Difficulty

[Leezar]

Challenging is good. Throwing your nintendo controler in the ground and cursing difficulty is bad.

The three things that annoy me the most are;
1. "Wall of death", for example see James Bond for Wii. This is a FPS exclusive, where as soon as you crouch out of cover you are immediatly shoot fifty times and instantly die. It does not matter if you sneak around and stick your head up from another cover, because the enemy magically always know exactly where you are, reacts with superhuman speed and have perfect aim.
2. "Extreme leveling", for example see any unbalanced J-RPG or RPG, such as FF or NWN. What it means is that if you have the right level or above, all fights are a boring cakewalk grinding. If you have to few levels, all fights are impossible. Like, you use all the fucking potions and wands and whatnots and still get brutalized no matter what. Within limits, of course - nobody expects the final boss to be beatable at level 1, and that Fathamurk requires level 13 (although I did it on level is fine by me, but any experienced RPG:er will know exactly what I talk about when I say unbalanced versus balanced. A fine example of a balanced game is BG and of course Eschalon. (Well, except for the final battle in Eschalon II, way way way to easy).
3. "Hidden switch", for example see the Marathon series. What this means is that there is a puzzle crucial to finish the game which is perhaps not as much difficult as much as "for fuck sake I did not think of that". For example, I was playing "The Dig" for Macintosh, and since Mac do not have a right button, you use apple-click instead. Well, nothing in the game requires "right button" EXCEPT some fucking tortoise skeleton you are supposed to put together, and you try in all possible different comibations only to later find out that you can rotate the bones with apple-clicking

Does anything of this apply to Eschalon III?

[BasiliskWrangler]

Challenging is good. Throwing your nintendo controler in the ground and cursing difficulty is bad.

The three things that annoy me the most are;
1. "Wall of death", for example see James Bond for Wii. This is a FPS exclusive, where as soon as you crouch out of cover you are immediatly shoot fifty times and instantly die. It does not matter if you sneak around and stick your head up from another cover, because the enemy magically always know exactly where you are, reacts with superhuman speed and have perfect aim.
2. "Extreme leveling", for example see any unbalanced J-RPG or RPG, such as FF or NWN. What it means is that if you have the right level or above, all fights are a boring cakewalk grinding. If you have to few levels, all fights are impossible. Like, you use all the fucking potions and wands and whatnots and still get brutalized no matter what. Within limits, of course - nobody expects the final boss to be beatable at level 1, and that Fathamurk requires level 13 (although I did it on level is fine by me, but any experienced RPG:er will know exactly what I talk about when I say unbalanced versus balanced. A fine example of a balanced game is BG and of course Eschalon. (Well, except for the final battle in Eschalon II, way way way to easy).
3. "Hidden switch", for example see the Marathon series. What this means is that there is a puzzle crucial to finish the game which is perhaps not as much difficult as much as "for fuck sake I did not think of that". For example, I was playing "The Dig" for Macintosh, and since Mac do not have a right button, you use apple-click instead. Well, nothing in the game requires "right button" EXCEPT some fucking tortoise skeleton you are supposed to put together, and you try in all possible different comibations only to later find out that you can rotate the bones with apple-clicking

Does anything of this apply to Eschalon III?

1. No
2. Perhaps. Some testers have been able to make some great builds that become exceptionally powerful, but it still takes work and strategy to achieve. Powerful character builds are not just given to you.
3. There are lots of hidden things in Book 3, but nothing that will hinder your progress on the main quest. Most hidden stuff (switches, keys, etc.) lead to secondary bonus areas and items.

[Painted Lady]

3. There are lots of hidden things in Book 3, but nothing that will hinder your progress on the main quest. Most hidden stuff (switches, keys, etc.) lead to secondary bonus areas and items.

Ooooh - hidden switches - that sounds like a fun addition to the game. Any other "new" things we should know about (that aren't spoilers)?

[blatherbeard]

The only time i found book 2 frustrating was when i made a fighter but spread my points too thin in the wrong areas and got my butt handed to me on the very last part of the game(where my hdd promptly died and i lost my save files grr)

but i also think that had i not lost the save game files, id have eventually gotten past the frustration and beaten the game, just would have taken longer than it would have if i had spread my points more focused.

[VDK]

I just completed Book 2 with a piercing weapon skill of 9. I relied on enkindled weapon and some bless spell as well. General Ghorr was just about how difficult as he should be. But it was the most fun Ive had in a boss fight. We ended up having a game of cat and mouse where we each fought and then ran away, until he panicked into his enemy lines. Im going to use this build in book 3 and It will work. I only want to see how the enemies are moving like in that video. It seems they used a different ap thing.

[vdweller]

People, you got it all wrong!

Ingredients for 100% successful RPGs involve:

1) Appearance of choices that ultimately have absolutely no impact in the game story.
2) Chicks with enormous boobs who run and fight on high heels.
3) 3D graphics which definitely require the latest $250 graphics card. This is very important.
4) Difficult to the point of having your health down to 50% once or twice or maybe even dying (once and in Hardcore mode).
5) Skills with variety only in visuals, ie affecting if you enemies die by fire, lightning or frost. Don't forget ingredient 3) for fully appreciating the latest shader technology!
6) Shooting Arabs or having Russians/Chinese as baddies also go a long way.

Oops...did I say "successful"? I meant, bought by a lot of consumers, from 5 year old kids to grandpas.

On a more serious note: There are two types of hard games for me: 1) Challenging hard and 2) Nintendo hard.
I'm pretty sure EBIII falls into category 1 (as Book I and II did).