scumble on 7/10/2017 at 10:25
OK Renz, so the enemies retain their previous health levels?
It did occur to me to set up positioning beforehand, but you don't always get advance warning. Maybe I've forgotten to try sneaking up on the battle zone before engaging.
What I'm finding is that the battle component of DOS2 is very central, so you can't approach it like many other RPGs that can let you sail through and still be entertaining. The only game I've played a bit of that had a similar turn based system was Disgaea (the PC port).
I'm still determined to get the hang of this game, because when it's working just right it's great, and its tendency to trip me up is making it more compelling overall. If it hadn't made me delve into side quests to get to the right level I'd have missed most of what was there.
Nameless Voice on 8/10/2017 at 01:00
I made the mistake of starting on Tactician difficulty, since "AI which is actually smart" sounded like it might be interesting.
What it didn't mention was that this apparently also vastly inflates all of the enemies' hit points and armour ratings, making them pretty much impossible to beat.
I'm only level 2 and can't find anything to fight which I can actually beat in order to get more XP.
The average fight goes something like this: we start the fight, my archer has initiative and can take two shots dealing something like 20 damage, then the enemies get their turn, and either use ranged/AoE abilities to soften up my party and make most of the ground really difficult to traverse, or get into mêlée range and kill my characters in one turn.
For bonus points, sometimes one enemy uses an AoE ability on two of my characters who are standing too close together, then the other kills two of them on its turn.
Then I reload and retry it a couple of times before realising that I can't actually win that combat and going somewhere else to repeat the whole process on a different encounter.
I could eventually beat these encounters by playing them repeatedly, getting lucky, and/or relying on really cheesy tactics, but it's just not fun.
(You also can't change difficulty settings when playing in Tactician mode.)
Not a huge fan of the whole armour system either. I have access to various fancy tools, but never get to actually use them because the enemies are immune to them all until their armour is worn through (and, on Tactician, they generally kill be before I can cut through it, since they have maybe 20-30 armour, whereas my party only have a few points and so get hit by every enemy status effect.)
Plus, it means that the most ideal party has everyone dealing the same type of damage, which really limits your choices if you want an decent party. Urgh.
Malf on 8/10/2017 at 08:12
Yeah, they really need to re-evaliuate their entire RPG system when it comes to combat. I've played a fair few PnP RPGs in my time, and this feels like a system slapped together by a bunch of guys who've played maybe a couple of sessions of PnP and decided they know how it works. Without ever having read the manuals completely.
As well as the ridiculous armour system, there's the half-implemented gear damage system, where only certain weapons get damaged now and no other gear.
There's persuasion checks that should just roll against the stat they require (Strength, Finesse, Memory etc.), instead of requiring an investement into the Persuasion ability too.
There's physical abilities resisted by magic armour and vice versa, so even when you DO focus on either a physical damage or magic damage party, some of your skills will be completely useless. And those skills feel like they should be resisted by saving throws against stats, but the saving throw concept is nowhere to be seen.
There's the utterly inconsequential initiative system, where every turn is now a round-robin. If you do get the first turn in combat because one of your characters has the highest initiative in the encounter, even if the next highest initiative is held by another of your party members, the enemy with the highest initiative goes second. Yet this system isn't in place when you're out-numbered (which you are most of the time), so you can end up with the enemy having 5 or more consecutive turns before you next get a turn. On top of that, even if you have the highest initiative, most important encounters in the game cheat and let the enemy have the first turn.
Add on top of all of this the ridiculous number bloat on gear, health and damage between one experience level and the next, and you've got a hot mess of bad RPG systems design.
I really like the game, but it's despite the systems instead of because of them.
Thirith on 8/10/2017 at 08:19
Reading that does put me off quite a bit. RPGs were my first gaming love, but never for the combat. I'm hoping they'll improve some of the systems with patches. The first game I ended up cheating my way through most of the combat, but there was so bloody much of it...
scumble on 9/10/2017 at 11:52
The best way to approach the game seems to be to start easy and work up if you want to. I can't see myself getting beyond explorer so far.
The way I'm seeing it, the game is constructed based on finding a fairly specific path through the right battles in the right sequence, and there doesn't appear to be a great deal of flexibility in it. I've had to learn how to do the quests in a few attempts and saved every few minutes to give myself a way to retry sections. For me it's been a while since I've played a game that makes you do this. Either more games are far more forgiving at letting any option work or I've just been avoiding games that need a bit more thought.
Overall I'm enjoying the challenge whether or not the battle system is that great, because I don't feel I've got so much from a game in years. I've breezed through far too many and that's unsatsfying if relaxing.
scumble on 15/10/2017 at 12:00
Don't know who else is still going on this, or whether we should ditch spoiler tags yet...
End of chapter one:
I've got through the battle with Alexandar and the big worm after getting my party up to level 7 and collecting enough armour. I had to resurrect Sebille after walking her through necrofire, but that was the only death in the battle. I did the battle with Radeka just beforehand and that was almost trivial in comparison - all enemies are level 6 in that one.
In case anyone's interested my party ended up like this:
Lohse - the one I'm playing as. Hydrosophist/Aerothurge, but she ended up as a half ranger with a crossbow because it does so much more damage than any wand or staff I have. An item bumped up her finesse so she could use it.
Ifan - He has become the tanky fighter. I took Renz's recommendation on the bouncing shield and made sure I kept him with the best shield I could find.
Fane - He seems to be the weak point and most likely to take damage. Pyrokinetic Geomancer. He has a staff so he can't stay out of range easily. On the other hand he does a lot of fire damage.
Sebille - I went with her default rogue setup and her backstab does a ton of damage now. I think she needs more magic armour. The main bonus with her is that she can cover a lot of distance in the battle.
I'm not even sure if they're really spoilers.
Still haven't tried mods but in GOG Galaxy I saw this article on recommended nexus mods. I can't copy the URL out of Galaxy for some reason though.
Ah, found it via nexus: (
https://www.gog.com/news/guest_feature_nexus_mods_10_essential_tweaks_for_dos2?pp=a120fe5cad51f0d0942d7c283478628047d6cfce)
Nameless Voice on 15/10/2017 at 12:14
Well, you should probably mention which chapter the spoilers are in so people know if they should reveal them or not?
I'm still playing, haven't got very far though. I've only made it to the swamps so far.
My initial attempts of trying to play on Tactician kind of put me off for a while, but the game is much more fun on Classic mode.
Malf on 16/10/2017 at 08:40
Finished it now.
It was fun enough, but went on for a bit too long and was marred by those points I mentioned above. I also feel the need to mention that key enemies in the game cheat even more than simply getting the first turn by default; they're also given more action points than the player. This can lead to a lot of first encounters resulting in party wipes because you're simply not prepared for the enemy getting the first turn and dropping multiple high cost abilities on you.
Great game despite itself.
scumble on 16/10/2017 at 11:29
Conversely, in my game I'm often getting the first turn with Ifan having a high initiative. I've got to Reapers coast and finding myself in the position of finding battles I can actually win again. They are there I'm sure but the game doesn't present you with many random easy things for XP. In fact you farm more XP from bits of quests with no fights.
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Nameless Voice on 29/10/2017 at 11:02
I feel that despite adding a lot of interesting new abilities, the combat is still a big step backwards over the first game.
There's just so many annoying elements in it.
All the enemies have 2-3 as much armour as you can have despite being the same level, so it just feels like a grind wearing it down. More importantly, most enemies have about twice as much magic armour as physical armour, so my mage feels completely and utterly useless. Faced with a 1,000 armour enemy, I often just skip her turns once she's used her buff spells, since there's not actually any point in even bothering to attack someone that she will never be able to damage.
Furthermore, since she can only use Intelligence-based armour, she ends up with really high magic armour and laughably poor physical armour. I finally realised I had togive her a shield, because it was the only way she'd ever get any protection at all.
Surfaces are useless to you because the enemies have too much magic armour to be affected, but are harsh to you because you don't. Plus, if you ever create any surfaces near your characters, the enemies love to cast Curse on them, which causes the whole surface to give you the most annoying status effects in the game, such as the inability to heal, or a random % chance of being frozen and losing your turns when walking over it. How is "random chance that you lose the fight" fun, or even tactical? It isn't.
I guess mages were too strong in the original game, so they just slapped a nerf onto every single aspect of them until they became useless. Can't deal damage, can't apply CC or debuff enemies, can't have armour, have to spend lots of points on memory - they feel like glorified buff bots now.
I can't help but think that just taking Warfare on all my characters for the sweet physical-based CC would be the most effective tactic.
I met the best example of awful fight design yesterday - an enemy with a fear aura around himself. Anyone within a large area (probably about 10m) who doesn't have magic armour is feared, and since magic armour isn't going to regenerate when you can't control your characters, it means that you have literally lost the fight as soon as your magic armour goes down. Even on classic mode, you have to really cheese the fights to win.