Ok, I'm getting that they're trying to go for an older school vibe here. But unless I'm missing a bunch, they're really missing the mark. Please try to bear with me and tell me if I'm mistaken, because this is really making me scratch my head. I'm not meaning to flame or troll and would be pleasantly surprised if there's something vital and good I'm missing here.
Basically the idea is that after combat you no longer regenerate health, or at least not all the way. You need to take potions, of which you have limited supply, or have a dedicated healer with you. The idea being that each time you venture out the encounters slowly grind you down to a nub where you're scrounging for every last resource.
Ok, that's great and all. But something has to give somewhere. Not many would be able to live off of tough encounters like in BG or DA:O like that simply as is. It'd just be too difficult. Back in the old school days you could just rest, get your spells back, and heal. That's not what they're going for here, though. At least from what I understand. This leaves us with one of a few different ideas, none of which sound appealing.
First, you have dedicated healers. But this doesn't make any sense. Why implement a system like this if healers are a dime per dozen? That'd be pointless. It's just making the player waste time between combat, healing back to normal and waiting to recharge. Basically, complicating things for no reason. I find this to be the best case scenario.
Second, you only have one or two dedicated healers. They are a resource, and can't do as much offensively, but are useful to heal the party. Problem here is that these suddenly become the single most valuable party members in the game by default, even if they are limited offensively, because they can hand out the most valuable resource for free and at will: health. Having a party without this party member is making things needlessly difficult for no real reason. This basically becomes like the first option, only the party is extremely unbalanced.
Third, mana is as rare as health. This just isn't going to happen. Limiting all the flashy spellcasting to an extent is obvious, but limiting it across an entire questline is an insanely bad idea for reasons I don't especially feel the need to explain.
Fourth, healing spells don't work off the mana system. They work more like potions, and can be used a certain number of times. This wouldn't work though. It's still too potentially limiting. It's going back to square one, basically, with just a bit more healing to get you by.
Fifth, enemies are easy. They can grind you down slowly, sure, but there's little to no danger from any individual encounter. Why? Because your Inquisitor is a boss and enemies are stupid, don't have much health, don't cause many negative effects, and most have only simple attacks, maybe a knockdown or the like here or there. I find this to be arguably the worst option here. This would make combat boring. Facing simple opponents isn't rewarding.
With that said, it seems from the videos presented thus far that they're going with option 5 here, maybe with 2 or 1 mixed in. AI has looked very simplistic so far, responding and attacking slowly and generally not being a threat at all to any party. If that's the case...really not looking forward to this game. I mean, that's a mechanic that'd make things arguably worse than DA2' random waves.
Retour en haut
Should be challenging, but I don't think it'll be impossible. And if combat difficulty is a great concern to you, you can always choose to go for a more challenging one.
