Who Killed PoR?

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Stormfront Studios.

 

disagree with OP entirely

I'm going to have to disagree with the OP, and apparently 3/4 of the other posters on this forum.

Hands down this game is one of the best adaptations of the pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons games I've ever played. So far it is only second to the Temple of Elemental Evil: (fully modded with the Circle of Eight patches). And the only reason I say ToEE is a bit better is because more of the 3rd Edition rules and features were implemented. And FYI I've played them all BG1+2 with all expansions, original POR, NWN1+2 with all expansions, DDO (many more hours than I'd like to admit), and just about every major real time strategy title that's every been made.

The problem with all the negative responses I'm seeing on this board is that I suspect most of the posters enjoy a fast paced, real-time, Baldur's Gate type game that is renowned for a great story. What most people fail to realize is that this game was developed by SSI, a team of programmers that have ummatched talent for developing militaristic, turn-based strategy games, or games that require chess-type, well thought strategy and careful planning. I think they did an incredible job at modeling the D&D 3rd. Ed. ruleset into a computer game.

So if this game is not your cup-of-tea so be it, but don't go around saying it sucks just because you prefer games that require less strategy and offer a richer story. It's all a matter of opinion, and this is mine: in the context of the lack of resources I'm sure SSI had to produce this game, it is a masterpiece. Unfortunately publishers do not cater to the hardcore D&D, turn-based combat fans and usually means less resources, less man power for software development , and games rushed out the door. Sadly this is another fine example of this treachery, as I'm sure more could have been implemented with more time.

 

Welcome to the boards!

As with all games your mileage may vary on what's enjoyable and what isn't. However I suspect the reason many of us disagree is that we do not consider PoR3D to be a good adaptation of D&D. For one thing PoR lacked a HUGE number of things from 3E, the most serious being the ability to assign skills and feats yourself, not to mention the majority of the feats and skills were simply not there in the game. To compare this to ToEE, which had just about every skill and feat under the sun, not to mention all the delightful variety of special moves like 5-foot steps, charge, disarm, grapple, etc, is immensely unfair to ToEE and how accurate that game is to the ruleset. Even NWN (a game that I hate with a burning passion), which used the same real-time with pause system as the Infinity Engine games, managed to translate the rules more faithfully and accurately than PoR. At least NWN HAD all these skills and feats, and you could select them yourself. Really the only aspect in which NWN loses is that it's not turn-based. Whether you consider this to be the breaking point is up to you, but to me the complete lack of optimisation and control over my characters in PoR was a much more serious breaking point.

As for our responses being because we enjoy fast-paced real-time games, I can't speak for anyone else but it's certainly not the case for me. I prefer turn-based by FAR, and in fact ToEE ranks as my favourite combat system in any game I've played. Quite a feat considering it has to compete with the likes of Warlords, Dark Sun, the older Ultima games, Might and Magic (and Heroes), and yes, the original PoR (and the rest of the Gold Box games).

Regarding the game's development it was actually made by Stormfront who, while they had a very productive association with SSI, were their own company and even managed to outlive SSI themselves. Unfortunately Stormfront's track record was always mixed: the Savage Frontier games were easily among the weakest of the Gold Box games, Demon Stone was a pretty poor game, and at one point they were doing nothing but the yearly incremental releases of Madden and NASCAR for EA; and as for PoR3D... On the other hand they were responsible for some stellar achievements: Stronghold, a fantastic city-building/strategy game, Tony LaRussa Ultimate Baseball (a huge milestone in AI programming), and they single-handedly created the graphical MMORPG genre with Neverwinter Nights (no, not that one ), many, many years before Ultima Online tried to steal that torch. As for the reason behind the game's problems... hard to say. Certainly Stormfront could not have had it easy, especially as they were trying to release the game at the same time as SSI (who was the original distributor) was being slowly and systematically destroyed by Ubisoft. How much this and the subsequent distribution of the game by Ubisoft affected development is not known to me, but it can't have been good. A real shame, as the game certainly had a lot of potential.

I have to confess that I felt great pleasure in reading your praise of SSI's talent for developing wargames, as their games were already pretty niche in the early 90s and have pretty much been forgotten nowadays, which is a real shame. I must also confess that, while I always admired just how complex their strategic simulations could be, I was never very good at them I have many fond memories of constantly losing in Pacific War, which to this day sticks in my head as one of the most complex (in a good way) games that I have ever played. Panzer General is still the only wargame I did reasonably well in, and one of my favourite strategy games.

 

Thx for the welcome

Well I guess we agree on most things, disagree on a couple.

True D&D is turn-based. That really only leaves 3 titles out there that adapt the 3rd Ed. rules into a computer setting: i.e. only TWO other games in the same sub-genre (turn based, D&D):

1) ToEE
2) PoR2
3) D&D tactics for the PSP

So what really confuses me is when alot of people express their discontent for this game and say its no good. The game is not good compared to what? The other 2? To NwN? NwN is a totally different type of game, they cant even be compared, its realtime.

Totally agreed ToEE is by far the most superior of the 3, its an amazing title. But there simply aren't enough titles to compare POR2 to at this time. Maybe once 10-15 games like POR2 are out, one can say it sucks compared to the other. Maybe, if that time ever comes (crossing my fingers lol). But until that time, I fail to see the basis on which the negative remarks are made.

I'm just making my way through POR2 now and yeah, i was a little (ok VERY) disappointed to learn I couldn't specifically assign skills and feats. And the druid and the wizard weren't implemented, or a decent ranger, or my personal favorite the bard!. But these are obviously due to lack of resources from Stormfront/SSI. I seriously doubt they were just being lazy, i mean how hard would it be to implement a wizard class, theres even a mod for it. So for what they had to work with I think its great, unfortunately it was rushed out, but it's a great product none the less.

And yeah SSI has brought me so many hours of enjoyment, I had to praise them a little, it had to be done. To this day they are masterminds of computer strategy games, legendary.

 

This thread was started 7 years ago! How is it not dead?

The only two D&D turn-based games i've played are PoR and ToEE. One of these games was actually pretty good. The other nearly made me vomit blood.

It's been years now and I don't remember it all that well, but..

I remember it being massively slow to play, which made it horribly frustrating. It just seemed like ENDLESS dungeon crawling with no real point. Hated it, really did.

 

I've heard a few people describe Bard's Tale or Wizardry that way.
When I think about it, the combat wasn't that different from the Gold Box games, yet in Por2 it seems to drag on without the patch. Granted, the whole attacks of opportunity was bugged out the wazoo with the way enemy monsters could walk right through your tanks to strike at your spellcasters with impunity, but otherwise it wasn't that different.

Yet it still seemed agonizingly slow compared to playing Pool of Radiance on my old Apple IIGS (with the system speed set to normal).

 

I've been playing the game for maybe a month or so and have grown quite fond of it, but that might be due to hearing so much bad press about it. It's not as good as TOEE, but it's what I'm in the mood for. I tried loading the speed patch, (cause those undead move way too slowly) but it didn't seem to work. Maybe I'll try again later. I'm just wondering if it speeds up my characters as well??