PoR First Impressions

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(Originally posted by Darien)

Rendelius has posted his first impressions of The Ruins of Myth Drannor over at RPGDot. By now it may come as no surprise that the game isn't living up to people's expectations.

Most of us expected a Baldur's Gate with 3e rules, a deep, rewarding roleplaying experience with customizeable characters, non-linearity and questing galore. PoR 2 is nothing of that. It is a tactical dungeon crawl, a hack and slay game - and, sorry to say that, far from being brilliant at that.

When everything is about combat, combat should be perfectly implemented. It isn't. The combat interface is crude at some times, ruining your plannings more often than leading to success. Click the wrong menu item, and you are done. No way to undo an action before unleashing it. Distance weapons and spells are rather useless sometimes, because enemies tend to close in very quickly. This doesn't say the game is unplayable, but it can be quite frustrating. In some ways combat is more interesting than in Baldur's Gate, because you CAN plan your actions (as you might remember, spellcasting was a problem in Baldur's Gate from time to time, since the baddies moved around a lot, and sneaking in doesn't help in PoR 2), but as I said, you'll have your frustrations, too. For example, it is completely impossible to disengage from a fight - you just can't run or hide. This isn't what I call roleplaying, is it?

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