06-25-2004, 02:53 PM
I'd be inclined to agree that it ranks as one of the best single player games ever
I found it incredibly frustrating as a multiplayer game. Played the official campaign and the Hordes of the Underdark expansion with a friend and it drove me potty
Whenever one player activates a plot link the other player can not activate it
Since the person I was playing with was inclined to summarise lengthy instructions as "just kill things I think" then 10 minutes later say "hmm, think there WAS something about an amulet". After a few days of this I was biting my keyboard
Whenever we screwed up so badly we had to re-load it seems we had to load a save that was absolutely ancient and spend a very long time re-tracing our footsteps
About my last in-game experience was searching a large dungeon for an item which was actually in my mate's inventory and which he'd picked up and forgotten about (he'd given up doing "plot stuff" by that point so he had no idea what was and what was not important)
Now one could fault the player but I actually think that pretty well anyone would have to spend a lot of time organising and explaining to get through this game. A game so plot-driven should have mechanisms for sharing plot between players - at one point I spent 5 mins watching my friend just standing there while he interacted with something not shown to me before getting a Game Over screen. Very tedious, very frustrating
I found it incredibly frustrating as a multiplayer game. Played the official campaign and the Hordes of the Underdark expansion with a friend and it drove me potty
Whenever one player activates a plot link the other player can not activate it
Since the person I was playing with was inclined to summarise lengthy instructions as "just kill things I think" then 10 minutes later say "hmm, think there WAS something about an amulet". After a few days of this I was biting my keyboard
Whenever we screwed up so badly we had to re-load it seems we had to load a save that was absolutely ancient and spend a very long time re-tracing our footsteps
About my last in-game experience was searching a large dungeon for an item which was actually in my mate's inventory and which he'd picked up and forgotten about (he'd given up doing "plot stuff" by that point so he had no idea what was and what was not important)
Now one could fault the player but I actually think that pretty well anyone would have to spend a lot of time organising and explaining to get through this game. A game so plot-driven should have mechanisms for sharing plot between players - at one point I spent 5 mins watching my friend just standing there while he interacted with something not shown to me before getting a Game Over screen. Very tedious, very frustrating