A few hours in

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So far so good. It has got decent reviews an lives up to what I expect.

Would be nice to have the original remasterd.

 

I don't think I'll be playing it anytime soon. The reviews have exposed far too many issues that I'd like to see resolved before I go and ruin my experience.

 

Pussies. Probably console gamers, the lot of you.

 

Ironically, many of the issues probably stem from the fact they decided to port the game to consoles.

 

8 hours gone. apparently no XP for killing. lots of little bits of XP for asking questions. Baldurs gate style conversations, granting XP when asking the right questions.

The game is stable, expect for one glitch during combat. A save-game solved it. The combat is turn based, a like Divinty original sin, or ToEE. An adaption for the rules, no D&D.

 

Cypher system awards XP for discovery, not for killing monsters. It's a natural transition for those of use who leveled our characters with the story, not so much for D&D players.

 

The short of it for me:
Lots of fluff and too much hype on the part of Inxile it is. Planescape: Torment, it's not.

The somewhat longer version:

Spoiler

Combat is lackluster.
Dialogue trees are expansive but quite boring most of the time. It's very neat to observe the NPCs picking their noses when they think you aren't looking. The massive chunks of descriptive text start getting annoying when it's in practically every conversation, many of which are pointless.
Banter is minimal.
Most items are sellable gold fodder with fluff tacked on.
Party size of 4 stinks.
Barely any playable/joinable NPCs.
Story and character progression are plodding.
Side quests are generally alright but most of it ties back to #2 and the stupidly long for the sake of it dialogue trees.
Merecasters are fluff that requires work, ew!
Tides are little more than colored alignments no matter how they spin it.

I can't say I'd recommend the game to anyone at full price. Pillars isn't my favorite game of all time but it was a lot better than this. Too much trying to differentiate themselves from D&D lately.

 

Beat the game and.....
My opinion is mostly unchanged.

I won't spoil anything but, don't expect much from the antagonist(s).

Edit: I almost wasn't going to say it but, the game really feels more like a pitch to go buy into the tabletop system rather than the game it was supposed to be.

 

A combination of both, I think. Once you start getting edge it makes skill checks extremely easy.

 

So, skip this?

 

I think people are far too critical of the games coming out now. Everyone needs to get out of Nostalgia town and get some perspective.

Pillars promised to be the spiritual successor to BG and that's exactly what it was. It failed in certain aspects (like modability), but it delivered an experience very much like that of BG1 and more. Pillars 2 is looking to be an improvement across the board, so it might be nearing BG2 in quality (too soon to say).

T:ToN isn't Ps:T, but it's not what they said it would be. They promised to deliver the thematic successor to the old Torment and that's exactly what they did. Sure, they failed to balance the game properly, but anyone who's played even a couple of RP sessions with the Cypher system would understand that this was inevitable. It's simply not a balanced system and it would require a large time investment to make it one (which they couldn't afford). I'm kinda peeved that they cut content in favor of features like console ports, but cut content is ultimately also inevitable. Ps:T had cut content too (quite a fair amount), the only difference is, we didn't know. That's just one of the side effects of open development.

Wasteland 2 had a lot of things going for it and I enjoyed it a lot. Since I haven't played the original Wasteland, I have no idea how it compares to it, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and I'm looking forward to Wasteland 3. It's sure as fuck better than Bethesda's Fallouts.

I have yet to play Tyranny, but from what I understand, it's a fun experience with a cool concept, so I'll definitely get to it eventually.

As far as I'm concerned, Obsidian and InXile are both doing a stellar job. There's always room for improvement, of course, but there's only so much they can do with the budget and manpower that they have. You wanna see a real disappointment? Look at the recent BioWare games. If anything, it's the AAA scene that hasn't been delivering at all lately.

 

I'll agree on the Obsidian front but, not Inxile. I see nothing wrong with comparisons to a game the developers specifically mentioned. ToN is a average at best game without any comparison to its betters, let alone with.

 

When you say that you are making the spiritual successor, that makes most people regard it as, "Oh, so they're gonna make it as good as or better than the original," so they temper their expectations around that, even if subconsciously. And this is actually closer to Bethesda calling Fallout 3 and 4 Fallout games, as T:TON is called Torment. As in part of the name of the original game. So that adds to the hyped up super-expectations. Are they unreasonable? Yes. Are they uncalled for? In the realm of human psychology, no.

 

I didn't say you shouldn't compare the games, I'm just saying that your expectations were misplaced. Unless the games are being produced by the same group of people using comparable technology (i.e. a direct sequel), there is no way you could possibly expect a "successor" to be an improvement any more than you could expect a die roll to be favorable every time you toss it. It's a successor, nothing more and nothing less. Hopefully, InXile will be busy improving the game now, rather than circlejerking. Time will tell.

 

My only expectations were that it would be on a similar level overall. I don't think it's a terrible game that shouldn't be played. I do think it's a middling one not worth full price.

They've got a lot of work to do with bugs and optimization.