I’ve had this one in my library for quite some time, yet I’ve just not been in the right mindset to take on a VLCRPG (very large and complex role playing game). It’s a game that focuses on numbers, die rolls, and limits. Compare that to the more action oriented Skyrim/Fallout games, where the numbers are much less meaningful.

tldr; Baldur’s Gate 2 sits in my top 5 all time games, and it would be sad for me to share the amount of hours I sunk into that bugger. Early Access for Baldur’s Gate 3 got me thinking about going back to the genre. My own sanity prevents me from playing any EA games, even more so one that is known to be buggy, incomplete, and that I would have to replay again anyhow. I value my time more than that exchange returns.

So Divinity 2 it is, and Larian’s vision on how D&D-like mechanics can be applied in the modern age.

Creation

Normally you’re a no-faced bugger and you get to tweak some numbers that eventually end up making your life interesting. A dumb warrior is not going to talk themselves out of anything. Here we have a somewhat straightforward character builder, where the stats are familiar, the skills are just on the edge of focused (so many spell types), and talents that make you go hmm. That’s neat below the covers stuff.

The actual look of the character is pretty awesome, with a decent variety of races and customizations. Topping it off are pre-set characters you can select from, that will allow for a more directed story experience. I tend to pick mage classes in RPGs, they can do amazing things. Divinity 2 takes a different approach to combat though, so my attempts at a caster didn’t go so well. I opted for a dyed in the wool Rogue – Sebelle. She eats people to learn their memories, neat beans!

Tutorial

On the surface the game looks like other isometric RPGs, and for the most part it follow the formula. The tutorial starts you off on a ship, that ends up on a beach. We’re in Chekhov’s gun territory in terms of tropes here. It’s the combat aspect that I think really sets things apart.

It’s paused action, meaning everyone has initiative. Like a game of chess. Each character gets a set of action points to either move or perform an ability, taking up a specific set of AP. While this makes for a more realistic combat scenario in terms of “energy”, it does strongly favour ranged classes who have a limited need to move. Neat bit, the Rogue gets a cool teleport mechanic that allows for a backstab, 1AP but 3 turn cool down.

The tutorial also explains the environmental aspects of combat, where pretty much anything can blow up. Oil catches fire and explodes, causing burning. Water can be frozen or electrocuted. Water can also put out fire, or create steam that people can walk through. There’s poison, bleeds and a pile of other effects that can feel like they come out of nowhere. Since the environment is a hazard unto itself, moving around carefully is important. This again has a disadvantage to melee characters – often you’ll have a pile of fire between you and a target.

Practice

I think this is the magical part of Divinity, where the foundations above create these extremely divergent experiences. Example is a fight I had against Griff and his crew, for not giving up name. There’s Griff in front of me, an archer right next, a melee 2 moves away, an archer above me also 2 moves away, and 2 mages of a similar distance. Starting the fight blind (around Griff) I get picked off in 2 rounds from all the ranged attackers – I just can’t get to them in time. Quick save habits pull me out and I move my folks around before triggering the fight.

Attempt 1 has my main damage dealer put to sleep before her turn, things go bad from there. Attempt 2 has my healer put to sleep before her turn and everyone somehow ends up on fire. Attempt 3 goes super smooth until I’m left with a mage and Griff. Then mage freezes my team (too close together and wet) and Griff just goes off on everyone.

Attempt #4 is where I decide to game it a bit more, frankly because melee characters at low levels are wet noodles. My tank manages to get Griff’s attention, and the other 2 members split up on taking out the mages. Fane (earth/fire mage) does 90% of the lifting here with a dual ranged attack (wands) that causes poison and burning. Not a spell, just a simple ranged attack.

It took 5 tries to get something that resembled a real fight, where target priority mattered, my ranged attackers were smart enough to spread to good positions before attacking, and my healer wasn’t focused down in 2 turns. I am unsure if this is the natural issues that come with low level character in RPGs – this was certainly the case in BG2 – or if this is how things work out in the longer term.

Thoughts

I’ve been playing RPGs for a very long time, and the older D&D model is etched in my brain. Melee excel for the lower levels, and mages have exponential growth later on (e.g. solo dragons).

From the tutorial, it would appear that this model is no longer valid. This is primarily due to the AP mechanic on movement, that penalizes melee characters until they have movement skills. Casters are also limited since their abilities are also limited by the AP mechanic, as well as cool downs, preventing chain casts of something like fireball.

D&D focused on single turn events. You took down one enemy (or more) per turn, and moved through a list of priority targets. Divinity 2 is different in that the landscape itself changes from turn to turn. Entirely possible that the next target is just not reachable because of a fire pit that wasn’t there last turn. It’s a much more dynamic system, more tactical than strategic. It’s certainly interesting!

Forward

I’ll keep up with the game and have a few posts on progress. The presentation values are amazing, everyone is voice acted, and the interconnections between NPCs and events is impressive. Feels like I’m seeing the tip of the tip of the iceberg. Fun times ahead I’m sure.

This weekend, my daughter and I (with the wife and other daughter watching on a cast) played us some PC Building Simulator. I’ve played a lot of simulators and as a common theme, they all do an admirable job at exploring how monotonous any task can be. There are spikes of “WoW”, very long periods of tedium, and then plenty of “ah shit” moments. What I’m getting at is that the game is a true reflection of building PCs.

(Side note first. I went back and specced out a CDN build of a RTX-capable desktop. The core parts came in around $1300. The video card starts at $800.)

There’s a simple tutorial that explains how PCs are built and which components are used. It’s impressive how simple PCs are today compared to 10 years ago. PSU, mobo, CPU, cooling, RAM, storage, and a case. That’s it. In the real world, the only extra component would likely be a network card if you’re not going on-board (few do). I clearly remember managing sound cards, printer cards, modems, limits on hard drivers, jumper placements, mouse cards, and a series of nightmares that followed with drivers. Thankfully, none of those are here.

But the simplicity of the pieces belies the true complexity of managing PC builds. To say anyone can build one is a lie for the simple fact that PC parts themselves are a labyrinth of half truths, interfaces, parity, and wattage. First there’s the simple stuff, like AMD and Intel chipsets, which dictate the rest of the build. You need the right chipset, which means half the available motherboards won’t work. The mobo’s RAM speeds determine both the quantity and the speed of your RAM. Mobo also decides what type of video card is available (SLI or Crossfire support). Hard drives don’t appear to matter here, since all I’ve seen so far is SATA connections. Cases matter, since they can only support a given set of mobo standards (S-ATX/ATX), and they limit the size of certain components (video card may be too big). Entirely possible to buy some stuff that simply will not fit together.

Then there’s the arcane math of PSU, making sure that the listed wattage draw is supported, and if you happen to add any over-clocking (OC), you’re going to need even more power. Cooling is certainly impacted by OC, which pretty much forces you to get into water cooling.

And then the magical PC Part Rank lists. Multiple times a year the makers will send something new to market that is either a major or minor tweak. Instead of “clear” lines of a 590 being better than a 570, you’ll end up with 10+ versions of the 590 that meet niche requirements and bloat your options. Prices often dictate performance, but sometimes not as was shown last month, you’ll get a 3070 which is on par with a 2080 (for cheaper), but less good than a 3080. And I haven’t even talked about the game yet!

The Game

In truth, the game covers all of this and rather well. You have a shop with a great search function, a Part Ranking list that’s damn solid, 3DMark testing, RGB settings for many parts, a build order requiring paste before cooling, and clients with very strange habits.

More often than not you’ll get a box that’s filthy and full of viruses, on top of a fundamental issue. Could be they just want an upgrade, or know a part needs to be replaced. Those easier items are eventually replaced by “I don’t know what’s wrong” and you need to figure it out by reverse building the PC and checking each part. That alone brought back nightmares from IT support in my younger years. The worst offenders are those who want a NEW build, saying they want it to meet some benchmark, and then give you a budget that gets you a sandwich at the deli. And you’ll often have 5-6 requests all going at the same time.

And this is where the game both shines and suffers through it’s accurate reflection of the real world. You are spinning plates and have a wall of parts, a list of PCs to address, budgets for each, compatibility issues galore, and you can’t label pieces destined for builds. You have a pile of work, and a pile of parts, and no real link between them. God forbid you end up 100pts under a benchmark (the test takes 2 real world minutes) and you’re over budget. Now what?

Now you OC the crap out of it and pray to the gods in the sky that you don’t burn it out. You pray that you have enough power to the box, and that the cooling won’t turn it into a marshmallow roaster.

And as you progress, more and more parts come down the pipe. What was top of the line a month ago is relegated to mid-tier today. Making you doubt if it’s ever really worth it to spend triple on a PC that will be relegated to “ok” in less than a year. Of all the things PC Building Simulator does well, it’s the accurate reflection that ultra amazing is a carrot that cannot be held.

This is an amazing simulator.

Clearly we’re at the point where base Anthem is dead, and everything is focused on NEXT. We’re a few months shy of 2 years from launch from the base game, with nothing new for over a year. I guess all the chips are in this new pile.

A blog post due in August is finally up. I’ve read it a few times now, and truthfully everything in there is a solid decision point. In terms of “decisions that should have been made years ago”, the only thing that really matters is that abilities are unlocks and not drops.

For those not recalling Anthem’s skill system, javelins at max level have no abilities. You need to equip items to get access to abilities, and those abilities are limited by your class. The drops have stats, and for nearly every item in the game, there are god rolls and then garbage. Inscriptions made it even worse, since they allowed for tweaks of base abilities, had god rolls that made things broken, and were next to impossible to find.

So that change is more than welcome, there’s no point in having NEXT if that’s not the foundation to build from.

The rest of the post talks about drops that add modifiers to abilities, a skill tree, and specializations. Which if you look at every other looter/shooter, is baseline structure. It’s hard for me to emphasize how fundamental that this be the case and how mind blowing/infuriating it was when Anthem launched.

At this point, I can’t say that there’s anything bad in here. The devil is clearly in the details and balance. At no point did I ever have a problem with the moment to moment parts of Anthem, they were kick butt. Everything wrong with Anthem was the mechanics that prevented players from experiencing the game. It really felt like no one played the game outside of the battles. It was like a 4 course meal of AAA lobster, nachos, curry, and tiramisu. Each piece is great, but they just don’t go together.

In that respect, if you look at Anthem NEXT as a parallel to FF14’s relaunch, things are rosy. That EA/BioWare are willing to invest in this is amazing, clearly seeing some value in the IP/assets already in place. We’re ~6 months since the new direction was launched, and this is pretty much where I expected things to be. EA’s fiscal year end on March 31, ain’t no way we’re going to see anything launched by then. So I guess we’re looking at March 2022 as the end date for all this work.

Aside from Dragon Age, I don’t know what the devs would be working ont. I sure wish them luck in this.

Probably.

I completed the full epilogue the other day, which I won’t spoil for those who have yet to reach it. Understand that it takes a significant amount of “relationship” investment to achieve. It was somewhere around run 78 I think. I have 1 only Aphrodite left to max out now.

I still have some minor prophecies to go, related to getting all the duo boons, getting all hammer upgrades for gloves, bow, and railgun, as well as completing the lyre quest. That last one appears to take ~100+ uses of the lyre and a good half dozen extra runs. I think that one quest is my only complaint of the game so far!

Given the Duo Boons quest, it’s made for some interesting focused runs. Things I normally would not have tried for. The biggest hurdle in this is Demeter, as she is the least likely to show up as a primary god on a run. Primary gods are those that show up 5+ times in a run. Combined with the fact that her tier 1 boons are the weakest, you’re really at the mercy of RNG to have a decent run.

I wouldn’t say I’m in the optimization mode, since you know, RNG is RNG. Yet, I’m aware of every weapon’s strengths and weaknesses, as well as each god’s. Zeus for example, is great on fast attacks, but horrible otherwise. Artemis is best on slower weapon as the crit impacts can deal crazy damage levels. Dash-strikes reduce combo damage, but are twice as fast. Hermes speed boons can be crazy. Chaos boons need to take into consideration when you’re going to reach the boss.

Some screenshots below of end of game screens that I thought were worth mention.

This run focused on the Zeus/Poseidon with the Zeus Shield. That shield aspect hits multiple times, and if you aim it right, it can hover over a boss. The actual shield damage is minimal (30) but it triggers a 71dmg bolt that has a 43% chance to hit twice. Each of those triggers a 40dmg bolt which can also hit twice. All the while I’m dashing to trigger Sea Storm for yet another 40dmg bolt (again hitting twice). It’s impressive to see.

This run was an Arthur Sword run, which is high damage but really slow swings. The base combo damage 60/80/200. It was focused entirely on getting the Hoarding Slash hammer upgrade, which raises attack damage by 5% of your total gold. Poseidon, Hermes, and Chaos all give gold boons. The Golden Touch mirror upgrade (+15% gold at end of zone) is also great. With 3158 gold, that comes to +158 damage on attack. It has a 15% crit chance, and with Weak, crit deals 350% damage. You’ll notice that I didn’t boon my Cast, that’s due to a mirror upgrade that increases damage to targets with a crystal by 50% – only Artemis and Poseidon have casts that inject a crystal. The weird math behind this means a 3rd strike can hit for ~2,300. Even a non-crit 3 hit combo hits for 1,500.

Easy Heat

Heat levels give you more Diamonds, Ambrosia, and Titan Blood. Diamonds are for cosmetics (some quests), Ambrosia to max friendship, and Titan Blood to upgrade weapon aspects. You only get rewards for 1 Heat increase per weapon – repeating the same heat level only gives Darkness. In the picture above, that means I’ve successfully beaten Hades 41 times with increasing Heat levels. The rewards end at 20 heat (aside from a Skelly cosmetic/achievement at 24). You can get all these materials through the Broker in the Lounge, or buying them at the Styx/Charon shop.

The absolute easiest Heat levels come from Tight Deadline, which reduces the amount of time you have to clear a zone. No difficulty increase, and ample time to clear everything with either 9m or 7m selected (36m/28m full clears). As a perk, this pact prevents the annoying “survive 45 seconds” rooms. Extreme Measures is also helpful here, at least for the first two ranks. The Furies add some extra AE attacks, but that’s it. And Lernie has a smaller zone, which actually helps clearing the extra heads (and AE damage). Extreme Measures for Theseus/Asterius is a pain in the butt, at least in terms of clear time.

Now for the hard ones. Underworld Customs (remove a boon at end of zone), Routine Inspection (lose 3/6/9/12 mirror upgrades, from bottom up) is insanely painful, and finally Approval Process (remove 1/2 boon choices) is extremely restrictive. There’s a quest to clear the game with each active, but I don’t suggest trying with all 3 active at the same time.

I won’t suggest any combos past 5 heat. If you can clear that, then the rest is fairly obvious.

While I’m still having a ton of fun playing, I think I’ve saturated the blog enough on Hades for a while. Happy gaming!

Of all the console launch games coming in a couple weeks, this is the one that intrigues me the most. At least, at the conceptual level. It gives a vibe between Warframe’s flexibility, and a 3rd person hack and slash like Monster Hunter. It’s a weird mix.

Destiny launched in 2014, which ostensibly put the looter/shooter into the limelight. Destiny 2 and The Division(s) iterated on that. Warframe had launched a year earlier but took a couple years to find it’s footing. The game today is much different than back then. That to say that in general, the model has evolved over time. Where it hasn’t is with Anthem (the 2.0 blog update is 2 months late), and from all I’ve read, Avengers.

The good news with Godfall is that the lead designer has a fair chunk of experience in this field. Devs have worked on Diablo2 and Destiny 2. IGN has an interesting article on their mindset for loot management, which articulates how much importance they are putting on that item. Since “tinkering” is the long term carrot for most of these games, I’m somewhat optimistic that they can get this to work.

There are some eyebrow items in here, such as how leveling one class levels all the others – you swap plates to change classes. That’s a very odd choice as it reduces replayability, and certainly has some mechanical reasons. I think the grid mechanic is neat, where proximity of slots impacts their effects. Two identical classes, with identical gems to slot could have different (marginal?) effects based on the order of the slots.

I’ve been a fan of Warframe’s customization for a long time now, enjoying it much more than hunting light levels or whatever arbitrary term the game uses. I’ve written dozens of posts as to how Anthem screwed the pooch on this aspect. I’ve avoided Avengers, primarily due to the way the power grind is built (I won‘t get into the Mega Hives, or that it’s better to play with AI).

I should point out that this game is built by a rather small team, so there’s no “traditional” end game here. There’s some sort of rogue-like tower activity you can do with others, but that seems to be it for now. The focus appears to be on the campaign, which can have on-line co-op. Which seems a-ok to me, much better to bite off what you can chew. If multi-million dollar companies can’t even get the basics right, then why would a small crew try to do the same?

Colour me interested. Maybe they actually figure out the loot part and can teach the big studios something. Guess we’ll find out in a couple weeks.

This morning there was some white stuff on the ground, first time. Considering we were wearing shorts on Friday, it’s a hell of a swap of mindsets. I rather enjoy winter, though that’s primarily due to the hockey season. Without it, I’m curious as to how my brain will manage through.

Wife is interested in taking up cross-country skiing. It’s one of those weird things where I have zero interest in skiing, in any form. I think that the cross-country version is too close to running, which I also do not enjoy. My joints have enough invested in hockey already, I don’t need even more abuse. I’m sure it’s a mental block. That and the near grand I’d need to drop to be equipped for it properly.

Winter also brings a form of SAD, where sunlight plays a massive part of my energy levels. The good news there is that I work next to a very large window, so I get a ton of it during the day. The downside is that I don’t get it directly by being outside. When the work day starts it’s usually dark, and it certainly is by the time it ends. Recalls when I was younger in an office with no windows… felt like I was working in a mine. I did invest in a neat piece of technology, an alarm clock that simulates sunrise. It’s done wonders for my morning routine.

Pumpkins are carved, outdoor patio stuff is put away, cottage is closed. All that’s left is putting up the holiday lights in a couple weeks and the outdoor rink. Winter coats aren’t out yet, but I’m sure they will be by next weekend. Including winter tires. Adulting sucks sometimes.

Games, well it’s obviously all Hades. I’ve done about 75 runs now, on a streak of 33 wins too. There was one in there that was a heck of a close call, while I was trying out some interesting difficulty modifiers. Got the last boss with 2 HP to spare. Note to others, Hades with speed and damage modifiers is like bullet hell.

I will say that going for fast runs is certainly fun. I’m running ~15 minutes on the good ones, and have some favorite aspects to get through. Lenny on Extreme Measures, and enemies with increased move speed makes it all go a lot faster. I do like that every run has a preferred weapon, with a 20% boost to darkness/gems. It’s a neat motivation to keep trying different playstyles instead of fishing for the perfect boons on a specific weapon. I should have the final epilogue complete in 5 or so runs, which would “complete” the true game.

As I put more time into Hades, the more I come to appreciate it’s horizontal design. At the most basic of levels, the tool sets you are given on your 1st run are there on your 50th. Sure, there are some back end number tweaks, like slightly more HP, or better odds for a rare boon. And when you get the weapon aspects unlocked, the damage boosts they give are offset by the gameplay changes they present. Homing missiles on a bow, a long-term DoT for the gloves, a massive AE slow effect for the sword.

In my mind, horizontal design excels where the gameplay itself changes over time. Vertical design is where you do the same thing again, and again, just that your power (and potentially enemy defence goes up). RPGs almost exclusively focus on the vertical aspect, you get bigger numbers, bigger attacks, more targets. Destiny, Avengers, Anthem, Division are in a similar bag, where you certainly have gameplay choices, but often they lack the balance due to the difficulty of enemies. Not that you want to select the highest DPS option, but that you essentially have to. And there’s a place for that design, no question.

What Hades does is more akin to something like Civilization, or XCOM, in that the strategy and tactics you apply change dramatically based on each step. Hades just has so many variables into the mix, it’s bonkers.

• 6 weapons, 4 variants each. Each weapon has 12+ hammer upgrades.
• 10 gods, with 15 personal boons each, and 28 duo boons. I’m not counting Bouldy
• 25 Keepsakes and 6 Companions

You’re looking at hundreds of thousands of combinations, most of which are completely randomized. You can pick the weapon/aspect and the keepsake/companion, but the rest is all RNG.

A previous post mentioned a Chiron Bow (homing missiles) run which focused on Doom stacking. That build is not possible without 2 specific boons – enabled by a Hades favoured run. I got those really late in the run, so it was a decent build… getting those two put a massive smile on my face.

A recent Arthur Sword (AE aura that slows enemies and reduces damage) was off to a rough start. Arthur is the slowest of all weapons, but deals insane damage. It’s the only build I’ve seen where the default attack is actually decent DPS. Normally my start of builds are focused on getting boons and then potentially poms if I think the boons are worth upgrading – it makes room choice important, so I end up skipping gold/nectar/keys. Well, some “bad” luck was in with some so-so boons that aren’t all that good together – then I got an interest hammer upgrade – Hoarding Slash. This thing gives extra damage to attack equal to 5% of your total gold. Which stacks with a % attack boost. Long story short, when I got that one I started focusing entirely on money, no more Chiron shops, and gold rooms all the time. I re-rolled Hermes boons to get the +10g per room and equipped the +100g keepsake. I was at 1500g when I reached Theseus/Asterius and over 2000g when I fought Hades. So 100dmg attacks as my baseline, upgraded through other boons, and an exposed Hades. It was my 2nd fastest boss clear. Just insane damage. And that entire run was dependent on that one random hammer roll.

The less obvious point here is that nearly all the boons build on each other. My base attack may deflect. Then deflects cause Exposed. Another than increased deflect damage. And another that causes deflect to trigger Doom effects or increase crit chance by 20%. And then there’s a similar train for critical hits.

In the 50+ runs I’ve done, I have had only 1 run where I didn’t like the results of RNG. It happened to be a run with Guan Yu which came with a 70% HP penalty. In retrospect, the rolls were not bad, they were just average. I was going in with a large penalty and needed some luck to get through.

I’ve done runs that focused on Cast damage, Special damage, chain lightning, curse stacking, dashing, DoTs… all sorts. I’ve had similar runs, but never identical runs. I’ve cleared with every weapon, using a bunch of aspects. I’ve cleared on multiple heat (difficulty modifiers) levels. I’be maxed out a chunk of keepsakes, and have 1 companion on hand. I’ve beaten the last boss without getting hit once. I’ve died a bunch of times. Every run is a new adventure.

And I’ve not even remotely touched the storyline of the game, the fact that NPCs remember what you did, that you have relationships with them, or their quests. And god forbid I start talking about how this game has fishing!