about this game I think ^_^
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You can just change run to toggle instead of press in the option menu.
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On February 28 2012 17:13 Gorsameth wrote:
You can just change run to toggle instead of press in the option menu.
Neat thanks 
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On February 25 2012 11:58 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 02:45 solidbebe wrote:On February 25 2012 02:13 Sated wrote:On February 23 2012 06:46 Euronyme wrote:On February 23 2012 06:06 Jibba wrote:
I don't get how people call it a console interface. I'm playing with a controller and the menus are still terrible. It's just poor design, nothing to do with consolification. How could scrolling through menus ever be better with a controller than a mouse and keyboard? o.o
If anything this game is an example of a console port done properly. Runs perfectly, no crashing, small footprint. The parts that suck suck for both consoles and PCs. If the interface is terrible then it's a console interface. As far as I understand it most console RPGs have terrible UI. You realise that's an absolutely trash statement that you can't back-up, right? I can't remember many console JRPGs having interfaces that were difficult to use. Final Fantasies, Breath of Fires etc. all awesome. To be fair, he wasn't talking about JRPGs. And personally I agree that most western console RPGs have shit UI JRPGs = RPGs. End of argument. EDIT: In other words, if JRPGs can do it right, why can't western RPGs? Being on console clearly isn't the problem, the developers are.
It was never said they couldn't do it right, what was said is that they aren't doing it right. Which you seem to agree with. And since they aren't doing it right in the games that are released here and not in Japan. It would be only logical for people here to say console games have bad interfaces.
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On February 25 2012 11:58 Sated wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2012 02:45 solidbebe wrote:On February 25 2012 02:13 Sated wrote:On February 23 2012 06:46 Euronyme wrote:On February 23 2012 06:06 Jibba wrote:
I don't get how people call it a console interface. I'm playing with a controller and the menus are still terrible. It's just poor design, nothing to do with consolification. How could scrolling through menus ever be better with a controller than a mouse and keyboard? o.o
If anything this game is an example of a console port done properly. Runs perfectly, no crashing, small footprint. The parts that suck suck for both consoles and PCs. If the interface is terrible then it's a console interface. As far as I understand it most console RPGs have terrible UI. You realise that's an absolutely trash statement that you can't back-up, right? I can't remember many console JRPGs having interfaces that were difficult to use. Final Fantasies, Breath of Fires etc. all awesome. To be fair, he wasn't talking about JRPGs. And personally I agree that most western console RPGs have shit UI JRPGs = RPGs. End of argument. EDIT: In other words, if JRPGs can do it right, why can't western RPGs? Being on console clearly isn't the problem, the developers are.
Funny story about that.
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I am enjoying the game a lot apart from the fact it is way too easy. Every enemy needs at least twice as much health and double the damage they currently have on Hard.*
e: *from about level 20 onwards
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very disappointed that the game hasnt recieved any patches, not even a camera fix.
For a company that states "from gamers for gamers", this is sad to see. Most people are done wtih the game now either way, so even if they actually work on one big mioracle patch that needs 2 months of dev time, this was not enough.
Very forgettable gaming experience overall for me, overshadowed by a frustrating camera that made fights, that were supposed to be fun and a highlight, frustratingto the point where i stopped doing (MMO generic) sidequests and rushed the game.
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The DLC is coming out March 20th. Maybe they'll include some fixes with that? Dunno.
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I just got this game and played the first 2 hours (reached the first town) and so far it is fucking so much fun. I'm not certain how I'll play my character fully yet. Probably Fae weapons + Chakrams but I'll see what I like. I love that you can see the animations of things before you spec into them to see what you like and such. I'm using some longsword of frost I found in a cave now though because it was at least twice the damage of my daggers but soon I'll stick to daggers anyway.
BTW, is there a way to auto-target with ranged weapons? I hated using the bow so far because it doesn't auto-target.
Finally, is there a way to lower the sensitivity of the mouse for the camera? I remember several people were unhappy with the camera in this game so I'm guessing no to that plus zooming out though... not a huge deal I suppose but it would be nice.
*EDIT : Not sure why people hate the camera that much. The fight vs the troll was very fun for me and honestly the camera, despite being a bit too zoomed in, didn't lower my enjoyment of anything.
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EPT
