Positive And Negative

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Ok. Finally after my summer vacation, I found they'd released a second patch. This one made the game playable for me. And so I got the game through a couple of days ago.

Still, I'm sorry about the ironmanmode being so useless with some very annoying tactically annoying bugs still in the game.

I can't even remember how many times I've skipped a turn from a fully operational character because the previous turn got ended even though I have autoend turns off. Or worse, when I clicked on a monster and the game thought I clicked on the dead corpse on the ground and makes my character spend all their action even though they don't even do anything but stand still. The most apparent flaw in a game that's supposed to be tactical, is the fact that you can't position your characters the way you should. Often you have to force combat mode just to get 2 people stand next to eachother, instead of forcefully keeping a 5 meter hole inbetween. And sometimes even when you do this, they just teleport back to their previous places the second you end the combat. So what you have is a door you should be able to defend with 3 people, but you can't get the 3 people there before the fighting starts and by then it's too late as the monsters are already swarming through.

Then there's the problem (not bug) of us unlucky people. When characters are gaining random hitpoints during levelup. I was wondering why my barbarian had less hitpoints than my monk though they both had same constitution and were level 4. Never understood why what we made a houserule very early on never made it to the basic rules as well. Giving a frontline fighter random hitpoints is the same as giving a mage random spells and random ability to cast different levels of them.

And the followers? Well they're a joke really. Stealing my cash and equipment, and not really being controllable enough to add to the group anyhow. I just prefer the system they had in BG.

Also, there are race/gender combinations that have no portraits at all. Finding appropriate portraits for multiple characters of the same gender & race can be an impossible task as well. I never had anything against the portrait style though.

Still, I liked the game very much. The graphics were very nice and combat really felt good. I've actually played near to the end with 2 parties now. One with 3 frontliners (barb, fighter, monk) and a rogue/druid using a ranseur for extra reach, backing them up, with 1 mage in the background (also my crafter). And another being my all-time dream that I never quite got through in BG2. A full mage group. I did need one ranger to do the frontlining, but the 2 sorceresses and 2 wizards gave me a good enough idea of what full 5 would've been like.

Let's just say that I really enjoyed the few large hall fights when I had web and cloudkills on my side. Actually seeing a horde of the enemy ogres and giants and bugbears shrink before your eyes as their health is drained to death, is a rewarding feeling indeed. As opposed to going in there and getting your head bashed in.

The Circle of Eight patch was a good addition as well. Only thing I don't get is that after I installed it, I couldn't find the crucial secret doors to quickly enter between groundlevel and the deeper levels of the temple. Running around for minutes uselessly can get quite annoying.

I hope they make another one like this soon enough. And with less bugs on release.