What are you Playing Now? - the man sez Video games are bad for you - fight the man!

[LadyCrimson]

Tainted Grail - Act2
---the quests and longwinded npc's are starting to wear on me. It's not bad quality, it's just the usual me reaction.
---definitely front-loaded. Also, the night-mega guy shows up too frequently imo, hindering free night-exploration. Technically some could beat him but it's not worth the time so most just run/FT away (preemptive bonfire use becomes more needed) *2ndEdit: I'm sure at some point it's dealable, but not for a long while
---starting to encounter a few more bugs (not just fun jank) re: certain features and quests. They've been patching but I'd say after 1st act game is not quite "finished".
---the MQ in Act1 had a method to get to act2 without having to do the MQ quest/faction. I appreciated that.
---There are more skill trees then what you initially see
---still love the item/finding stuff and exploration feels rewarding aspect
---Direct magic is good, summons however kinda suck. Wouldn't bother until their AI is better. Haven't bothered with melee, parry window looks really tight EDIT: also, re: parry, tap the button, don't hold it
---there are respec potions - you get a small number from exploring, saw one npc selling them but expensive
---3rdEDIT: there is no level cap - or rather, technically there is, but no one is ever going to reach it legit

Still liking it/finding it fun. The Wyrd-night-boss mechanic is the only thing I really dislike.

Edited May 31 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

Is the night boss as annoying as the "random" dragon attacks in Skyrim? (which would basically happen every second time you fast travel)

[LadyCrimson]

40 minutes ago, melkathi said:

Is the night boss as annoying as the "random" dragon attacks in Skyrim? (which would basically happen every second time you fast travel)

Not familiar w/Skyrim but -
---there's a mild bell sound when he spawns. He spawns some distance away and there's a brief moment/period before he starts "hunting" you giving you time to bonfire or escape other ways.
---there's no specific event/timing re: his spawning that I can tell. You go beyond safety zones/warded bonefire at night and maybe you'll get to explore a fair time, or maybe you'll hear that bell/see him spawn in really quick.
---you'll see him/hear the bell in Act1, but he just appears on the edge of visual ranges then fades away - he doesn't start hunting you until you've reached Act 2
---he scales I think, but skills/gear + the slow time Arthur skill as a leadup would eventually make him manageable. BUT he's immune to a lot of magic (frost, fire I think).  Or maybe you could get him stuck on terrain and cheese him.
---if you manage to kill him before dawn, it's maybe a few game days before he starts up again.

Edit: his purpose is to prevent players from excessively "farming" things that only drop at night, plus (I assume) just to annoy and present a skill challenge.

Edited May 31 by LadyCrimson

[melkathi]

Thank you.

 

With Skyrim the problem was that when you enter a general area it checks if an event triggers. In FO:NV that would for example have been the check if Caesar's Legion sent a deathsquad after you or a trader caravan walking past or an escaped slave running towards you with their explosive collar. If you just walk around, you may not even notice the events in Bethesda games as they can spawn two hills over yonder and the npc could run into a minefield or a monster. But when you fast travel it will spawn in your point of arrival. And if you travel into a town, there is a limit on the events in the event table it can pick from - for Skyrim that would mean that after scripted events for the town are done, if you don't use dawnguard to add vampire attacks at night, there only was one event to trigger for most towns: dragon attack. So if you fast travel a LOT, like I do, that would mean half a dozen dragon attacks in one play session.

 

If he gets too annoying, some modder may mod him out  As long as bonfires aren't too limited in whatever resource you need to do bonfire stuff, I don't mind lighting bonfires when I just want to rest. I do believe devs in general have not understood that when people want to rest, they want to do just that and not be messed with all the time. I am low on health, I want to have my character sleep, heal and go back to enjoying the game - interrupt me and you prevent me from doing the last step: enjoying the game.

 

In Tainted Grail I only did that Bonfire at the very end of the demo, so didn't see how it works really.

[LadyCrimson]

The normal bonfire can be used for general resting/point distribution, cooking. And with cobweb-fuel, recharge Arthur ability (with cobwebs)
If you fuel bonfire itself with 10 cobwebs, it also lets you FT from the bonfire, do alchemy with it, ID items.  I think a skill/perk tree lets you do even more, like blacksmith in it. And I think fueling is how you can rest in the Wyrd protected/shielded (a barrier like around towns) but I can't recall offhand. the "wild" campfires will definitely wake you up if you try to rest at night.

Cobwebs drop from enemies ... at night. Although there are some day enemies that can drop a little. The special night enemies drop more at once.
Un-id'd items only drop at night. I currently have 1300 cobwebs stored up.

[Lexx]

God damnit, Starfield is such a typical Bethesda product, it's not even funny. You look at the world and stuff and it really feels like this could be something. I really like the visual design and even the way the gameplay feels, with exception of annoying bullet sponge enemies. But then at the end of the day it's still just a Bethesda game -- wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.

There was a quest with some collector dude that started out really interesting. You had to get an artifact from him in whatever way you want... yeah, right. Either you shoot him dead or you shoot him until he gives up and let him live. Great choices. If this quest were in an Obsidian game, you just know you had at least 3 or 4 ways to deal with the situation.

Now I had a quest where you have to get some super dangerous top secret data from an archive. All the time on the way to that point people kept telling me how I have to be on my best behavior, how I can only access the data I need, how I am NOT supposed to look at anything else... Well, guess what... Once I was in the archive, I had to press 3 buttons to open a door, walk down a corridor and basically press another button. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE. You couldn't do anything else, even if you wanted to. There is no way not "to behave", there is no way to look up any other data. Nothing. It's a linear corridor. 

I swear, the writers must have a word budget of less than 250 words per NPC, otherwise I can't explain this crap. In the main story I had to talk to one person from each big religious faction about some mythical mumbo jumbo. How does that interaction look like? Player can ask 3 questions and the NPC replies with maybe 2 or 4 lines. End of it is you saying "Hm yes, now I understand everything" - meanwhile I'm sitting here like wtf did just happen.

EVERYTHING in this game is like that. What's the point of a gazillion quests if all of them are like this. Please just scrap 50% of them and instead make everything else 50% bigger...

At this point, the only good quests in the game are the ones that are (almost) unmarked and entirely localized in small areas. Where you don't constantly fast travel from one planet to the next to a point where you lose the sense of scale in the world, because everything is a black loading screen away anyways. 

Man, it's such a shame. This could be so good, but it's... Bethesda. It's the same crap every time with all of their games. This is why I stopped bothering with Fo4 and why I would have never even tried Starfield if it weren't included in Game Pass. Deep inside, I knew this is exactly what the game would be like, and I can already tell you now that TES6 will be exactly the same.

/Edit: My companion just told me she is part of House Va'ruun. NO ****. Please, man, don't insult my intelligence. That was obvious from the very first moment. She even wears clothes that are like whatever the Va'ruun guys are wearing and now I was forced to act all surprised and what not. If at least my character could be like "yeah, I kinda expected that" ... but nope... "wow, you lied to me, this is so disrespectful." ... bruh, just stop. 

Edited June 1 by Lexx

[uuuhhii]

38 minutes ago, Lexx said:

God damnit, Starfield is such a typical Bethesda product, it's not even funny. You look at the world and stuff and it really feels like this could be something. I really like the visual design and even the way the gameplay feels, with exception of annoying bullet sponge enemies. But then at the end of the day it's still just a Bethesda game -- wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.

There was a quest with some collector dude that started out really interesting. You had to get an artifact from him in whatever way you want... yeah, right. Either you shoot him dead or you shoot him until he gives up and let him live. Great choices. If this quest were in an Obsidian game, you just know you had at least 3 or 4 ways to deal with the situation.

Now I had a quest where you have to get some super dangerous top secret data from an archive. All the time on the way to that point people kept telling me how I have to be on my best behavior, how I can only access the data I need, how I am NOT supposed to look at anything else... Well, guess what... Once I was in the archive, I had to press 3 buttons to open a door, walk down a corridor and basically press another button. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE. You couldn't do anything else, even if you wanted to. There is no way not "to behave", there is no way to look up any other data. Nothing. It's a linear corridor. 

I swear, the writers must have a word budget of less than 250 words per NPC, otherwise I can't explain this crap. In the main story I had to talk to one person from each big religious faction about some mythical mumbo jumbo. How does that interaction look like? Player can ask 3 questions and the NPC replies with maybe 2 or 4 lines. End of it is you saying "Hm yes, now I understand everything" - meanwhile I'm sitting here like wtf did just happen.

EVERYTHING in this game is like that. What's the point of a gazillion quests if all of them are like this. Please just scrap 50% of them and instead make everything else 50% bigger...

At this point, the only good quests in the game are the ones that are (almost) unmarked and entirely localized in small areas. Where you don't constantly fast travel from one planet to the next to a point where you lose the sense of scale in the world, because everything is a black loading screen away anyways. 

Man, it's such a shame. This could be so good, but it's... Bethesda. It's the same crap every time with all of their games. This is why I stopped bothering with Fo4 and why I would have never even tried Starfield if it weren't included in Game Pass. Deep inside, I knew this is exactly what the game would be like, and I can already tell you now that TES6 will be exactly the same.

/Edit: My companion just told me she is part of House Va'ruun. NO ****. Please, man, don't insult my intelligence. That was obvious from the very first moment. She even wears clothes that are like whatever the Va'ruun guys are wearing and now I was forced to act all surprised and what not. If at least my character could be like "yeah, I kinda expected that" ... but nope... "wow, you lied to me, this is so disrespectful." ... bruh, just stop. 

 

did bethesda given up on starfield yet

didn't hear anything about another dlc

[Lexx]

Well, they don't really need to focus on that a lot since they probably make more money from just selling "creations" by third party creators / modders.

Not gonna lie, playing this game and seeing all the wasted potential makes me start dreaming up a smaller quest dlc as well. Something that is better than everything in the game right now (not really hard to do, truth told). The only issue is that Bethsoft pays like 20% ... yeah, **** off. Considering how expensive game dev is, and how big of a risk this is, since you have to put up with all cost first, this is terrible. Even Bohemia Interactive pays 50% - that's far more reasonable. 

However, it seems Bethsoft doesn't even release patches, since I have found issues in the game that people posted about back in the release days already. Again, this is just typical Bethesda. The moment they change game engine and mods aren't possible anymore, is when their company will die, since the community can't fix their bull**** anymore. 

Edited June 1 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

God damnit, Starfield is such a typical Bethesda product, it's not even funny. You look at the world and stuff and it really feels like this could be something. I really like the visual design and even the way the gameplay feels, with exception of annoying bullet sponge enemies. But then at the end of the day it's still just a Bethesda game -- wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle.

There was a quest with some collector dude that started out really interesting. You had to get an artifact from him in whatever way you want... yeah, right. Either you shoot him dead or you shoot him until he gives up and let him live. Great choices. If this quest were in an Obsidian game, you just know you had at least 3 or 4 ways to deal with the situation.

Now I had a quest where you have to get some super dangerous top secret data from an archive. All the time on the way to that point people kept telling me how I have to be on my best behavior, how I can only access the data I need, how I am NOT supposed to look at anything else... Well, guess what... Once I was in the archive, I had to press 3 buttons to open a door, walk down a corridor and basically press another button. THERE WAS NOTHING ELSE. You couldn't do anything else, even if you wanted to. There is no way not "to behave", there is no way to look up any other data. Nothing. It's a linear corridor. 

I swear, the writers must have a word budget of less than 250 words per NPC, otherwise I can't explain this crap. In the main story I had to talk to one person from each big religious faction about some mythical mumbo jumbo. How does that interaction look like? Player can ask 3 questions and the NPC replies with maybe 2 or 4 lines. End of it is you saying "Hm yes, now I understand everything" - meanwhile I'm sitting here like wtf did just happen.

EVERYTHING in this game is like that. What's the point of a gazillion quests if all of them are like this. Please just scrap 50% of them and instead make everything else 50% bigger...

At this point, the only good quests in the game are the ones that are (almost) unmarked and entirely localized in small areas. Where you don't constantly fast travel from one planet to the next to a point where you lose the sense of scale in the world, because everything is a black loading screen away anyways. 

Man, it's such a shame. This could be so good, but it's... Bethesda. It's the same crap every time with all of their games. This is why I stopped bothering with Fo4 and why I would have never even tried Starfield if it weren't included in Game Pass. Deep inside, I knew this is exactly what the game would be like, and I can already tell you now that TES6 will be exactly the same.

/Edit: My companion just told me she is part of House Va'ruun. NO ****. Please, man, don't insult my intelligence. That was obvious from the very first moment. She even wears clothes that are like whatever the Va'ruun guys are wearing and now I was forced to act all surprised and what not. If at least my character could be like "yeah, I kinda expected that" ... but nope... "wow, you lied to me, this is so disrespectful." ... bruh, just stop. 

That's what you get, when your focus group are teens who grew up on TikTok

[Zoraptor]

The quintessential Bethesda style predates tiktok by a decade plus. Bethesda games are what you get when there are zero bad consequences- quite the reverse, you get rewarded- for putting out garbage. Why wouldn't you release low effort unmaintained bilge when it's guaranteed to sell anyway?

One might hope the reaction to Starfield might lead to some sort of road to Damascus moment but who's anyone kidding. FO76 didn't, so you'll get TES6 on yet another rebadged 2005 vintage Gamebryo iteration with the same bugs and soulless low effort puddle deep world together with a bunch of literal decades old bugs.

[Lexx]

The engine is totally fine. In fact, I really like it - always did. It's amazing to work with and the gameplay is not as bad as people make it out to be. They improved a lot in most areas, except maybe ai pathfinding and such. But that's not really the fault of the engine either. Starfield even has acutal ladders now!

The only thing I always have issues with, is the quest design in their games. It is just terrible. You have all those cool ideas but then you dive into it and... yeah... why expect anything else than a linear corridor. Some quests have multiple ways of doing them in the way that you can be an ass or an ass kisser. The end result is - at best - just different loot rewards. There is one quest where you have to find a dude and collect money from him. You can shoot him and loot his weapon and stuff, or you pay the bill for him and he will gift you his weapon. Amazing. Yeah, sure, you will get negative reputation or whatever, but why would I care if literally nobody else in the game world does.

Really, it's just sad. 

Funny thing is.. I was just thinking that a Starfield made by Obsidian probably wouldn't be that great either. They are so formulaic in their quest design by now, that it gets lame as well, just in the other direction.  Guess the tl;dr is ... everything is so predictable. 

/Edit: Oh boy, I have more to complain about  
Generally I like how the settlements and outposts look, but... why is everything so small again? You have whole planets to work with!! Can you not make something like.. I don't know.. a farming planet, where everything you can see is just fields of crops? Unlike Fo3, there's actual farming and plantations now at least, but still.. why not scale it up? Work with what you have!!111

Edited June 1 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

The quintessential Bethesda style predates tiktok by a decade plus. Bethesda games are what you get when there are zero bad consequences- quite the reverse, you get rewarded- for putting out garbage. Why wouldn't you release low effort unmaintained bilge when it's guaranteed to sell anyway?

One might hope the reaction to Starfield might lead to some sort of road to Damascus moment but who's anyone kidding. FO76 didn't, so you'll get TES6 on yet another rebadged 2005 vintage Gamebryo iteration with the same bugs and soulless low effort puddle deep world together with a bunch of literal decades old bugs.

Of course it does. But the point about the composition of the focus groups of the companies, who prefer to build their games around checkboxes, still stands  You can't get any more creative, nor even need to, if your focus group and main target audience has attention span of a Gold Fish and no economic literacy 

[MrBrown]

Playing the Obliviion remake.

Not having played the original, I can now see why Skyrim is so highly regarded, because it's miles better than this.

[Zoraptor]

2 hours ago, Lexx said:

Starfield even has acutal ladders now!

Wow, and only 29 years after System Shock had them...

Jesus, 29 years.

To be fair, it is nice that they, for example, finally fixed physics being tied to frame rate. But you can't get around the feeling that it only happened because it was used for 'sploits in FO76 and if it wasn't you'd have a 2023 game with a 60fps frame limit. 

Quote

You can shoot him and loot his weapon and stuff, or you pay the bill for him and he will gift you his weapon. Amazing.

If that were the only issue I'd be impressed as in the end that is how most quests revolve in RPGs, though you certainly tend to remember the ones that don't a lot more fondly. And the windowdressing around it is very important, if you care about verisimilitude.

Otherwise I rather agree- and I don't really dislike Bethesda's games per se, they're just so very disappointing which in many ways is worse than just being bad. They could be much better without that much extra effort.

The classic example is the pre dlc end to FO3. The rest of the game was OK overall, but that was stupid, and they knew it was stupid but didn't fix (until the dlc).

[Hurlshort]

Yeah, I love the setting of Starfield. I like the ship designer. There is some good exploration moments.

But no argument for me on the majority of the quests. Bethesda has always struggled with story and characterization. 

I thought the corp storyline was fun. It was the only one where you didnt end up just killing a bunch of people.

[HoonDing]

I liked the pirate/sysdef questline but that mission on the ice planet is really tedious. And Delgado is an annoying imbecile.

But I'm so far on NG+ I don't care about factions anymore. I don't even want to see Constellation again. I go for a "weird universe" every time, only do the "Mantis" sidequest, gather enough cash to buy "Reflection" particle beam and then go planet hopping on my own until I get bored and move on.

"Shattered Space" was decent but has no replay value. It was cool how the enemies were literally the Aldrain from "Land fit for heroes" but no way I'm ever dealing with those Va'ruun morons ever again.

Edited June 1 by HoonDing

[MrBrown]

Played some indie stuff lately.

The Roottrees are Dead. Good, but gets a bit too convoluted by the end. Needs American knowledge to figure out without googling.

No Sase Should Remain Unsolved.  Great. Had to google what type of day inputs it accepts, but otherwise managed it by myself.

Sea of Stars. Gave up after I realized I'd have to dodge enemy attacks. Just make a real turn-based game. 

[Sven_]

On 5/26/2025 at 10:15 AM, BruceVC said:

I never had that issue with Kingmaker so I doubt  that will happen in WoRT

I have read some of the criticisms of both games around them being too long and dragging or things becoming repetitive 

That was never my experience and I think its because I have breaks between sessions so I dont get  bored by how the game unfolds  

 

 

 

Well, I took a six to eight months timeout with Kingmaker. WOTR I bought upon release and had three time-outs total over the span of September 2021 to end of 2023... still not finished. Probably won't.

I jokingly view it as this: Owlcat took the opposite lesson from Planescape:Torment and its development than the Disco Elysium boys did.

Disco got rid of combat entirelly after experiencing Torment's copypaste trash encounters replacing quality content and questing in later areas such as Curst Prison (a result of crunch and rush). Owlcat based their entire business modell around that. I mean, these guys are about to release their fourth 150-200 hours longest CRPG ever opus in the span of like 7 years, plus DLCs plus Enhanced Editions... that's insane. It would have been insane in the 1990s, when production was simpler.

Mind you, I'm more frustrated than anything. For one, their type of game is right up my alley. Then I also like the better parts. I just wish half of it wouldn't be such a filler slog.

Edited June 2 by Sven_

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, Sven_ said:

Mind you, I'm more frustrated than anything. For one, their type of game is right up my alley. Then I also like the better parts. I just wish half of it wouldn't be such a filler slog.

Yup. This is my main criticism of the Pathfinder games as well. It's why I have to play them on the Easy setting so I can just breeze through the tedious filler fights.

[BruceVC]

Im about 80 hours into WoRT  and Im still having lots of fun

I am  really enjoying the whole Crusader management,  I am comfortable with  the army combat mechanics and how you train and buy army units and then engage in combat with various demon armies 

And its great making all the Commander decisions, I should have done this P:K and not let AI manage my kingdom because it provides a nice break from the standard RPG progression

And then Romance, I have some very interesting companion choices and Im not sure how things will progress, firstly Arueshalae has joined my party and its a fascinating take around an ascended Succubus. If you find fallen Angels then why not the opposite? I really want to Romance her but Im not sure how without dying because of the  Succubus life drain. But she is an excellent ranged combat addition 

And then the truth about Camellia has just been revealed to me and thats become a greater  conundrum, I have taken an entire stance in this game that my decisions will always be about the main objective which is stopping the Demons and closing the Worldwound. And that means certain grey choices and even some evil choices with the view "the end justifies the means "

So Im keeping  Camellia in my party, Im Romancing her but I told her to stop killing people ...maybe her insane  spirit can help with the main objective but I have to some standards  and blood sacrifices is not ideal 

 

[marelooke]

Been putting some hours into Soulmask recently. It has very similar vibes to Conan Exiles, a game I sunk a fair few hours into (and that I still occasionally play, but more as a building game  ), so I'll mostly be comparing against that.

At a high level they are very similar, end up in some weird place due to weird reasons and have to build/craft your way out of things, you bonk natives on the head to add them to your tribe, etc.

From where I stand there's two major differences:

The first one being that your main character is weaker than everyone else (stats are hard-capped below those of other NPCs), and you are, in fact, not expected to use it most of the time. This is where the titular "soulmask" comes in, you can use it to "Control" other tribesmen that you recruit, taking over their skills, inventory, gear, etc. The one downside tribesmen have is that they can die permanently (at least initially), while your PC will just respawn.

The second one is that Tribe management is much more involved than in Conan. Tribesmen are much more active, and in fact much more along the lines of what I wished Conan Exiles had when I started playing it: you can assign them various tasks and they'll go out and do them. If you assign them to logging they'll go out to the area you assigned them to chop wood, grabbing an axe from storage if they don't have one, for crafting they'll run around collecting materials from chests to then craft the things you queued up.

The downside of this situation is that you have to rely on AI pathing, so being creative with base placement/interior may not be the best of ideas. I had the great idea to build up on a cliff, with the result that my tribesmen often get stuck at the base of said cliff instead of pathing around.

There's still some limitations I wish there weren't, for example they won't repair their gear when it breaks, instead they'll toss it and grab new stuff from chests if they can, otherwise they'll just start idling.

Overall having a good time and probably worth checking out if you enjoy(ed) Conan Exiles.

[majestic]

My nephew has badgered me into playing Satisfactory. At least he's the one having fun building the factory while I'm mostly off killing stuff, doing research and crafting equipment. The factory's a jumbled mess of conveyor belts and pipelines and storage containers. Pretty much what you'd expect from a 12 year old.  

Edited June 4 by majestic

[Wormerine]

Elena dropped for Street Fighter6 and with her season3 patch.

So far she seems great. Probably my favourite addition this year. I am a bit disappointed by s3 patch though… it being 2 years since game release, many were hoping for something new and exciting, but all we got was a very conservative balance patch. To be fair, Capcom seemed to put a lot of work upfront this time around, but with slow drip of new characters and little changes in the meta things have been feeling a bit stale for a while.

[LadyCrimson]

Tainted Grail - still in Act2
----came across a goblin thing wearing a silly big red mage hat. I wanted that hat. But he wanted a dictionary. So I gave him one. We became friends. I taught him to read. He gifted me with a Summon goblin spell. Pffft, I have no interest in that.  I thanked him, left. Then I snuck back in, killed him with a fireball, and took his hat. FASHION OVER FRIENDSHIP.

---I was wrong re: the night-boss guy being Act2 specific. It's attached to the MQ main thing - if you finish that, he starts appearing. So technically you could start seeing him in Act1 while still low clvl. I did manage to smite him after gaining some levels and adding new perks.
---so  many crafting resources seem to have no use. All I make are heal/mana pots and one or two foods and I barely need those anymore. After Act1 you barely find/get any new recipe/blueprints of any kind. A few. I don't craft armor/weapons (you'll find better), I only upgrade armor. eg, crafting/cooking/blacksmithing had potential but is hugely undercooked and in the long run you only need a few key resource things. The zillions of other things in my stash seem extraneous. Maybe they'll add in more crafting options later.
---a "big patch" is supposed to come out Fri or so, so I'm avoiding progressing too much until then. Hoping for more bug fixes, and I think such isn't typically retroactive on saves. Maybe they'll tweak balance stuff. By mid-Act2 I'm back to being totally OP'd (for Normal).
---I might start over.

Conclusion so far: Fun game for the price, engaging, great first impression, but starts to feel like it needed more time in the oven. I'd generally advise most to wait a few months for more "big patches" before buying. Although if you don't, it's still great fun for many hours. It just could be .... more fun, better QoL, better balance, quests that are less easily broken, stuff like that.  EDIT: still better than Bethesda

Edited Thursday at 02:35 AM by LadyCrimson

[Sven_]

On 6/2/2025 at 3:51 PM, kanisatha said:

Yup. This is my main criticism of the Pathfinder games as well. It's why I have to play them on the Easy setting so I can just breeze through the tedious filler fights.

Good idea, actually, hm..... currently replaying Torment for the first time in years, so thereafter, who knows. Thing is, I actually like combat. So it's not strictly that.

It's that Owlcat's copypaste encounter design makes Icewind Dale II look like grandmaster chess.  And they're so proud of it that it's EVERYWHERE. It's literally like: "Ok, here's two gargoyles. Now move two feet. Here's the same two gargoyles. Keep moving! Oh, hello you two again." Then comes the super mobs, and they only ever differ in armor class and buffs, like: "Cool, they switched that super mob with AC 50 for one with an AC of 80, now I'm gonna need to really buff up or else..." Kingmaker at least had the advantage of switching threats every chapter or so. But WOTR is naturally a crusade against demons... so horned beasts is all you're gonna get, start to finish, hour 1 to hour 250 or so. It's Demon Burnout Incarnate.  It's not like they're receiving no feedback on that.... people start BEGGING on their Reddit knees. 
 

Edited Friday at 01:44 PM by Sven_