Soo... yeah. I'm still here. And I'm still playing Neverwinter Nights 2. But I restarted and made another character after coming to the not so difficult realization that (as someone put in the comments of the previous blog) "Warlocks are fucking boring". So, instead I made a Fire Gensai Swashbuckler (Name: Fire Dude), in order to continually resist the pressure to just make a goddamn Human Fighter. Still evil, still a dick, still investing in conversation skills. Swashbucklers were added in the Storm of Zehir expansion, and are basically Dex type warriors who use light weapons and also can use intelligence in place of strength to add to damage rolls (consequentially, Fire Gensai have +2 intelligence). And for the heck of it I'm also using two weapon fighting. Considering that the class' high level abilities don't seem that hot (oh wow. on a critical I can do two points of strength damage to an enemy. That's not totally worthless in any way shape or form by the time I reach level 15), I'll probably multiclass at some point, either to Fighter or a prestige class.
That being said, because of me having to play through the tedious opening sequences again, I haven't advanced in the story as much as I otherwise should have. Khelgar is still totally a dwarf. But, now I encountered my obligatory rouge party member, a Tiefling named Neeshka, who will make me gouge my ears at some point because of her obnoxious high pitched voice and spunky attitude. It's a pity I'm going to have to keep her in my party. I've reached the first hub area of the game, a military fort where I can do such amazing things as: Go to a bandit camp, kill bandits, get loot and reward and: Go to a graveyard, kill undead, get loot and reward. Not much story stuff going on. There is still a mysterious shadowy force that wants the silver shard I have for some reason, so that's great. Got introduced to the item crafting system, so now I can make items and if I had a wizard I could probably enchant them too (Enchantment? Enchantment!).
However, to keep this blog from being super short, let me complain about some of the systems in this game. Obviously, the bad party AI doesn't help (as they will very willingly walk into attacks of opportunity unless I remember to turn off "protect controlled character"), but there's also all the weird skills that aren't in P&P, like Parry and Taunt. Neither seems to be very useful, parry basically allowing you to not attack in exchange for making your defense be based on a skill check instead of your armor class (but hey, maybe if the roll is high enough you can counter one enemy!) and Taunt gives the enemy a minor penalty to armor class but incites an attack of opportunity. Sorry, just had to get that off my chest. It's at this point that I question if I should go back to Icewind Dale 2 or not, but I'll probably keep playing. Now, for no particular reason, here's the pantheon of classical CRPGs as interpreted by me messing around in Computer Graphics class. Keep in mind that the games represented are both specific and general representations of my tastes.
Yes, KotOR 2 is on fire. Why do you ask? Yes, there are 3 games representing silver tier, and yes Arcanum is not on fire, although it was in conceptual stages. And, to give you an idea of what I've had to listen to while doing all this character creation stuff... again, here's the main menu theme for Storm of Zehir. Pretty good, actually.
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