[Aptorian]

To me it comes down to the gameplay, in that sense it is hard to compare the first games with the later ones made by Bethesda and Obsidian. Personally I have no interest in playing a really old 2d isometric rpg so the jump to the 3D first person versions would be an easy choice. You're not losing any particular insight into the universe and there's no overarching story.

I personally preferred Fallout 3 to New Vegas. I liked the Washington Wasteland more than the Nevada Vegas area. I have been told that the characters and story is better made by Obsidian but I played the two games with a 4 year gap inbetween so I wouldn't be able to tell you if I thought one was better than the other in that regard.

[Werthead]

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I have been reading stuff about the Fallout series, and I think it looks pretty sweet! The Fallout, Fallout Tactics & Fallout 2 Bundle is only £13.99 (about $22) on Steam right now. Is it worth playing those games or is it better to start in the "modern" period with Fallout 3?

Contrary to the above, there are over-arching themes in the series although only a few very specific plot points and characters. These are very minor: one character in FO3 and a few more characters (including a super-mutant sherrif voiced by Michael Dorn!) a bit more of the general political set-up in NEW VEGAS. You can certainly start with FO3 and NV with no problem. I went back to FALLOUT 1 having not played it on release and I found it to be pretty much unplayable now. I do mean to try FO2, which was a lot more advanced than FO1 and was a bit crazier. TACTICS is a side-game focused on combat which again is very vaguely referenced in the later games but is not essential

I'd recommend FO3 over NEW VEGAS to start with: NEW VEGAS is the better and far more replayable game, but its opening is really poor and the game doesn't kick into life until a few hours in. FO3's opening is superbly designed and eases you into the FO universe and the game itself much more effectively. It gets a bit duller later on as it runs out of steam, whilst NV improves immensely after its dodgy opening few hours. I'd recommned the DLC for both games, but especially NV as they make the game much larger and give you more stuff to do.

Note that FO3 is the outlier of the series in terms of creators: FO1, FO2 and TACTICS were made by Black Isle, who later collapsed (when parent company Interplay went under) and then reformed as Obsidian (and Troika, who later also collapsed and many of their members joined Obsidian), who later made NEW VEGAS (and helped with WASTELAND 2, the sequel to the game that FALLOUT was a 'spiritual successor' to in the first place!). FO3 and its DLC are the only parts of the franchise not made by the same team.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 27 September 2014 - 03:45 PM

[Silencer]

God, Wert, you just reminded me how much I miss Troika! >.<

[Macros]

I never really played much fallout, but I still play bg and iwd

[A Demon Llama!]

Does anyone play Path of Exile? I just downloaded it from steam, its a free to play game. Apparently similar to Diablo 2 although I never played Diablo. Played for an hour and it pretty good so far but I know I will get bored soon if I dont have someone to play with. Anyone playing this currently?

[Defiance]

Just started playing Divinity: Original Sin. Enjoying it quite a bit so far. Amusingly, my biggest enemy is my second character. I gave him the free spirited AI which has created a lot of problems that would have otherwise been easily avoidable. I don't mind, though, as it makes things interesting.

[Avatar]

Playing it as well, Defiance. Love this game. Funny, the fighting makes me think of the old UFO/X-com game.

[Morgoth]

The plot is fairly standard, but the combat of Divinity is rather excellent. They've made the attacks surprisingly satisfying. When my warrior kills a cultist with his two handed axe the impact feels real and powerfull, and the animation of the poor fiend turning into dust is well done too.

[A Demon Llama!]

Saw Torchlight 2 on sale for $5 today so I bought it. I'm running a bit behind on these games.

[Werthead]

DIVINITY and WASTELAND 2 have both been superb, as is SHADOWRUN: DRAGONFALL. For old-school RPGs with excellent turn-based combat, it's been a very good year so far. If PILLARS OF ETERNITY squeezes out before the end of the year (maybe looking a bit less likely now), this will go down as the best year for RPGs in a long, long time. Even moreso if DRAGON AGE: INQUISTION turns out to be better than it's looking at the moment. A shame THE WITCHER 3 slipped, otherwise this might have been the best CRPG year ever.

If you like XCOM-style combat, WASTELAND 2 and SHADOWRUN satisfy that urge even more than DIVINITY, since they have guns, lasers, robots and other SF stuff.

[Morgoth]

Shadowrun is pretty great too, I agree.

Have any of you guys tried that new fantasy 4X? Umh, Endless something something?

[Tapper]

Morgoth, on 02 October 2014 - 06:02 AM, said:

Shadowrun is pretty great too, I agree.

Have any of you guys tried that new fantasy 4X? Umh, Endless something something?

Endless Legend?
I played a bit in bèta before they started a competition for a player-made race.
It was mostly click-end-turn-compete-auto-move-rinse-repeat and one of the races was a tad bit overpowered, so I left it at that. However, the other day I started it up to check it out and I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity of factions (each faction has 4 unique unit types, and racial bonuses are so different they make each faction almost a wholly unique experience from one another, not just a 10-15% shift of focus) and according to rockpapershotgun it cleaned up very nicely in gameplay, too.

One warning: the combat is turn based but takes place on the actual world map. When two armies meet, the stack of units is spread out over the map. Pretty cool for chokepoints, but it looks really weird.

[Defiance]

About 35 hours into Divinity: Original Sin right now with no end in sight.

Absolutely loving this game. I've been playing it on hard difficulty which makes the fights a real adrenaline rush. I have to think multiple turns ahead in order to come out on top. I've had to make use of barriers and corridors to cheese a few fights because of how much I was getting my ass kicked.

I only have two complaints about the game so far: inventory and dialogue. Managing your inventory isn't exactly a nightmare due to the sorting tool, but there's just so much of everything and I feel compelled to pick it all up. I'm going to have to set aside an hour when I play tomorrow just to sell and sort through everything. As for the dialogue, a lot of it isn't well written. It feels like a teenager trying to write Shakespeare a lot of the time.

EDIT: Is it just me, or has the beta footage for Pillars of Eternity been underwhelming? What I've seen of the combat hasn't captured my interest, especially after playing Divinity.

This post has been edited by Defiance: 03 October 2014 - 08:21 AM

[A Demon Llama!]

Anyone planning to get Alien: Isolation?

[Avatar]

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The plot is fairly standard, but the combat of Divinity is rather excellent. They've made the attacks surprisingly satisfying. When my warrior kills a cultist with his two handed axe the impact feels real and powerfull, and the animation of the poor fiend turning into dust is well done too

Yeah, I love the combat. And the way you make use of the elements, (making it rain to put out fires, after which lightning bolts hits everyone who is standing in the water) feels both satisfying and organic.

[Werthead]

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EDIT: Is it just me, or has the beta footage for Pillars of Eternity been underwhelming? What I've seen of the combat hasn't captured my interest, especially after playing Divinity.

I suspect DIVINITY will end up having the better combat (especially for turn-based fans, since, well, it's turn-based and PoE isn't) and it's clearly already visually superior but PoE will be much better-written and have a stronger story. PoE is also a much bigger game with a lot more side-quests (including an entire, apparently mostly-optional 15-level megadungeon that's bigger than most entire games) and a longer main plot.

The (somewhat) inferior visuals and combat will probably be a letdown, but PoE should, if everything's turned out as they planned, actually have a hell of a lot more to actually do, and I suspect it will be a bit less obtuse than D:OS can be.

[Morgoth]

I'm pretty close to the end of Divinity, and to be honest I have little interest in playing through untill the end. There's nothing interesting within the story, and I never found mucn interest in the whole Diablo idea of levels for levels sake.

[Morgoth]

So I was slightly drunk and bought Endless Legend. Steam is a dangerous store.

At any rate, I'm tentatively positive. I enjoy how different the factions feel, and I like the quest system. It's a little buggy, and somewhat slow, even for a 4X, but that might be because I'm not very good at it yet. I very much enjoy the heroes, and the tech tree is interesting. Mainly I'm just happy to play a fantasy 4X. Few of those are made for OSX for whatever reason.

I also feel that there's a lot of content waiting to be implemented still. Sure, it's a fully fledged game for sure, but I there'll be more factions and more features.

So, not a 4X winner, but it'll serve me well until Beyond Earth.

[Defiance]

So, I beat Divinity: Original Sin today.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the game.

I loved the combat. I liked the visuals. I enjoyed exploring each map, and thought there was a good amount of content in each area. That said, by the time I got to about hour 40, I was starting to get worn out. The main plot was terribly unimaginative. It took no risks and there was very little to make it interesting. As a result, my interest in the game began to wane. I made it through the next 15 hours to beat the game, but the combat started to become tedious. I was just fighting to finish the game, not because I cared about what was going on. And I think that's a real damn shame, because I loved so many aspects of this game. But the key thing that makes a game stick with me fell utterly flat.

I don't regret the 55 hours I invested in the game, but at the same time I don't have any plans to ever revisit it.

Moving on to Metro: Last Light.

[Tiste Simeon]

So I finished Dishonoured. Superb game, but I have to admit, I absolutely sucked at it. I have no idea why or what to do differently. I started off really trying to sneak around but I always got caught and then I'd have to kill everyone. I never seemed to be able to do anything stealthily, even with updated blinking etc. So I got the ending where

Spoiler

Havelock jumps off the building, killing himself and Emily! I was like WHAT THE HELL and then I was upset!

Highly entertaining game though, going to go and YouTube some alt endings!