Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard.
Where anything goes.
-//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7
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Where chaos stops and more chaos ensues. Where Filia plays the electric keyboard. Where anything goes. -//o_O\\7 *Home of the Awful, Mediocre and Pathetic* -//u_u\\7 |
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Friday, December 15, 2006 Christmas in Cambridge, Part IV ... Ever-Night Winters Right, as everyone can see, I gave in and got a cbox so people can abuse, um, I mean praise me. As usual, same rules apply, no advertising, no spamming, no slanderous or libellous statements about yours truly, and no comments that will offend me, which consists of, um, well something you wouldn't like written about yourself. That being done, I think I shall remove that stupid comments thing at the bottom of the messages since no one seems to use it. Well, bah. Anyway, please do commence on the grovelling. Praise Charlotte. I was told one day that I'll probably start a new religion. Here's a good start. What other religion requires greater devotion on the part of the deity than on the part of the worshipper? Originality in spirituality, heh. On other news, I've rolled a critical failure on my Temptation check ... well, actually that ability score has been decreasing all this while during these long and mind-numbing holiday, so I've given in and bought Neverwinter Nights 2 at the normally shiver-inducing price of 28 quid. Of all places, I got it from HMV, which was selling it two quid cheaper than the most common game stores for some reason. That's at least ten dollars more expensive than what I would normally expect in Singapore, but I won't be leaving this country any time soon so I can't complain. Well, first thoughts, the graphics, animations and GUI have been greatly changed from the original. Since my clunky old computer at home can barely process the original Neverwinter Nights in the first place, it was a great relief to see reasonable, well, pretty good levels of animation on this laptop, although the graphics aren't yet at their "best" settings. Ah well, it would probably take a macroprocessor to cope with something like that ... or a desktop. Other significant changes ... well, too many to list, but most significantly new races, new prestige classes and new spells, though not all of them would see use to any but the most dedicated role-player. Some of the original classes have also been improved, like Bard and Ranger, so they're good choices for people trying to sample what's new in the game and in D&D 3.5ed. There have been some nerfs too, but, oh don't gripe, you munchkins, they were exploits to begin with, yes? What's most interesting, however, is an emphasis on party play. You can control all your companions directly, in that you can neglect your PC in favour of them if you wish, but your PC is a compulsory character, and your companions are limited in the classes they can level up in. Furthermore, companions share all your XP (although subject to some set modifiers), and you don't get a XP penalty for having more people and companions of the same level in your party ... it appears to be based on average levels, so having a person with fewer levels in your party will actually increase your XP gained. That's great, as you no longer have to "solo" your character to gain the maximum amount of XP and get to level 17 or 18 which you probably won't be able to do in the original Neverwinter Nights unless you played without companions and summoned monsters ... or played as a Evil character and went around killing civilians and innocents for bonus XP. On an aside, apparently you can't target innocents in this game, how sad ... uh, I mean good. Yes, "Good". =) But anyway, all this means that you don't have to put all those points into cross-class skills in order to make your character self sufficient ... you can afford to bring someone around to disarm the traps instead of training yourself to do it, for example. Correspondingly, there's a smaller emphasis on Intelligence (for skill points) and more on doing what you do best and doing it ... better, so if you want, you can create a one-sided character and get away with it. Negative points ... well, some, in my eyes. There's a lot of repetition of ambient music and character voices from the original, which is ... well, not good, because I feel that that was one of the weaker points of the original game. There are some new voice sets, but they're dwarfed (unintended pun) by the number inherited from the old. I mean, they really need to come up with more than five voices for PC girls that actually sound like girls and not continually spout all kinds of absurd aphorisms in an attempt to sound vaguely threatening. Is shouting something like "Die!" instead of "(yadda yaddada yaddada something long and profound but ultimately very daft)" so difficult? Why do NPC companions get all the good, original voice sets? Maybe it comes out of a lack of inspiration for warlike girls, Charlotte being one of the few exceptions that springs to mind. There's also the inventory, like all of the GUI, has been revamped, but instead of having items take up a certain number of spaces depending on their item size, they take up only one space. Although this allows for easier management, and a chance to display many pretty icons, it can be misleading especially over trying to recall "what is what", and over issues of weight of items. Well, it takes some getting used to. On another note, the quickbar at the bottom of the screen is still there, but it's much less customisable than before. You can still drag spells, skills, feats, items and whatever in there, but you can't put things you need often like party commands like "attack" or "stealth" in there (to get your party members to do something instead of standing around like dopes), or to specify skills or spells with options, e.g. casting Protection from Alignment (good) or (evil) or to examine, disable or retrieve traps. So yes, it's prettier, but actually more limited. Well, I won't go on for too long since it's only the first time I'm playing, but good luck to Alvish Granger, the Wood Elf Ranger. I know it's cheesy, but that what I do best =D The story is a good blend of plot and humour, nothing excessively cerebral, meditative or depressing (yet), so it's all good fun for someone like me. On a side note, speaking of Granger, I would like to inform all Harry Potter fans in Singapore, if they didn't know already, that "Hermione" is apparently a very common name in England. And back in Singapore I was thinking it was inventive of J.K. Rowling to bring a name from A Winter's Tale (by Shakespeare, of course) to the public vocabulary. Ah, I should have known. posted by Charlotte | 11:27 pm
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Disclaimer : The Slayers and Filia Ul Copt and all images thereof are the property of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. I don't own any of them, although if I had a choice I would want Filia ... ~//n_n\\7 |
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