What? When did that happen, I thought it was beginning of August. 
I’m re-installing the game because of this constant problem with saving and loading. It’s supposed to be fixed in a patch that is beyond the version number the game is reporting, and Steam isn’t giving me the option to update manually.
Okay. An hour later, the version number is higher, and the problem is not fixed.
Did you try checking the cache integrity?
Well, it seemed to take longer to crash on save after I tried that.
New patch this morning from Steam. Now all new saves are corrupt.
Sucks you’re having so many issues with it. I would definitely hit up their support forum.
Well, it turns out that the patch was probably not to blame, unless it suddenly filled up my hard drive. I had space issues.
In any case, I’ve just restarted even though I was almost done with Cyseal, because I have a much better idea what abilities I actually use and want, so I’ve started with properly tweaked versions of the character classes. The fact that I had previously found two rings that let me cast Ice Shard really saved my ass in the Fire Idol area. Looks like I’ll be abusing the saved games again, now with more stability. I hope.
Well, I’m seeing now very rare crashes from saves. Hooray. I mean, it was worth playing even knowing that tough battles might have to be replayed because I couldn’t rely on being able to save afterward. But now, hot damn.
About the Armory in Hunter’s Edge:
They hype it up, saying how it is full of weapons and how mad people are if the key isn’t found and so on and so on … and when I finally got there in our co-op game it had two crappy special arrows in the whole room, nothing else. Talk about an anti-climax.
For those who can’t even find the place, it is the room with the purple magic lock in the barbarian’s cellar.
I don’t know how everyone else is working these tougher combats, but I find the same tricks used in other games of pulling enemies away from their friends that works well in other games works very well. Especially those encounters where they don’t even show you the other fighters until after you’ve started the encounter.
I like CRPGs, but not all of them. I like a solid compelling story, “adult” themes, freedom of action, variety of possible approaches,…
My favourites CRPGs have been : Planescape : torment, Fallout serie (especially Fallout 2), Arcanum, The Witcher, Elder Scroll serie, Dragon Age : origin (the first one). Pretty much in order. I found Baldur’s gate OK, but pretty lame (unoriginal, not much freedom, etc…)
Am I likely to like this one?
Well, how did you feel about Baldur’s Gate II? It’s kind of in a different category than its predecessor, in terms of the richness of the story, strategic gameplay, etc. Instead of the many fields you have to march through mostly because you need the XP, Baldur’s Gate 2 allows you to fill up your XP with much more substantial events, while still being wide open with the order in which you do them.
Divinity: Original Sin has stragetic gameplay that has been compared with that of Baldur’s Gate, and so did the original Dragon Age. I find the comparison apt. But instead of the continuous-turn-based style in those games you get a Fallout-like action point system, which to me is substantially better. And the implementation is more polished than the similar system in Arcanum. I love it.
As for the story, I’m only on the second town and its vicinity, but so far it’s typical fantasy fare. You have all these little problems to solve on the way to unravelling the mystery behind a major threat to the cosmos itself, which solution will involve gathering a bunch of numinous objects of power to unlock the secret of your own lost past. The big difference is that it’s all shot through with Larian Studio’s particular brand of humor, which is not afraid to make you the straight man in a world full of silly people and bizarre events.
But the unique feature from a roleplaying perspective is that you play two characters, and at various points they turn and talk to each other about the events they’ve witnessed or the things they’re about to do. You can have them disagree with each other, and there are games-mechanical consequences for demonstrating certain personality traits (a bold person gets a bonus to initiative, but a cautious person gets a bonus to sneaking, for example). You can have them disagree over deeds they’re about to commit, and play rock-paper-scissors (modified by social skill levels) to decide whose morals win the day. And when your companion NPCs share their thoughts with you, you can decide how each PC feels about the matter in question. It appears that the strident witch hunter Madora is beginning to soften her views under my two moderate characters’ influence, but the white necromancer Jahan seems to be just as stubborn in response to my PCs’ differences of opinion about whether it’s inherently wicked to deal in life magic.
Overall, this is an excellent case-in-point that for a niche genre the Kickstarter model is a superior way to operate, because they would not have been able to talk money men into investing in a game that was so tailored for the specific audience of hard core CRPG players. I’m hoping I’ll find the same to be the case for Wasteland 2, Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity – that these will be the kinds of hard-core CRPGs that you couldn’t possibly have funded without taking your case directly to the exact players who want it, but have had to put up with titles watered down to please broader audiences.
From a story perspective, it is pretty tongue-in-cheek, more like a Terry Pratchett novel. I’m not invested in the story or having my heartstrings tugged at all, but the writing is clever enough that it is staying fun enough to still read the dialog boxes. When it is over, I probably won’t remember any of the plot or characters, but will certainly remember many fun tense encounters 
The funny thing is that this “niche” game for a narrow, hard-core audience has been either at #1 or at least in the Top 10 of Steam sales list now for 6 weeks in a row. I have no idea of the exact numbers but it must be selling really well to do that. Hope Larian Studios will release some sort of blog post or press release on sales at some point to learn more, but they’ve already said it’s their fastest-selling game to date.
Yeah, you’re right. The narrative needs to be revived. I too am surprised, but it appears that the desire for this kind of game is broader than just a devoted core audience languishing in the wilderness for over a decade. I thought the money men who refused this kind of thing were at least half right – the paying customers were few unless you hybridized into some sort of action-based game, like Larian Studios’ own original Divine Divinity. Maybe it’s a short-lived matter of nostalgia, but the fact that this supposedly dead genre has been revived with great success suggests there’s been a market all along.
I believe they were up to 250,000 copies after the first week or two.
And that’s with zero advertising. I think they had money left over for 1 ad after development. They’ve already had several offers to buy them.
Necroing this thread because Kickstarter for D:OS 2 is live. I already backed it, loved the first one.
It already met it’s $500,000 This is going to go a, loooong way.
I backed it too. The first was amazing, waiting for that 2.0 patch for a replay.