Queen's Wish Sucks

[ScarlettGoHamSon]

I really dug the Avernum and Geneforge sereis, and I don't understand why Queen's Wish has to be much worse than those games.

 

The gameplay, story, combat, inventory, graphics, you name it, are all a huge step backwards.  Just about everhting is worse in this game then the other ones.

 

Am I the only one that feels this way?  I really like this developer and I hope they can get things back on track!

[Mechalibur]

Aw, I like Queen's Wish. It fixed a lot of issues I had with the Avernum remake/Avadon era of Spiderweb Software which was difficulty figuring out how to balance abilities. The Avernum remakes tried to balance it with an energy cost, but that really just ended up being "what level of tedium are you willing to accept to clear this dungeon?" since you could just exit to town whenever you were running low. There were also an extreme amount of potions doled out that pretty much ensured energy management was a non-issue and contributed to mages being significantly stronger than warriors could ever be. Battle disciplines tried to solve that, I think, but it turned out only a single one was ever useful in the late game (Adrenaline Rush) and mages could easily get access to it as well. Avadon tried to fix the issues by introducing ability cooldowns, but they were so long (10+ rounds) that you often only ended up casting any given ability once per encounter. Queen's Wish, by comparison, has a number of useful abilities that you have to manage properly to get through the dungeon. There's a decent of variety of effects, and I enjoy actually having to think about my energy management.

 

I also think it does a much better job with difficulty. Enemies hit a lot harder on torment difficulty and utilize more abilities, but they don't become bullet sponges like they do on torment for previous series. Resistances don't scale to ridiculous degrees where it becomes nearly impossible to hit with mental effects in the late game, and you can actually inspect enemy stats in combat with right click.

 

Story-wise, I'll agree it's not the strongest Spiderweb game, but I liked the premise and characters well enough. The sequel, on the other hand, I think was a great story, Queen's Wish 2 ranks near the top of Spiderweb stories for me with Geneforge 2.

[Slawbug]

It's definitely a step further away from mainstream expectations for RPGs.  A step backwards, absolutely not.

 

It's also hard to argue whether or not it's a step backwards without any specifics to talk about.  What about the gameplay, combat, and inventory is worse to you?  I'm with Mechalibur on the combat balance points mentioned above.  It certainly has more depth than the very fun but wildly imbalanced mechanics of the original Geneforge games.  (And Mutagen came out after QW1.)

 

The graphics are... well, I don't think anyone completely loves them, but I do appreciate going back to a top-down perspective.  So that complaint I understand at least.  As for the stories... it's worth pointing out that the central Avernum stories (1-3) were written from 1994-1996, and Geneforge was written all in the early to mid oughts.  15-30 years of real life (!!) passed between those stories and Queen's Wish.  The world has changed, and so has the person writing them.

[Randomizer]

Queen's Wish is a world view from a different perspective. Instead of Avernum/Exile from the perspective of the rebels and criminals dumped into exile, it's more like the Empire that dumps its enemies elsewhere to protect itself. It's also like 
Avadon in showing the more unsavory side to how a government stays in power and keeps things stable by striking deals to keep their power.

 

The combat system is different in the emphasis on completing a dungeon in one trip. You have to manage your resources to have enough for the final boss battle and not being able to leave and return to do each section with overwhelming force. It also got rid of the extra experience with redoing a section like in Exile.

[Losrandir]

It's just a question of prefence. There's something for everyone.

[supercow]

I did not enjoy the QW story, for the simple reason that I much prefer to start out as the plucky underdog who has to scrape by to gain power (Avernum) rather than starting out as the big guy on campus. The writing was top-notch and the game balance was probably better than every SW game that came before it, though.

[TriRodent]

Eh, I much prefer the various chapters of Avernum or Geneforge to QW, but it isn't 'that' bad.  You just need to understand/factor in from the very beginning that you must play strategically rather than tactically.  Being part of the ruling family you have to keep strategic goals/implications in mind with whatever you do.  In the other games, such decisions are generally way above your paygrade and all you need to worry about is which cave system/area that you want to go clear out next.  Shrug, it just entails a different way of looking at things.

 

I doubt that I'll play either of them anytime soon (probably will revisit them if/when QW3 is on the horizon), but I don't regret the time spent playing around in that corner of Jeff's imagination.

[Hyperion703]

I'm unsure if my addition to this conversation is still relevant some months later. But, here it is regardless...

 

I understand how the OP feels. Initially, I thought it felt a little... kiddie. Like a bowling lane with bumpers up. I can't tell you why I felt that way. It was just a pervasive feeing in the background. A handful of times I thought it (QW1) might be the first SW game I put down.

 

But I stuck with it. And I'm glad I did. 

 

The QW series ended up possibly being my favorite SW series to date. That's a tall order; these games blow big budget games like Diablo out of the water. Why? Because it's actual roleplaying. Most games hyped as "RPGs" these days are just hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers. You never really feel like your decisions matter or change anything. It's just "get quest, go kill, loot stuff, get quest reward." Everyone did the same stuff, had the same dialogues, never made a single real decision that mattered. Everyone's experiences were the same. Not so with SW games...

 

I bring this up because it's the same argument one can make about the QW games because, among SW franchises, there exists tiers where some do "roleplaying" better than others. 

 

Queen's Wish is at the top of that list. A-tier RPGing. Because the game records multiple "reputations" in the background based on your dialogue choices, you literally have to pick a path based on what your character has been consistently expressing and stick with it. There's really no "best" path, either. Each path you choose has merits as well as pitfalls. I'll end my game with a character who had very different experiences as your character, and they have different equips and spells to prove it. "Whoa, where'd you get that shield?" I remember a friend saying as we compared QW endgame notes. Those conversations aren't happening with what passes for "RPGs" available today. That's what QW has in spades and that's why I love it.

 

But you gotta stick with it over that initial distaste.