Wednesday 14 June, 2006

The back of the box says "More I, less A." (as in more intelligence, less artificial).

Hmmm. Strong claim....let me describe how I "finished" the Viking village a few days ago:

1) Run in circles around a house with the vikings not far behind
2) Summon friends to fight the vikigs as I run in circles
3) When friends die, re-summon.
4) If there is a chance, take a few shots at vikings...resume running

It took a while, but I was able to succesfully win!

I wouldn't qualify the viking behavior as "intelligent".

Here's another bunch of examples of how I've approached combat in this game:
1) Shoot arrows from far away. (far enough that the enemy takes the hits, but won't come after you)
2) When badly wounded, run away. Enemies won't follow, even if you're still in sight! (it's almost like there is an invisible "turn back here" barrier they won't cross.
3) Trap an enemy in a corner/against the wall. Button mash. The enemy won't be able to get a single hit. (I used this against the viking boss Silkbeard. I didn't take a single hit!)

Combat is generally very unexciting, sad to say. At least in Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance there was a sense of urgency! (and the quick-heal/magic buttons helped ). In this game...not very exciting.

I suspect the "intelligence" they were thinking of was supposed to be in the script, rather than in the combat.

In general, from what I've heard, they spent a lot of time on getting the dialogue and humour right, and much less on making the gameplay, you know, actually interesting. Your observations seem to corroborate this.

It's a bit of a pity, really. The pacing of the gameplay totally wrecks a lot of the dialogue/story. I'm still not entirely sure if I want to bother finishing the game or not. :-(

It occurs to me that your Vikings are apparently dumber than giant ants, since the latter will begin chasing you as soon as you shoot them, will begin chasing you as soon as you shoot one of their friends, and won't stop chasing you until either they or you are dead. (According to EDF2, at least.) They will, however, chase you even if you are fast enough to outrun them and shoot them from range - but this I attribute to their being giant ants, and therefore not endowed with particularly acute mental faculties.

He!

Your comment REALLY cracked me up.

I can see the "revised" box text..

"Now with Viking enemies that are dumber than ants!"

Very funny...