Sedape

He moves to another alcove in the cave. You just have to keep hunting for him.

I thought about adding to another "final thoughts" post, but I want to really talk specifics on which changes were awesome and which were... not so much. I'll start by saying that I really like Aeftp. It felt fresh, not just a rough copy and paste (which is how I felt about N:R) but a full remake of the original. I think overall this is a huge improvement over A1, and generally quite a fun game. I'm now really looking forward to the revamps of A2 and A3. Likes: 1. I'm a huge fan of the new spell-levels system. When I saw that higher level spells get added effects and not always simply added damage/healing/effect, I was very pleased. It made me excited to level up my spells to discover the new effects. 2. New content: awesome. It didn't feel forced at all. In fact, most of it fit so seamlessly that I had to rack my brain to remember if it was in the original or not. 3. Challenge: good. I played on Hard and found myself usually needing to use some items and approach fights a handful of times before I could pull it off. It seems like Jeff is getting a better sense of what makes for *good* difficulty. In Aeftp, this mostly amounted to slashing boss HP and seriously boosting their damage. Fights were exciting because I was usually on the brink of death, trying to balance the need for healing vs damage vs crowd control. 4. World: great. I think the open world system is simply better than the zone system of GF and Avadon, and vastly superior to the continuous world of the latter A4-6. Dislikes: 1. Darkness rooms. It's been said before, and I'll say it again - these were bad. Not fun, not especially challenging, mostly just annoying. 2. Difficulty Curve: the game was very challenging early on, but got substantially easier from about level 20 on. Once I got to Hawthorne and Grah-Hoth, I found the fights less difficult than some of the early battles in the Eastern Gallery had been. 3. Skills balance: way off. This was my biggest disappointment with the game. Pole weapons? Pathetic. Thrown weapons? Completely useless. I felt like the game had very few viable character builds, and the structure of the level-up system left me pouring points into the same few skills every level. I'd rather see some real diversity, where these skill lines branch off in ways that result in characters that play differently. My "rogue" ended up being indistinguishable from my "tank" by lvl 20, and my Mage and Priest were identical other than their spell sets. I want different *paths* for my characters to follow, so that I must choose between optimizing different aspects of my character. I never had that sense of choice in Aeftp. I want to choose between offense vs defense on my warriors, high damage per hit vs chance for multiple hits with my rogue, more damage or higher curse effectiveness for my mage, and more healing versus more damage versus better buffs for my priest. And I want those skill trees to be constructed so that I can't have the best of all worlds... make me pick. 4. Traits: close, but room for improvement. I thought this was a cool way to change the traits system from A1, and I will say that I liked this method better than the A1 traits. However, getting a trait point every 2 levels made it feel more like just another skill/stat point, especially when some traits are just that. I'd rather see traits be a little rarer (every 7 levels?) and come with commensurately larger bonuses. In other words, more like specializations from Avadon. I feel like traits should be more momentous decisions about how your character is going to play rather than just another tiny incremental increase in power (which is what stat and skill points are for). It would also be nice to see them in "tree" format rather than "list" format for the reasons listed under #3. In the end, great game. And none of my complaints will deter me from buying A:CS (especially that discount for having registered the original is very nice). But, for me these were the main sticking points that left Aeftp a great game rather than being an amazing game.

I just found an interesting glitch. When terrified, you can time it to take control of your character. If you click on an enemy in the moments that your character is running around terrified, s/he will run to that person and melee them just like normal. It takes some timing, but it's possible.

This is nitpicky, but I wish combat was more fast-paced. It seems like the animations take just a little bit too long, especially when casting spells. In previous games, the spell animation would take place concurrently with the damage animation. I'm not sure why in Avadon the clouds of acid/lightning/etc. must evaporate fully before the targets do their "ouchie" animation. I looked for an option to speed up animations a la the older Avernum games, but it was not to be found.

Originally Posted By: Rogozhin And this is so petty, but it really is important: I have played every game since Exile 3, and I think I have yet to find a grammatical error, let alone a typo. I found one. Apparently Zhethron was hatched "hundred of years" before the Black Fortress was built. Either it's a typo or dragons have poor grammar.

Has BoA (or BoE for that matter) been used to create a character-driven story, such as providing the player with a prefabricated party and giving the PCs actual dialogue in the story? It runs somewhat contrary to the concept of BoA, but could provide a new element to the story to make things feel new or different. (Less: you are a band of mercenaries/adventurers/flunkies with no backstory or personality sent to complete mission X) While scenarios with plot decisions and alternate endings provide some extra flavor, a scenario like this could conceivably accomplish a similar brand of character involvement with a lower degree of design/execution difficulty. Thoughts?