SoZ - First impressions

[Verrath]

Well, I haven't played it that much yet but I thought I'd share my first general impressions.

Overland map: cool feature, and I can see it working awesomely for PWs.
BUT: The random encounters in the campaign get too much, and frequent inability to evade them is annoying (because you have to load a new map every time). However, I'm sure that can be influenced and lessened considerably in a custom mod.

Party/Dialogue system: Kind of cool to be able to roll up four characters instead of just one. Also nice to have different dialogue options for different characters based on their skills. But I did not mind the old one all that much.

HOWEVER, I really liked the NPC personalities/interaction in the OC and MOTB, and even the cohorts you pick up in SoZ do not seem to have any history/dialogue - because of this, and the influence system, I've found the other two Campaigns far more immersive from a single player point of view.

I'm not sure if this campaign is Multiplayer friendly - has anyone tried?

Overall I like some of the new features, but as a Single Player Campaign it hasn't yet truly pulled me in, whereas after this amount of time playing the OC and MOTB, I was well into the story.

What are your thoughts on SoZ?

[MithrilBlade]

Game mechanical -wise I think SoZ was a jackpot, it added a whole bunch of stuff that used to piss me off to no end, such as extra damage in bows, enchantment bonuses in gauntlets and of course the overall playability is much higher than previous games. I can't wait for the possibilities that these new additions will offer when building items.

As for single player, I think the overland map is just fantastic idea, it's like combining a small and simple strategy game to DnD, which is exactly what gives it great immersion, you actually have to walk between the ends of the map if you wanted to get somewhere.

Also, I love what they made with the skills concerning world map, since when you reached your party to high level in any other game, skills lost all their value (Spot, Listen -> True seeing, Heal -> cleric does it better, Hide/MS -> sometimes good, but usually not neccesary, Survival -> not neccesary, etc etc). Now when you travel in the world map you can strategically put different people into charge so that you can (at least when your skills grow high enough) avoid encounters, spot them from afar, move faster etc. Personally I would love see this system implemented for Sundren as well...Perhaps now the system is good enough for random encounters.

Audio world of the campaign is IMO better than that of original NWN2 or MoTB, which offers a bunch of new nice songs to use.

The two new races were a small dissappointment for me, gray orc seems just PG'ish supercleric and Yuan-Ti is like slightly improved drow which'll certainly become the favourite race of hardcore grinders in Action/RP servers.

Classes, well I am a bit old-fashioned and dislike new base classes in general but I think that swashbuckler was a good addition, once again, in game mechanical -wise, it used to be semi-impossible to play a good non-armor wearing warrior char before without extremely uber equipment, so that's good.

I like the new background feat system, it can be great roleplaying possibility but IMO if that was to be implemented into Sundren, I'd say that it should be restricted so that not every dude around would walk with steely fey skin or call theirselves son of a balor or whatnot, but I'm sure Sundren is capable in dealing with the RP side.

Too bad there were no new soundsets or hairstyles for most of the races :s

Imo SoZ may be just the expansion that NWN2 needed so that I can finally stop saying that I hate what they did to NWN2 compared to the good ol' NWN1 :P

[Xeesheava]

Races:
- Pureblood Yuanti: They didn't made a lot of effort on the moddeling, it's an human with another skin color and it's only the most humanlike breed. Yeah, a lot of +2 STATS and +1 AC.
- Grey Orc: We can live without them.

Classes:
- Swashbuckler: Good class if you combine it with Duelist.
- Hellfire Warlock: Well... the warlock needed a prestige class anyway.
- The Kelemvor's one: Pointless.

Another notes:
- Lacks the possibility to play soloing if you are not a high AC and Strenght high, character.

- The party spend more time on negative HP than positive.

- There is a unwise usage of skills, I mean, I can use Alchemy to brew a potion even if Im a Half Orc Warrior with 6 Int. And I will not start talking of the social skills, all the campaign related rolls doesn't exists, you can say: "BITCH! I WILL FUCK YOU WITH A STICK FULL OF MUD!" or "I love your hair", there is no effect more than a new dialog string.

- Overland map options doesn't reflects any change on fights. Intimidate? Bluff? Doesn't matters, anyway they are strong enough to kill you.

- Overflow of XP! You can get 100 XP killing all the random encounter and 700 only for leaving the zone.

And the main rant is: YOU CAN'T MAKE A PARTY OF RP BUILD CHARACTERS BECAUSE THEY SUCK IN COMBAT AND THE GAME IS A HACK AND SLASH DISGUISED ON A OVERLAND MAP!

[Kaeldorn]

I think my opinion is a mix of the first two posts. I really do miss the development of a bond with your companions that the OC and first expansion had, the characters who had a personality and conflicting interests. Many may have moaned about it, the OC singleplayer campaign really caught me up in it. Something that SoZ does not really accomplish. But it's exactly what Obsidian promised: a modern full-featured Baldur's Gate with custom party kind of game. With perhaps less story built up around the protagonist, but with the variety and open feeling that the other NWN games didn't have as well as some really nifty new concepts from a technical gameplay standpoint.

I also had issues with difficulty in the beginning using a less than optimal party (actually died two or three times in the first battle), and I still do struggle sometimes now, but I don't feel it's making the game unplayable. The Doomguide is a nice character concept for RP although I must agree that in a 4-5 member party it doesn't quite cut it in the versatility department. With the leadership feat it can be an interesting addition though.

Ah, and I love the atmosphere Volo creates with all his misconceptions of a mildly crazed explorer

[Cornuto]

Cheers to being able to custom-make your party (and with slight modding this includes being able to make all 6 of your people)

Jeers to the shallow skill-bots that are your found cohorts.

Cheers to the idea of the overland map, in theory this is awesome and is a lot better than insta-teleporting across maps, and making skills actually valuable again.

Jeers to Obsidian shipping the product without it working correctly. They couldn't get spell effects to scale down with the player models so they decided that stripping all buff (and negative) effects once you enter the OM was the best solution. -- This is assanine and wrecks any buff-heavy class. Characters have 1 round to buff before enemies are on top of them, so expect to heal A LOT (BIG BIG Jeers to this.)

Cheers to restricting resting.

Jeers again to the fact that you fight endless battles that you lose your buffs after EVERY one (and these are CONSTANT) -- the inability to rest reliably (while it should be a good thing) makes this even worse.

Cheers to the sheer number of places to visit and explore.

Jeers to the fact that every place is either a 1-3 room dungeon or 1-3 room city (the city of Neverwinter could fit inside the 4 lanterns inn).

Cheers to the trading system, its fun to play merchant and have my little wagons scooting about town.

Jeers to my non-existent "Quartermaster" thats 1000 trade bars down the drain.

Cheers to the new wizard spells.

Jeers to the new cleric spells.

Cheers to new races.

Jeers to the lack of faces and no new hair.

[Thief Of Navarre]

I normally take cookie cutter classes if I can make a party; a ranger, a fighter (barbarian or rarely a paladin), a cleric of Ilmater (druid sometimes), rogue of some variety (either a rogue/dancer or Bard/duelist).

Mine's in the post so I will have to see how it all plays out in actuality when it comes, I found the difficulty of MotB a bit extreme since I didnt have a cleric till you get Kaelen the Dove. (my protagonist was a CG Drow Bard18/Duelist1 when I started the XP)

[Xeesheava]

But it's exactly what Obsidian promised: a modern full-featured Baldur's Gate with custom party kind of game. With perhaps less story built up around the protagonist.

Sheez! No one in Obsidian played Baldur's Gate? That game was full of sidequest and party interaction with confrontation between them. How can they say that when you met the very first two NPCs (Inshula and the other Tiefling) seeking for the same thing and Inshula doesn't says anything.
The campaigns of BG were excellent, but the NWN1 and 2 ones were boring, the only one I finished were the Hordes of the Underdark.

Seriously, I prefer the history of the Dot Hack Game Series.

[MithrilBlade]

I personally don't understand the difficulty rants, I made only my own character, rogue and a cleric that I use of my own builds and I have the two henchmen from the first city, having only one major annoyance with the encounter: The damnable loading times after a battle where I suffered perhaps total of 10 damage and gained little to no exp worth mentioning.

I can understand that some people like to make RP characters for the campaign but I'm not quite sure if that's a reason for rant because it's not a PW, but a baldur's gate -style adventure RP where you rely on equally balanced party with their own areas of expertise.
There simply isn't any need for every character to have 16 charisma and if you look at BG2, you can certainly see that most of the NPCs don't have such stats (I mean jeez, just look at Misc!).

The buff-loss is very difficult part though and sometimes effortless fight become really difficult when the AI is acting like ass, either starting to buff automatically and get 123123 hits to himself or the ranged people the char is supposed to protect while at it, or assault the creeps like brainless zombies and get pwned by their numbers. However, this is fixable by minor adjustments in strategy and turning off the retard-of-an-AI.

Then again, I haven't really seen proper AI in any game I've played this far, especially where you have NPC allies who usually have 10 points lower WIS and INT than the enemies.

*Shrugs* I don't care that much for the OC, but I look forward seeing the new things in Sundren.

[EndsBeginning]

Personally mechanics wise it is pretty close to epic win. I Loved the overland map system and the ability to custom party build, none of my 4 base characters aren't prestiging into something. I've posted what I made elsewhere, and aside from needing a cohort to heal it's very good. I like how they made rangers extremely useful for overland map travel. I like how you can do cool stuff to make bows and arrows now (which has been one of my biggest complaints since I actually tried playing a bow wielder especially without a strength mod [see Hail in my sig]). I'm of 2 minds about how you actually CRAFT some of the stuff, but mostly that is the materials. Swashbuckler is a badly needed class, not even looking at the other 2 as I don't play locks and I really just want to kill all obsessive followers of nearly any lawful deity. In fact I was quite happy to say go to the hells to Kelemvor himself in MotB ((ah the memories of charging the city of the dead)).

All in all RP wise I have to say it's really good, if you can play several types of personalities you can RP some of the stuff in your head (In my head the 2 hin in my party are twins and generally bickering lightheartedly). It is lacking a personality for the cohorts which is a big minus to me. I actually haven't gotten too far yet as I went and was trying to do all the side quests and find every location on the map in the starting zone. So I can't say if the story was even close to how good the other two games were.

[c2k]

Sheez! No one in Obsidian played Baldur's Gate? That game was full of sidequest and party interaction with confrontation between them. How can they say that when you met the very first two NPCs (Inshula and the other Tiefling) seeking for the same thing and Inshula doesn't says anything.
The campaigns of BG were excellent, but the NWN1 and 2 ones were boring, the only one I finished were the Hordes of the Underdark.

People on Obsidian's staff were part of the Baldur's Gate games.

Overall, I love the expansion. The buffing conflict with the overland map is annoying yes, but it hasn't ruined my game since the toughest encounters I've faced were in areas I could buff before fighting in.

As for party interaction, its not that type of game. The intrigue is on a group scale and the confrontations are greater than the individual. Its a cutthroat business environment.

My only gripe about the game are the bugs, especially the one that makes the voice sets in trhe 2 other campaigns not work.

[Product of Void]

hmm my favorite tatic is hiring a henchmen taking their stuff kicking them and then seeking to kill them.

If the overmap is used here I hope there is alot done to rp out of the fights or scale the encounters so lowbies do not start over crowding the dead zone.

[Kaeldorn]

What I think it should be like if it's done is to have encounters scaled depending on area. The hills would have goblins and perhaps some animals (level 3-4 stuff), Viridale region would have beasts, mossclaw bandits, maybe a few hidden cartel rogues towards the north (4-7), scavenging predators, undead and grave robbers near the necropolis (9-11). You get the idea. Generally challenge ratings at the lower end of what enemies you would find inside the major areas themselves.

[c2k]

What I think it should be like if it's done is to have encounters scaled depending on area. The hills would have goblins and perhaps some animals (level 3-4 stuff), Viridale region would have beasts, mossclaw bandits, maybe a few hidden cartel rogues towards the north (4-7), scavenging predators, undead and grave robbers near the necropolis (9-11). You get the idea. Generally challenge ratings at the lower end of what enemies you would find inside the major areas themselves.

If you can and are able to set up the overland map for PW play, why limit it to such a small area?? You would be able to do regions. For instance, you could possibly do the entire Silver Marches, the nation of Amn, or, in Sundren's case, you could enter Icewind Dale, some parts od Sword coast North and the western part of the Silver Marches.

[Kaeldorn]

I personally feel more for a large, detailed map of our sweet little valley to travel inbetween all the areas we have grown to love, with perhaps a small extension somewhere and areas to travel inbetween. Covering a huge landmass with nothing much to do RP-wise, and only allowing for areas to be used to run around and look for random encounters in does not work so well for an RP server. People need to be able to find eachother to meet and spark character interaction, and Sundren's main playing ground will always be the standard areas. The overland map is only a supporting feature to make the travel between those places flow more naturally.

[Urithrand]

I for one am not impressed by SoZ. The story has not grabbed me in any way. I can't get into the game, and am not enjoying it enough to motivate me to endure the still overly long loading times, something Obsidian promised they had fixed with this expansion. The party system is a powergamer's dream, but for those of us who enjoy party interraction and story, it sucks. The need to invest in dialogue-based skills is removed because you can simply skip over to someone else to add any of the dialogue options your main PC didn't think of.

The overland map which was one of their biggest brags before release is in my eyes a complete waste of time and effort. It turns every journey into a long, arduous process of endless grinding, which I hate, and often I get so bored with slogging through numerous encounters and loading screens that I simply turn off the game and play something else. And it would seem I am the only person who thinks that implementing something like this in a PW would be disastrous. The newbies would have nothing to restrict them access to the higher level areas, and would then die repeatedly simply walking around the world map. Plus it would severely limit RP potential while traversing through areas, as those with higher survival skills would get everywhere a week before everyone else.

Overall, I am thoroughly disappointed. Now I am also stuck waiting for Sundren to update, and am in no way inclined to even finish the game and write my review which is the whole reason I patched early in the first place.