Just finished PoE 1. What am I in for Deadfire?
I'm still at the beach but so far, character creation included, I'm positively surprised.
I thought PoE 1 was a good 7 to weak 8/10 with a great setting, White March was a 9/10 relative to the game as a whole, but the actual ending kind of sucked. In terms of CRPGs I think I liked Tyranny better, but the scope was so much smaller that a comparison is difficult I think. Much of the PoE content felt dragged out while Tyranny was in parts far too concise, the ending also felt rushed.
Is Deadfire better or worse than PoE1, and for that matter, other Obsidian/Black Isle CRPGs? Did they finally make a game at their own direction without running out of funding/publisher deadline?
Deadfire's got much better gameplay (although there were some encounters that made me want to tear my hair out) but a worse story and set of characters. The Beast of Winter expansion is fantastic and the best part of the game by some distance. Between the two, I personally preferred PoE1, but I still had fun with Deadfire.
Damn I had hoped to hear that the story is better in deadfire given that I thought the Leaden Key ans Thaos were really weak and probably the worst part of the game.
Well, as long as the encounters are good… that’s also something that bothered me in poe1. They all felt so floaty and essentially the same. What I‘ve played of deadfire so far is the opposite. Even moving the characters has weight.
>I thought the Leaden Key ans Thaos were really weak and probably the worst part of the game.
I'm the opposite. Thaos was probably the highlight of the story overall. He was a great villain from start to finish and It's a shame that Deadfire lacks someone like him.
i agree. i liked the main story and don't get the dicksucking of the expansion, all the fights fricking sucked in the white march.
What do you dislike about the encounters? Personally I thought they were great.
>sirens
he's seething at the sirens
NTA, but I thought some of the bounties were miserable. Concelhaut was also an extremely painful experience.
So you're upset about the difficulty? That's the only notable thing about those.
In a sense. But there were other difficult fights that didn't irritate me anywhere near as much as Concelhaut did.
another anon here
WM encounters are spot on with one exception
if you played vanilla on a higher difficulty setting and were having a blast and feeling good about yourself
it might come as a surprise that almost _every_ WM encounter requires quite an effort on your side (timely status protection/disposing of high value targets ASAP/keeping your squishy party members alive etc.) and turning the difficulty down is not an option because it feels like a surrender.
I really enjoyed the encounter designs but honestly I constantly felt like I need a break from sweating and wouldn't mind some trash mobs for a change )
>Concelhaut
I feel you bro
I actually played Deadfire ahead of WM, and the WM encounter is much more painful compared to Deadfire one
I for one loved it, felt like a proper IWD2 tribute they intended and fully exploited the IMO superb combat engine of the game.
>What am I in for Deadfire?
Better gameplay, way worse characters and story.
>What am I in for
good times
Arguably the best and most fluid RTWP combat ever and a very fun character building system. Kind of weak quest and encounter design compared to the first game and a world that feels much more disjointed, albeit one that is very interesting in concept.
>What am I in for Deadfire?
Even more schizo shit from the setting and the story. Also gay fish and black italians. 10/10 would schizo again.
Waste of time and buyer's remorse. If you want an actual isometric RPG, play Fallout 1&2.
>What am I in for Deadfire?
Wizards not being able to get spells properly anymore, their grimoires just being items that grant fixed extra spells known. The story, even the DLCs, still treat the grimoires like you can't cast spells without them, even though everyone can.
Other than that, pretty much an irrelevant, stupid and forced main quest, which can be mostly ignored. Semi-open world, more like Fallout 1&2 than Baldur's Gate 2.
in the same boat. 5 wizards level 2-3 and getting my ass kicked a lot on path of the damned. all wizards was a pleasure in the first game, especially at the start. mostly i'm playing duck the nogs.
>What am I in for Deadfire?
Lag. Obsidian has achieved the inacheivable in the field of game optimization. They have managed to make a game so poorly optimized that despite being an ISOMETRIC game, it will lag on PCs with good specs. From the creators of such codespews as NWN2 and New Vegas (at release), I should expect nothing less but I am none the less impressed. I actually know a fair bit about game design and I am completely stumped as to how they managed to get such poor performance out of an isometric game. My guess is some really inefficient CPU based process running in the background because my cpu is not as good as my gpu
>I am completely stumped as to how they managed to get such poor performance out of an isometric game
It's not really an excuse, more like the specific way of failure, but:
<unity
I noticed that my loading screen times increased the longer I played. After some hours it was like 45 seconds for a simple transition inside of a house. Also stutters. I donßt think I have seen a game stutter in like 15 years.
Had that yesterday. Thought I was suffering because I was seeing everything double, but no, the game was just lagging that badly.
The variety in character creation is the best part, you can do some really fun stuff with multiclassing.
Some of the companions are cool specially the returning ones, the new ones are not that interesting Serafen being the most boring I-couldnt-care-less one, but none of them, old or new are really memorable. Then you have sidekicks which is an extremely dumb idea and reeks of unfinished.
The open world archipelago thing is wasted, theres basically nothing to explore, no ancient ruins, lost islands, strange tribes to discover, the game will always guide your hand till the map is fully discovered if you do the sidequests. Other wasted potential includes the ship & crew part it's extremely shallow and its there just for you to sink money.
Visually the effects are overdone, at mid game if you have more than one spellcaster you wont have a fricking idea of whats going on in a battle till the dust clears off.
The best part for me was AI customization, specially with a mod that adds more conditions you can play in a way that no other RPG plays, as a sort of "Adventurer manager" where you equip your guys and let them fight on their own based on their AI.
And to finish my blog post I have to say that the game starts sort of strong because of the class creation and the city of Neketaka, but it takes a dive soon after.
Completely correct post. Deadfire is a mechanically and aesthetically very good game that suffers from a lack of content.
I guess it's a marketing strategy because with dlcs it has just the right amount of content
this has to be a joke
how much do you need?
I'm not sure but I think my "completionist" style but not actually a completionist run w/ 2/3 dlcs took 80 hours.
I feel it's about as big as it should be
The DLCs provide a sizeable amount of content but its disjointed from the main game. The game is about chasing Eothas through the deadfire to find out what the hell hes planning. Then you start the DLC and you're isolated on a giant iceberg or on a big island doing whatever and Eothas is out of the picture. Same thing with PoE1 and the White March, you gotta catch up to Thaos before you go insane but lets stop, go to the mountains and do these quests about a forge and some weird creatures.
Older games like BG and Arcanum had a consistent overarching plot, the DLC model of Obsidian destroys that.
>Older games like BG ... had a consistent overarching plot
>95% of BG1 main story is chasing ghosts of the iron throne which turns out to be irrelevant
>so you can go into BG2 w/o playing BG1 and loose almost nothing storywise
>in BG1 expansion pack in particular you are "isolated on an island I", "isolated on an island II", "isolated in a tower-dungeon III"
smells like a really dishonest post, but ok, I'll bite
the frick are you talking about? did you even finish deadfire and dlcs?
- both BoW and FS explore the """personality""" of other 2 gods with obscure motivations, very much in rhyme with the main questline
- all three final BoW quests explore the past related to the main events of the games.
The Endless Queries explore the Inquisition and Engwithans
The Drowned Kingdom provides insights on the Ukaizo and how the Huana got tricked by the Engwithans
The Bridge Ablaze actually allows us to witness the pinnacle of the Saint's War, you know the last time Eothas tried achieving his convoluted goals by possessing an avatar
- As a result of FS, The Body (the avatar prepared for Wael) can be turned against Eothas avatar in final confrontation in Ukaizo
That's just of the top of my head, and it's been years since I last played it.
No, Deadfire DLCs are the most interconnected and thought out DLC when it comes to connections to the main game that I have ever seen.
>Then you have sidekicks which is an extremely dumb idea and reeks of unfinished.
Sidekicks are doubly infuriating, because they essentially serve as a tease for some really neat characters that never gets delivered upon.
And when you have the companion roster that is boring at best and flat out bad at worst, teasing an actually interesting companion and then going "nope, frick you, this one has no content" is the worst thing you can do. Because at this point you KNOW you could've gotten some actually interesting characters, Obsidian just got lazy.
I'm 16 hours in now and I have to say I think I enjoy Deadfire more, in a sense, but it suffers from something I felt lacking in PoE 1 as well. I can't really put my finger on it, but sometimes the game really feels tedious and the sense of adventure fades fast.
It's very similar to Fallout 2 where if you have any clue on how the game works you'll be overpowered extremely fast.
The multiclassing is probably the best addition. I played a semi tank cipher in the last game because Eder alone wasn't enough for my squishy group and I generally like to actually main my main character while I let the AI decide for support. In PoE1 that was a suboptimal solution. Here it kind of works with my Cipher Psyblade/Devoted Fighter (ikr) combo for my main.
Either I've gotten better at the actual game or Deadfire is significantly easier than PoE1. I'm taking down stronger enemies pretty easily without cheese when in PoE1 I would've needed to be lucky or cheese those higher level encounters with my lower level group.
I just did the Berath Skull Knight -- Ys something -- and only had to restart once.
I believe they naively expected players not to explore Neketaka as soon as it becomes available, combine that with an abundance of quests that offer fairly high amounts of experience, most of which involve little combat and you'll rather quickly end up reaching level 10+ before even having started the main quest.
>I just did the Berath Skull Knight -- Ys something -- and only had to restart once.
This part of the game isn't supposed to be challenging. The same goes for the main quest battles.
But later on you can try on pretty challenging fights, in the dlcs in particular
I maintain that this is because 99% of players will end up overleveled due to doing all the quest in Neketaka. The first game did not have this problem and thus often ended up with better encounters and dungeons.
I disagree, I stayed in Neketaka quite a while and encounters on other islands didn't feel as pushovers
but I guess it's what level-scaling option is for
and it does seem intentional that all the toughest fights are side-content, not necessary to finish the main quest
I had upscaling turned on for critical path, but found no challenging fights other than the boss in BoW, some of the fights in SSS, a couple fights in FS and the megabosses.
>for critical path
well that's quite understandable, as I said main line quest fights feel to be intentionally not the most difficult ones
Well I'm not too sure, it seemed to me that with the upscaling the encounters were matched to my level, whereas if I had immediately left Neketaka I would assume several of them were intended to be slightly above character level, at least that's the sense I get from the difficulty of the encounters at Port Maje.
>at least that's the sense I get from the difficulty of the encounters at Port Maje
not sure what are you getting to, isn't that like the tutorial section of game?
anyways I strongly recommend switching level scaling to 'All'
>isn't that like the tutorial section of game?
i can't kill the skeletons in the engwithan ruins, or the boars and wurms out front, or the looters in the flooded part of town on path of the damned at level 2-3. are enemies supposed to hit me for over 30 damage? are aoe spells suppose to almost oneshot my party? gonna go play pathfinder.
On POTD it's arguably the hardest part, only a few parts of SSS and the mega bosses are harder.
Like Tyranny on its hardest difficulty. Pretty typical for Obsidian rpgs. You have very little to work with in the beginning so you‘re essentially a naked character trying to pass cheating ai
if you turn on 'all' level scaling, the monsters that were supposed to be higher level are going to be higher level, not scaled to your level
I think there is a limit though, I forgot how it supposed to work
Enabling upwards level scaling makes the game significantly harder in my experience (playing on PotD). There are also "Magran's Fires' if you are a real masochist.
Deadfire feels like burnout. You have so much to do and most of the interesting stuff you discover isn't at your level. The Beast of Winter also had a weaker opening than White March. Maybe I went in with the wrong expectation, but facing off a dragon at the start of the quest reminds me of Fallout 4 and the Death Claw. Kalameet appears early but it's relative to the length of the DLC some time until you face him.
Vatnir being a priest with frost spells is logical but makes me not want to keep him around. The coward characters which aren't fleshed out and have shitty abilities are by far the worst. I'm probably just disappointed by this not being like White March and yeah so far it's not that good.
Sounds like a skill issue
Aloth and mage player char are nice for spellcasting. You put 3 books in inv and have answer for every enemy. It's rly easy to run dry like that, tho.
Guise, is the level cap still set at 20? I'm lvl 19 and most likely right in the middle of the game. I play that xbox pass version (all dlc included if I'm not wrong).
If Deadfire, then yes. The XP curve is all fricked up.
well, shit
I enjoyed it but the devs really seemed to want you to rp as a whimsical Jack Sparrow esque pirate
the story is strange, you don´t have any impact on it and are there like a tourist, watching things happen.
You aren't strong enough to do anything about Eothas, think of him as a force of nature. However you do have a lot of influence on what happens after.
post party you got past the engwithan ruins at the start of the game with on path of the damned
it's not a great game
but it's a pretty decent game
worth checking out just for the world/setting alone
you sail around a notCaribbean in your ship, shanties are playing, you board a pirate ship and your captain MC casts fireball with one hand while shooting the flintlock with the other
nothing really like it
main con for me is how "small" or "short" everything except for the capital city feels, dungeons that have 3 rooms total, quests done in minutes etc. But PoE1 bored me to death, this is at least entertaining
Okay I finished the game yesterday after going through FS, SSS and the final encounters in Ukaizo in one day and I'm content. I think the ending is more interesting than in PoE1, I like the variety in stuff you can do to reach Ukaizo (I went solo), but I don't like the amount of options you have and that every option seemingly puts you in the graces of one God. I'd like an ending where you choose what to do out of your own volition, the same way you sailed to Ukaizo solo.
I think I might finish some quests I forgot but overall pretty good. I don't know if it's better than PoE1, I think they're about equal tbh, with both having their flaws, but I still think an 8/10 is fair for both. Tyranny was too short, but better as a whole if that makes any sense, so 8.5/10.
What should I play next?
Kingmaker, Torment: Numenera, Six: Ages, BG3 EA, IWD?
IWD is the only actually good game on that list, so that.
Any other suggestions? Neverwinter?
Kingmaker is pretty solid and then WOTR improves upon it. Numenara is very bland and forgettable sadly.
NWN1 campaign is sadly a huge letdown, basically a fancy demo for their back then new and fancy multiplayer modules engine. NWN2 is ok, if very slow to start, but worth it for the endgame and GOAT expansion (Mask)
>Numenara is very bland
Good to hear. The setting sounded interesting so I was about to get it actually.
Dunno about WOTR. I hear a lot of bad stuff about it. Kingmaker people generally seem to be very positive about.
WotR is more highly rated you dumb frick
People say it's pozzed and gay and the kingdom management was kino. I haven't played either that's why I'm asking here.
Neither Pathfinder games are really that pozzed, they just have to write around Paizo's woke qoutas. All those gay and trans NPCs were originally in the module and Owlcat HAD to put them in the game, much to their annoyance (because they had no personality outside of "I'm gay/trans" and that means heavy lifting for the writers).
Keep in mind that Paizo is probably second most woke tabletop company after Wizards of the Coast. They used to be THE most woke company, but then WotC decided to pozz themselves off the fricking cliff.
Okay, any mods to just remove or change the dialogue? I don't really care about voice acting or will I have to ignore it (wouldn't be problem).
was never bothered enough to look for one, and if the lesbian pair of advisors annoys you there are options to kill them
>All those gay and trans... Owlcat HAD to put them in the game
no one fricking cares about your mental gymnastics about mah trad russians, owlcattle
it's in the game, and it makes both PF games pozzed, yes even when being compared to PoE games from "woke comifornians"
and no it's not because of Paizo, for example, Owlcat could have made the gay green shut the frick up after the first time you ask him to BTFO (like any romancable companion from PoE), but he doesn't
I think wotr improves on km in every single aspect, including ow crusade management beats kingdom management
everything is pozzed and gay these days, none of them stand out really
I mean there is one (1) troony in wotr (0 in km) but you have to do some personal quests and pass a speech check to even find out in chapter 5
WOTR's gameplay is better and allows for more customization, and its story is higher stakes. The quality of its writing and characters are lower compared to Kingmaker. Both kingdom management and the crusade were pretty tedious, but I personally thought crusading was a lot worse.
another vote for IWD games if you're not burned out from playing rtwp 'IE style' crpgs
Kingmaker is just ... meh, the 3.5 / 5 is a honest score for it.
didn't play wotr, I heard it's better, but I doubt it since owlcat apparently hadn't learned its kingmaker lessens and just had to include a non-rpg side game instead of using the resources to polish out locations, encounters and writing to make a better rpg ... again
Besides now it's full of degenerate shit and nu-rpg-scene tropes, I mean just look at their companion dlc
FRICK THAT SHIT
I'll take gayfish any day of the week, at least his bisexuality is actually natural to his story arch
Okay, I tried. It's too old. I'm sorry to be such a pleb but I can't stand it.
>hadn't learned its kingmaker lessens and just had to include a non-rpg side game
I kinda appreciate their effort
I mean that they try to make it so if you are a "leader" you can actually lead. So many RPGs and other games call you guildmaster, commander, general or whatever else, and then it means absolutely jack shit
so while it is not great I still do like that it's there, that you give orders that affect your kingdom or lead armies
and yeah, it is better in wotr, for one thing the edicts don't tie you down forcing you to sit in the castle for two weeks and there is no diceroll in their results, two you order your armies around bargain bin HOMM style, so it's not just a shitty cardgame with randomized outcomes like KM
>you order your armies around bargain bin HOMM style, so it's not just a shitty cardgame with randomized outcomes like KM
While that is an improvement, the crusade battle system is a joke. Just hire a mage general and your troops are only useful for scratching their own nose while you automatically win every encounter with the general's spells.
yeah, it's not great, but I still like the flow where first your army clears the area from larger demon forces and then your small party moves in and does the regular questing and it's not done via cutscene to show you that crusade made some progress, but it was actually your doing
>I'll take gayfish any day of the week, at least his bisexuality is actually natural to his story arch
Why do you hate Larian so much?
>Kingmaker is just ... meh, the 3.5 / 5 is a honest score for it.
it's much much better than IWD and IWD2 so don't bother with those before it (Well unless you want to play something you can blow through very fast). BG and BG1 are great, but making a series of combat encounters from it is huge downgrade. If you could at least play it as the BG party.
>check GOG verified owner scores
>PKM = 3.6
>IWD = 4.1
>IWD2 = 3.8
it's really not, there are so many fundamental design flaws in every aspect of it that it's really suitable to list them in a separate thread
I would argue it got popular due to exactly two reasons
>a niche genre with like 2 top-tier games per year max in this time and age
>extremely popular tabletop Pathfinder IP, which at the same time was represented in crpgs like ... never?
if it didn't use popular tabletop IP nobody would bother with it at all
if we had more top-tier cRPGs released nobody would bother with it at all
but here we are with constant shilling of this otherwise very mediocre game really not worth the hours it requires
>BG and BG1 are great, but making a series of combat encounters from it is huge downgrade. If you could at least play it as the BG party.
I don't think you understand why people enjoy IWD, it's really not "BG 1/2 but all combat", it is a fleshed out linearly structured very "tabletop feel" campaign with great combat encounters, fun to explore locations, and very good pacing of both gameplay and story
No accounting for shit taste I guess.
What even is the best martial class for POTD in PoE1?