Icewind Dale 1 is indeed quite tactical, but the real-time system can be easily taken advantage of. About halfway through (in the complete edition including Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster), a fighter with Boots of Speed, Cloack of Displacement and Sword of Action has about 8 attacks per turn, and is nearly impossible to hit. Not much use for tactics when your tank can solo 9 out of 10 battles.

I must try Jagged Alliance 2 one of theses days... along with the other 300 games in my back catalogue. Damn those sales, I can never resist!

I read some of the comments from the person behind the "true" bloodlines patch, and darn, that person really lacks people skills.  Wesp on the other hand was far more polite in his comments.

I never gave my warrior that equipment (I don't think I found the sword), and without it the game never broke down. But such an abusive/broken combination is really no different than abusing an AI bug. Most games that gives you a lot of freedom in how you tackle the situation will have bugs or abusive combinations, which will make the game a bit too easy, and the more complex the game is, the harder it is for the devs to spot the abusive combinations. Grotesque tactics has a rather simple core system, which also made it easier to balance. 

Originally Posted By Mr Innocent.

Terry, if you are following the Steam sales, Risen is "only" 33% off right now (it could get a better single-day deal), but Divine Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga and Drakensang are both 50% off. You should have a look, if you don't own them already.

 

Terry, if you don't get yourself DKS for Xmas, I'll never speak to you again.     

In fact, if I had a bigger budget I'd even buy it for you.

Divine Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga looks really pretty, i am tempted..

I wonder if it will run on XP SP3 wth a 9600 fX card, i do have 3 GB of RAM

Just ordered myself the second Drakensang. According to the reviews I've read it's supposed to be better than the first (which I've not played) and on a par with DA Origins which I'm currently enjoying very much.

I've also ordered the Enhanced Platimun Edition of The Witcher because it was ridiculously cheap (7 pounds) because I need to finish it before buying the second game

Cris, I am not certain about the relative power of the GPUs, but Dragon Knight Saga run well enough on a ATI Radeon HD 3850 with 256MB, provided I had most gfx options in medium quality.

Still, it looked spectacular with all options maxed out on my new Nvidia 570GTX . The 9600 is starting to show its age, being based on tech introduced sometime in 2006. A Nvidia 460 1GB, or 560TI, depending on your budget, would be excellent upgrades. As would an AMD 6850, if you don't mind switching companies.

ah thanks Mr I, much appreicate that. I just got this one this year, prob have to wait a bit budget and economy considering. But thanks for the specs and info, much appreciated.

Originally Posted By Maum

Just ordered myself the second Drakensang. According to the reviews I've read it's supposed to be better than the first (which I've not played) and on a par with DA Origins which I'm currently enjoying very much.

 

I've also ordered the Enhanced Platimun Edition of The Witcher because it was ridiculously cheap (7 pounds) because I need to finish it before buying the second game

I miss Geralt...

Drakensang: The River of Time is not as big or open feeling as the original game.

But it is more polished with a great story, some truly wonderful settings, very strong characters, solid voice acting and a terrific main quest. 

Although extremely challenging, the EP is quite good too. 

Cheers, Terry

Originally Posted By CrisGer

Divine Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga looks really pretty, i am tempted..

I wonder if it will run on XP SP3 wth a 9600 fX card, i do have 3 GB of RAM

It played perfectly fine for me in XP S3 with an Nvidia 9800GTX, let's see the official specs:

  Windows XP or Vista
    1.8 GHz Intel Dual Core or better
    1 GB of RAM for Windows XP / 2 GB for Windows Vista
    DVD-ROM drive
    9 GB of available hard disk space
    256 MB DirectX 9.0c With Shader Model 3.0 support (Nvidia 7600 / ATI Radeon X1600)
    DirectX 9.0 compatible Sound card with speakers or headphones
    DirectX 9.0c / 10.0 (Vista)

So yeah, you should be fine! 

Originally Posted By Terry Penrod
Although extremely challenging, the EP is quite good too. 

 

Cheers, Terry

Most challenging thing about D:RoT's expansion, is finding the english version available for purchase. Currently it's only available via digital distribution, and only in NA.

Actually the expansion does not seem to be region locked on Gamer's gate. At least I can see it there. The core game is region locked though, so I doubt they have sold many copies to us Swedes. 

*edit* I used some leftover blue coins to see if I could purchase the expansion, and it was possible. 

*edit 2* Finally started Advent Rising. I'm not too keen on the controlls, but the music in the game is very well done. It is a shame that the GOG version did not come with a separate soundtrack, because I would like to have used some of those tracks as background music for my pen & paper RPG sessions. 

Glad you are going on Advent Rising, check out the gossip in the space station, if you linger near people talking you will pick up a lot of the back story. I loved that sort of detail they lavished on the locatoins. It gets even beter as the story advances for the NPCs all do whatever real people would do...the action scenes are epic. I can ask that Patch maker if he can seperate out the sound track.

I found it online, but thanks for the offer. The entire game feels quite ambitious in general. They seem to have created a setting worthy of a pen & paper RPG.

I felt the same, they pulled out all the stops, giving every part of the game their full attention in design and depth, and the characters and the style are all I felt very well done and integrated. All and all a work of art as well as a cracking good game.  We are going to try to see if we can some how get access and permission for use of the game resources for making new levels and mods, the problem is that it is a very modified engine, tho a well known one, so it will take access to the modifications to be able to access. For now we can enjoy the game. Some of the powers that were not used in the game are still in the files too, in addition to the ones available. So they clearly planned to expand on things in the sequels.

Divinity 2: The Dragon Knight Saga is 75% off on Steam's sales today, so it's available for 10$. A steal for a great, and lenghty RPG. I got Avadon: The Black Fortress for 2$ myself, I'm curious to see Vogel's attempt to make his hardcore RPGs more accessible.

At $4.99 this is probably the best deal I'll find for Mass Effect. I got Mass Effect 2 for free but have been putting it off hoping to try the original first.

Great deal CB, Mass Effect is a wonderful game esp the starting part where you get to see some amazing things...enjoy!

Because a friend kept telling me that Defense grid was a great game and that I really should try it, even though I don't like tower defense games, I ended up buying it when it was 75% off... and suddenly I noticed that several hours had dissappeared. I'm surprised, I really like Defense grid, it is a very well made game. 

Because of you guys, i'm having a bit of mindless fun with plants and zombies

hmmmm, now what could that mean?????

strange visions of sugarplums danced in my virtual head....

It's quite an hilarious game, sort of a time managment/tower defense thing.  You get to plant various types of plants in your back yard, to stem various tides of zombies trying to enter your house. 

The basic plants are pea shooters (They literally shoot peas) and sunflowers (they literally produce little suns for you to collect sunshine from to make your plants grow)  You also get cherry bombs, wall nuts, and so forth.  Quite a hoot!

The ppl here at JA spoke of it a while back, so when I saw it somewhere recently, (can't remember where now) I grabbed it just for fun. 

Of course one can't play it all the time, but it's a fun diversion.

I plan to get back to Skyrim again soon.

Plants vs Zombies is fun! And on Steam discount today... totally worth the price, imo. It's a great little game. (even though they patched Michael Jackson zombie out

Originally Posted By Dona

Plants vs Zombies is fun! And on Steam discount today... totally worth the price, imo. It's a great little game. (even though they patched Michael Jackson zombie out

)

No

Started Sacred 2: Fallen Angel today and am having a ball roaming around the gorgeous, sprawling counrtyside with my amazonian seraphim warrior. She's already deadly with her long bow from a great distance and getting much better with a sword. 

The strictly third-person controls with no mouselook were a bit odd at first. But after adjusting the camera angle and keyboard settings, it plays like a dream. Mouselook would have made it even better though...

One graphic highlight that really took me by surprise is the ocean water effects. The rolling blue waves and seafoam washing upon the shore is truly spectacular! 

All in all, the game is a steal at under $10 via Steam.

Cheers, Terry 

Each to his own... I found Sacred 2 to be very Diablo-like action-ish and it has a painful save system.  Glad other people are enjoying it, though.

Anyway, I got quite a few games at GOG (plus a gift or 2 there) while the sale is still on.  I've just installed Creatures and wondering how it all works..- I guess I'm going to have to read the manual with this one..