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Mothra: a 480 hours playtime on DA:O and Awakening tell another tale. no scaling ? L O L
each and every monster, human, elf, darkspawn WHATEVER scales to you and your party.
that's why the high dragon is a piece of cake. You trigger him during Ashes quest and can return much later in the game fighting a crippled low-lvl dragon and feel badass.
When you start a quest all the enemies are spawned at or around your level.
there is absolutely no place in the game where you can't own no matter what level you are. In other games at low level you don't even hit the enemy due to low dex, whatever, and are down in 1 second. that's what I am talking about.
Most other games spawn all enemies upon chapter-start, meaning - like in gothic - that you can advance to a certain part of the island, no problem. but everything there kills you if it even looks at you. Risen is another example. There is just nothing like this in DA:O
I liked DA but it's strength surely did NOT lie in its world, history or .... plot ... whatever that was...more like "best of past rpg cliche staples". DA excelled in the party banter and the 4 party combat-pause system. Everything else, design, environments, armor was so mediocre it hurt my eyes.

yeah..I hate that. ME had it and even tough i am level forty clearly doing 10 times as much damage as before and i have massive superpowers i still have problems with some robots on random mission. how the hell those robots didn't conquer galaxy yet? one of them would kill my whole party in the beginning of the game.
One of awards of leveling up is that feel of awesomeness of godhood.
In PS:T I remember a great moment.
In one building there were like 12 bandits. Each would be difficult to kill alone. 12 made it impossible. Tried maybe 10 times to kill them using massive amounts of potions, every spell. No good. team died i died.
Had to sneak past them and escape the location.
I came back to that place after 10-15 hours of gameplay. The fight didn't even last 10 seconds. Very nice slaughter.
Other example is action RPG Nox. Zombies were never big of a deal. but ten of them were a huge obstacle. an improve one, some superzombie, was even harder. 4 of them gave you a very nice fight.
at the end you slaughter them like pigs during Oktoberfest. It makes you worthy, you feel that you progressed from some little kid to walking the earth god.
Kotor didn't have scaling did it? It might have a little but at the end you were slaughtering everything and everyone without a problem and only bosses were a challenge.
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chautemoc:
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Mothra:
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Mothra:

a 480 hours playtime on DA:O and Awakening tell another tale. no scaling ? L O L
each and every monster, human, elf, darkspawn WHATEVER scales to you and your party.
that's why the high dragon is a piece of cake. You trigger him during Ashes quest and can return much later in the game fighting a crippled low-lvl dragon and feel badass.
When you start a quest all the enemies are spawned at or around your level.
there is absolutely no place in the game where you can't own no matter what level you are. In other games at low level you don't even hit the enemy due to low dex, whatever, and are down in 1 second. that's what I am talking about.
Most other games spawn all enemies upon chapter-start, meaning - like in gothic - that you can advance to a certain part of the island, no problem. but everything there kills you if it even looks at you. Risen is another example. There is just nothing like this in DA:O
I liked DA but it's strength surely did NOT lie in its world, history or .... plot ... whatever that was...more like "best of past rpg cliche staples". DA excelled in the party banter and the 4 party combat-pause system. Everything else, design, environments, armor was so mediocre it hurt my eyes.

Actually, while there is scaling in DA, it's limited: each creature has a minimum and maximum level they can be, so unlike Oblivion, you'll never face a level 20 wolf or a level 6 dragon.
Frankly, if you liked the Gothic series, I can't imagine you'd be that upset about DA's graphics, since that's never been Gothic's strong point either.
Finally I'd say that DA's big advantage is its toolset: give enough time for the modders, and you'll be able to customize the experience to your liking. I'm pretty sure removing the level-scaling, if you hate it that much, would be fairly easy.
Anyway, to get back to Risen, I did enjoy the difficulty and lack of scaling too, this is a big part of the appeal of the series. I wish more RPGs would do the same instead of trying to appeal to the casual gamers who can't stand the thought of dying, or of not being able to kill everything in the gameworld from level 1.
I went and grabbed the Risen demo and was shocked to find out my laptop actually plays it quite well, I had been holding off since it's release figuring it would never work and yet it does, it's not as smooth as I'd like but hell it's easily playable, so I went ahead and bought it.
It's classic Piranha Bytes gaming and I realized what I probably like the most about Risen as well as the previous Gothic games besides what I stated before. The world actually feels hand-crafted (it probably is), nothing feels randomly generated, which is precisely how the worlds of Oblivion, Morrowind feel. I love the fact that while the worlds are smaller in Gothic, everything was placed where it was placed, by human hands, not by some very obvious computer algorithm. While I liked Oblivion and Morrowind, they just don't compare to the Gothic games because they are way too big and its fairly pointless because once you've seen one cave, you've seen them all and most of the time, there's little reason to investigate any of them, this was particularly true in Morrowind. Also, who the hell has time to sink hundreds of hours into a random generated cookie cutter world, not me.
Risen feels like a more polished Gothic, I always saw the Gothic's as a little rough around the edges, unpolished (they had their bugs and combat was a little weird even though I liked it), Risen feels like classic Gothic, just with some polish the others never received.
Thanks for the thread, glad I got the game, happier I didn't have to upgrade anything to play it :)
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lukaszthegreat: In PS:T I remember a great moment.
In one building there were like 12 bandits. Each would be difficult to kill alone. 12 made it impossible. Tried maybe 10 times to kill them using massive amounts of potions, every spell. No good. team died i died.
Had to sneak past them and escape the location.

But IRRC there was some level scaling in PS:T. Mostly it wasn't the a specific monster being stronger, but finding a stronger type of monster, kind of like in Neverwinter Nights. So instead of a weaker demon you might encounter a Glabrezu; instead of a Shadow you might find a Greater Shadow, etc. And I think the final boss level scaled just a bit - but only up to a point. For the hell of it I grinded up tons and then managed to finish him off with my own severed arm :)
Stupid leveling, it's just stupid in all games.
Even Risen has some kind of monster leveling though. Remember folks, upon chapter change, stronger monsters spawn in the same old areas. In Risen, a wolf is always a wolf, always the same HP, dmg, XP, etc. but spotting a black wolf where you found a regular wolf before, is a sort of monster leveling.
Sure, it takes dozens of levels until you advance a chapter, there are only 4 chapters total. The monster leveling makes pretty much no difference whatsoever. Those Harbor City ruffians you couldn't take in the beginning of the game are the exact same on chapter 4, so you can beat everyone in town when you acquire near-godlike equipment and moves later.
Has anybody in the USA found this game, Risen PC Version, at a cheaper price than $40?

I mean, hell - the game's been around for a while now and I don't think I've seen it even hit $30 USD.

EDIT:
Hell, Gamestop's got the Risen X360 version listed for $20 USD.
And no, I do not own a 360...
Post edited September 27, 2010 by MysterD
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MysterD: Has anybody in the USA found this game, Risen PC Version, at a cheaper price than $40?

I mean, hell - the game's been around for a while now and I don't think I've seen it even hit $30 USD.

EDIT:
Hell, Gamestop's got the Risen X360 version listed for $20 USD.
And no, I do not own a 360...
They deserve $40 and then some, even now.

360 version is crap.