re: General RPG Discussion - favorite games, suggestions, etc.

quote:

---

How's the story?

---

Story is great. Its takes the seemingly standard RPG route of a simple, routine mission to start that gradually turns into something a lot more catastrophic that you must deal with. But it is done very nicely.

quote:

---

looks like it requires a lot of patience

---

Crafting & inventory management is a pain at first. Eventually you'll develop your own system to help organize as you move along and both becomes easier. It isn't that crafting is hard to do, its just that you receive so much crafting materials throughout the game that it can seem overwhelming to jump into.

And combat is great. You can manipulate the terrain/environment to help you in fights (the CPU will do it to you too), so it makes battles seem unique instead of doing the same things over & over for 100 hours. For instance, it's raining and your enemy is standing in a water puddle. Said enemy is also immune to elemental damage, so your mage spells are pretty worthless against him. When its your mage's turn to act, instead of attacking the enemy directly with spells he is immune to, use a freezing spell on the water puddle that the enemy is standing on which will turn the puddle to ice, thus causing him to slip & fall. While he is knocked down, his turn is skipped multiple times until he stands back up but also his physical defense takes a huge hit while he is laying on his arse. So send in your tank/melee character to wipe him out while he is on the ground & cant defend himself. But then again you'll have to be careful because friendly fire is possible: your melee character can slip on that very same ice you just created if they aren't wearing the proper anti slipping equipment. Obviously not every fight requires that much thought or planning, but sometimes you'll be against a particular tough foe or just outnumbered in general and are about to be swarmed. In those situations, you can often change the momentum back to you by figuring out a way to alter the terrain of the battlefield to your favor.

It requires patience at first while you figure things out through trial & error. But by the end of the tutorial section (the murder mystery you're solving to start the game), you'll have the combat controls and inventory figured out. And that's when the story really takes off...