Yeah, if one year ago someone had told me how they thoroughly torture who had been guilty of chosing a race whose numbers "had to be contained or all will play it" with giving them a miserable life I would not even had bothered subscribing at all.Time to declare victory on the "war on subscribers"?
Good choice. I found my copy with a rebate since it's not a new game.Meanwhile I'll see if I can get a copy of I o the dragon
I can tell you in advance some things of it, tho':
- very nice out of game interface, while the dragon graphics (expecially if you chose a bad gamma correction) are not as nice as those of Horizons dragons and show their wintage.
If you use 3D glasses both are amazing and well done.
- you'll like the "Baldur's Gate like" advancement system. You start with a weakling (hatchling anyone?) that levels up and can choose where to spend points (stats and / or spells). Later your body alters and becomes more and more powerful until you are a machine of destruction. Not ethernal, capped, suckadom.
- the game is simple and/blasphemy mode on/ fun /blasphemy mode off/. A start up company making this game as a demo of their engine (do you see any similarity?) and yet they understood what a player wants orders of magnitude better than AE will ever do in the best case.
When I am bored with Horigrind PermaTeleport (Dralk -> Bristugo -> Manta -> Last Stand -> Mithril -> smelt it to full -> recall to Dralk -> make scales -> Bristugo -> Saritova -> Pawn V -> Last Stand with intermixed happy CTDs, 24/7 since I have nothing more to do) and want to play a Game I fire up the I of the dragon and go killity.
- the attacks are what you "expect" from a dragon. Powerful (you may decide how much) or precise and improve as you level up. The moves are well animated, all magic spells have animation and sound (!!).
Yet if you suck at the game you die. But if you are very good you are a force to be reckoned with, with no asinine capping or dead ends.
- the effects are "dynamic", so if you fire a magic geyser, you see the actual terrain morph to tiny cones and spit stuff that then drops and digs holes burning what is in between. You get many spells and each is original and serves a different purpose.
Spell book full? There is a storage to place the least used in, not needing a deletion.
- quests with tangible results, where you feel important. You slay a ton of mobs and their lairs? You rebuild a city and get power and slots etc. Not a timid pathetic "+2" in a forgotten stat that is broken and would not affect you anyway. And in some quests the "view" changes and you impersonate i.e. a bowman whose role is important in that moment.
- three "flavours" of dragons for all the tastes. You are a Lunus? You play the "grunt"specialized infire and sports his physical prowess. You are Helian? There is a blue magician ice dragon with high magic predisposition that has a complement of spells. You love deaders? There is a black necromancer dragon that summons undead etc. etc.
- the game since launch never needed a patch. The effective workforce were four, capable, programmers. The game runs of every kind of dusty hardware and fast yet has as eyecandy as Horizons plus the effects affect the world. In Hz they are just a static effect animation.
I think that the playerbase should gather some pennies and send a copy of Baldur's gate, Planescape: Torment, Drakan and The I of the Dragon to AE so they learn what a game is about.