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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dreeble" data-source="post: 1017430" data-attributes="member: 7322">ToEE and ComicConHeya: I played the demo at the San Diego Comic Con this morning a bit.  Here's some random thoughts:o It looks a bit like Pool of Radiance:Ruins of Myth Drannor.  Not so much in terms of graphics (ToEE graphics are far better looking, far more colorful (PoR had mile after mile of the same drab dungeon passageways)), but in terms of playstyle.  As far as I could tell, there was no combat grid.  There's a movement bar that drains as a PC moves and it was color-coded, I think, so perhaps the topmost bit of the bar indicates whether you've moved less than a 5 foot step.  Not sure about that.  Anyway, my point was that moving characters was similar to PoR, what with the lack of fine grain control.  There is a blue circle that shows where the PC will wind up, though, so it's not too random.o Maybe it was just the settings or something, but the characters were really big on the screen.  Far closer to Planescape relative sizing than Baldur's Gate, for example.o When I first went up to the game (it was on 2 stations), nobody was playing it and it was at the options screen.  I chose New Game and it put me directly into what was obviously a saved position.  Four characters, a dwarf warrior (level 10, I think), a paladin (she probably was a druid/paladin, now that I think about it), a wizard, and another character.  Inventory is pretty standard, what PCs wear wasn't a paperdoll exactly, closer to EQ's square slots I think.  Easy to navigate.  Left clicking an item gives its stats.  The dwarf's waraxe was 1d12 (20, x4).  I thought they were x3, but that's fine.o Casting spells has a plus and a minus.  The plus is that it's easy to choose spells.  Right click the caster and a circle appears around the character, sectioned off.  The rightmost section says WIZ or DRU or whatever.  Clicking that causes a semicircle to expand on that side, with sections labelled 1,2,3,4,5 (no cantrips, obviously).  The druid in the demo had HORRIBLE spells selections.  Everything was Summon Nature's Ally, or Magic Fang, or Call Lightning.  No cure spells, which hurt when I went up against the Vrock.  Clicking a spell level causes another semicircle to expand outwards, sectioned off, containing the names of the spells the caster can cast (entire names present).o The minus on casting spells is that if the caster is on the right side of the screen, when the spell names expand out, you won't be able to read them.  Maybe there's (actually I pray there is) a "Center On Current Character" button, since casters absolutely require that.  There's got to be a button like this.  I wish there'd been somebody around to ask questions, but it didn't really seem like it.  And I definitely had that "Hey, I wanna ask questions look" on my face.o Also casting spells: Targetting is very nice.  Casting fireball put up a big blue circle that allowed me to cover exactly the target I wanted (my PCs and some nearby monsters).  One nice thing is that on screen you see all the saves, damage, etc. but if you want to be sure who is taking damage, making their saves, etc., there's a log of that you can look at.  Targetting a lightning bolt was easy too, it's a long slightly thick blue line.  Magic Missiles can be individually targeted to multiple monsters (a red circle appeared around my target with a 1/5 in the middle, every time I clicked it went 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5).  That was from a wand, by the way.o Summoned monsters didn't impress me.  I had the druid cast a few nature's ally spells against the Vrock.  I couldn't tell if they even had hit points, since the Vrock would do some kind of stunning breath or sonic wave or something and the polar bear and dire wolf (and one other, I think, boa constrictor, maybe) just fell over.o When I realized the Vrock fight was going poorly, I tried loading a different save.  I was eventually successful, but there was EXTREME lag in trying to select a new save to load.  Probably just some kind of memory leak or something and one of the traits of a demo.o The Vrock was in a courtyard of a caste or something.  My party went underneath an arch to get into the courtyard and the game paused, obviously loading the Vrock and the visible area.  I saw somebody else send characters through a doorway and it was a more traditional area transition.o The demo characters' equipment was pathetic.  No wonder I had trouble against the Vrock: no magic weapons.  I think the one hit the dwarf made, one point got through DR.  No potions, either, although the wizard had a Brew Potion section on the opposite side from the spells.  The druid/paladin had a bunch of special abilities.  I had no luck with Lay On Hands, though.  Is it supposed to draw an AoO?  The Heal ability (skill?) healed the cleric (that was the fourth character, I think) from -5 to 23, but she didn't get up.  Not sure if that's how it's supposed to be, if she was permanently stunned by the Vrock, or what.o Scrolling the screen and character movement was a little slow.  Either a demo issue (I hope) or controlable via settings.o There was no rogue in the default party so I never thought to try sending a character off on his own to scout stealthily.  I did send a character out alone a bit and monsters immediately reacted.  Hopefully they have to make spot checks against hiding characters.o Of the creatures I killed (giant frogs, kobolds, I think), none had treasure.  No treasure chests either.o I'm tempted to go back tomorrow just to spend more time with the game.  If I could rearrange the casters' spells, I'm pretty sure I could apply some smackage to that Vrock, despite its 22 SR. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Take care,Dreebleo</blockquote>

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