#I wasn’t one to grind for high stats and armor and levels but I consistently played

[okaratauri]

Destiny since childhood

[atsushishelteredinmoonlitjasmine]

Fire Emblem: Awakening Thoughts

As of the date May 20th, 2020, I finished my playthrough of Fire Emblem: Awakening on its one year anniversary of when I got it. It is now June 5th of writing this. This post will be my thoughts and feelings on Awakening, much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post last year. Let's get into some history between me and Fire Emblem before I go into Awakening.

As I've said before, Awakening was both my first Fire Emblem game and my first Tactical RPG. Smash Bros. was where I had heard of Fire Emblem but it wouldn't be until Ultimate came out that I would start to get interested. It was because of my friend's preference for Lucina that got me into playing as her in Smash and that's pretty much how she became both one of my mains and a favorite. It honestly wasn't till I listened to the Smash remixes of Id, Conquest, and Lost in Thoughts All Alone that I decided to play Awakening and then Fates. So thanks go out to both Smash and my friend Eric for converting me to Fire Emblem trash!

Much like the KH3 Grievances and Blessings post, I'll be going over every aspect of Awakening I can think of, from the graphics to the gameplay to the story. I'll even include a Best/Worst Girl and Boy of both generations because that kind of thing seems to matter to some people, along with my reasons for why X is Y. Keep in mind that whoever I choose as those categories, it is just my opinion and you're free to disagree with me. I say this because I know that, no matter what I say, some diehard fans will get pissed at me and come at me for daring to shit on their favorite character. I already know some people are gonna get mad because they think X should be Best/Worst and that'll be fun to see (You can interpret that as sarcasm if you want).

Listed below are Awakening spoilers, so if you want to play the game and don't want to be spoiled, now's your chance to stop reading. I know Awakening came out in 2013, meaning 6 or 7 years ago, but there may be some people who haven't gotten around to playing it yet so I want to be courteous to them. Here are my thoughts on Fire Emblem: Awakening!

First off, the graphics. I think they looked really nice for a 3DS game that came out in the early 2010's and I believe this was Fire Emblem's first fully 3D game as well so that's really impressive. The in-game models were nicely detailed, the in-game sprites were nice looking, and the prerendered cutscenes were beautiful. This doesn't mean they're not without their faults, though. I wish the in-game cutscenes were more animated because it's easy to tell when an animation's been used over and over again, I feel as if the in-game sprites have some dissonance with official art, and there are times where expressions or animations for the prerendered cutscenes have looked pretty awkward. In terms of the first and last point, I'm giving IntSys some slack because, as I stated earlier, they were developing a game for the 3DS, a powerful handheld device but it's still a handheld, and this was FE's first 3D game so there may have been issues transitioning from 2D sprites to 3D models. I'll explain what I mean by my second point. I've looked at Cynthia's official art and when I see her face, I tend to see what I'd call a baby face, pudgy cheeks and all. Her in-game sprite, however, her face is sharper, more mature, if that makes sense. Maybe it's the pigtails throwing me off or it's just a difference between two art styles, I don't know. I'm not an artist so there's not much weight behind this but I'm just saying there's somewhat a dissonance between official art and in-game sprites.

Secondly, gameplay. I loved how easy it was and how I could switch between a simple and complex UI if I wanted to see which attacks could hit or what the enemy's stats were. This may sound stupid but I honestly thought it'd be way more difficult due to this being a Tactical RPG. I know strategy's a big part of Fire Emblem but strategy's not a big problem if you're like me and you grind to hell and back. Speaking of which, I played on Easy Casual mode so that might be why it seemed so simple from the get-go. Just to give you an idea of how much I grinded, I put in 200+ hours and that mostly consisted of buying a shitton of Reeking Boxes, spawning Risen on some of my favorite grind spots, and fighting them over and over again. I went through the 3 basic classes each character could have, maxed out their default class one last time, promoted them to their advanced class, and maxed out those classes 2-3 times over. I have a video on my Twitter that shows the stats of these characters and most of them are over 220 (The shapeshifters 300). Needless to say, I loved each and every fucking crit I got. Cordelia even got what I call a miracle crit, which means she got 2 crits in one round and after the enemy attacked, she got another 2 crits. Level grind ain't a joke in this game.

Thirdly, the music. Considering it's part of why I got into this game in the first place, I loved it. As I'm writing this, I'm listening to the OST and it sounds so much better when you don't have the ambient sounds and you're not listening to it through the 3DS speakers. The song that hit me the most and just gave me the overwhelming feels was Id~Sorrow as it played in Chapter 21. It fit so well with the tone of the scene and I just sat there for a few minutes, letting it play in the background as I did shit. Other notable mentions are Id~Purpose, Destiny, Conquest, and the song that is just ellipses. If the music is this good in Awakening, I can't wait to see what's in store for Fates!

Fourthly, the voice acting. For a game where most of the voices come in forms of clips, I thought they were good. Each of the actors tried their best to convey their characters in the clips they were allowed to have and I think it shows. The only critique I have, and it's not the actors' fault, is that some of the characters' voices don't fit them. I'm not saying they miscast these characters, it's more like the direction was off, if that makes sense. Let me bring up Cynthia, Kjelle, and M!Morgan as examples. I don't think it's a stretch to say that, sometimes when you look at a character, you kinda imagine what they'd sound like before you hear their actual voice, right? I already brought up Cynthia's looks so I imagined her voice to sound very high-pitched and maybe a little childlike. I hear her voice and, while she's high-pitched and some of her voice clips do go into that childlike territory, she's nasally sounding and more mature. Kjelle is a complicated case in that, her voice fits her appearance (minus the armor) but not her personality. Her personality is similar to Sully's so I figured her voice would sound gruffer and not...cute, if that's the right word. M!Morgan's, I think, everyone can see the problem with. He's supposed to be the youngest of the kids, right? Since he's the only third generation character and all that? I think he just sounds a little too old for the supposed baby of the kids. Again, I'm not saying the voices are bad or that the delivery/emotion was bad, I just think the direction in which they were voiced don't fit some of the characters. Maybe I'm just thinking in terms of archetypes or something.

Now we move on to the story. I can't say as to whether it was good or not, mainly because I spoiled myself on it way before I decided on playing Awakening, so I don't think I can say much to the quality. The least I'll say is it's serviceable. I'll admit, the one thing I was shocked by was the appearance of the Grima Avatar because I thought Grima was inside Robin the whole time and I didn't think he'd have a separate vessel. I straight up thought Grima!Robin was either my mother or a twin I wasn't aware of so I'm giving credit to the writers for surprising me. Anyway, I think the only flaw I have with the story is with the pacing. I thought the first half was fine, it wasn't too fast or too slow. It was the second half that the pacing couldn't find a middle ground. Now I'm going to say that this half was stretched out over months of my playtime so whatever I say next might be exaggerated because of my procrastinating ass so... I feel like the Valm arc was way too slow and the Grimleal arc had so much trouble finding a middle ground. The beginning of the Grimleal arc was quick but Grima himself decided that I had to finish 2 and a half chapters before I finally got to beat him and you have to deal with constant reinforcements before you kill off the target. I think if it weren't for my overleveled as fuck units, I wouldn't have finished Awakening in time for my birthday.

Just for shits and giggles, I'm gonna say what I picked for my choice with both Luce's judgement and Grima's fate. I picked the self-sacrificial choices, which means I accepted Luce's judgement and allowed her to kill me and I dealt the final blow to Grima so Chrom didn't have to. While I knew the outcomes of both choices and them ultimately not meaning anything, I wanted my Robin to reflect what I would've done and I'm a very self-sacrificial person. Because I made Chrobin happen in my playthrough, which meant Luce was my daughter, I believe that, if my child who came from an apocalyptic world told me I was the reason for that happening and that she came back through time to stop that future from happening so she and the others wouldn't suffer, I would've let her kill me. Parents would and should do anything for their kids and if my death possibly gave my daughter the chance for a better life, I'd take it in stride. As for me dealing the final blow to Grima, if it was to save everyone I loved, I would've done it. Although there's some feelings of wanting to give a big "Fuck you" to Grima and to permanently end the problem so any future descendants wouldn't have to deal with it. This section may sound more philosophical and personal than I usually write but I think it deserved it.

Now we're on to Supports and who I chose to be together. I don't think it's wrong to say that this is where the characters really get to shine and it's because of the Supports I love these kids and how much I'm going to miss them when I move on to other FE games. As for the "canon" couples, I mainly went with characters that I thought would complement each other and this was one of the few things I tried to choose for myself. I tried my best to go for pairings that weren't fan favorites but I'm also not very connected with the fandom as of writing this so I may be completely wrong in which ships were favorites or not. So here are the pairings I got for my playthrough!

Chrom-Robin

Frederick-Sumia

Virion-Miriel

Vaike-Nowi

Stahl-Sully

Lon'qu-Cordelia

Ricken-Lissa

Gaius-Maribelle

Gregor-Cherche

Libra-Panne

Henry-Olivia

Lucina-Inigo

Owain-Cynthia

Brady-Nah

Kjelle-Laurent

Severa-Yarne

Obviously, there are some characters missing from this list and I can explain why. I didn't recruit Kellam and Tharja and it's because your girl is a dumbass. Kellam, I thought, was already on my team, he was just labelled as an ally so I didn't need to recruit him. They really should've made that clear. Tharja, on the other hand, was an even bigger dumbass than me because she decided to charge after Robin, who happened to be in front and was way overleveled, and got her ass promptly beaten with a crit. I regret not getting Kellam but after hearing how awful of a person Tharja is and how many fans are willing to put aside emotional abuse and stalker-like tendencies to have a chance to fuck her, she can stay buried in the sand where I electrocuted her ass. Unfortunately, this does means Noire didn't pop up in my recruitment list and that fucking sucks. The only characters left I didn't have a pairing were Gerome and Morgan. I think Gerome wouldn't really care for a romantic partner because he's all about not wanting to create ties in this time and shit and, since I see Morgan as the baby of the kids, I figured he'd be a little too young to be in a relationship. Despite that, I wish I got him and Nah together because I found out after she was shipped with Brady that Morgan's the only S-Support she'll say "I love you" to and I was immediately filled with regret.

Before I move on to the Best/Worst contest, there's something I need to bring up because I can see what sensible fans have shown now. This game is HELLA gay. Like, holy fuck, how many instances are there where you have two characters of the same sex and they have dialogue that seems to have been written with romantic intent but the writers decide it's meant to be platonic? Maybe I just have this weird line of thought on how straights are because there's no fucking way some of these gay moments would be a thing with even the most accepting straights. Maribelle calling Lissa darling and other pet names, Robin blushing from some of the girls and even mistaking Flavia's proposition for a marriage proposal, Severa looking at Kjelle's abs, the list goes on. I'm not straight because I'd be doing some of this shit with a potential girlfriend if I could! Why did it take IntSys until 3 Houses to implement LGBT+ pairings when this game is right here?! At least this game doesn't have the weird student/teacher relationships 3H has and believe me when I say that, if it weren't for the fact I could give less of a fuck for 3H, I wouldn't play that game for that reason! Anyway, Awakening is hella gay and it should've been the first LGBT+ FE game instead of 3H.

The Best/Worst contest... As I said in the beginning, there'll be a Best/Worst Boy and Girl for both generations because that's fun and it seems to matter a lot to some people. Repeating what I said, this is just my opinion and you're free to agree or disagree with me. One rule I'm putting in is I will try my best to not pick fan favorites. Don't get me wrong when some of the crowd pleasers are good but there are other characters that deserve just as much love as the fan favorites so this is why I'm putting in this rule. Without further ado, here are the rulings!

1st Gen

Best Boy-Lon'qu

Best Girl-Panne

Worst Boy-Virion

Worst Girl-Miriel

2nd Gen

Best Boy-Owain

Best Girl-Cynthia

Worst Boy-Inigo

Worst Girl-Severa

Let's see how many people I piss off with these judgements. So, my reasoning: Best Boy for 1st gen was a big toss-up. I kept wanting to choose between Chrom, Frederick, Stahl, and Lon'qu because they really endeared themselves to me but I chose Lon'qu in the end because he's honestly such a dork (I mean, all of them are) and I gotta admire how he tries to overcome his fear of women and try being there for his wife and daughter if he happens to have one. There's also the fact he has to literally psyche himself up to talk to women if you check in with him in the Barracks and I'm just like "Fucking hell, that's adorable and I GET it". Best girl is Panne because believe me when I say that the moment I see this woman and hear her voice, I'm immediately gay for her. Then she transforms into a giant rabbit, kicks so much ass, and I'm in love. Funny story, I'd talk to my friend about my progress in Awakening on Discord and the moment he asks me who best girl was and I answered Panne, he called me out for being a furry. Granted, I would've automatically said Luce but I'm trying not to pick fan favorites so I get his criticism. If a woman like Panne existed in real life, bunny ears and tail and all, I'd probably become a furry for her, no questions asked. As for worst boy and girl, Virion and Miriel are characters I honestly don't give much of a fuck about. Not that they're bad, I just don't care about their archetypes, if that makes sense. Miriel I found to be boring and Virion's of the Casanova archetype and I've always kinda hated that archetype so that's why they're on the ranking.

Oh boy, 2nd gen. So, best boy being Owain. This boy is going to kill me. He's so adorable and sweet and he's just a good boy. There are literally Tweets on my Twitter where I just gush about him and he deserves so much love. He's just a sweet boy who loves his parents so much and is so proud to be their son and how he manages to rope his cousins (Luce and Morgan) into going with his fantasies and how they just go along with it! Owain is a cinnabun and I want to protect him and love him. Anyway, best girl being Cynthia is sorta the same reason as Owain. She's just so bubbly and happy and just adorable. Yeah, she may get carried away with showboating but I just love her earnest desire to be a hero. I think everyone can see why I paired Owain and Cynthia up. Now for the worst. Inigo and Severa are probably the only characters in this whole game that straight up got on my fucking nerves and for different reasons. Outside of his supports with Olivia and Henry, Inigo's constant flirting with the girls and Robin and inability to take no for an answer just rubbed me the wrong way. I actually put out a Tweet saying how Inigo's like an r/niceguy and I still think he is one. Course, this doesn't mean I didn't have my fair share of laughs from him. I fucking died at his and Gerome's A-Support where he ends up pathetically crying after the emo loner got more game than him and Gerome has to comfort his ass, that was hilarious. It also helped the fact that Liam O'Brien, who I've only heard him as the brooding emo loner role, voiced Inigo as the complete opposite of that and I had a blast. Severa, on the other hand, was...really unpleasant. There's a reason I hate Tsunderes with a passion and it's because they're unnecessarily bitchy towards everyone they know, even if they have no reason to be. Severa, however, was somehow worse because she went out of her way to be horrible to people. My dislike for her was cemented the moment I saw her and Cynthia's C-Support and she chose to make fun of her, despite Cynthia minding her own business and Severa just going "fuck it". However, I should express that I understand why Inigo and Severa are the way they are and that's why I'm not being as harsh on them as I could be. They still have their good moments and I can appreciate them while also raking them over the coals.

So that concludes my review/experience of Fire Emblem: Awakening! Despite some moments of frustration and annoyance, I had fun playing this! I mean it when I say I'm gonna miss these kids but I had plenty of time to spend with them so it's time to move on to newer lands. Next up on the list is Fates and I think I'm siding with Hoshido first. It's funny how, despite me spoiling the story for myself 3 separate times, I still can't remember much, if any, of it so that may say something about the quality. I also know Fates is pretty divisive among the fandom but the thing I know it for is the weird pseudo-incestuous ships it has so that's going to be fun! Hopefully, I'll get around to playing as one of my other mains in Smash, my water horse dragon Corrin, sometime soon and I'll be sure to let everyone know when my journey will start!

[thehallofgame]

Review: Dragon Age Origins

Sorry for the delay! For some reason I found this one challenging to write and it took a few extra days to get out. Sorry about that.

Dragon Age Origins

Release: 2009

My Rating: 8.5/10

              I’ve taken to saying that if you get four dragon age fans together none will agree on which of the three Dragon Age games is the best. Where Bioware’s Mass Effect series nailed its tone and gameplay the first time out and continued to refine it over the next couple of games (Andromeda excluded) the studio’s Dragon Age series reinvented itself with each core entry to considerable uproar every time. Yet, somehow, the series retained a core fanbase and a through line based more on their engrossing world than any continuous story.

              The original version of this game launched in 2009 on PC and was later ported to consoles following the game’s success. Unfortunately, the game’s mechanics just weren’t built with controllers in mind and though playable when ported, were awfully clunky. Thus the PC version remains the ideal way to play this game. This is especially true now that the Ultimate Edition, which comes with all of the DLC alongside the base game, can be regularly purchased for under ten dollars on sale.

              Bioware’s roots as a Dungeons and Dragons RPG maker are on proud display in Dragon Age Origins, which feels and plays a lot like a tabletop RPG campaign. The player takes the role of the Grey Warden, a protagonist whose gender, face, race (as in human, dwarf or elf) and starting class (warrior, rogue or mage) they can mix and match to their hearts content. These choices will land the character in one of six backstories that are all gristly, tragic and end with them fleeing for their lives. They are then rescued by Duncan, a knight of the Grey Warden Order, who shelters them on the condition they join the order and travel with him to fight the ‘Blight’ brewing in the distant south of the land. The Warden agrees and off they go, collecting party members along the way.

              Unfortunately, disaster strikes and what was to be a glorious victory against the Blight, an army of totally-not-orcs called Darkspawn and the undead dragon leading them, instead turns into a massacre. The newly recruited Warden and a few allies are all that survive of the order. With the blight still threatening to burn and pillage through the defenseless kingdom of Ferelden the Warden decides to raise their own army to counter the threat and do their duty. Meanwhile, the order has been framed for the murder of the king, loss of the army and the political strife tearing the country apart.

              With that, the player is sent off on their journey with a checklist of potential supporters to visit and request aid of. This amounts to four initial core quests to complete as well as a bevy of side-quests to be discovered via becoming close to party members, speaking to NPC’s and several organizations the Warden can choose to help. While most of the side quests amount to fetch or hunting quests they’re all dressed up nicely with supporting story, unique and challenging enemies (including all the hardest encounters of the game) as well as ample reward that makes them feel like a natural part of the game rather than padding. Meanwhile, the story quests have entire regions with multiple levels tied to them and their quest chains. Each story feels unique, engaging and encapsulated. Choice is a major aspect of any Bioware game and Dragon Age does an excellent job of making those choices feel like they matter and impact the end of the game (even if the ending is mostly decided in the final hours). However, the choices the Warden makes in the story quest will effect who comes into power during the civil war, which people will or won’t join the Warden’s party and what kind of hero the Warden is perceived as.

              Unlike in Mass Effect Dragon age doesn’t have a black and white morality system, but rather reflects moral and political allegiances that other characters will react to. While it’s possible to recruit every single character no matter what choices the player makes they may not like the Warden’s choices, which makes befriending them harder. Likewise the player’s choices will inevitably cause them to gain one advantage at the cost of another, especially during the pivotal moments of the game. Unfortunately most of the choices do have an answer that’s more objectively ‘right’ than another, though most could be interpreted with equal weight in the culture of the game world. For example, the player isn’t going to have a cultural stigma against elves, magic or anything else that doesn’t exist in our world but conflicts will be presented on the assumption the character that they’re playing does. Incidentally, the Warden’s race and class also make a massive difference in how they’re treated, and the options for responses they have in certain situations. This makes roleplaying a character very immersive and engrossing, but can be a bit of a let down for those who don’t get as deeply invested in their characters and the world of the game.

              The Warden will come across and have the option to recruit up to eight party members in the base game (the Stone Prisoner DLC adds a ninth). Some join the party of their own volition, but others have short quests or pivotal decisions that influence their willingness to come along. These followers each fall into the three base classes of mage, warrior or rogue but have their own unique specializations and abilities that give them each a unique combat style that can be tweaked to the player’s liking. Of these characters three will be willing to develop a romantic relationship with the Warden, though the options of who will vary with which gender of Warden is being played. Luckily, there are two bisexual characters so if the player wishes to pursue a same-sex relationship they can.

              Each companion has an approval rating that represents how friendly they feel toward the Warden. Higher ratings will impart increasing stat bonuses to the companion in combat. This rating goes up and down in response to the Warden’s actions, conversations had with the Warden in the party’s camp and via gifts that are found in the world and matched to the correct recipient. If the player reaches about 50% approval, or fulfills certain conditions, the party member will approach the Warden with a special quest. Completing that quest will impart a massive approval bonus and cement that character’s loyalty. On the flipside low approval could result in party members choosing to abandon the party or even turn on the Warden at pivotal moments.

              The gameplay is built around the hub of the party camp, which can be accessed from the world map. Here the warden can talk to the companions, use runes they find to enchant their weaponry and visit the merchant that follows the party around (which they’ll need to do often as the small inventory is prone to filling up). Upon leaving the player will head a party of themself and three additional party members. They will then select a destination on the world map and travel there. Almost always this is associated with a random encounter or a cutscene detailing events going on elsewhere in the world. If it wasn’t so consistent this feature would be annoying. However, as it can be anticipated, and there is a good mix of combat and story-encounters the random encounters aren’t particularly awful… though some are cripplingly hard. Some quest threads can’t even be encountered without traveling with specific party members, which again sounds worse than it is, because gameplay encourages swapping party around, the player will be returning to the world map and traveling on it often and because the story encounters almost always appear once the correct conditions for them have been met.

              Combat, however, can be a bit of a grind in and of itself. Each character can be equipped with four pieces of armor, four accessories and two sets of weapons. Matching pieces of armor confers a stat bonus, accessories can provide noticeable resistances to certain kinds of damage or confer stat bonuses and there’s an abundance of ranged and melee weapons to choose from. Add to that a system of specialization and ability chains that add a plethora of options, increase party members skill with certain weapons and the fact that the mage’s talents are designed to be stacked and used in clever ways to exploit bonuses as well as keep the party… and thing get very micromanagement heavy very fast.

              Dragon Age includes a system by which the player can go in and customize multiple sets of preferred behaviors for each character so that they don’t have to pause and switch characters as much on the fly. However, these behaviors basically amount to tiered if-then instructions that don’t always have the desired finesse, often activate in undesirable ways and without careful management might end up making things worse. Additionally, while the player can tailor different sets of behaviors for long battles, bosses or swarms of enemies they still have to go into a sub menu to switch these out, which defeats the purpose somewhat. For most players what ends up happening is that they find out who they can tailor to be self-sufficient, and whose abilities they need to micromanage (usually the party’s mages). Using a special ability depletes stamina and also has a short cooldown time. While stamina and health regenerate over time, it isn’t fast enough to keep up with the pace of comba so extended battles easily turn into white-knuckled slug fests. The player can craft or purchase health potions and potions to restore magical stamina, but rogues and warriors who run out of stamina are simply out. Meanwhile, if an ally runs out of HP and is KO’d they are out for the duration of the battle (with the exception of a high level healing spell with a very long cooldown). They’ll wake after the battle with an ‘injury’ that will impart a stat penalty until the player uses an injury kit to cure it or returns to the party camp. These injuries will stack, which can make party members all but useless in a long dungeon crawl without significant backtracking or resource management.

              The game encourages using a range of close and ranged combat, however, bows can’t be enchanted and often miss without the character being specialized in them specifically, so that quickly falls by the way-side. Likewise, for melee warriors weapons exist on a scale of sharp and accurate swords down to unwieldy hammers that are ideal for smashing armored enemies. This is good in theory but in practice is impractical. Switching like this necessities micromanagement again, and giving over precious inventory space to additional weapons when it’s already being choked with crafting items and good equipment the characters aren’t strong enough to equip yet. And all this is with the ability to map character abilities to keyboard buttons and use the mouse to accurately zoom out and survey the battlefield from certain angles (oh, and also hold down the tab key to identify hard to see items like loot or readable books). Doing this on a console is even more eye-twitch inducing.

              That all said, there’s something about Dragon Age’s combat that’s endearing. There’s something so satisfying about finally leveling up enough to equip the Legendary Sword of Legend or trying some hair-brained combination of obscure abilities and have them produce dramatic results. In the end, the system wears the minutia focused style of old Dungeons and Dragons like a badge of honor and did its best to recreate that in a game. This comes with a steep learning curve, but it eventually levels off and the player falls into a rhythm that will carry them through all but the hardest encounters.

              There’s so much more to be said about this game. It packs so much content into a game that’s ultimately not technically that long that it’s a little mind boggling. What Dragon Age lacks in gameplay and interesting visual design it makes up with in world building, compelling stories, interesting and beloved characters and climatic scenes with emotional payoffs that feel powerful and meaningful. Ultimately, Dragon Age is a great game that is only just beginning to really show the wear of its age. It also set an incredibly solid and tantalizing foundation for the future of its world and thus the Dragon Age franchise.

[ciathyzareposts]

Ishar: Legend of the Fortress: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

Our hero does . . . something . . . in celebration of his victory.

           Ishar: Legend of the Fortress

France

Silmarils (developer and publisher)

Released in 1992 for DOS, Amiga, and Atari ST

Date Started: 22 February 2020

Date Finished: 10 March 2020

Total Hours: 21

Difficulty: Moderate-Hard (3.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at time of posting: (to come later)

  Summary:

            First of a trilogy for which Crystals of Arborea (1990) served as a prologue, Ishar offers a classic kill-the-evil warlord adventure with tile-based, first-person gameplay similar to Dungeon Master or Eye of the Beholder. It has excellent graphics and sound but limited RPG mechanics, including combat and spell tactics, character development, inventory, and puzzle-solving. A couple of original features include a party morale system by which party members can override the player’s choice to recruit or dismiss a character and a saving system that requires the party to pay gold, but neither really plays much of a role in the end.

****

I could have gotten three more entries out of Ishar, as this final entry covers more than 15 hours. But I played it over a week-long period in which I was moving from one house to another, and something about the process made it easier to just keep playing than to stop and write. I apologize if I elide anything important in my summary below, but the good news is that a lot of Ishar‘s gameplay is repetitive. The constant need to replenish your supplies and find a tavern for food and sleep means that you backtrack frequently to the towns of the west while overall gameplay drives you east.                

Approaching the titular fortress.

         When I blogged last time, I had explored about half the game, having just crossed the bridge into the land of Silmartil. Lands further along include Kandomir, Urshurak, Vargaeon, Baldaron, Zendoria, Gil-Aras, Uldonyar, Elwingil, Halindor, Fhulgrod, and finally Valathar. That sounds like a lot of territories, but each one generally only has a couple of (respawning) monsters and a couple of encounters. The entire game world consists of four outdoor villages, two indoor cities, two dungeons, and a smattering of huts and other wilderness encounters. It spreads across the entire game what Might and Magic would have on a single 16 x 16 map.

The culmination of the game was far to the east, in the large dungeon (or, I suppose, fortress) actually called Ishar. But to survive its perils, I had to solve several sub-quests in the main game area.

When I last blogged, my party consisted of Aramir the warrior (the starting character), the monk “Unknown,” Nasheer the spy, Kiriela the priestess, and Golnal the warrior. Golnal and Unknown were pretty ineffective, and redundant, so I soon replaced Golnal with a paladin named Karorn, and eventually I dumped Unknown for a wizard named Zeloran. To get around party members overriding my dismissals, I simply put the unwanted characters at the front of the party with no armor, and I let them get killed by the next enemy.          

This is infuriating. I don’t know why some NPCs do it and some don’t.

         Naheer eventually took off while we were sleeping, so I replaced her with a third warrior named Manatar. I liked that balance, but soon afterwards I had to get rid of Manatar to accommodate a quest NPC–a spoiled princess named Deloria who had been kidnapped from her village in Baldaron. I found her in a building in Elwingil, the furthest city to the east.            

Manatar had good stats, but he wasn’t with us for long.

          Returning her to her father rewarded the party with a vital key to Ishar, but getting her out of the party was a bit of a chore. Karorn decided he was in love with her and refused to let her go. I tried killing Karorn, but his infatuation simply transferred to Aramir, and I didn’t want to kill him.               

Oh, boy. Here we go.

           The solution to that problem involved a potion. Potions become important in the game during the second half, and it took me a while to figure out how they work. First, you have to find an empty vial, of which there is only one in the entire game, in the dungeon in Rhudgast.          

The manual gives you the formulas but not the effects.

         I had previously noted that various shops sell reagents like rat’s brains and salamander oil. The manual tells what proportions of these reagents you need to make various potions, but it gives them nonsense names like “Trillix” and “Bymph.” What you have to do is find an alchemist named Jon the Unique in Kandomir, who gives you a scroll that translates the nonsense names into actual potion effects. (I think these might be randomized for each game as a copy protection exercise, but I’m not sure.) The manual has recipes for 15 potions, but the scroll only translates eight of them: “Physical Regeneration,” “Psychic Regeneration,” “Invulnerability,” “Cure Blindness,” “Apnea,” “Disrupt Charme,” “Pig Detransformation,” and “Brain Wash.”          

A scroll in the game tells you which words correspond to which effects.

          “Disrupt Charme” turned out to be the potion I wanted, but it required a unique ingredient, “turtle slobber.” Fortunately, I’d managed to obtain a vial by first finding a turtle near the sea in Silmatil and then giving it to an alchemist in Zendoria. I fed the potion to Karorn, and he got over his objection to losing Deloria.              

Where did Jarel get the key to Ishar?

            By this time, I was so enamored with my wizard, Zeloran, that I decided to fill the empty NPC slot with another one. I found one named Khalin in Elwingil. I spent a fortune getting them both equipped with the “Lightning” spell, which damages all visible enemies on the screen and makes wizards more valuable than warriors except that psychic energy runs out faster than physical energy.              

Blasting dwarf-bandits with “Lightning.”

           A lot of the game’s magic system is wasted. It costs so much to purchase spells that even by the end of the game, each of my spellcasting characters only had three or four. There’s no point wasting money on “Healing 3” when three castings of “Healing 1” do the same thing. I never explored a lot of useful-sounding spells like “Dissolve” (turns the party into a gas cloud that can blow through enemies) or “Inversion” (changes NPC alignments). Some of them seem useless–I never encountered any poison for “Cure Poison” or any invisible enemies for “Invisibility Detection” (except for one that you can’t detect that way). “Radar,” “Invisible Party,” and “Invulnerability” aren’t even described in the manual, just listed. “Regeneration,” “Resurrection,” and “Repulse” (sends all your enemies to hell!) could have been useful but I just never had the money. I basically had my wizards cast “Lightning” (and “Mental Shield” when it was clear it was needed) and my priest and paladin cast “Healing I,” and that was it.            

I never learned most of these spells.

           Money is tight throughout the game. You need it for sleeping and eating–one meal and one night’s rest costs over $2,000 in the eastern cities–saving ($1000 each), reagents (enough for a single potion might cost $7,000), spells, weapons and armor, and the occasional training. The shop in Elwingil sold high-level weapons and armor, and by the end of the game I was able to get my two warriors into magic armor and wielding the best swords, but no one else. I spent most of my spare gold on potion reagents because potions of “Physical Regeneration” and “Psychic Regeneration” are worth every penny if you’re far from a tavern.

Meanwhile, the places that train characters in strength, agility, and intelligence (I never found one that trained constitution) seem to be there to compensate for very weak characters, not to provide regular character development to already-strong ones. Every time you try to train, there’s a chance that it will go very well (increasing the attribute by 2 points), just okay (+1), or poorly (+0). I don’t think I ever saw an attribute increase when it was already past 10. Thus, for most characters the only form of development is by leveling, which improves maximum health. Several of my characters hit level caps (Level 10) near the end of the game, but not everyone did.

I grinded quite a bit for my gold and still arrived at Ishar mostly broke. (Ishar itself has tens of thousands of gold pieces, but you’d have to slog them back to civilization while very near the endgame.) I decided the best way to grind was to repeatedly enter and exit the two indoor cities in Elwingil and Urshurak. Each one spawns about half a dozen orcs that leave 500 or 1000 gold pieces each. Repeatedly entering and exiting the city was a good way to build both wealth and experience. 

By killing a large knight in Osghirod, I got a special helmet that allows you to see invisible enemies. This let me kill the invisible lizardman Brozl, who roams the huge area called Fimnuirh, and to loot from him five fire protection rings.

I spent a lot of time tracking down five rune tablets that you need for the final battle, or you can’t hit Krogh. One was out in the open, on a pedestal in Lotheria. A second was in a hut in Zendoria called “The Forbidden House,” so-named because my characters got cursed and slowly died of a wasting sickness after entering. I had to inoculate them with a potion before entering. Another was in the dungeon in Rhudgast. A fourth was on a pedestal in the outdoor area called Gil-Aras, but the party went blind the moment I entered the province. I had to use the “Cure Blindness” potion to see well enough to explore the small area. The fifth was in Ishar itself.             

A rune tablet in an area that causes blindness the moment you enter.

          In a house in Elwingil, one of Jarel’s companions from Arborea, Thurm, gave the party five monks’ robes that would disguise us as initiates in a certain place in Ishar.

Eventually, having explored everything else, I entered a teleporter in Halindor and found myself across the channel in Valathar. The entrance to Ishar is in the northeastern part of this island, but there were a few things to do first, including defeating the wizard the guarded the entrance. In the far southeast past some encounters with much tougher dwarf-bandits than I’d faced before, I found a pig standing in the middle of the forest. Since a wandering alchemist had recently given me some toad eye, a necessary ingredient for “Pig Detransformation,” I figured that’s what I wanted to use. I mixed the potion and applied it to the pig, and it transformed into an old woman named Morgula who offered to join my party.              

When there’s a potion called “Transform from Pig” and you find a pig, it’s not hard to figure out what to do.

                        If was reluctant to get rid of Khalin, but I figured Morgula must be special in some way since I had to go through so much trouble to get her. Sure enough, although she’s weak as hell and her physical energy depletes while you watch, she has a spell called “Anti-Krogh.” After I won the game and was doing my usual post-game research, I found that several web sites claim that Morgula is Krogh’s mother, but I don’t know where they get that, as her name appears nowhere in the backstory or in any of the NPC dialogue.            

How do you turn down that kind of appeal?

          It was finally time to take on Ishar. The fortress is quite large, with three separate sections separated by teleporters. There are numerous doors that you have to find keys to open, and one area that serves as the game’s only real puzzle: a sequence of six levers, each controlling two doors in a small maze of corridors. You have to find the right sequence of levers to open the right doors, which I did through trial and error. There’s a huge area full of poison gas that you have to mix five “Apnea” potions to successfully traverse.           

A lever puzzle took much of the time in the final dungeon.

           At one point, I killed a mage and looted from him an object that looks like the Silmarils logo, but I never found anything to do with it.           

Anybody want to take a guess?

          The final corridor features multiple encounters in succession. First, a medusa, for whom you need “Mental Shield” active for everyone to avoid petrification.            

Why does it look like medusa is a statue? She’s supposed to turn people into statues?

           Then there’s a huge red dragon. It takes a long time to kill him–and my primary fighter had to drink two “Physical Regeneration” potions during the process–but he doesn’t do much damage as long as you have the gold rings from Brozl.            

Poor dragon looks like he’s cramped.

           After the dragon was a door we had to be wearing our robes to enter . . .             

This is the first I’ve heard of Krogh starting some kind of cult.

          . . . then a corridor full of individual fights with spellcasters.           

Killing wizards in the final corridor. I thought this was Krogh at first.

          It all culminated with Krogh himself. He had a powerful magic attack, but it only took three castings of “Anti-Krogh” to kill him. I assumed it would be harder. I guess maybe it is if you don’t take Morgula.           

The evil Krogh. Fortunately, Morgula has a spell called “Anti-Krogh.”

            Alas, there was no real endgame. After Krogh died, the game played some triumphant music while one of my characters–Aramir, I guess–knelt in a circle of rotating pillars and held a crown above his head.              One element of the game that I never solved: there’s a sword in a stone that was supposedly left there by Jarel when he swore off violence. Despite the message, I couldn’t pull it out at any level or with the highest strength statistics.           

Any ideas?

          In a GIMLET, the game receives:

          3 points for the game world. I like the layout, but otherwise it’s a generic high-fantasy place with a generic high-fantasy quest. 1992 CRPG addicts are no longer satisfied with vaguely-described evil overlords trying to take over the world just because they’re evil.

3 points for character creation and development. There’s no creation process, just an assemblage of party members from the NPCs you find across the land. Development is quiet, almost invisible, and besides those of wizards and warriors, the game really doesn’t call upon the varied skills of its other classes. 

4 points for NPC interaction. There are a few fixed NPCs who provide hints and items, and then there are the NPCs who can join the party. I’ll allow a point for the uniqueness of Ishar‘s approach to alignment, where party members must vote to admit or expel new members, and apparently you can order one NPC to kill another, perhaps creating ramifications down the line (I never explored this), but none of it amounted to anything.

             A few unnecessary hints do not constitute much in the way of “RPGs.”

           2 points for encounters and foes. There aren’t really any non-combat encounters, and monsters are generic high-fantasy denizens with the standard types of attacks. They’re not even named on-screen. I thought the respawn rate was useful.

          Here was a powerful thing from inside the final dungeon.

          2 points for magic and combat. Even if I’d bought all the spells, I don’t think they really would have afforded much in the way of combat “tactics.” There isn’t much to do in combat but attack, cast, and keep an eye on the related meters. The party deployment grid is mostly wasted, and you can’t even do the “combat waltz” or other strategies common to Dungeon Master-style games.

4 points for equipment. You have a reasonably good selection of weapons and armor, with numbers denoting their relative effectiveness. The potion system isn’t bad except that you only have one flask.

          This shop in Elwingil offers the best weapons and armor.

         6 points for the economy. It remains relevant to the end, and I like the way that it forces you to make tough choices throughout the game. It just lacks a certain complexity that I would need for a higher score, plus perhaps more of a “money sink” in those attribute trainings.

2 points for a main quest with some sub-quests but no side-quests. There are no alternate endings or player choices.

6 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The graphics and sound are some of the best we’ve seen, just about perfect for the scale and nature of the game. I particularly appreciated the ambient sounds (including a murmur of voices in the taverns that I came to believe was “I’m riding down to Livermore with some recruits”). The music is suitably epic, though in my case turned off. The interface was only okay; too much mouse, too little keyboard.

6 points for gameplay. It has some minor nonlinearity and minor replayability (with a different party configuration). It’s almost perfect in its challenge (including its enforcement of limited saving) and its length.

             That gives us a final score of 38. That seems about right. I was thinking that it should at least cross into “recommended” territory, but in the end the game is too sophomoric in core RPG mechanics to break into the “truly good” range.            

           I expected the Amiga version to do quite well in European reviews (most U.S. publications, including Computer Gaming World, don’t seem to have taken note of it), so I was surprised to find mostly low scores even in Amiga magazines. Scores ranged from 48 (Power Play, September 1992) to 89 (CU Amiga, July 1992). The consensus seems to be the same as mine: the graphics are great, but it lacks in RPG mechanics like combat and character development, and it doesn’t have much of a plot. A few noted that with a Dungeon Master-style interface, they expected Dungeon Master-style puzzles. A paragraph from the British Amiga Action (July 1992), which gave it an 82, is representative:

            Noticeably distinguished in the graphics area, Ishar: Legend of the Fortress plays almost as well as it looks . . . Perhaps the downfall of Ishar is its simplicity; you begin to wish for more activity, interaction, and involvement, more problems and less roaming . . . Certainly a valiant effort by Silmarils and, if they can learn from this, a firm foundation for a sequel.

            Not everyone felt as positively as I did about the pay-to-save mechanism. My fellow blogger, Saintus, abandoned it after one session for that reason. Magazines, if they mentioned it, mentioned it negatively. In contrast, a lot is made in the magazine reviews about the party morale or alignment system in which characters form bonds, defy orders, and “have their own personalities,” none of which is reflected in the game in any interesting way. I suppose Ishar did some trailblazing here, but I’ll concede that an NPC “has his own personality” when he actually says something. Yes or no votes on other party members aren’t quite enough.                                              

Does this really add that much?

               Silmarils will have plenty of opportunities to continue to improve on this system. Ishar 2: Messengers of Doom will be along in 1993 and Ishar 3: The Seven Gates of Infinity in 1994. We also might have them for Robinson’s Requiem (1994) depending on my decision on the genre. After that, Silmarils changes its focus to action games and ultimately goes out of business in 2003.

Although some commenters have suggested a certain amount of “Frenchiness” to this game, I think it’s safe to say that we’ve long-since exited the era of truly outré French titles like Mandragore (1985) and Tera: La Cité des Crânes (1986). Instead, Silmarils seems to be following early-1990s Germany by producing copies of successful American games, albeit with some of their own twists. I’ll miss the bizarre nature of the 1985-1989 French “golden age,” but then again there are still a few titles on my clean-up list.

I gave the choice of the next “upcoming” game to Sebastian, who designed my banner, and he opted for Lands of Lore (1993). That’ll be along in a few games. Next we’ll finally take a look at Planet’s Edge.

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/ishar-legend-of-the-fortress-won-with-summary-and-rating/

[thelongestdamnreviews]

Tactics Ogre: One Vision (mod)

As far as I know, One Vision is the only mod for the PSP version of Tactics Ogre.  The intent behind the mod was to balance things, make the OP things less so, change things around, make the game different but not change it at its core.  This review covers v0.91a, the latest version available when I started playing again.  There's now a v0.92 available as of August 15 2018, so that's worth consideration.  Download is available here. 

The first biggest change is that characters in battle no longer get 0.1 added to all stats when the class they're in levels up.  Instead, classes confer a percentage of given stats at each level regardless of their taking the field or not.  So if you have a character class change to a Lv20 Dragoon, they would have comparable stats to one who was a Dragoon from level one. 

A screenshot of the patchnotes, but this is still a good guide to follow.

Hired generics also are set to randomly be set under four different base stat distributions, for frontline fighters with lots of STR and VIT, archers with lots of DEX and AGI, mages with lots of INT and MND, and all-rounders.  You have to look at the blue bars on the hiring screen to tell what archetype they fit into, and they change each time you enter the screen too. 

Magic changed substantially too.  You're no longer able to use grimoires during battle, so you can't have your Warrior throw out Exorcisms when your Cleric is busy.  If you want magic, you actually need to field people that naturally use it instead of stocking up on one-shot spells.  Instill spells are now learnable Skills that cost TP and quite often I'd get an Instill off after moving and attacking someone instead of sacrificing my attack to power up.  Elemental magic now inflicts Averse of the opposite element so it's possible to set up elemental volleyball combos with two mages.  Reagents are no longer used and use MP/TP/sometimes HP to fuel them instead, though the buffing Ninjitsu still requires them plus a pittance of TP. 

Healing got buffed.  It now scales slightly with MND but it also heals a percentage of the target's maxHP as a secondary effect, but this won't happen when using heals to hurt the undead.  This makes enemy Clerics straight goddamned bats because they can and will undo a lot of the damage you're dealing to the enemy leader and several fights field one or two in the very back.  Enemies still have a ton of HP so enemy healers are priority one...or you can trick their AI and beat the crap out of another enemy in range so they heal that one instead.  I seriously exploited this several times since rushing Hawkmen to deal with them was potentially fatal for my guys.  Knights lost the ability to heal too so thankfully all of the enemy leader Knights won't tank and heal all the hurt you'll bring.

Oh, and resurrect magic no longer exists as far as I found.  You can save someone from death with two new items, the Lifeline Gem that Shiftstones them from the field (but never to return), or the Lifeline Gem that revives the ally and restores their HP, but removes the user instead so you're still permanently down one ally for that fight. 

Magic availability got shuffled around too.  Wizards and Spellblades get access to missile spells, but Warlocks can only use indirect magic.  Draconic Magic now uses the caster's weapon power in the damage formula and I often had it dealing the most damage between plain elemental magic and using the weapon normally. 

Items got the biggest change.  Gear is now normalized and every class of weapon or armor now does the same thing with higher tiers having better stats.  So 2H Swords all deal damage with a chance to inflict Stagger, and they give a bonus to AGIL, so late-game ones would do more damage and give more bonus stats--weight and RT stay consistent.  Armor is split between cloth/caster, light, and heavy.  Light armors boost evasion, while heavy armors boost HP and VIT for soaking up damage.  Ranged weapons have much higher RT values across the board, to make up for their users not moving as often as your frontliners.  

The Cutlass, Khora, and Damasc Sword are all the same weapon, but their stats are different.  I didn’t mess with crafted weapons but I imagine they break the ‘same thing, better stats’ pattern.  

Crafting got overhauled, so instead of getting +1 gear that's clearly better than the original, you get sidegrades.  2H Sword sidegrades are heavier and more damaging, but come with an AGIL penalty, Hammers have a high change to knock a target back, Cudgels trade caster bonuses for bonuses fighters would enjoy, Fists damage the target's MP as well as HP, and so on.  Armor is a bit different, such as light armor getting a slightly heavier and more protective version to heavy armor getting even heavier and tanky.  Some caster armor is different, like the standard Wizard Hat's sidegrade having a sharp RES penalty but innate Absorb MP.  Crafting also doesn't require anywhere near the dumb number of steps like the original game--Wootz Steel for example can be done in one step and crafting is intended to be 100% successful (but it wasn’t in the early chapters for me, so possibly a bug) too. 

Purified Ore isn’t very cheap, but it beats repetitive stress injury. 

And of course Skills got changed around quite a bit.  Fortify, Strengthen, and the other +stat skills are entirely gone (though enemies currently have dummied-out versions applied), Instills are skills as said above, skills that level up by use do so much faster now (I got Steal up to 2 before the end of the game, even), racial skills are now changed around so you can't stick Anatomy on everyone now (so demihumans have a use for your team), and activateable skills were either changed in function or swapped around between classes.  Some skills like Bash or Counterhit or Field Alchemy had entire tiers removed, so Bash/Counter start at 50% and Field Alchemy I grants you use of most items instead of slowly unlocking them through the four tiers.  Status Effect resist skills are gone and -Proofs unlock much earlier, and they allow you to cast a 'free' single-target cleanse against that type too.  You'll generally have more SP than normal since you're not dumping them into +stat skills. 

Finishers were balanced and Brimstone Hail is no longer the be-all end-all it was in the original.  Each one inflicts a status effect or hits twice, and accuracy or damage is determined by current TP. 

And there's a bunch of other small mechanical changes like changes to RT, cost, range, area of effect, and so on.  Many things have new names now too. 

Some character sprites were changed.  Catiua now wears blue pants, Vyce has a red coat on Chaos/Neutral, Folcurt has a new sprite, Sara and Donalto have different portraits and have permanent sprites like unique characters, Tamuz was made into an interesting hybrid Hawkman that has access to Orc classes and he ended up being a pivotal part of my team as a Juggernaut.  Templar Knights were given distinctive colors so you could see at a glance what they were capable of--red Templars were either Wizards or Warlocks so could cast magic, green were Archers or Fusiliers, so they could snipe you, blue with a black collar was Cleric so kill them first, etc.  Given how many you have to go through in the last part of the game, having this kind of information is extremely helpful so you don't need to keep checking all of the identical mooks to see who's dangerous and who is easy pickings. 

Please brain enemies with your giant hammer, flying heavy armor man.  He can get Battering Ram to ignore Rampart Aura, but flying units kinda do that already. 

I think the difficulty as a whole was increased somewhat, mostly at the start when you have terrible gear and skills.  For example, the very first real battle has Canopus join you as a guest...and he died my first time in that fight.  Uh.  Canopus, the gamebreaker, died in an easy fight.  I wound up making Denam a Cleric and fielded a second one and I still had quite a few incaps.  No deaths, but I had to use the Chariot more than a few times because things went south fast.  The Chapter 2 Chaos fight against Vyce 1v1 wasn't bad with Cleric Denam, mostly because I used whatever to inflict Falsestrike and gave myself Truestrike, so I could whittle him down.  The Chapter 3 Neutral fight to save Cerya was made easier by her being given armor and leggings, but I had more trouble with actually killing Oz than keeping her alive (since you can use Lifeline Gems to ensure your guest lives).  That was one of the instances where I had to grind. 

I don't really have anything negative to say about the mod.  I had to grind a bit and that was off-putting, but I think that was what killed my interest in the original game.  The changelog is set up logically, but there's no rolling "this is everything that's different as of this moment" sort of list, so you kinda have to read from the bottom-up to get an idea of how many changes there are.  And there are a lot.  The PDF changelog is 67 pages long and 65 of them are patch notes, though not all of them are full pages.  Still, there's been a lot of work done on this mod and it really shows.  And it's not even done.  It is kinda annoying to have to actively overwrite your own memory of "oh, well X is different than what I read a few minutes ago" while you read, though. 

This isn’t a change that the mod made (as far as I know there’s no text alterations) but this is something that happened while I was going through a second route and I never knew this was possible. 

The changes to gear kind of makes new tiers unlocking less exciting, not that they really were much in the original.  Every standard upgrade does more than the prior one, but I don't really think it's a negative.  The author has also tried to use the crafting system to give direct upgrades to some items that have big gaps between levels so that does help to keep things feeling consistent.  I felt the light helmets gap between Circlet and Damasc Helm was pretty wide but that's something that can be addressed later.  At least the system is otherwise pretty consistent instead of having one item increasing one set of stats and the next iteration increases something else. 

One Vision is definitely worth a look if you're kind of tired of standard Tactics Ogre.  I think it does a fine job of cutting off the chaff and streamlining things, but you should take some time to look over the extensive changelogs so you're not going to get your ass handed to you when the tried-and-true tricks of old cease to work.  I'd suggest downloading a save that has classes maxed and so on so you can get a preview of all of the differences, if spoilers are no problem for you. 

I honestly feel like trying a for-fun run where Denam only has monster allies for some reason now... 

Edit:  Hi, I’m an idiot and I guess I thought it was the same name as the Deus Ex mod, but nope!  I fixed the name here almost a month after the fact.