Caltrops - Dragon Age 2 - Yeah, I meant JAII, that's the only one I played

Forum Overview :: Dragon Age 2

by Entropy Stew 11/18/2014, 3:21pm PST

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:

2. Baldur's Gate II (the magic puts its above JA2)

See, this is what I don't get. BGII isn't a tactical RPG. It's an RPG, and many of the encounters require too much foreknowledge to deal with the first time you hit them unless your party is radically above the encounter level. The magic's rock/paper/scissors/Baalspawn/lich/dragon/llama/circle-of-invulnerability/timestop/instant-death hierarchy of spell resists is not tactical. If your mage memorized the wrong shit you will LOSE because you cannot apply the correct bitmask of effects to allow damage to actually hit your opponent, and you generally don't know what that shit is beforehand unless you are consulting the FAQs. Now, that doesn't mean I dislike the game. It's actually great fun to get wiped, come back with a new gameplan, then stomp your foe, but it isn't really tactical.

For the same idea with the opposite implementation, look to the Witcher or Monster Hunter. Ok, maybe Monster Hunter is a bad example because it's opaque as fuck, but you still have at least a CHANCE since you tend to know what you're going to be dealing with beforehand, and a non-optimized kit can still land you a kill. For both games, you tend to spend a load of the time just girding yourself to handle an encounter, then you execute the strategy you have come up with. Neither game is a squad-based tactical RPG, I realize, but they do serve as examples of what I mean by tactics.

I guess what I'm trying to say here is that depth isn't necessarily tactics. Which brings me to TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL. That game was tactical as FUCK. The End.

-/ES/-