So how janky is The Technomancer? Is it the best of those three? Is it REALLY worth time spent with it? Seems like TB wasn’t alone in trashing it.
Edit - you know what, it looks bad.
(Didn’t want to derail the TB thread…)
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My opinion on The Technomancer is pretty complex. I love the core gameplay, the worldbuilding, and many of the massive improvements they’ve made since Mars and Bound by Flame. That said, they’re still in jank territory.
First of all, while the translation and VO is relatively alright this time around, it’s still very flawed. Spiders is a French AA studio, and you’ll see this with one of the swapped lines early on, a few weird things with the subtitles here and there, and so on. It’s strange because most of these issues appear early in-game rather than later, giving off a bad impression then holding together for the rest of the game. :\
I also felt that, unlike Bound by Flame and Mars, The Technomancer just has a little too much backtracking. In a way, this was Spiders’ first attempt at open world gameplay in their RPGs (never played Faery), and the unfortunate consequence is that you’ll be revisiting locations a fair amount. They start this off well by actually changing the locations based on the story, namely with Ophir, but this is a one-time instance and other maps in the game more or less never change.
Its combat is a massive step-up from Bound by Flame. I’d say that while Bound had a much greater production value in its combat, there’s a certain theme in the game that makes the game fall flat for me; your enemies are undead monsters that act like the Laughing Dead from Eragon. You hit them, they keep on swinging… cool in concept, but it makes fights extremely tedious. I played the game at the same time as my co-op buddy, and while he just used the broadsword the entire game and cleared through it easily, I switched to the daggers early on (closer to Mars) and got destroyed.
I bothered typing all that out because I want to highlight how much better The Technomancer is in comparison. You now have three stances… one of which you should probably ignore to save upgrade points, two more stances that give you an entirely different range of movements and abilities, and a sort of passive "Technomancy" tree that makes your lightning more capable. I have no idea what it was that TB was doing in his video; he said that he played around 9 hours, but he was still in one of the opening areas and his skills seemed way lower than they should have been. The gun he used had a cooldown almost instantly (normally you can get 5 or 6 shots out of it), his lightning was garbage, he didn’t have any other abilities, and it seemed overall like he hadn’t used his points at all. He also greatly misunderstood some of the mechanics, including the fact that the Guardian (shield) stance DOES have a parry, happening when you time your block correctly.
Overall, it’s not my favorite Spiders game due to all the backtracking, but I still completed it and had a great time. Spiders is still in that kind of CD Projekt phase where they’re trying to find their footing in an already thriving genre. They have a high bar to reach, and only so much to work with. At the same time, they clearly have the fundamentals down, and they’re right about to release a great game that can actually go places. They just haven’t dropped their very own Witcher 3 yet.
If you want to give it a miss, I can’t blame you… but it’s not a bad game in the slightest. When it comes to combat, it’s also one of my favorite RPGs out there. There’s a great RPG under some localization weirdness and general jank.
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I hope you are looking at this bundle if you are looking at The Technomancer…
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Thanks for that detailed response. The combat concerned me because of the mentions of input lag, and also the fact that it seemed enemies were unaffected by the environmental scenery and could in effect phase through it, whilst you were bound by barriers and walls. Also, there was mention that the upgrade system never really feels empowering, and that there’s a LOT of backtracking and boring menial tasks. After looking at reviews I kind of thought that there are probably better examples of games in this genre that warrant more time.
Yep, but I think I’m going to pass. I don’t have the disposable income to just throw money away on frivolity without consideration, and I put every purchase under a microscope. For now my backlog can remain overwhelming rather than truly unstoppable.
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I love how The Technomancer isn’t even on the cover-art, but PewDiePie’s game is.
FOOKIN RIP
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I actually bought that bundle for 3 games in it… 1. The Technomancer, 2. Forward to the Sky, and 3. ICY: Frostbite Edition.
So it was a good deal for me…
EDIT
Couldn’t care less about that PewDiePie game.
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I have a feeling that those people didn’t play the game. You really feel upgrades. Whether it’s the extra power bar that gives you one more use of lightning, the ridiculous ground-attack you get later on, extra shots on your gun, a high stagger chance, and so on… it gets pretty ridiculous. The start of the game will definitely be the hardest, as you’ll have to come to grips with the combat itself. It’s by no means bad, though, and there are plenty of i-frames involved with your dodges that keep things fair.
I played with a mix of Rogue and Warrior points, stopping to put a few in Technomancy after realizing how ridiculous it could get. If the animations are what bothers you, I highly recommend either playing as a Rogue or just using Guardian. Guardian, or “Block for Days,” lets you just hold down Ctrl and block pretty much all damage (edit: this dummy forgot to mention that Guardians can also parry attacks, leading directly into a crit). Rogue will be a little intensive on your reflexes but lets you eliminate enemies quickly, and Warrior will drop some brutal AoE attacks if you can avoid damage (Rogue’s dodge is better).
No shame in waiting for a sale. I do think you should keep your eye on their new game, Greedfall, to see if they can finally pull off a Spiders RPG for a mainstream audience.
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Yep, If there had been other games in that bundle that I’d have really wanted I’d probably have considered it a little more (and heck with over a week remaining I still may be worn down) but for now I think that total jank exceeds my tolerance. Nothing else really grabs me there, at least as being better than stuff I already have.
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i like horror themed ones like Ib and Mad Father
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Same with me, only played 1 your since other games as you said are shadowing it, can’t wait to get back into it tho
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Planescape: Torment 80% off until 8th of June.
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@coralinecastell, is it really good? The reviews say overwhelming positive. I don’t know anything about this game. What makes this awesome?
The store page is long and the screenshots are packed with tons of information. It’s more helpful to hear what Chronies think.
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Do you like long complex stories with lots of lore? Then torment might be the best game you’ll ever play. If you get antsy to kill something after reading a sentence and a half then you’ll probably be bored very quickly. This is a role playing game worthy of that name. It is old however so you will have to go into it not expecting ~20 years of UI design and user friendliness research.
While I wouldn’t recommend supporting Beamdog by buying anything, this particular title they have not messed up by adding their own shitty writing or ideas so that’s small mercy at least.
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What @Fraggles said. Additionally, this review also covers it well:
Let’s get this out of the way: If you’re into Chris Avellone/Obsidian/Black Isle kind of games and know what that even means, you know what you’re getting. Another clunky game with writing so good you’ll forgive any of its flaws. It’s another one of those games: a Baldur’s Gate, NWN2, Kotor 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol kinda game.
If that paragraph didn’t make any sense, the rest of this review is for you. Planescape: Torment tends to be less hack-and-slash than it looks, playing according to a system roughly based on second edition Dungeons & Dragons. But in a big departure from both, you can solve a huge amount of your problems with minimal combat and the real meat of the game comes in your decision making, mystery solving, and dealing with people around you. True to the Planescape setting, Torment is a game about the power of belief and the battlefield of ideas.
I don’t want to oversell that because you will be attacked by random thugs, some combats are downright mandatory, and there is a very real difficulty spike about three quarters through the game. But the allies you keep and the knowledge you gain can help you bypass some encounters or at least trivalize them under mountains of xp gained from unraveling cosmic questions.
It’s a grim, often macabre journey back and forth across the boundaries of life and death where even the happiest endings are pretty heavy, but it’s also a brilliantly written, thought-provoking experience that’s well worth the time and money. Just make sure to go deep on wisdom, okay, berk? Don’t need some dusty penning you in the deadbook because you couldn’t see the dark of things, cutter.
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I got that from Chrono…back in August I think!
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Just got Redout. Thanks, harith!
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@harith
Wow, thanks a lot… you made me hit my hand and nearly fall out of my chair, all in a rush to grab my wallet. 
Picking that up fo’ sho’… but hey, the sale is until the 15th, so I’ve got time. Seriously though, I didn’t even hear about that! Thanks for the heads-up.
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I was about to ask why you had such a problem with Beamdog, then I realized I got them confused with Cavedog (I’m pretty sure they’re defunct now, but Cavedog was pretty cool. Total Annihilation is awesome!).
MDK2 HD, and a bunch of other BioWare remasters that have near-universally been panned for poorly made new content and new bugs… OOF. Now that’s a track record that hurts to see.
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y, exactly what i told myself when asking myself whether i should buy the dlc immediately while buying the game; i said, “no man, the sale is until the 15th, so I’ve got time, so play the game for a while and then decide.” Then i tried the game, for like 10 min, and immediately went back to the store to buy all the (gameplay) dlc, lol.
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