Roleplaying games

Just got a news about a game I reviewed some time ago, “Magic Stones“. The authors have released an interesting add-on called “The Magic Shop”. What is it? in practice it allows you to spend XP and PP (prestige points) in a sort of shop to buy avatars upgrades or, more interestingly, “perks”.

The word “Perks” instantly reminds me of the great Fallout game. Indeed, perks are some “special skills” that you can unlock only in the shop, and that will give your druid extra powers like faster mana regeneration, some elements bane (for example “air bane” will decrease the stats of all opponent avatars that are air-based).

The add-on can be obtained for $4,99 which seems reasonable. I had followed the author’s thoughts about charging for each new quest, because of the amount of work involved, but I see in the end he opted for giving away yet another free quest, but charging only for this add-on.

So personally I’ve decided to buy it, also because reading his blog, he has already started working in another rpg very similar to the old classics like “Dungeon Master” or “Eye of the Beholder”… this guy needs some encouraging!

Today got an email of a friend of mine, that was all pissed because couldn’t find the quest mode in the card/rpg game I reviewed some months ago, “Magic Stones”. After a brief discussion with him in chat, I found out the problem: he didn’t buy from the original author, but from another site!!!

Often portals or other online resellers have old/outdated versions on their sites, so if you find a demo on a portal that interests you, is always better to try to buy it directly from the author to avoid surprises. It isn’t developers fault, since mostly are forced to accept such deals to earn more money to support themselves. And portals don’t update their games, so if the author 2-3 months later adds new feature/updates, the portals version is always outdated.

You must be careful about search engine ranking problems though, because often you would just do a search for the “gamename”, and not always the first result is the original developer. So in this case if you do a search on Google for the word “Magic Stones” you could find yet another portal reselling the old version. Unfortunately Google just places the result based on the “link” power, so a portal could easily get on 1st places.

What is the solution then? easy! - just google for the developer name! in this case, search “Winter Wolves”, or for other good roleplay games like Avernum, etc, always google for the author/developer name, like “Spiderweb”.

That way, you’ll buy directly from author supporting himself and his hard work, and also you won’t have unpleasant surprises!

Hope this tip will be useful to someone.

Nwn2 is probably one of the most awaited CRPG and in general videogames ever! after the big success of the first episode, that now is available in a cool package containing the original game + all the expansions released (the so called Diamond edition), there was much expectation for this one.

I’ve already ordered my copy as usual, but while I wait I took a look around trying to get more info about the game. What shocked me mostly was the introduction (FINALLY I should say) of the full controlled party !! That is simply magnificent! I always loved the Baldur’s Gate series and the recent Temple of Elemental Evil of the sadly defunct Troika games.

So finally even in NWN we will be able to control a complete party, coordinate all his members attack/defense moves, and so on. You’ll also be able to talk with them and similarly to what happens in other masterpieces like Planescape:Torment you’ll also have a tough time to keep all the various aligned (evil/good, lawful/chaotic) party members! that adds even more realism and fun to the game.

Another aspect that has greatly improved is the game Toolset, which had the name changed from “Aurora” to “Electron”. While the first “builders” say that takes much more time, the biggest news is that the support for Persistent World creation has been officially added (so next year we could see some cool free MMORPG!).
Ok that’s all for now (hey is just a preview!) but stay tuned for a more complete review!