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[scriver]

But i liked the Fallout 3 atmosphere a lot more as it felt more grim and desesperate than in New Vegas : more post-apocalyptic as you felt human settlements were mostly all in precarious situations and their survival was always at stake in the mission.

I liked the NV atmosphere better for this exact reason. F2 and NV, even F1 to some degree but not as much, aren't really post-apocalyptic any more, they're post-post-apocalyptic. Setting-wise, they are about the world moving on and how the new world will be established. F3 was the odd one out in that regard, even F4 had a more in tune vibe on that in my opinion.

Which makes sense. F3 was originally planned to be set, chronologically, at a more "twenty minutes after the bombs" stage of the world, iirc at the same time as or even before F1 but on the east coast, when people was just coming out of their holes in the ground and repopulating the world. In that light, a lot of the design choices make a lot more sense, settlements like Little Lamplight not being as unreasonable and stuff like nearly every place in the world being completely unlooted yet making more sense too. But during development they (I blame Todd Howard of course ) changed to be ser chronologically after F2 seemingly for no reason beyond assuming their players would be too dumb to understand the context of a prequel. Or maybe it was related to them forcing the BoS and Enclave into the story for brand recognition. Either way, I think the game ended up being worse for it.

Edit: Anyway, so, Jagged Alliance 3 just opened for pre-orders, with a 20% off bonus. I'm not the only one getting a feeling of them being insecure about how the game will be received, am I? 20% feels like an unusually large pre-order sale.

[Robsoie]

At least something i'll give to New Vegas is that it answered the question :

Spoiler: how do women supermutant look like ? (click to show/hide)

[n9103]

RE: NV- Whatever your wish, there's a mod for that.
RE: JA3- You're not. Considering how hard JA:Rage and the BiA set failed, in comparison to JA2, it's reasonable to be wary. Pricing probably reflects lukewarm tester reception + lingering feelings about Rage, et al.

[delphonso]

Having no context for modern crpg (I played a lot of Neverwinter Nights when it came on 7 CDs and some of Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale), I picked up Pathfinder Kingmaker and all the DLC on a friend's recommendation.

I'm thoroughly impressed so far - not much into the game (some say it's 100 hours) but the voice work is solid and it looks great, the customization at the start was the perfect balance of far too much to decide and solid guidance. The plot setup is good and I've got a clear understanding of what to do and where to expect twists, something the old ones didn't always do well.

[Robsoie]

I hope you're playing the game on a SSD , as sadly in Pathfinder Kingmaker the crazy amount of loading screen between each small maps, and their silly durations (unity asset manager?) on HDD can be -very- aggravating on the long term (and Pathfinder is a very long game as there's truckload of quests and adventures on the campaign even without the dlc) .
It's sad that a game that is that good is having such annoyance.

On other news, i read that Paradox is going to publish (not develop) a Star Trek grand strategy game "Star Trek: Infinite", and from what i read it seems it is in fact the Star Trek 'New Horizon' mod for Stellaris that is going commercial.

[Robsoie]

Toyed a bit with "Sigma Theory: Global Cold War" following the gog giveaway

It's a boardgame, so there's no action or stealth to be seen there despite the spying theme, all is about selecting an action (that often take 2 turns or more) for each agent and move of your agent on a board with only few locations (as there are only 12 countries in the board ), with some possibility to negociate with a country leader (after identifying its own positive and negative traits with your agent)
And it is filled with invisible roll dices.

Each agents you deploy in a specific country can do a few actions, and each is decided by some roll dice you can't see (influenced by the level of strength or intellect stat of said agent + influenced by an invisible bonus given by a possible agent special skill).
I don't know if i have been particularly unlucky, but i got some high intellect  ( stat 8 ) agent failing "lower alert level" hacking very constantly, with only the agent that had the "hacker" skill despite its lower intellect ( stat 7 ) having some success sometime, hinting that probably special skill are much more important than the base stat, unless it's just being lucky or unlucky.

Also the big part of the game is finding hidden scientists to abduct them to get them to work for you or convince/seduce/bribe them into double agents. First you need to have an agent detecting the hidden scientist facility , then locate scientists, and spy on them to identify them closely. From there you can abduct/seduce/bribe/convince  them to work for you directly (or double agent work for you) of course depending on your agent stat+skill that help the best in the case.

But with my poor luck i ran into a situation in a country in which none of my agents have been able to approach the scientists facility "it's too well protected" regardless of high intellect or strength (the stat for facility locating is intellect), even after having done a recon action on the country (that supposedly allow to "improve" the chance of successfull dice roll) and constantly lowering the alert level with my hacker.

So all in all if you like boardgames it has potential, but it seems a bit too reliant to luck with the invisible dice rolling at every actions done.
From time to time a successful action will unlock a new agent for your next game. Unlocked a bunch of them before miserably losing the game because the doomsday clock reached midnight.

And the game suddenly froze (though not really as background and animation were still playing) when it was supposed to deliver me the final score i reached.
At least before bugging out at least it let me complete that game, but a quick look in the steam board of the game seems to hint people may encounter "infinite loading" at various stage of the game randomly.

[Robsoie]

Played a bit more of Sigma Theory and it seems i have been much more lucky this time with the dice rolls, after hiring an additional hacker codenamed Aiekillu, (that i unlocked in the previous game), both Gamera and Aiekillu managed to do wonders by hacking alert levels, scientist locations and various stuff on several countries without failing once !
It helped greatly.

Liberty did her abduction then extraction job of 2 scientists without failing too !
Something i never managed previous game, it seems dice rolls really are on my side this time. The first one in Turkey was a complete success, but on the 2nd extraction (it was in France) she killed accidentally 4 civilians when setting up a fire in a building as a diversion, negociation will be funny with the french , will have  to find some dirty secret on their leader to get things peacefully with a pressure point for my arguments. 

But my elite agent (Maestro) got abducted somewhere in Turkey by a terrorist group "Anti-Capitalist Brigade" that i turned off when they contacted me to help after i released the research "Stability" that ended capitalism worldwide just for fun while he was investigating Turkey's leader , as i had good enough relationship with my employer (playing for the USA on this game) i got access to a replacement codenamed Saint (a 90 years old Brahim with some great skill, also a black belt master).

All was right in time as 2 enemy agents were spotted and plotting something in my country (probably abduct some scientists i had or had previously abducted, or ruin some research effort). Fortunately my 2 hackers extraordinaires managed to locate them.
Both Liberty and Saint managed to thwart the enemy agents effort, Liberty also managed to capture one of them, codenamed Morrigh4n.
After deciding to release the "Panacea" research to the public instead of a big pharma company just to annoy them, i got a big help on the Doomsday clock that got pushed back a lot as the Panacea can cure all form of cancer, hopefully those big pharma folks will not do something in retaliation. 

Anyways, so far that game is going good, my country is still ahead on the course to the Sigma Theory.
What a difference it made to be a bit more lucky
Though poor Maestro, i hope he'll manage to escape or that the game allow to find him.

[Iduno]

Yeah, I've played a bit of Sigma as well.

It looks like making a scientist a double-agent gets you either +2% or +4% science per turn. I think your 2 starting scientists each give 200%. It's not 0, but it's not worth the effort.

Extractions are also really difficult, so you probably can't steal scientists most of the time. Although a drone and high stats helps. Failing means you lose 1 of your 4 agents, and only get a chance at a new agent ever 4-ish turns, if your country likes you, and they might have terrible stats, and you have to pick the right response to successfully recruit the new agent. It's very high risk, but high reward if you succeed.

Diplomacy works like a 4x game: you figure out what they want, offer it, and they say no. I did have 1 country with a leader I could easily negotiate with and also liked me, and also I had blackmail material. A one-time 23% increase to one type of science. Maybe worth it, if you happen to have blackmail material and something to offer of equal or greater value (which means it has a cost), and also you *really* need the small increase.


My second game was my best. I got up to 13/15 science score, including a hypnosis technology that got my agents a large bonus converting scientists (for that sweet 2-4% increase), and one that made them 100% loyal, which didn't seem to affect anything. Successfully exfiltrated the head of a terrorist organization, after they'd lowered my rep to single-digit percentages in half of the world. I failed a mission because I couldn't convert a scientist, which cost me an agent, and later had another agent arrested when I was getting desperate. Then I lost both of my scientists to an enemy who had an actual useful technology.


Edit: playing more, it's clear that there isn't that much game there. The only real replayability to "we don't tell you how anything actually works, so you have to replay the game to do trial and error." Any time a game has to hide information from you, wonder if it's because it's a badly-made game. Good idea, but they just couldn't make it work.

[Robsoie]

Sigma Theory problem is that it's lacking a bit of depth, as after your first game you'll have seen everything it has.
After that with the "custom" mode you may switch a few things (no idea i only played on "classic" mode and ignored the "story" mode that from what i read is limited), but overall your further games will play exactly the same.
With the difference being your luck in rolling dice.

Something that does not really help is that there's no balance with the agents, especially the ones you'll unlock for future replay are clearly superior to other, meaning there's no reason to choose the weaker ones unless for some reason you're challenging yourself with weak agents
But with how much luck is involved i don't think there's a need to challenge yourself, randomness of results will do that sometime.

Also, it seems the event i ran into (the "anti-capitalist brigade" abducting one of my agent) does not have any resolution, meaning you can't rescue the guy or event locate the enemy group, it's just a random event to remove one of your agent and force you to get another one, but also then what's the point of an agent being "elite" , out of the game preventing you to have more than one elite in a team, if that stupid random event will just remove an elite agent like any garbage one.

So i agree, the game had a lot of potential to be great, some mechanics are good (once you start to figure them out, as the tutorial is really bad at that), but unfortunately it never reaches that potential as everything feels shallow. And will never do as the devs have moved to other games and left this one behind.

[MCreeper]

Remake of Pocket Mirror, which i kinda praised around there before, is out. For a month now, in fact.

New character sprites are horsefaces, though more detailed. Fortunately, you can switch back to old ones.
What little story they added, they put into NG+. 
I legit don't understand what the point of buying soundtrack is, and more so when it is present in it's entirety in game's files either way.
They removed pixel-hunting aspect and some other annoyances. Unfortunately, game didn't provoke any emotions at second go, except mild annoyance at gotchas.  You know what is a great way to do a bad chase scene? Insert a few traps that player can't possibly react to while going through them for first time. 
But the new intro is marvellous, true, even though it has little to do with actual game. 

[delphonso]

I hope you're playing the game on a SSD , as sadly in Pathfinder Kingmaker the crazy amount of loading screen between each small maps, and their silly durations (unity asset manager?) on HDD can be -very- aggravating on the long term (and Pathfinder is a very long game as there's truckload of quests and adventures on the campaign even without the dlc) .
It's sad that a game that is that good is having such annoyance.

Absolutely believable - I've got an SSD but...

finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.

[Robsoie]

the rest part in Kingmaker was an annoyance , especially as 99% of the time nothing special will happen : it just slow down your progression uselessly, especially after you heard those little dialogues between NPC a dozen of times already and they're telling each other nothing new.

Back on Sigma Theory, i got a surprise after what i wrote in a previous post :

But my elite agent (Maestro) got abducted somewhere in Turkey by a terrorist group "Anti-Capitalist Brigade" that i turned off when they contacted me to help after i released the research "Stability" that ended capitalism worldwide just for fun while he was investigating Turkey's leader , as i had good enough relationship with my employer (playing for the USA on this game) i got access to a replacement codenamed Saint (a 90 years old Brahim with some great skill, also a black belt master).

Gamera managed to detect an enemy agent in my country preparing for some more nasty stuff.

Spoiler: traitorous bastard (click to show/hide)

so apparently he went to work for the russian now?
Liberty did her job again and captured him.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As i was starting to have a bunch of captured agent in my country, i accidentally noticed that you can interrogate them (the game never told me that), and again many options to do so without explanation on what exactly each will do,
And experimenting with those options lead to obvious conclusions

Spoiler: sorry Morrigh4n (click to show/hide)

But that's not my fault guys, i had no idea how it ever worked

At some point Japan developped a teleportation technology through some gates, and captured immediately one of my agent (Saint, the elder guy that replaced Maestro) , ignoring that said agent was equipped with a CHAMELON implant (a tech i discovered and kept for my country use) so what the hell is the point of having a tech that allow him to switch his appearance at will if he can get captured so easily ...

Anyways, Liberty again proved her worth by rescuing Saint, and unlike her previous mission in which she killed 5 civilians and 11 soldiers on her path to extract a captured scientist and did an international outrage that shocked my best hacker (Aiekillu) that decided to run away from our agency, that bastard ...

Spoiler: she just went super james bond ninja (click to show/hide)

All in all , things were really going well

Spoiler: leading on the Sigma research by a lot (click to show/hide)

And from there i guess luck disappeared from my dice roll :
One of my scientist (one that wasn't a prisonner) contacted me in order to get back her brain enhancement drug that security confiscated recently, i told her yes but instead of the double dose she wanted i told her to give some to the other scientist (as i hoped then to get the Sigma research faster).
Result : my 2 regular (i mean the one that were working for us and not forced) scientist and 1 of the prisonner scientist died immediately ...
Then another country did a research that forced me to lose one of the prisonner scientist.

Spoiler: the last prisonner scientist (click to show/hide)

And all those scientist losses in only a few turns, so while i'm ahead , i have no more scientist.
I guess Liberty will get busy abducting people again, hopefully she'll be as lucky as she has been so far.
Hopefully i'll be able to slow down my competitors when taking their scientists.

Edit :
Japan discovered another technology that cause Gameran to switch to their side, that bastard
Meaning i had no more hacker at all
So after looking at my country offer of new agent, on the 3 proposition, i went with Kepi Blanc, another expert at getting things done with his knife when it comes to abduct and exfiltrate scientists

Along with Liberty they managed to abduct then extract 2 scientists from Russia ! good timing as Russia was growing its Sigma research very fast (it reached 20% in a few turns ) .
This was great as it allowed me to grow my own Sigma research again as those scientists were fitting in branch i hadn't yet completed.
...Helped by Saint that managed to convince another scientist in Russia to work for us.

Russia was now stagnating at 20% , no more Sigma research growing (i guess i stole the scientists that were in a not yet completed Sigma branch of theirs)
While i reached 63% , i was going to win i was seeing it !

But, it was time Japan and Russia both ended researching 2 techs that both skyrocketted the Doomsday clock to its end to everyone.
And that was the end, i was way ahead of the competition , close to win, but sadly that stupid Doomsday clock ended the game by a global war so none can win.

Spoiler: score (click to show/hide)

Sad to see the score not getting higher, i guess the doomsday end really is a bad malus. But so close to an actual win...

Not sure what the spouse thing is supposed to be, she sometime was popping up to ask me something, growing "love" % or not (while sometime impacting on various stuff) , and at some point the Germany sigma research leader contacted me and asked to give him all our research in exchange of my spouse alive or her corpse, i said no and that was it, never heard about spouse or related event after that.

[Frumple]

finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.

For what it's worth, while I don't know if Kingmaker has it, WotR very much does -- there's a major utility/cheat mod (Toybox) that lets you do things like auto-rest or restore abilities after combat, and things of that nature. If you want to not deal with some of the crud involved in traveling, the option is there to just cut it out.

It's also what enables toggle highlighting instead of having to hold a button down to see stuff you can interact with, heh, among a pile of other things. Would very much recommend, even on a first playthrough.

[Persus13]

finally hit a wall in the game: just too many side-quests and too much time to travel across the map. I'm enjoying the story and gameplay, but would also like to...just get to the next map without travelling for a minute, camp, get in a fight and continue travelling - same reason I skip this in table top games. That said, it's not a deal breaker, still, and I honestly might be able to flick it off with all the options that are available to the player. I picked up Wrath of the Righteous on the recent sale as I intend to finish this one and will happily jump into the next one, after a bit of a break.

Another tip for reducing travel is to build mage towers in every town you can and using teleportation circles to cut down on travel time. This works in both games iirc.

[Robsoie]

Started playing Eschalon Book 1 to prepare for the Book 2 and was rather puzzled by the lack of world map to know directions .

One of the side quests i got in the town of Aridell has me pointed toward the "Salted Coast" but without telling me in which direction that "Salted Coast" is (the other quests still give me some vague "north west, east, north" etc... that makes it rather hard to find something as pathq are a bit maze-like, but this one puzzled me.

Until i noticed on a tavern in Aridell the owner can sell you amongst other items a world map that showed me that Salted Coast being at a long distance in the south.

.. ingame world map that is the same as the one you'll find in the manual (lost 10 gold before noticing that map is in the manual.pdf )

I went with focusing my character on a classic warrior build, strength+ and as skill sword and bludgeonning (and some dodge skill too)

After clearing a cellar for a very early game that was infested with a bunch of salamander and getting close to death, i was wondering how anything other than a warrior build can survive that.