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I've been playing a game called Ember that I got on GOG.

It's pretty fun so far.  I estimate I'm about 15% into the game.  Here's some of my screenshots.

It has that indie-feel to it, so don't go expecting Pillars of Eternity level of depth and writing, though the music and dialogues are similar. The inventory and item manipulation remind me a lot of the original Divine Divinity.  The aesthetics and visual designs remind me a LOT of Torchlight.  Even the magical Mcguffin in Torchlight is called "Ember."

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Character building is done almost entirely through items. The only things you get on level-ups are attribute points.  Having high enough attributes allows you to wear certain types of armor and weapons, and in turn these items have various skills attached to them.  So skills are acquired through equipment and can be swapped out on the fly.

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There is a lot of crafting in this game, and I have a feeling crafting (or lack of) can make or break a character.  There are separate crafting stations for Armor, Weapons, Food, and Alchemy (potions) and tons of components for all these types of crafting.  There's even fishing and mining (with the correct equipment) that will provide more crafting and cooking materials.

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The lore is actually pretty interesting. I found myself wanting to click through all dialogue options to learn more and even read all the books in the first library just to get immersed in the world.

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I'm not sure how long it will hold me. The combat is slow paced and somewhat difficult, even with a party of three characters to control.  The combat is real-time w/ active pause but you can only have 3 skills per character active and the only consumables you can use in combat are health and energy potions.

Sacred Reborn keeps calling my name.  But for now I'll keep playing Ember for a nice change of pace.

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As usual... love your review topics! That word ember...is this game at all related to the movie I think came out a while back...not sure of the name now, but something ember in the title.  I know Knuckles is an ardent fan of these indy games... In fact a lot of the people I know have slowly progressed away from  online, mmo, to smaller games like this, from very passionate coders with lots of nifty details.    I think the graphics are fair, and really like the music.  :thumbsup:    

A good respite from the...*gulp*...thousands of hours you've put into Sacred?

 

:D

 

gogo

 

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At bad weather and a weekend with family: mainly 'Catan' the original board game and not the computer version.

At volunteer firefighter night duty: Sacred2 D2F, only time I can play it to nowadays. My singer barbarian seems to stay young forever :(

Tuba - the brass music instrument: not a computer game but real music. Our firefighter brass band plays at events and the money goes to our firefighter pot.

Bass guitar - our third trains for a school band concert with her at the electric cither and I do the bass at training.

Dogs ... two daughters out of house, third visiting a full day school, ... Frisbee, dog scooter, they miss the older daughters

SOCCER ... a big outch ... The local soccer team has 2 goalies and both injured. They asked me to play, me a grandpa. I was nicknamed Gibbon when I was a teenager and played goalie. I am short legged and long armed because of a virus disease at main growing phase. The game was at night, flood lights, red sand ground. What to say:  jumping and landing on the ground hurts a lot more nowadays. So I transformed into KINGKONG. Playing hard with full body contact instead waiting on the goal line. Hurts a lot less and the opposite team must have been surprised by my style. We won 5:3. Last game without me was a 0:3.

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While sick for last two weeks... Diablo 3 here for me.. ayup... still pretty addictive... we'd stopped playing it for a while because my computer kept freezing everytime too much action on screen

Schot fiddled around with the settings and updated drivers... voila...

enter Diablo 3!

:)

 

gogo

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23 hours ago, gogoblender said:

That word ember...is this game at all related to the movie I think came out a while back...not sure of the name now, but something ember in the title. 

"Ember" seems to be a very popular word in video games lately. Like I said it was a big part of Torchlight series which I'm sure you played.  There's also Emberfall which is a MMO coming soon, not to be confused with Guardians of Ember, the MMO that came out a few years back, and last but not least we have to mention Lost Ember which is an adventure exploration game that just came out last month.  :lol:

 

23 hours ago, gogoblender said:

I think the graphics are fair, and really like the music.

The music is definitely above average.  I found the soundtrack stuck in my head all throughout the week. Each region has its own distinct music which gave the game a lot of character.

 

On 11/30/2019 at 4:30 PM, gogoblender said:

A good respite from the...*gulp*...thousands of hours you've put into Sacred?

I finished Ember today.  It was a nice break.  Overall the game took 19 hours to complete.  Replay value is low, since you pretty much experience everything on one playthrough, though there are a handful of quest dialogues that offer different choices they are mostly superficial difference.

I went everywhere and did everything, so the 19 hour mark is pretty much all the content "maxed out." That's pretty short for an RPG, but it was all pretty consistent quality. A good story, decent characters, no bugs, altogether worth the price if you get it on sale. 

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We got an Xbox 1, with Minecraft on it. Not too stoked with Minecraft, so I'm looking at the free category. I see something on there called Neverwinter; I think I've seen that title mentioned here, I might give that a try.

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32 minutes ago, Gilberticus said:

We got an Xbox 1, with Minecraft on it. Not too stoked with Minecraft, so I'm looking at the free category. I see something on there called Neverwinter; I think I've seen that title mentioned here, I might give that a try.

my cousin has that console

loves it

:)

 

gogo

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Maps are fun!  Inspired by our imagineer Schot who has put together so much awesome stuff for us, including brilliant Sacred maps, I decided to try to do the same for the game I recently finished, called Ember.

The game's world map is broken up into over a dozen different puzzle pieces, so I spent an evening assembling them all into one giant map:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1S6AeVxX07SB_moN2_CEHoUt8CHtIXJBj

I even got a comment from one of the game's developers on Steam:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/339580/discussions/0/1753519941883604119/

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3 hours ago, Robi Dean said:

Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning

I absolutely love that game. I replayed it again a few months ago.  And there's so much content - a single playthrough was 130 hours! 

THQ Nordic got the rights to it last year. Here's hoping they issue a remastered version like they did with TItan Quest.

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9 hours ago, Flix said:

I absolutely love that game. I replayed it again a few months ago.  And there's so much content - a single playthrough was 130 hours! 

THQ Nordic got the rights to it last year. Here's hoping they issue a remastered version like they did with TItan Quest.

OMG I would die and play it again and again.

I'm streaming it too. Wink wink. twitch:psiguy3

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14 hours ago, Robi Dean said:

I play lots of Destiny 2, Fortnite.

Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning and thinking of playing through the Mass Effect series 2-3 and andromeda.

 

14 hours ago, Robi Dean said:

I play lots of Destiny 2, Fortnite.

Been going old skool with Kingdoms of Amular Reckoning and thinking of playing through the Mass Effect series 2-3 and andromeda.

Never heard of this game before... got the trailer... holee molee! Great voice acting and the game looks insane...is this a stand up or a mmo or something? It looks so polished

k... they could have done better than that "amular" name...but..i guess everyone is using up all the good names these days ?

:lol:

 

gogo

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Kingdoms of Amalur is strictly single player, but it was meant to earn the profits to fund a big MMO set in the same universe (it was known as Project Copernicus), however due to funds mismanagement, the game didn't earn enough despite selling millions of copies. They had just gone into so much debt creating it (even borrowing from the state of Rhode Island, a loan which they had to default on), that it was basically impossible for them the recoup the costs even if they had been the number one game of the year.

Some would say this is what comes from having a former baseball player (Curt Schilling) at the helm of what is a very complex process of game development. He had passion and willpower in spades, but the financial aspect sunk the studio and all future projects. 

The game itself is incredibly well polished and a delight to play, despite all the drama that surrounded its creation and the bankruptcy of the studio.

There are so few bugs and balance issues (especially compared to our poor Sacred 2), that my dreams of a THQ remastered edition are really limited to just making the interface scale at higher than 1080p resolutions, and to increase the level cap to account for the extra expansion content the devs released just before the studio closed.

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1 hour ago, Flix said:

The game itself is incredibly well polished and a delight to play, despite all the drama that surrounded its creation and the bankruptcy of the studio.

There are so few bugs and balance issues (especially compared to our poor Sacred 2), that my dreams of a THQ remastered edition are really limited to just making the interface scale at higher than 1080p resolutions, and to increase the level cap to account for the extra expansion content the devs released just before the studio closed.

I have to agree, the game was a blast!

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Speaking of the downfall of a game studio, does someone remember Icewind Dale 2? There´s an interview with Mister Urquhart where
he describes how the little rubber boat, aka Black Isle, struggled to prevent the Titanic (Interplay) from sinking, but got
finally sucked into the slowly rotating whirlpool, following its parent company. In a desperate fight, they stitched Icewind
Dale 2 together in a single year. A little later, the plug was pulled and both companies de facto ceased to exist. Sad.

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Hard drive crashed so had to buy a new SSD and re-install Win 10  :(

Currently downloading the 3 games I previously had on Steam - Sacred 2, Grim dawn + Ashes of Malmouth, and Shadows Awakening. Only played a couple of hours of the latter - seems very quest orientated once you reach the market/bazaar.

Played about 100 hours with the CM patch for Sacred 2. Throwing potions were interesting. Found the lycanthrope 2 piece set (?) that gives %LL early on. Only found a low level tinworas and no officers sabres. Used to readily find them.

Got a ranged inquisitor build in mind using testas annihalator - high RPH, high % stun from Ruthless mutilation and callous execution.     

EDIT - and tried the same things I did the first time I had trouble with getting Sacred 2 to run (used the redistrib pack, dll, run as admin, set compatibility mode to Win XP SP 3) ... no luck. May be recent Win 10 update. Gonna read through more Steam community threads.

Edited by Augmint
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On 12/19/2019 at 9:43 AM, Augmint said:

Hard drive crashed so had to buy a new SSD and re-install Win 10  :(

Currently downloading the 3 games I previously had on Steam - Sacred 2, Grim dawn + Ashes of Malmouth, and Shadows Awakening. Only played a couple of hours of the latter - seems very quest orientated once you reach the market/bazaar.

Played about 100 hours with the CM patch for Sacred 2. Throwing potions were interesting. Found the lycanthrope 2 piece set (?) that gives %LL early on. Only found a low level tinworas and no officers sabres. Used to readily find them.

Got a ranged inquisitor build in mind using testas annihalator - high RPH, high % stun from Ruthless mutilation and callous execution.     

EDIT - and tried the same things I did the first time I had trouble with getting Sacred 2 to run (used the redistrib pack, dll, run as admin, set compatibility mode to Win XP SP 3) ... no luck. May be recent Win 10 update. Gonna read through more Steam community threads.

Good hearing that you're back in the PC Gaming business!  When i finally upgraded to SSD the difference was so enormous. And regarding Throwing Potions... Yes I have an affinity for them... Specially the DarkMatters one ^^

 

:bounce:

 

gogo

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16 hours ago, gogoblender said:

Eve Online.. of course! :4rofl: ...but really? Is the game engine and content keeping up with times?

:0

 

gogo

Yep eve looks amazing (let me show you) :)

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The screenshots look good indeed! I remember when I played the X series back in the day. Too bad Egosoft screwed up over and over again. I heard it takes a while until you make your way in. Is eve really that difficult?

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yep they are :)

Heres one of the latest ships that was added to the game (Zirnitra) and the other one is just me moving around doing my thing just now :)

 

:christmastree:

@Dax Is really eve that difficult? Well yes and no The thing with eve is there is so many ways you can play it And so many things you can do So mastering everything is gong to take awhile :P  So as long as your not a millennial that want instant gratification like Yesterday eve is a awesome game for you... 

Everyone in here should ofc start playing eve right now :viking:

(Let me know if anyone does (Before you make an account) and ill make your eve startup a bit easier) :heart:

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