I’ve gotten about as far as Fenris, and so far I mostly annoyed with the way they’ve butchered the 3rd Ed. rules. Right off the bat, they’ve completly eliminated wizards. Why? My guess is that it has something to do with the way they’ve also eliminated all the meta-magic feats, which are what sets wizards apart from sorcerers. You aren’t allowed to pick what feats you want, they’re assigned based on your character class. The number of available feats is much smaller. The skill system has been almost totally eliminated. I’m not sure, but something seems fishy about combat. I seldom seem to get attacks of opportunity, even when an orc walks directly past my two fighters to attack my sorcerer. (Which, incidentally, means my sorcerer is useless in about two-thirds of the fights I get into.) Its very difficult to judge if you’re close enough to enemies to provoke attacks of opportunity, too. There aren’t any prestige classes mentioned in the manual, and I assume that means they’re not in the game at all.
I wanted to play this game precisely because it used the new rules. But the rules have been so modified that they are barely recognizable, leaving a mediocre hack ‘n’ slash fantasy RPG. (Mind you, this is based on how far I could get with 2nd level characters before I ran into that wraith and out of patience) Fuckit. At least I’ve still got about half of Arcanum to get through. Now that (buggy though it may be) is a fun game.
Fenris - So in other words, you have a computer RPG that’s counterintuitive, completely linear, bone-crushing difficult, and in general no fun whatsoever.
Welcome to the world of modern computer gaming.
(Sheesh, and there are people getting paid for this. Nice work if you can get it, huh? :rolleyes: )
Oh, and as for those incessant popups…here: http://www.meaya.com. Just $25…a small price to pay to eliminate a ton of irritation, IMHO.
Thank you for the suggestion, Drastic. Slowing my computer down to 20% has made the game at least playable. Still a bit too speedy to read some messages, but I might try 15% next time.
Some of this might be the fact that it’s a remake of an old game. (What was it before? 1E? 2?) So, translating the 3E rules without totally alienating the players who loved it before was a bit of a task.
A LOT of it is probably the fact that it’s on the computer, and even 3E rules don’t translate perfectly without jumping the size. (How well did Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale do? And does anyone know if they work without a working sound card?) I remember how restrictive a lot of the 2E games were in character generation…
I own all of the original gold box games and already know about Mo’Slo. My problem is getting the sound working. What am I missing? Legacy DOS drivers or something?
(I swear, I’m just gonna load up DOS 5.0 on an old machine and go from there.)
The original Pool of Radiance was AD&D 1st ed. rules. Including the amazingly annoying race/class level restrictions that basically said “All of your characters have to be human except for your thief unless you want them to top out at 5th level.” And your couldn’t be a paladin, druid, illusionist or ranger. In Curse of the Azure Bonds you can be a paladin or ranger and even get amazingly useless Ranger/Druid spells; I think they get faerie fire, charm animals and cure light wounds. Yippee