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About the controls:
Yes, they're pretty unintuitive, but once you get the hang of them, they're really good, particularly in G2.
About difficulty:
G1 is quite challenging when you play it for the first time since it's unlike most other RPGs. In most RPGs, the monsters are arranged according to their difficulty, so there are areas that feature only weak opponents, areas that are populated only by medium strength opponents and areas for the strongest foes. In G1 and G2, it's not that simple because even the areas that mostly contain easy opponents have some strong opponents thrown into the mix and vice versa. Thus, you have to choose your fights wisely. If however you play it smart and you pick on opponents your own size (or below your size
), the game is challenging but certainly not too difficult. In fact, when you replay it, G1 is a very easy game.
If you have played G1 and G2 vanilla, Night of the Raven is not difficult. In fact, I found it to be somewhat too easy when I first played it (after having played through G1 and G2 once). It's all about making smart decisions. If you want to charge headlong into every fight and smash everything to pieces with your bigass sword, then NotR is incredibly hard, but if you make smart use of scrolls (which only cost 5 mana each in NotR, so you can use them without having to spend learning points on mana) and other gadgets (like speed potions which make you run faster or black ore that slows down time around you), the game isn't difficult at all.
Yes, they're pretty unintuitive, but once you get the hang of them, they're really good, particularly in G2.
About difficulty:
G1 is quite challenging when you play it for the first time since it's unlike most other RPGs. In most RPGs, the monsters are arranged according to their difficulty, so there are areas that feature only weak opponents, areas that are populated only by medium strength opponents and areas for the strongest foes. In G1 and G2, it's not that simple because even the areas that mostly contain easy opponents have some strong opponents thrown into the mix and vice versa. Thus, you have to choose your fights wisely. If however you play it smart and you pick on opponents your own size (or below your size
), the game is challenging but certainly not too difficult. In fact, when you replay it, G1 is a very easy game.If you have played G1 and G2 vanilla, Night of the Raven is not difficult. In fact, I found it to be somewhat too easy when I first played it (after having played through G1 and G2 once). It's all about making smart decisions. If you want to charge headlong into every fight and smash everything to pieces with your bigass sword, then NotR is incredibly hard, but if you make smart use of scrolls (which only cost 5 mana each in NotR, so you can use them without having to spend learning points on mana) and other gadgets (like speed potions which make you run faster or black ore that slows down time around you), the game isn't difficult at all.
So you're saying it's bad that you can't sort through your inventory and drink a few potions in mid combat?joethekoeller post=326.68515.631593 said:
Yes, the inability to hit more than one opponent with melee weapons is definitely an issue, but the game adjusts to this by having a damage calculation system that makes group of weaker fighters a much smaller threat than a single strong opponent.
Unfortunately, blocking is pretty much useless in G1, but it's very important in G2.
And the endfight is supposed to be the most difficult part of the whole game after all, and while it's very challenging, it's by now means undoable.
While your friend certainly knows what he's doing, finishing G1 in 5 hours or killing an orc at a low level are not exactly amazing feats.
Well, then your friend does not understand how amazing it is to use ridiculously powerful scrolls for just 5 mana.
Which btw is also the greatest flaw in NotR: with the right scrolls, any fight is easy as hell, regardless of how weak your character is. So the really tough fights are actually the easiest part, while the routine opponents pose a much bigger challenge since the number of powerful scrolls is of course limited.
Yes, the Gothic games actually require you to think, unlike many other RPGs were you just run around killing every opponent that stands in your way wihtout every having to resort to clever tricks or tactics.
An informative review, but I really do think that the best RPG ever made is Arx Fatalis.
I shall summarise the awesome of Arx Fatalis in a few key words, and they are: Hit boxes, fireballs, dismemberment, item combination, cooking and hit boxes. Seriously, hit boxes improve RPG games to no end.
I mean, you're like "Damn, a giant goblin!" and then your fireball hits him in the face and his head explodes! But you lost some health and you're hungry, so you cook the rat ribs you've been carrying around on the nearby fire, which you light up with your ignition spell.
You can download it off of Steam for about 5-10 of your currency.
Just, give it a go... you'll like it.
I shall summarise the awesome of Arx Fatalis in a few key words, and they are: Hit boxes, fireballs, dismemberment, item combination, cooking and hit boxes. Seriously, hit boxes improve RPG games to no end.
I mean, you're like "Damn, a giant goblin!" and then your fireball hits him in the face and his head explodes! But you lost some health and you're hungry, so you cook the rat ribs you've been carrying around on the nearby fire, which you light up with your ignition spell.
You can download it off of Steam for about 5-10 of your currency.
Just, give it a go... you'll like it.
I've completed Gothic one...
And now I can say...
so that's how you drop stuff!
Can I put in a request for the spellforce series review? I've had my eye on it but don't want to commit to a purchase jsut yet.
And now I can say...
so that's how you drop stuff!
Can I put in a request for the spellforce series review? I've had my eye on it but don't want to commit to a purchase jsut yet.
Much obliged.
Good review, by the way. I'm not much of a critic so I can't really give you much informative constructive criticism, but it was perhaps a little dry, aside from your hyperbole towards the end. But whether that's a bad thing in what is at heart informative writing is debatable.
Just to add in my aside with the discussion, I didn't have any trouble with Baal once I realised that if you run in a straight line, his attacks will always hit anyone that is following you.
Good review, by the way. I'm not much of a critic so I can't really give you much informative constructive criticism, but it was perhaps a little dry, aside from your hyperbole towards the end. But whether that's a bad thing in what is at heart informative writing is debatable.
Just to add in my aside with the discussion, I didn't have any trouble with Baal once I realised that if you run in a straight line, his attacks will always hit anyone that is following you.
Gothic 1 and 2 for me were probably the games with the best storylines EVORR, but I write with a tear in my eye as I think about the bastardisation Gothic 3 is to the series. It took a brilliant story, and buried it in a hole.
I've played the Gothic games, and the thing that I enjoyed most about them is the freedom you have to wander around and see what you can see on your own initiative. The game isn't a series of discrete areas many of which can only be accessed on some sort of plot-related timetable.
I also enjoyed many of the factors that may have made the games annoying to other people, like the fact that you have to *buy* a map and it's not very interactive. The scenery is interesting and varied enough that you can learn your way around. This also adds an element of nervousness when you take a wrong turn. In Gothic I, they pull a very neat trick with the woods that makes them seem dark, deep, and dangerous--all the more so because there are some nasty critters in the deep forest.
Gothic I remains one of the few games where I still enjoyed just running around even very late in the game, unlike most other RPG's where having to go back to town to finish quests feels like a punishment.
I also enjoyed many of the factors that may have made the games annoying to other people, like the fact that you have to *buy* a map and it's not very interactive. The scenery is interesting and varied enough that you can learn your way around. This also adds an element of nervousness when you take a wrong turn. In Gothic I, they pull a very neat trick with the woods that makes them seem dark, deep, and dangerous--all the more so because there are some nasty critters in the deep forest.
Gothic I remains one of the few games where I still enjoyed just running around even very late in the game, unlike most other RPG's where having to go back to town to finish quests feels like a punishment.
Gothic I was also one of the first RPG-style games I played where they gave the main character a voice and a personality (even though he didn't have a name). I'm not a big fan of playing male characters (I don't do so voluntarily when I have a choice), but the protagonist in Gothic was fun to run around with.
Even though the English dialog had obviously been translated from German (and translated pretty well, the awkwardness was minor), the characters all had a delightfully masculine "feel" to them. They were all *guys*, all stuck in a penal colony and trying to get along in life as best they could. The "schedule" that everyone in the game runs through also contributes to this a great deal. When you need to go talk to someone, at night they'll be asleep in bed, during the day they'll be cooking or smoking or sitting on the lawn chatting with their buddies. Some would even travel from one location to another or do things like fix their huts.
I actually liked the fact that there were virtually no women in the first game, it made it seem more significant in the second when you actually get to go into a town where there are ladies wandering around. But maybe I'm a romantic.
Even though the English dialog had obviously been translated from German (and translated pretty well, the awkwardness was minor), the characters all had a delightfully masculine "feel" to them. They were all *guys*, all stuck in a penal colony and trying to get along in life as best they could. The "schedule" that everyone in the game runs through also contributes to this a great deal. When you need to go talk to someone, at night they'll be asleep in bed, during the day they'll be cooking or smoking or sitting on the lawn chatting with their buddies. Some would even travel from one location to another or do things like fix their huts.
I actually liked the fact that there were virtually no women in the first game, it made it seem more significant in the second when you actually get to go into a town where there are ladies wandering around. But maybe I'm a romantic.