Playin' any games today, Flying Nun? (WGAYP - 2011 Edition)

[Excal]

Man, next thing you know, ID will be back.

Welcome back, guy.

[Grefter]

Welcome back Fenrir, good to see you back and hopefully enjoying yourself.  I hope even if you decided that you enjoy games you got something out of the time away from them.  Time makes the heart grow fonder and all that.  It doesn't really do much harm to give up the games for a bit and go live life a bit outside the box and so on, even if it is just to do the "normal" thing.  Certainly hasn't done me any harm to give up a bit and take a corporate job and so on.  Edit - That is to say, man you have been missed.

Dragon Age 2 Demo - I guess I may as well play all the classes.  Think I have hammered out which class I will be playing as with what kinds of weapons and so on.  Gods I obsess over this stuff way to much.

[Clear Tranquil]

I haven't played jack shit in like a week.

This.

Ah so it's the mysterious Fenrir of DL lore and legend that people (ok super) told me about in reverent tones. I'm in the same boat as Djinn. Nice to meet you and your dog~

[Sierra]

Are you in a save started pre-patch? I heard that got fixed but wasn't retroactive.

Yep. Just continued off my original game from November or so.

Hi both of you!
I brought the dog back too.

WHAT IS THIS MADNESS. Fenrir don't play Dragon Age on hard mode the first time through, it's bad for you. Normal is brutal enough. And yeahhhh the way sex winds up being the apparent pinnacle of DA relationships always kinda bothered me, largely because the game's banter is way more fun than watching underwear-clad character models grope each other.

Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.

Accurate but needs more Lyner hate.

[Grefter]

Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.

Oh yeah forgot to say, it is okay, you don't have to tell me I was right.  I already knew.

[OblivionKnight]

FENRIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^_^

[DjinnAndTonic]

Ar Tonelico is sometimes okay but mostly it sucks.

Oh yeah forgot to say, it is okay, you don't have to tell me I was right.  I already knew.

Well, they managed to make 2 more games for it, so I'm kind of hoping that they iron out some of the crap by AT3. There's enough interesting setup and gameplay mechanic unique-ness that I'd be willing to play it if they had a little less exposition, a less bland main, and actually utilized their sex metaphor without mixing it up with an awkward terrible scene about a girl who has to get raped every three months OR SHE'LL DIE... and then the game plays off the scene as romantic.

Yeah, if they can get rid of THAT, then I think I could enjoy AT2 or AT3.

[Grefter]

http://ar-tonelico.jp/at3/wp/wp_03_1280.jpg

That is what you are looking at in the future.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Hmm... the character designs got significantly less interesting and there seems to be a lack of anything male in the entire cast... but it doesn't look outright offensive just from a picture.

[Lord Ephraim]

I can't be the only one besides Grefter who is excited for AT3's prime feature: Hold R1 + R2 + L1 + L2 and waggle to strip clothes off your lolirapebaitdolls.  Wii, you have been outdone by the PS3 at last. At least until We Dare comes out. (search for it on youtube, European Ubisoft is fucking nuts.)

Speaking of oversexualized lolis: Hyperdimension Neptunia. One must build their list of jRPGs Niu won't play.

Never have I played a game and felt trolled from the very beginning to the scenes after the credits. Not in a way like this game's plot so awful like XS3 awful, but in a way of "we're just fucking around making this game. Don't take us seriously one bit."  It's nice that NISA did the their best localization job ever and took the trainwreck beyond our feeble minds.  The first scene features the Xbox chick making fun of the Wii for having small boobs because Microsoft represents America and we have giant breasts and cocks compared to the inferior baka gajins.  The very next scene, we're treated to a very Ko balanced nurse into BDSM complete with CG and breast jiggle.  Along the way, we try to reference as many video games as possible and it's not subtle about it at all.  The great video game developer of Playstation land named Zack Unfair depressed about the unsuccessful GG12 (GREAT GREED 12?, YESZ!) compared to GG7-10 and his woes of GG13 development.  They even make fun of Guilty Gear and Tales of Vesperia for the obscure references.  They did a great job capturing the personallity of the game consoles well: Playstation 3 is a hardworking girl that does everything and totally tsundere for Sega.(?)  Xbox 360 is a gamer chick that tries to get minors to play "zombie filled mall surviving simulator" and makes blog posts about pre-ordering "Hoop": Reach.  Wii is a stuck up bitch who thinks she's better than everyone and swears a lot to hide her childish demeanor.  It's quite brilliant if you get past the whole "everyone is an anime girl."

Too bad the actual gameplay is terrible because Idea Factory is Idea Factory.  They're on the right track though. The true ending is straightfoward if a bit annoying, there's no stupid item synthesis that requires grinding randoms for 5% rare drops, and bosses don't randomly bust out a full screen OHKO attack.  I didn't mind the idea of reactionary items once you level up enough, if you only you could heal outside of battle and the weakest PCs is the only character with revival for 80% of the game.  Uploading images would have been nice if they could have been bigger.  I'm glad I wasn't the only one to put Gutsman's ass on Purple Heart's ass.

EDIT: HOLY SHIT IT'S FENRIR

[superaielman]

Man, next thing you know, ID will be back.

Welcome back, guy.

This calls for the Final Countdown. *Nod* And welcome back, Fenrir.

LFT- Cleared most of the DD. Horror was a fantastic fight- no resets but lots of tension, etc. END was brutal. The trick to clearing it is statusing out the support as fast as humanely possible. You *need* to break/disable those knight's weapons. I stole them, but battle skill is probably more useful.  Had a ton of resets of the fight. A lucky Galaxy stop resolving did wonders for sorting through all the shit.

I picked a very good team for the DD. Malak, Beowulf, and Cid are all in their elements in the DD, and Olan is as awesome as ever. I've seen (not really fought) the rest of the the END battles.

Ko loop can be bested without the math skill trick, but man. You need to use a super defensive setup and hope your various breaks/status skills don't miss at just the wrong time. You can also go low faith and stomp the shit out of the fight as well.

[Shale]

Holy shit Fenrir came back everybody party.

Glad to see you're doing well, man.

SRW A Portable: I forget exactly how far I was last time I posted about this. Got the God Gundam, it's awesome, pretty sure I recruited Master Asia because Fuunsaiki hasn't joined. The last fight against Master Asia was an incredible pain - I was almost dry on SP and he was (a) extremely evasive and (b) able to cast Guts whenever he hit 40% health. Infinitely. I finally got a lucky hit with Shine Spark.

The level where the Nadesico decides to blow up my dudes was even more annoying than usual because it comes in the middle of a fight against AP's ridiculous Gespensts that I hate. I reset on that a couple of times before turtling my way to victory. Had to give up on any hope of killing Vindel for loot, though.

Anyway, now I'm on Grendizer's debut. All Dynamics present and accounted for, woohoo.

[Tonfa]

Grandia LLG! The exciting finale.

A few notes first. Right here at the top of this update is the last time to buy anything in the game. This point of no return is obviously not announced. You get three dungeons with a ton of moneybags in them but nothing. to. buy. And very few stashing places for that matter. Grandia would be regarded as a ridiculously badly designed game if any of this mattered at all on a normal playthrough (it doesn't because you can't die)

Oh and you lose Feena for yet another extended period of time because what kind of scrub would rather have a full battle party anyway, right FF13? Also I wished to free you from those wings that torment you so. Mullen is almost Chaos Wars bad.

Mage King (Justin 25, Rapp 25, Liete 31) (1 reset): Body, Head and Wand. Body and Head share their HP, Wand is an optional target. 4500/3000 HP I believe. Body spams Howlnado for 70 MT damage every turn. This is very bad. It does Vanish away your buffs if you try anything other than damage and healing obviously because that is how lategame Grandia rolls. Head uses Atomic Shot that covers a quarter of the platform you're on. Sometimes this ends up firing at nothing, most of the time you're looking at 30-50 damage though. Wand mostly uses a scrub AoE physical for 20ish damage. Occasionally though it OHKOs a PC with GadZap (150 damage). First time through I die because I can't keep up with Howlnado once resources start getting depleted and there's the occasional Gadzap thrown in. I then reload, put on a few wind blockers, take 15 minutes to trek through the dungeon, and steamroll the fight. Oh and obviously the boss is right next to the save point but the game doesn't give you a path back once you reach the boss even though the dungeon gimmick is about new paths being created between platforms when you do stuff because that would be entirely too sensible and clearly defeat the true challenge of the game. Haha Grandia designers you sure got me.

Gaia Battler 4 (Justin 26, Rapp 26, Liete 31): 4500/2500HP. No this isn't hard even with a missing PC. Obviously this one has Vanish too. Of note, the sleep physical gets Liete once even though she's wearing a Talisman.

Mullen (Justin 26) (2 resets): Hardest beatable boss in the game !! I am actually serious, Justin has 150 HP and Mullen hits hard and is crazy fast. As a small mercy I have one auto-life Revival Stone left on Justin. First time in, I take hits in the face for 40x2 from his standard physicals and the rest of his skillset isn't any more merciful. I can't really chop through 3k HP fast so back to the drawing board we go.

I need to equip for defense obviously, but this leaves Justin sorely lacking in speed and I can't have being doubled on a regular basis. I swap out the Talisman for Hurricane Belt (+50 wit). This leaves me with +4 status resistance from the Spirit Shield. Which means Mullen can and will inflict Moveblock with any physical hit. Ah status resistance, you are almost universally worthless. This means I have even less offense, oh well. I hang with him for a bit and then make the grave mistake of trying to Defend through one of his specials. Protip: Never defend against anyone faster than you in a duel. The defend command fails ANYWAY (what), and I get tripleturned and die.

I decide to ditch my axe training plan and get the Spirit Sword for pure offense. This means I hit for around 250 with a combo, which aside from turn 1 Midair Cut is all the offense I will use in this battle. Well, I do cancel almost any special I can with Critical for 150 damage or so. With Mullen's speed this is often not possible though. So Mullen has physical hits, 5-20x2. One of the least threatening parts of his moveset and he loses the basic combo quickdraw to Justin, amusingly enough. Sonic Boom hits for 30-40, not worth cancelling since there are much worse things. Like Rising Dragon Cut, which hit for 70. Or Fireburner for 80, or Zap-All for almost 100. He also loves placing buffs on himself. When this happens I lay down one level of Diggin' to bait him into Vanishing it, which is a losing trade for him turnwise and means he can't get up to +7atk/+7spd or something equally ridiculous. Finally he can cast Alhealer+ for 300. This is really annoying but not worth canceling, while you are doing damage slower than he heals it is at least a turn he is not crushing your face with Zap All. Healing is done either with Healer or with Crimson Potions when you just need stronger faster healing. I lose the revival stone to a double turn but eventually manage to prevail and become the mightiest swordsman in all the land.

Nice of you to return for the final dungeon Feena, you've only missed half of this disc's bosses.

Gaia Trent (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31): It is almost unscaled from the original Trent, Flowerbeam hits for 100 I guess, woo. Oh and it has Vanish and the final dungeon boss gimmick, universal elemental resistance. Hooray for making even more battle options useless, now you can't do shit with magic. Sleep Pollen hits through Liete's Talisman a few times here, which means:

a) Talisman is actually +7 status resistance and Liete has undocumented status vulnerability for some reason
b) Grandia coding is fucked

I could buy either one.

Gaia Armor (Justin 27, Feena 24, Rapp 26, Liete 31) (2 resets): Scaled up Massacre Machine. 6500 HP. Standard boss gimmicks. Eye casts Gravity (-4 to -7 MOV on one, essentially makes them immobile), Vanish and Healer for 500. Body either uses various worthless physicals or Killer Tackles a pack of people for 80. I lose twice because of doubleturn Killer Tackle. Third time of the same gets the win, standard stuff, bait Vanish with one buff layer, use physical attacks, heal with the -MOV character.

BAAL, IS ACTUALLY A TENTACLE (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (1 reset): Four targets. Baal has 7000 HP and beating him ends the battle. Tentacles have 6000 each. Gaia Cyst has 4000 and is straight up immune to elements instead of just resistant. Baal has Seed Smash for 50ish MT damage, Grand Cross for the same deal except it sucks the PCs in front of Baal first, Gaia Tail for 40-60 to one PC and dispels their stat changes. And Vanish because ST Dispel with damage is obviously not enough. Right Tentacle uses pretty much every stat debuff in the game and can cast Alhealer+ for...300, I think. Left Tentacle spams a whole lot of mid-high tier offensive magic. Gaia Cyst spams Deathmark, which is a giant laser sweeping the whole room and does 40ish damage. First time in I get overwhelmed by all the damage and die in short order. Switching in an equipment set built for maximum magic resistance I head back in, and...surprisingly there's no negative status to be seen. Huh. One layer of Starlight Symphony both gives a nice boost and counteracts the stat-down assault as Baal will eventually use a turn to Vanish it. Damage is manageable when you roughly halve Left Tentacle's spell rampage and cancel Gaia Cyst every chance you get. Once Cyst is down (this phase takes plenty of consumables). I go after the main body, since killing the tentacles would just drag out the fight. It's fairly easy to cancel the main body's big hitters in this phase too. Not that bad despite first impressions.

Gaia Core (Justin 28, Feena 25, Rapp 27, Liete 32) (GAME OVER): There are two Mega Gaias and they spawn 2 1300 HP Gaia Tentacles every turn they get (unless there are tentacles on the field, then they either do that or order them to do combo attacks). I can't cut them down that amount of HP in any reasonable amount of time, so I have the main body slinging high end spells and Vanish (of course) at me, 2 Mega Gaias spitting out tentacles and 6 tentacles doing unspeakable acts to my party. Game Over.

Oh well, I am satisfied since I wasn't sure I would get to endgame anyway. Quite a few of the boss battles were a lot of fun to figure out/mock, and now I remember what an awful game Grandia is and will never touch it again.

And just for the record's sake, final party stats.

Justin
Level 28
163HP 76SP
46/39/23MP
111STR 58VIT 121WIT 53AGI
Sword L19 Mace L13 Axe L14
Fire L12 Wind L4 Water L15 Earth L9

Feena
Level 25
158HP 49SP
62/29/16MP
91STR 58VIT 103WIT 47AGI
Dagger L3 Whip L16
Fire L18 Wind L6 Water L17 Earth L11

Rapp
Level 27
164HP 101SP
46/35/15MP
103STR 62VIT 136WIT 127AGI
Dagger L20 Sword L14 Throw L26
Fire L15 Wind L2 Water L13 Earth L6

Liete
Level 32
145HP 65SP
83/58/30MP
87STR 62VIT 145WIT 63AGI
Mace L14
Fire L16 Wind L21 Water L20 Earth L21

Grandia 2 - Why do I do this to myself? There is a good battle system concept buried in here, I like the skill system in general. But the enemies have trouble even keeping me awake. Got to village of spooky eyes. A minor thing I enjoy is the Regional tab in shops, this would be brilliant and multifunctional in a RPG that used it correctly;

1. It alerts the player of items unique to that shop. Stock up.
2. It gives a little extra flavor to areas.

Unfortunately G2 botches the first part by only having consumables in there and the world does not seem like a coherent construct in any way, simply a collection of unrelated towns and dungeons. Oh well.

[Fenrir]

Thanks a lot all. Yeah, life's good.
Tonfa, A Grandia LLG was part of the Fenrir summoning ritual. Good job. Are you going to do the same thing with Grandia 2? Please. (To be fair, Eye of Valmar would just infiniteturn your team, and he's early in the game)

Fenrir's Game of the day:

Resonance of Fate (PS3/360)


Picture a game that can only be played with a 1000 buttons controller. One button lets you jump, one lets you shave, one lets you clap your hands, etc. Now, enemies are attacking you at the same time, so you die a hell of a lot at the beginning. Eventually you realize that you can easily kill enemies by hitting the 345th button (throw gas at an enemy) and then the 876th button (put enemy on fire) You now do that for the rest of the game and win everything.
Resonance of Fate is this. It is complex and shallow. It is hard to learn, easy to master. Not many games are like this (There's this and Unlimited Saga, from the top of my head), for one good reason: This is stupid.
Plot is a mess. No one knows whatever the hell they wanted to do here.
I still really like this somehow, mostly thanks to the -ridiculous- gun customization. I had a gun that was supposed to shoot in front, upwards and behing (meaning right back at the poor guy who's using it) It's too bad you can't see your retarded guns in game. BTW you can dress up your characters.
100% guilty pleasure game. You can even play it around relatives, unlike something like a Gust game!


El Cid: Actually I'm playing DA on nightmare, not hard.
I'm already level 11, having finished most quests in Derenim and currently looking for the sacred urn. My team of choice is Allistair/Morigan/Shale. Shale was a good enough character to replace Machiavel the dog, which is a rare feat. Great job at preemptively picking a cool username, Shale the DL guy.
You know what's the best part about that game? The font. The font is beautiful, it makes you by itself want to every dialogue option and read the 1345 pages of the codex, by itself. Replace it with, say, the Wild Arms 2 font, and the game loses at the very least 3 points right away on a /10 scale. I'm not kidding.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

-Holy shit Fenrir is back?- Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

[Meeplelard]

You know, I believe I beat this a few weeks ago and never stated that I did...so I probably should!  If I already did...uhh...well, you'll see I did it again!  Don't worry, no rant...at least, not a MEEPLE Rant, just a basic run down of thoughts (which I know I DIDN'T do.)

Soul Nomad:  Completed.  Not gonna bother with Demon Path cause Soul Nomad's gameplay just doesn't appeal to me that much, and the argument "You can grind to skip it" is basically equivalent to saying "Get rich so you don't have to work!" in real life.  Basically, its a crappy argument, and while I won't DENY that the Demon Path may have good stuff, I'm not feeling the ability to actually care enough.

Though, while I did just say something negative about the gameplay, I will note that while I find it a bit yawn festy, given outside of a few rare maps end game, it doesn't challenge you, it wasn't offensive at least...outside of Terror Blaze which just pissed me off cause it was a clear case of the game just being stupid.  Not so much the concept behind the move as much as the way the game ONLY shows the outcome of what happens to the leader, so it can say "Miss" and half your unit can still be killed.   BEYOND THAT STUPIDITY, gameplay wasn't too bad, but I wasn't a fan of it. 

Plot and writing...its N1, writing is what they do well.  Phantom Brave proved they can do serious story telling at least adequately, so wasn't really that surprising Soul Nomad did it at least as well.
And a rare occurrence happened: A character actually living up to all the hype he got in the past!  Yes, I'm referring to Gig; he's pretty awesome, really.

And I still refuse to believe that Endorph and Walnut are the same person!

And with that, I end it.  Probably a 7/10 game or something. 


Suikoden Tierkries:  So King Mage is a pimp, and at least 2 of his wives are giving off "they're evil" vibes right from the start.  Well, this clearly can't possibly go wrong!  ...I don't know quite the nature of what WILL go wrong and when, but I'm sure its related to King Mage in some manner.

Also, apparently, I'm looking for Shark People.

[Nephrite]

Miracles happen if you believe in the heart that believes in America.

This is very true.

[Tide]

Unfortunately the heart of America was defeated by GRANDIA BOSS

It is a sad day for humanity

[Dark Holy Elf]

Mega Man 9 - Beaten again. I was out of practice so I had quite a good number of resets on Wily. Like... despite the fact this was my 31st time beating the game, more than I've had on any one playthrough of any original-series Mega Man game that isn't 9. Did I mention MM9 has the hardest Wily in the series? Yeesh. Love it, though. Haven't decided if I'll chain-play this a few times or pick up something else. Leaning towards some chain-playing because seriously, 31 playthroughs? What a lame number to stop at.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 - Not too much to say here, I update about it in Backloggery more than I do here because I just... don't have a huge amount to say about it! Pretty solid obviously. Has a few flaws which bug me now and then (the most recent one: why is Bowser such a wuss in this game? Doesn't really build up to an intimidating final boss fight) but overall they're pretty minor and the game is fun stuff.

[Niu]

Dissidia 012- I must say Ex-Revenge is a HORRIBLE feature. And I have mix feeling about nerfing the accessories and make the rule setting the focus of the tweaking. The the multiplier accessories are certainly more balanced now. Though, they kinda reduced the ex force but too much, making Ex-Mode quite pointless outside throwing in Ex-Burt. Thus making Ex-Revenge infinitely more valuable.... but Ex-Revenge is just too horribly broken that I really don't want to use it.

[Rozalia]

Welcome back Fenrir, its what a year/year and a half since you last were on here (That I know about anyway). Good to see you.

MVC3 - Switched Zero out for Magneto, doing slightly better.

Also how so is it broken Niu? I'm not challenging you on this I'm just interested on what this new feature is as I haven't get up with Dissidia news.

[Niu]

There is no more ex cancel and ex counter this time. Instead, it gets replaced by Ex-Revenge. If you hit ex-mode while getting hit, you'll not enter ex-mode, instead a time stop effect will occur, and in its short duration, you are free to pummel the opponent however you like, and the only way your opponent to stop you is by lunching assist at you.

Sounds balanced? No. As there are ways to extend the duration of the time stop, with a reasonable amount of set up, you can unleash like 4 of your own attack with your own assist, and with extended tweaking.... the result is just oh my god. Yes, the attacks can be interrupted by opponent's assist... but assist isn't 100% accurate and assist gauge isn't the easiest thing to maintain. You can even develop strategies on getting hit on purpose when the opponent's assist gauge is empty then beat them to death by Ex-Revenge.

[Sierra]

Dead Money: You know, as engaging in conversation as my super mutant buddy is, I really wish he would shut the hell up during exploration. My god, it's like he loops through the same collection of voiceclips on a minute-by-minute basis. Nooot going to be using him more than I have to just because of that, grows annoying very quickly. Mind, I don't really need someone else around just for survival purposes, so it's only a nuisance when he's forced. I maxed guns and energy weapons in the maingame and my PC is basically built to execute headshots, so while the resource scarcity of the villa can make things tense, I'm very well-equipped to deal with the hazards. The otherwise useless regeneration implant I wasted my money on in the maingame is actually a help here given the lack of non-radioactive food and places to rest.

I also seem to have come in with just the right stat/skill selection to get the most conversation out of the NPCs. Took pumping all the skill points of my first post-expansion level into medicine to get through to Christine, but still, totally worth it, glad I had enough already to make that possible. I found her, Veronica. Will endeavor to keep her alive.

[Nitori]

Bioshock 2 - As it turns out you make friends by not killing them, literally amazed

[Fenrir]

Rozalia: It's been a lot more than that, actually. Three years?

El Cid, if God bores you, switch to Dog!
You won't keep your allies for long anyway. (Not a spoiler) I loved Dean Domino, personally.

Dragon Age: I fought some dragon. It didn't end well. I tried everything, bombs, poison coating, traps... Nope. Reminds me of Firkraag: There's probably some good trick to beating this dragon, but right now I'm just getting chewed. Bombs are pretty awesome in this game, it's the first time they failed me.
I got betrayed in Orzamar, and I wasn't expecting it... Male dwarves are disgusting in this game. Their beards disappear into their bodies whenever they're talking. Ew.


Game of the day: Divinity 2: Dragon Knight Saga (360/PC)



Niiiice.

Divinity 2: Ego Draconis was released in 2009 and got overall mixed reviews. (Bad sign, as PGs have higher scores than average. There's an even worse sign: It's a sequel to a game called Divine Divinity) Larian, the german developer, changed the engine, tweaked a ton of things, added an expansion and released the whole thing for a lower price. The game got a great reception and was a smash hit in Europe, and it's not hard to see why.

The game kind of works like a 3D Diablo. Solo character, you're chugging potions all the time, you have big skill trees and can specialize in whatever you want. It's an action game, as movement matters and you can dodge spells/arrows and the likes, but it's no Demon's Souls. You can't even block with a melee character, you can only dodge. You can also turn into a dragon, which is a nice distraction but not too important in the grand scheme of things.

Unlike Diablo clones, there's a big focus on writing and quests. As usual in the best WRPGs, there's a ton of different and interesting ways to finish quests. In this however, you can mindread anyone for an experience cost. It's pretty awesome and often gives worthwhile rewards. You can expose lies, learn of passwords and secret passages, get skill/stat boosts, listen to useless trivia, you name it. I actually just ended up mind reading everyone.

Unlike something like Dragon Age (Which is SERIOUS BUSINESS), Divinity 2 goes all out. You get the ability to turn into a dragon, kill ultra powerful mages and archdemons from beyond time and space, acquire an island early on with a big tower in the middle and some magic levitating  rocks on top of this, all in the beginning of the game.

I'd say that getting your own tower is the best part of the game; you have to choose between two alchemists/necromancers/smithies/trainers, and the ones you don't pick end up dying. The choices are never clear cut. (Arrogant and experienced alchemist or incompetent and desperate alchemist?)

There are definitely polish issues. Enemies never respawn until the expansion, so these large and beautiful landscapes feel extremely empty whenever you revisit. I believe that every female character has the same face; only hair and makeup make one differ from another. There's way too much action in the middle of the game, and way too much conversation in the expansion. Loot is generated randomly, and badly, so you never really care about treasure as much as you should. Fortunately, non RNGed powerful item sets scattered around the world are there to compensate for this.

Oh yeah, good graphics and lot of good humour too. Overall, it's really worth it. My favourite Xbox exclusive since ME2 isn't one anymore, easily worth something like a 9/10.

My archer had a rough beginning but got ridiculously powerful lategame. The final boss got 2HKOed.