The Drunken Lizard Pub

One of my main criteria for evaluating a CRPG is whether it can be enjoyed by a bad player. I am not good at these games, at all, and I'd rather have an interesting character than min-max, so if a game is really demanding I will probably not like it. I love Avernum 4 and 5 for the atmosphere and the story and the politics and the character design system, but also because I can finish them. I've played through A5 multiple times straight and multiple times cheating, and it's a lot of fun both ways. Neverwinter Nights I was terrible at. On my first attempt I was only 14th level when I reached the final map and it was more or less impossible to win. So I cheated my guy up and gave him a superweapon and played through the whole game that way and had a great time. The Geneforge games I can't play at all. Early on in G4 I realized I was never going to survive the game. So I went back and played with a cheat guy and it was a lot of fun. G5, on the other hand, I couldn't complete even with a cheat guy. So this is how much I suck.

I'm not sure yet how I am going to evaluate Eschalon on this basis. I like it well enough that I bought it. I'm under Grimmhold now, and I've been as far as Lake Atria. A few times already I have reached a point where I thought, "how the hell am I going to get past these thugs/bees/giant poisonous lizards?" but there have been unfinished quests I could go back and finish to strengthen my character. One thing I do appreciate is that I can really see the effects of every level-up. When I gain a level my character becomes noticeably more competent. I make frequent use of the "run away!" tactic as well as the "run away go to town sleep it off buy more healing potions!" approach. One thing I think I will like about Book II is having a party of adventurers. The consequences of dying are too great with a single character.

I'm interested in heroic fantasy, not getting-your-ass-kicked-and-being-really-irritated fantasy. The difficult thing is satisfying the min-maxer and the role-player when you can only write one game at a time. Some players want to get through the entire game without reloading; that impresses me, but personally I reload every time I break a lockpick and if I get further and can't finish, I'm going to cheat. At the end, the character won't know the difference and he'll be similar to what I had in mind. I am on the edge as to whether Eschalon is going to be a game I want to play again, or one that I only got 90% of the value out of because I played the end fifty times and couldn't beat it.

madrigan wrote:One thing I think I will like about Book II is having a party of adventurers. The consequences of dying are too great with a single character.

I think someone got you confused. Eschalon Book II will still be a solo adventurer. All three of the Eschalon games are planned that way according to BW.

In terms of your other stuff, I'm certainly a long way from a min/max power gamer. My first three times through the game, I worked to get all of my characters' stats over 20, and had a wide range of skills. Also, Eschalon Book I was the second CRPG I've played since about 1992. I found it great fun and not too hard. I hope you agree.

Odd, I would swear I read somewhere on this forum that there would be multiple characters in EBII. Maybe buried somewhere in the discussion of the new game? Oh well, maybe I just wanted it to have that feature and decided to believe it.

At some point there was a poll and consideration of a multi character game, but it's going to be a single character again.

I have to agree with you that some games need to have a powerful build to be playable. Geneforge 5 is much harder than the earlier games where you could neglect combat or battle magic and still kill most things in the demo.