Same way we pump everyone else,sorta feel sorry for him...

I always give him a plus when I see his posts but I think his rep has sort of become his 'forum trademark' :-)

Yeah,it's a stupid idea this rep thing.Lester told me he had falling out with his best buddy
and that's where the de-repping is coming from..

Atlus has made good RPGs for years. When I had the money to spend, I used to pick up new Atlus games as a matter of course when they came out. I have several packed away in storage for my DS. It's good to hear that they haven't lost their touch.

Yes, indeed! I'm still blown away by Soccorro's generosity... and the game just finished installing. Let's see how well my poor laptop can handle it. XD

Damn it, Pillars...

I really can't afford you, not even sure if my computer will run you. So why do you keep taunting me!?!?!

(This bears mentioning - I am not looking for anyone to gift this to me at any point. If a ninja gifter sees this and gets the idea, this is fair warning - I will end up gifting you back the same amount in other items, if not more.)

That's pretty much exactly how I was feeling. LOL

BTW, the first Etrian Odyssey is one of the games sitting in my DS case, somewhere in storage. I barely got into it, but it was fun. (Six or seven? My inner completionist wants to cry now. ;P )

Well, I didn't tweak any of the initial settings and it runs pretty darn well. It's very much not a new laptop. *shrug* I'm sure it's a little slower than most people would desire, but not slow enough for me to notice, or to feel like it's lagging at all, but I only just got through the intro scenario, so we'll see how it goes later on. Let me dig for specs...

Acer Aspire 7750g, 64-bit WIn 7
Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz
6 GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6650M (also says Intel HD Graphics Family - I'm so out of touch with computer hardware, I have no idea)

I just got through the first little intro bit after spending probably more than hour making my character - soo many options that it's just way too fun to slip back and forth to look at all the options. It's also pretty awesome that it doesn't stop at race - every race has sub-options, and then you get to pick the area you're from, and then what type of life you had in that area, and it all affects your stats/skills/reputations.

I foresee way too much time sunk into this game over a very, very long period of time. Yay! :D

I would say we're of a similar mind. My budget is going to suffer, and my inner sales fiend screams at the thought of paying flat retail for ANYTHING, but after reading some reviews, it indeed looks like Obsidian has succeeded in making the kind of title that I would be a fool to not support fully.

(Given my disgust with Bethesda, and my inability to trust Bioware as far as I can throw them, I kinda need to back anyone who's actually making RPG's I like or love.)

Well, when I manage to build up my collection, I will do my very best to shove them through the ethernet cord so you can borrow them and play through the series. =)

All your components look good, despite the mentioned age of the laptop.
What worries me is that I'm running on integrated graphics. Not sure if an I-5 @ 3 gigs along with 12 gigs of RAM will be enough for me to brute force the game into working properly.
Course, at this point, it's all a bit silly to mention, since I know I'll end up buying it and trying anyway regardless.
(And I say I hate to gamble...-laughs-)

Your commentary about the wealth of options makes me think of Icewind Dale 2, where you could pick not only races, but subsets within those races.
Very happily, it sounds like Pillars took that and spiked it through the roof, option-wise.

Between the sheer variety, the overall quality, and the massive size of it? It's going to be a very long game.
(Not ashamed to admit that the mention of a 15 level mega dungeon in one of the reviews, a dungeon full of incredibly nasty monsters and super-high end loot makes me salivate a little....)

Oh no,Crow's got bitten by a Pillar bug...

That happened as soon as I heard mention of a game that would be an extension of Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale.

I spent six months solid playing Baldur's Gate 2. Icewind and Icewind 2 are high enough on my all-time good games list that I'm going to be replaying them soon, as well as buying the EE version of Icewind 1 to be supportive of a company that's focusing on games like that.

And my brain just reminded me that while I gush and clamor for Pillars, Original Sin is another title that is of the same type and of high quality. So now, I get to eat full retail on not one, but two games.

Really hoping GOG doesn't do a big sale in April...

Very good games for sure,haven't taken much notice of Pillars and didn't know it was like the other
games.Anyway doesn't worry me too much when I'll buy and play it..I used to hang out for new releases
but not any more,probably from buying too many over rated duds...

This is a time where I deeply wish that game demos were still a common thing.
If they were, I'd be making sure Pillars runs decently on my system right now.

Not willing to spend boatloads of money on new releases as a general rule. Simply don't have that much of a games budget to burn it 40 to 60 dollars at a time.

But like I said...there aren't many big-name RPG producers that I can actually stomach, let alone want to support.
Need to back the good ones that are left.

<laughing>

That's just how I feel. I haven't even tried Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale yet, those are still sitting on my wishlist, so I'm sure I should get to them first. From that point of view another good sale will help.
The spring one does seem to have a lot of Double Insomnia repeats - just as well, I guess, as the last time I tried to use my credit card, it asked for asylum.

How are you doing with the vow of abstinence? That's admirable, but very hard to do all at once. I managed to quit smoking long ago, but never coffee. Although I did read that it's easy to quit smoking if your body is less acid, and coffee makes it acid, so perhaps you are right. Try putting some lemon juice in the water you're now drinking, to help the alkaline balance along?
Good luck!