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This game has become a real grind


Ghaldring

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I think the real answer here is that A5 should just not be played on Torment. I once put down my min-maxing Torment game and tried one on Normal; it was much more fun. I still enjoy all the optimization exercises, mind you, but the game is better on Normal. That's what it's designed for. Enemy HP is a bit less ridiculous (though I do agree it is higher than necessary). It's less of a grind.

 

Most CRPGs do not have difficulty settings. This is particularly true of those in the "classic" genre, which Jeff's games fall into. The games we grew up loving to play did not let us play them on Torment, and they were probably better off for it. If they were easier, that's just as well.

 

When G5 comes out, I'm playing it on Normal. I'll still min-max for Torment, of course, but I won't play it that way. It's just less fun.

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Regarding the plot of A4, keep in mind that it was much more compelling if you had never played an Avernum before. I suppose that if I was a veteran Spiderwebber I would have thought "It's Rentar, duh!" but since A4 was my first Spiderweb game, I thought "Who can this mysterious villain be???" When I got to A5, since Dorikas was the number two villain in the only other Avernum I had played, he seemed more important so I was really motivated to find him and eliminate him once and for all.

 

Regarding bosses and sub-bosses, I thought the reason that Jeff created all the tough sub-bosses in A5, and made beating them a requirement for proceeding with the plot, was that A4 was so open that it was too difficult to balance the different areas for the various character levels that might end up there.

 

Regarding enemies having too many hit points, I really do not think I am good at these games, and I always play on Easy, and I don't min-max. I didn't think that A5 bosses had too many hit points compared to A4 bosses. I think if you suspend disbelief, then you will tend to think "wow this wolf is tough!" rather than "why did Jeff assign so many stupid hit points to this irrelevant creature?" If you were one of your characters, you would be focused on the fact that a gigantic wolf was attacking you, not on how disproportionately tough it was compared to other wolves.

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Originally Posted By: Slarty
Most CRPGs do not have difficulty settings. This is particularly true of those in the "classic" genre, which Jeff's games fall into. The games we grew up loving to play did not let us play them on Torment, and they were probably better off for it. If they were easier, that's just as well.


Which CRPGs do have difficulty settings, anyway? Might and Magic II does (as does World of Xeen), Diablo II does, Fallout does, all of the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment) do, Neverwinter Nights does (actually, pretty much all of BioWare's games do)...
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Originally Posted By: Thuryl
Originally Posted By: Slarty
Most CRPGs do not have difficulty settings. This is particularly true of those in the "classic" genre, which Jeff's games fall into. The games we grew up loving to play did not let us play them on Torment, and they were probably better off for it. If they were easier, that's just as well.


Which CRPGs do have difficulty settings, anyway? Might and Magic II does (as does World of Xeen), Diablo II does, Fallout does, all of the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment) do, Neverwinter Nights does (actually, pretty much all of BioWare's games do)...


Actually, Neverwinter Nights specificially warns you not to change the difficulty settings lest you make the game virtually impossible. I think the same must necessarily apply to almost any true RPG, since there's no way to make your characters "better" when their stats are determined by skill points rather than skill. Tactics can only get you so far . . .

And regarding the Pole of Punishment: I found that extremely easy. Not sure what I did differently (you did haste your healer, right?)
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Originally Posted By: Thuryl
Which CRPGs do have difficulty settings, anyway?

Realmz. And the difficulties are neither balanced nor intelligently implemented.

Originally Posted By: feo takahari
I think the same must necessarily apply to almost any true RPG, since there's no way to make your characters "better" when their stats are determined by skill points rather than skill. Tactics can only get you so far . . .

Strategy will get you the rest of the way, and in an RPG strategy is character min-maxing. It's not how many skill points you have, it's how you use them.

—Alorael, who finds normal difficulty more fun on that account as well. If he spends some skill points unwisely, he'd rather be able to continue playing happily.
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Originally Posted By: Ghaldring

Just one example from my own experiences. I wanted to gain an audience with the Giant Queen, and was told it would be almost impossible to storm the front gate. So I decided to take the back entrance, and got stuck with those ridiculous and incredibly contrived trials. The first trial involves you being forced to stand next to the 'Pole of Punishment', which is far less kinky than it sounds, while four giant slingers throw rocks at your more frail party members.

Think you can run to get a better tactical position? Well, you're wrong. If you try that, you fail the test.

And while you're trying to deal with the four hundred hp giants, out comes a god damned 2,000 hp drake (on normal difficulty). Not only does it receive two attacks of frost breath, it emanates an ice aura, which hits for about 60hp. Damn, I'll have to move my mages out of the way, but oops, I forgot, I can't move them away from the Pole of Punishment. I just have to let them sit there.

Now, here's where it gets even better. You don't pass the trial based on how much damage you endure (or how many turns you spend in there), you pass it when you kill all of your enemies. Which sort of conflicts with what the intention of the trial is, that is, TO TAKE PUNISHMENT.


I moved my chars that 1st fighter was at down, 2nd fighter at left and magepriests at right and top (both capable to do mass healing) and buffed them all with haste, blessing and protection (maybe i used few buffs more not sure) and used bows (had quite good bows by then) and spells to kill enemies and spellcasters killed long range giant hitters with spells and fighters hitted giants who were closer with bows and when long ranges were dead spellcasters were able to help fighters with their enemies and I healed all my chars when health dropped under certain level and renewed buffs (haste, blessing and prot if they were gone) and kept hitting giants with bows and spells until they were all dead and after that battle I ended combat to regain sp and hp. Drake I killed same way except spellcasters used spells which did most damage to it. My party wasn't anywhere near best possible at that time (I had used only needed skillpoints to get needed skills like Arcane Lore to 1st fighter so spellbooks could be deciphered, Tool Use to 2nd fighter to open locks and spellcasters to get more sp via intelligence and spell-levels) but I passed all tests (even last where giant used charm or daze (spellcasters did only healing, unshackling mind and buffing 1st fighter (2nd fighter hitted so that it wasn't at giant's sight)) even I needed to reload few times due dead of char. I won't say 1st test was easy cause it was hard due restriction not to move.

Buffs exist to be used when needed.
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Originally Posted By: madrigan
Regarding bosses and sub-bosses, I thought the reason that Jeff created all the tough sub-bosses in A5, and made beating them a requirement for proceeding with the plot, was that A4 was so open that it was too difficult to balance the different areas for the various character levels that might end up there.

That sort of openness might be an advantage, though, since it gives the player more room to choose the order in which they do things. Hopefully, people choose an order that minimizes the tedium and frustration for their playing style. For instance, if you have a magic-heavy party, then fighting a magic-resistant boss later on in the game will be more fun than having to pick away at it for ages.

Dikiyoba.
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Slarty:

Quote:

I think the real answer here is that A5 should just not be played on Torment.

 

Agreed.

 

When I reduced the difficulty to normal for that Ice Drake fight, I found it bearable. I then decided to leave it at that difficulty, although I felt guilty for doing so.

 

But despite reducing the difficulty, Melawhatever's Keep and Darkside Lands are just ridiculously long, tedious and difficult. I'd rather be filing my tax return.

 

So I've given this game the flick, and I'm rather piqued about my whole experience. My party endured a hell of a lot on Torment difficult, the game should't just win like that after so much time and effort was invested. It's an abomination against what is just and fair and decent, it's a mega F you to the avid perfectionist gamer who puts in the hard yards, a Nelson 'Ha ha' to anyone who tried to take the game seriously.

 

Any game designer who inserts a 4,000 hp sub-boss into a game where a character has difficulty dealing 100 damage per round is a sadistic [censored], plain and simple. And yes, I'm probably breaching the CoC, but it really needs to be said.

 

Avernum 5 sucks, and I honestly don't know how anyone can play it to the lackluster finale. I'd rather play Exile 1 on my old Macintosh, I'd rather play Goldenaxe in the Arcades, I'd rather relive my experiences with Exile 2 in my imagination.

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I honestly don't understand how everybody here comes to these highly polarized, emotional judgments about games because they aren't perfect. Ghaldring brought up some legitimate criticisms, but they don't eliminate the things about the game that are fun. Even if completing the game doesn't go in that category for you, there are still good things about it.

 

Really, what game is perfect? Even the games that I love the most I can quickly point out major flaws with, flaws that stop me from playing them as often as I might. Chrono Trigger was too easy, Jewel of Arabia was too hard, Exile 2 had gapingly exploitable balance issues, Dungeon Master 2 tends to distill into stupid noncombat grinding. The list could go on.

 

Avernum 5 does not tend to stir up the same level of excitement as those games do. The "fun factor" is a bit lower. But it still definitely exists. Its own balance issues, enemy HP and whatever else, do not seem to me particularly worse than the balance issues in any other game. So why all the invective? Why all the hate?

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No, I think it's too easy because it's a very low difficulty game. There are a few boss fights that are a bit tougher with a standard party (the Mountain of Woe boss comes to mind, or the final Lavos fight) but the majority of the game is easy to blaze through.

 

Heck, the programmers even deride how easy Chrono Trigger is explicitly, in one of the endings.

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Originally Posted By: Slarty
Avernum 5 does not tend to stir up the same level of excitement as those games do. The "fun factor" is a bit lower. But it still definitely exists. Its own balance issues, enemy HP and whatever else, do not seem to me particularly worse than the balance issues in any other game. So why all the invective? Why all the hate?

Probably because we expect far more from Vogel. A5 isn't even in that same league as other Avernum games, and it's a massive letdown for it's fans. Instead of the usually fun tale of swords and sorcery in an underground world, we wound up with freakishly huge monsters that took more time to beat than was necessary, and less of a story than A4 provided. To be perfectly blunt and use a BoX term, it suffered severely from Monty Haul, and would be closer to the scenario one would expect from a beginning BoX designer.

Yeah, it has it's moments. But they're quickly outweighed by the tedious grinding and filler.
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Except I played A5 and had as much fun with it as I'd had with his other games, and more than with the Geneforges. I even enjoyed A4 despite its weaker plot. Fun is subjective, and enough people enjoy the game.

 

—Alorael, who finds nitpicking inevitable and even possibly constructive. On the other hand, if you really hate A5, why register? The demo gives a good example of how the game goes.

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Originally Posted By: Report High Crimes and Misdemeanors
—Alorael, who finds nitpicking inevitable and even possibly constructive. On the other hand, if you really hate A5, why register? The demo gives a good example of how the game goes.

Two things here: First, I never said hate. I do not hate A5. I just think it fell far short of what it was sold to be and was inferior to the earlier Avernums. Second, the demo DID NOT give a good example of how the rest of the game went. The enemies in the demo section were reasonable and fun. The plot was strong in the demo section. But once the demo ended, both bottomed out.

Also, if people are aren't even finishing the game because of the issues, I doubt it qualifies as mere nitpicking.
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Slarty:

Quote:

I honestly don't understand how everybody here comes to these highly polarized, emotional judgments about games because they aren't perfect. Ghaldring brought up some legitimate criticisms, but they don't eliminate the things about the game that are fun. Even if completing the game doesn't go in that category for you, there are still good things about it.

...

 

Really, what game is perfect?

 

When I read what I quoted above, I had to sit for a moment and let the absurdity sink in. What you seem to be saying is that no game is perfect, hence you can't criticise Avernum 5 for its game killing flaws. And yes, they ARE game killing, otherwise I wouldn't have stopped playing the game.

 

But I'm just curious. Have you completed Avernum 5? I remember reading an old thread where you specifically stated that you had not, which raises the question: Why haven't you? If Avernum 5 is indeed a solid and enjoyable game, one would think you'd play it to its conclusion.

 

lampshade:

Quote:

It's typical for a JV game to bottom out imho. The only game I kept having fun with was Exile 2

 

Exile 2 and Nethergate are by far and away Jeff's best games.

 

Nioca:

Quote:

The plot was strong in the demo section. But once the demo ended, both bottomed out.

 

Yes. And giving the gamer the 'option' of joining Dorikas was just ridiculous. That would be the equivalent of Bioware giving the PC from Baldur's Gate/II the option of joining Sarevok/Irenicus.

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Slarty: I can completely see where you are coming from - I can point out all the good things I liked in A5, and if I were to play again, I'd probably still enjoy them. I even mentioned some in my post earlier. But, for me, the fun factor did cease to exist - if I'd rather look for alternative games to play instead of slogging through another screen of A5, then I can't have been enjoying the game.

 

For me, if the negative points in the game outweigh the positive ones, I won't want to spend my free time playing it. And for all the things I did like about A5, at the point of the game where I stopped playing, they were being overshadowed by the things I disliked.

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I did not complete Avernum 5 -- or Avernum 4, or Geneforge 3 or 4 -- but that says more about me than about the games. I rarely complete games these days. The last game I remember actually finishing was Jewel of Arabia when I played it in 2005! Actually, wait -- I did finish Paper Mario in 2007. But as you can see they are few and far between, despite my spending far too much time playing the darn things.

 

Typically, I complete 90-95% of the game and then get bored and move on. Geneforge 3 I think I stopped one zone short on. I think this is due to a confluence of factors that tend to set in at that point, in most CRPGs: (1) sudden and rapid diminishing returns on optimization due to lack of increases in experience gains, learned abilities and/or available equipment; and (2) dramatic slowdown in plot delivery due to proliferation of sidequests and/or lengthier dungeons; and in the case of games without interesting ending bosses or cutscenes, (3) not looking forward to anything I really care about. I could add on (4) distraction, either by another game or by fun, but fun-squishing analyses of game mechanics.

 

Avernum 5 I stopped unusually early due to an onslaught on #4: the mechanics were a lot of fun to min-max, and Eschalon came out just a few weeks after it. But the slowness of plot (#2) and inherent diminishing returns of the stat system (#1) were contributing factors as well.

 

What I really need, in the last 10% of the game, are short dungeons with interesting bosses that challenge me to do things differently than I am used to, with a compelling and constantly present storyboard; ideally, I need to not have already gotten all the relevant powerups in the game. I can only think of one game, off the top of my head, that provides this; FF4 has a long, but graphically diverse final dungeon filled with interesting bosses guarding significantly powerful weapons, continuing right up until the last floors; and the ending is enjoyable. And indeed, I usually finish FF4 -- and it's probably one of the games I've played the most times, period.

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A question: If a game is great for some duration and then after a certain point becomes mediocre, or even awful, can it still be a great game? What if the game's total length is so long that the fun first part is longer than most games? Is an end necessary?

 

—Alorael, who starts many more Civ-type games than he finishes. But the question mostly concerns RPGs.

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Quote: "A4 was so open"

?????? I guess you din't play geneforge 1 or 2 ...

 

Slarty - I agree on the ending part a lot. Just maybe you should add a

(5) I get depressed after actually finishing a great and involving game and want to spare myself that with subconsciously knowing the game isn't over yet.

 

And Alorael: Yeah, I get what you mean of all the Civ games I played I only ever finished Civ 3 ONCE, but started it at least a hundred times - even editing it ...

Oh yeah, but I played, enjoyed and finished all the levels possible (OK, I know it has an editor :)) of (single player) campaigns of Settlers 2 Gold edition - I don't know why, maybe coz it was the first game of the genre I've played.

 

Anyway, as for A5, I found it quite nice, although the linearity bothered me a lot sometimes - but I, for one, think that the unique bosses improved the game, at least to the extent that linearity didn't bother me that much. And also some game long quests/encounters (like Dionicio) I found really nice.

I don't know, but I LIKE the game.

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I think the trick I used for the giant test was to stay in one corner at a time to limit exposure to 1 or 2 giants max. Proper application of leg sweep and shield breaker was essential here and throughout the game. It just took a couple tries here.

 

The part I disliked was the endlessly respawning enemies along the way to Dorikas castle. Now that was tedious junk encounters!

 

Most of the game was balanced just right for me (on normal difficulty). This was with a 4 person party, all having the divinely touched trait.

 

Slith poleman elite warrior

Feline archer / priest pure spirit (minor in thrown)

Human priest pure spirit (minor in swords)

Human natural mage

 

All had decent bow skills, with the Feline having much better.

 

The game did require tactical thought, which I loved. The only thing I regret with the party build was not having enough lock and traps skills for the hardest locks.

 

BTW, I just finished Knights of the Old Republic II, and I though it was really good, although at the end it really turned into a hack n slash with too many repetitive junk encounters. I think I preferred it to KotOR I.

 

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Originally Posted By: Thrasher
The part I disliked was the endlessly respawning enemies along the way to Dorikas castle. Now that was tedious junk encounters!


at least trip was shorter than howling depths but enemies were harder there. i went few times back to sell stuff i got from d's castle and get traits higher with that cash and every trip there was 3-5 enemy parties to trying kill my party and while stucked to 1 party 2nd came behind to join fight.
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How I dislike A5...A long and complex topic. One major part has been covered. The whole annoying fight part. Yeah, disliked that, but more than that, fighting is, or should be, only one of a variety of puzzles that we cope with, and there was nothing other than straight up combat. No laser puzzles. No mazes. Nothing but combat.

 

I have other complaints: the lack of a compelling story, the engine (no individually targeted spells, feels claustrophobic), but they are beyond the scope of this thread.

Cheers. - A

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Originally Posted By: --- / .... .- ..
A question: If a game is great for some duration and then after a certain point becomes mediocre, or even awful, can it still be a great game?


I think that some of the staunch Jeff defenders are trying to overcomplicate this issue. I can't provide you with a precise ratio of suck vs awesome that can be used to distinguish between good games and bad games, but that's not really important. If I lose so much interest and enjoyment in a game, and as a result don't complete it, then it has failed as a form entertainment.

A good (great?) RPG/adventure/FPS should be so enjoyable that you are stimulated to play until the very end. There is a very strong correlation between the games that I never lost interest in, and the games that I've completed. If a game dies off half way through, then it fails, it's a piece of crap.

Quite simply, you shouldn't have to force yourself to finish a game, that defeats the whole purpose of gaming, which is done for enjoyment. If you're not enjoying a game, you might as well force yourself to file your tax returns or work overtime.

Avernum 5 failed. It failed to maintain my interest, it failed as a form of entertainment and enjoyment. What more can I say?
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Of course you shouldn't have to force yourself to finish the game, but is finishing the game paramount? The point of games is to be fun. If you have fun up to a certain point, then just stop playing, you've still had fun. If you had a whole lot of fun, why isn't the game great?

 

I agree that games should be fun up until the end, but some aren't. A terrible stretch at the end doesn't automatically make the game wretched if the rest was pure gold. That's what I'm interested in teasing out.

 

—Alorael, who thinks it probably depends very much on the payoffs of the game. A tactical challenge can be fun and then abandoned. A plot-driven game could be wrecked by infuriating gameplay at the end because getting the payoff, the story, isn't worthwhile by the end, and that loss taints the rest of the storyline.

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Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba
Great games are generally games Dikiyoba wants to play again and again.


How come you seem to be the only one who can grasp this very simple concept? Maybe because you have an abundance of common sense, which many of veterans on this forum are lacking?

Alorael:
Quote:

Of course you shouldn't have to force yourself to finish the game, but is finishing the game paramount?


Finishing the game is important, in my view. You obtain a sense of achievement, satisifaction and closure when you finish a computer game.

Not being able to finish Avernum 5 was not only a major disappointment, it was also incredibly disheartening to think of all the time I had invested in the game, only to have the game 'win' in the most treacherous of ways.

And I repeat, *wanting* to finish the game out of pure entertainment is a clear indicator of a good game.

Quote:

The point of games is to be fun. If you have fun up to a certain point, then just stop playing, you've still had fun. If you had a whole lot of fun, why isn't the game great?


Because that's not the whole game? For example, the first 10 minutes of Doom 3 were fantastic, where all hell broke loose and everyone was getting hacked to pieces and possessed by demonic legions. But the following 40 hours of gameplay were just a grind.

By your logic, I should just replay the first 10 minutes of Doom 3 over and over, and come to the conclusion that the game is great.

Quote:

A terrible stretch at the end doesn't automatically make the game wretched if the rest was pure gold.


Except that you'll rarely (if ever) find a game like that. Some classics which had a rushed production (off the top of my head: Serpent Isle, Vampire: Masquerade, KOTOR II) did slacken off a little at the end, but the ending was still playable, and imho, enjoyable. The final 1/5th of Avernum 5 is not playable.
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If Doom 3 has ten great minutes and 40 terrible hours, I think its problem is that ten minutes do not a great game make, and playing those ten minutes over and over would probably be no fun at all. On the other hand, if it were 80 hours long, and the first 40 were great, the game could still be very good. It probably wouldn't go on top ten games of all time lists, but it could be quite enjoyable. And I could want to play those 40 hours again and again.

 

Take Civilization as another example, although I've already said it's not quite the genre I want. I don't really like the beginning very much, but I enjoy the middle a great deal. I find the very late phase of the game slow, frustrating, and hard to manage, and I usually stop playing. Despite this, I play game after game of Civilization (or Alpha Centauri) knowing that I am unlikely to complete them. It's replayable but not completable for me.

 

—Alorael, who agrees that finishing a game is a source of satisfaction. Winning is fun. It's not the only fun, though, and it still seems possible for games to be enjoyable even if winning them isn't. What about old arcade games that keep going indefinitely so you know you'll lose eventually? What about Tetris?

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That's a bad game, then. But a game that's never fun is pretty obviously a bad game whether or not you finish it.

 

—Alorael, who would label Portal terrible if the last puzzle were mind-bendingly difficult and required great twitch reflexes to boot. After all, the only reason to play is the ending. Everyone wants the cake.

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I think good and bad are subjective in art and gaming. A game can be bad for you and good for someone else. Some kind of consensus, or at least majority opinion, is helpful for reviews and sales, but it doesn't matter very much to you the gamer.

 

—Alorael, who has read that online flash games are now a huge "market" (they're free) and presumably most of them are short and somewhat crude. No one gives them prestigious awards, yet they are, apparently, immensely fun. So, are they great games?

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I find this forum topic very interesting, so I thought I'd add my two cents as a relative newcomer to Geneforge/Avernum.

 

My first game of Jeff's was Geneforge 4. While I really enjoyed the plot - the demo really drew me into the game - I found the game somewhat unforgiving for a first-timer. I didn't realize how important mechanics and leadership were my first time through, and my first playthrough ended disastrously when my character could barely beat the demo on Easy. I bought the full game, then went back and tried it again, but no matter how many times I played I always stopped roughly 1/2 into the game, because I got burned out and never felt like finishing it. In Geneforge 4, I thought the plot was fantastic in the beginning, but I lost interest halfway through. I simply never understood Jeff's gameplay mechanics well enough to really have a chance to succeed.

 

Next I tried Avernum 4...and found that my gameplay difficulties immediately went away. Maybe I'm just better with a party system as opposed to a single character system, but I was able to succeed very early on in the game. However, as opposed to Geneforge 4, I found the plot lacking, and didn't get past the first 1/3 of the game. The shades were interesting at first, but for some reason it was never enough to really make me care. Also, the fact that items in your stash counted towards your encumbrance was extremely annoying to me. After playing Geneforge 4, I just couldn't go back to that - I can't tell you how many hours I wasted going back and forth, back and forth between towns with items just for a few measly gold.

 

As for Avernum 5, in my humble opinion, it took what I liked best about Geneforge 4 (the story) and combined it with what I liked best about Avernum 4 (the gameplay) to make a very enjoyable game. When I bought that game, I played nothing else for 3 months straight - a rare thing for me and a clear sign that I really liked the game. I found the fights hard but not impossible. I liked planning out my character stat points. The plot was fun, and I liked how each area had their own stories. More importantly, I could relate to the plot, something I simply couldn't do with Avernum 4. Also, while people complain about the linear nature of the world, I rather liked it - I HATE missing things, and prefer a large group of areas that I have to fully explore before moving on. I got all the way to the end, where you have to choose your ending...then never completed either ending. I don't know why, it made absolutely no sense, but basically I put all those hours into the game, then walked away at the very very end.

 

Bottom line: I really liked Avernum 5. Is the game perfect? No. Does it have a lot of replay value? In my opinion, no. but those three months I played it were a hell of a lot of fun for me, and that's what counts the most in my book.

 

I'm worried I won't like Geneforge 5, and maybe I'm just better suited to the Avernum series in general but I guess time will tell.

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Geneforge and Avernum have enough game engine differences that you have to use different strategies in each. Some fight tactics are the same, but until you get used to the differences they can be hard to play.

 

Go to Strategy Central topic in each game and there are some topics where playing suggestions are given to help with planning your characters.

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Why not? If the game is fun if you play it that way, it's a fun game. If you find that to be no fun, fine; play it how you want. If you don't enjoy the game no matter how you play it, it's your loss.

 

—Alorael, who would take microphage's analysis of the game's difficulty with a hearty helping of salt. Otherwise, as long as he's happy, why do you care?

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