What are you playing?

[rabidtictac]

Killed the vampire, though I still have no idea how. Worthless quest. Shitty reward of an evil party member. I chunked her immediately for wasting my time. The quest didn't even complete when I did that. It still says that the gibbed vampire wants me to give her a vampire cape. Fuck off. That quest can stay unfinished there forever in my log.

Now I'm stuck against 3 giant ogres that are (surprise surprise) resistant/invulnerable to almost everything and regen health faster than they take damage. They move and attack like they have perma-haste and can deal 40 damage in one hit. Nice. I looked up what people do for this one and it seems like they just cheat. Cheat using the doors (because AI can't open doors for some retarded reason) or cheat using combinations of buffs that break the game.

Encounter design so far in BG2 sucks massive dong. There were hard fights in BG1 but they were largely reserved for endgame quests. Giving an enemy massive hp regen, hyper speed, max damage and resist to everything isn't clever or smart design. The fights so far that don't have any BS to them are trivial. So the difficulty curve veers wildly between very easy and romhack hard.

Edit: Holy shit this game has a million cutscenes. I was in the middle of a fight against muggers when a five minute fucking cutscene triggered, paused my fight, made me watch it and then dumped me back into the fight. The cutscene was totally irrelevant and unrelated to what I was doing. It was for some other quest.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

That doesn't sound like it conforms to official AD&D standards.

[jpakke]

Killed the vampire, though I still have no idea how. Worthless quest. Shitty reward of an evil party member. I chunked her immediately for wasting my time. The quest didn't even complete when I did that. It still says that the gibbed vampire wants me to give her a vampire cape. Fuck off. That quest can stay unfinished there forever in my log.

Now I'm stuck against 3 giant ogres that are (surprise surprise) resistant/invulnerable to almost everything and regen health faster than they take damage. They move and attack like they have perma-haste and can deal 40 damage in one hit. Nice. I looked up what people do for this one and it seems like they just cheat. Cheat using the doors (because AI can't open doors for some retarded reason) or cheat using combinations of buffs that break the game.

Encounter design so far in BG2 sucks massive dong. There were hard fights in BG1 but they were largely reserved for endgame quests. Giving an enemy massive hp regen, hyper speed, max damage and resist to everything isn't clever or smart design. The fights so far that don't have any BS to them are trivial. So the difficulty curve veers wildly between very easy and romhack hard.

Edit: Holy shit this game has a million cutscenes. I was in the middle of a fight against muggers when a five minute fucking cutscene triggered, paused my fight, made me watch it and then dumped me back into the fight. The cutscene was totally irrelevant and unrelated to what I was doing. It was for some other quest.

That vampire quest is "Enhanced" Edition added content, no wonder it's fucking shit. I have no recollection of any three giant ogres top off my head. One of the first quests you should get offered in the inn is the one by Korgan, the dwarf and Nalia, the noble who wants your help liberating her castle. There's also the circus in the very first area where Imoen gets taken away which is easy one and you can gain new companion.

Anyone who defends Dragon Age Origins combat is a fucking moron, you fight the same fucking boring enemy for the whole game and it doesn't have combat encounters, only filled with a shitton of trash combat.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

>shitty Enhanced Edition content

Yeah, that explains a lot.
You know, if you don't like the game in the first place, you probably shouldn't play the "Enhanced" version. The only thing it enhances is your suffering.

[jpakke]

>shitty Enhanced Edition content

Yeah, that explains a lot.
You know, if you don't like the game in the first place, you probably shouldn't play the "Enhanced" version. The only thing it enhances is your suffering.

Fortunately, there's a mod which lets you remove all the added "Enhanced" edition content, they just mostly made the UI a lot uglier, basically took the fanmade fixpack, updated the game to work on modern Direct X without a hassle, removed resolution choice, it runs in the desktop resolution, and made a few QoL changes, like being able to have two-handed weapon and one handed weapon + shield on the other weapon slot, and that's it.

Changing the UI is probably worst aspect (beside the added "quality" content), as it's a lot uglier and I'd say actually worse than the original UI. I don't think it would've been impossible job to mimic the original UI as closely as possible, and just make it to scale to the resolution.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Why replicate the original at a higher resolution if you can half-ass it? And if you want modern DirectX support, try dgVoodoo2 or something.
And does the mod at least let you kill that tranny knight who thinks xir unique special snowflake name would ever raise an eyebrow in a world where "Drizzt" is a thing?

[jpakke]

The troon was in their fan-fiction "expansion" which is set between the two games, and it is fucking horrendous, afaik only decent thing about the expansion are the combat encounters which were designed by the modder who's made combat mods with better AI etc. The writing is basically fanfic mod-tier, which probably isn't surprise to anyone.

[rabidtictac]

Killed the vampire, though I still have no idea how. Worthless quest. Shitty reward of an evil party member. I chunked her immediately for wasting my time. The quest didn't even complete when I did that. It still says that the gibbed vampire wants me to give her a vampire cape. Fuck off. That quest can stay unfinished there forever in my log.

Now I'm stuck against 3 giant ogres that are (surprise surprise) resistant/invulnerable to almost everything and regen health faster than they take damage. They move and attack like they have perma-haste and can deal 40 damage in one hit. Nice. I looked up what people do for this one and it seems like they just cheat. Cheat using the doors (because AI can't open doors for some retarded reason) or cheat using combinations of buffs that break the game.

That vampire quest is "Enhanced" Edition added content, no wonder it's fucking shit. I have no recollection of any three giant ogres top off my head. One of the first quests you should get offered in the inn is the one by Korgan, the dwarf and Nalia, the noble who wants your help liberating her castle. There's also the circus in the very first area where Imoen gets taken away which is easy one and you can gain new companion.

Anyone who defends Dragon Age Origins combat is a fucking moron, you fight the same fucking boring enemy for the whole game and it doesn't have combat encounters, only filled with a shitton of trash combat.

I meant 3 giant trolls, my bad. Trolls not ogres. It's the quest to liberate the keep for that dumb thief/mage bitch. I won't argue about enhanced edition being dogshit. From looking things up, it sounds like they added a bunch of class kits to BG1 that the original game was never intended to have. And ruined the balance of Icewind Dale completely.

Dragon Age Origins has more than one enemy. Mage fights in particular are brutal. But there are also hurlock/genlock alphas, dragons, ogres, archers firing from cover, assassin backstab ambushes etc. The game uses terrain really well to set up fights where you can't cheese because you have to beeline to the biggest threat ASAP. There are encounters where you have to know the right enemy order and how to navigate the arena, otherwise you'll die. And the AI scripting system gives you a lot of flexibility in building your party's AI to take the burden off of you. I wish BG2 had dragon age's ai system. Being able to hard-script Minsc to drink a strength potion when he's in combat and unbuffed would be godlike. Imagine scripting your priest or druid to cast healing on anyone below half health (I know for a fact they won't do this on their own.) Dragon Age's ai system covers a multitude of sins in the gameplay department, because you can always create a script for whatever you need.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Trolls = kill it with fire. Were you lacking in fire?

From looking things up, it sounds like they added a bunch of class kits to BG1 that the original game was never intended to have.

That's bog-standard behavior for any of the myriad fan mods that let you run BG1 in BG2 (from which the probably borrowed this idea).

[rabidtictac]

Trolls = kill it with fire. Were you lacking in fire?

From looking things up, it sounds like they added a bunch of class kits to BG1 that the original game was never intended to have.

That's bog-standard behavior for any of the myriad fan mods that let you run BG1 in BG2 (from which the probably borrowed this idea).

Fire does shit-all damage to the 3 giant trolls. I know because I spammed fireball until I ran out and then they healed it all. I had a mage with slots of nothing but fire and acid damage and it didn't do shit. I even had fire arrows and acid weapons. Didn't do anything.

No, what worked for me was abusing the broken door mechanics to lock them in one at a time so I could gank them individually. Otherwise, while focusing one down, the other two would use hasted speed to run over to my mages/clerics and body them. I'm talking 40+ damage without a crit using hasted combat speed.

I've already experienced multiple instances of using the "correct" damage type or "correct" strategy and it not working. Turn Undead is a great example. Never fucking works. Useless command.