Thread 11945015

Why are these games (norrath+return to arms) so hard compared to Dark Alliance games? Its not just hard its frustrating as fuck and the games seem to be balanced around not actually unlocking all of your skills until NG+ when you've already sunk 25hrs into the game. Dark Alliance games are alot better imo. Tell me im wrong

>>11945015 (OP)
Are you playing with a friend?

>>11945015 (OP)
Because you play them wrong?
Blocking is OP in those games if you have to play solo.

>>11945021
I don't have any friends

>>11945035
We're your friends, pal

I remember Marr being total bullshit compared to everything else.

>>11945035
I don't have friends anymore either. Years ago when I did, I played Champions and it was a great co-op game.

Dark Alliance is fun by yourself but Champions is built around co-op.

>>11945387
If you play solo is the difficulty toned down or is it the same?

champions just kind of sucks in general honestly

>>11945015 (OP)
Never played the Dark Alliance games, but rented Norrath and owned RTS. I don't remember either being particularly difficult, with a few sticky parts. This >>11945187 being one of them as Marr was one of the few enemies that could break your defense and recover quick enough to land cheap hits.

There are two things I HATED about RTS though. First, the Erudite Mage class (the most fun IMO) got screwed. The damage caps on the spells are so low, most of them are near useless by the end of second difficulty level. You're better off bonking enemies with your staff or mace at that point!

Second, pic related. I get what they were going for with this challenge, and I like that it requires a slow pace and a unique way of dealing with enemies. It just goes on far too long. One mistake and you're dead, start all over again. Too close to a exploding keg or troll: dead. Didn't see one of those annoying, flying leeches when you're already hurt: dead. Chose a low strength/stamina build: sucks to be you. I did eventually beat it with every class, but it's like a sanity endurance test.

>>11945387
>Dark Alliance is fun by yourself but Champions is built around co-op.
Yeah, i agree. It was supposed to help to sell the ps2 online stuff, like Everquest and FFXI.

I finished Norrath the other day, I really don't see what's so difficult about it OP, I played dark elf and would just kill everything blinding it with the fog skill and then going to town with my sword, sometimes I used the skeleton summon to distract them.
What I do not get is how are you supposed to get to level 50, I finished the game at 46 while trying to clear every area and AFAIK enemies don't respawn, except for that area before final boss, are you just supposed to grind there?

>>11945015 (OP)
>hard
if you're having trouble in any of those games, you picked the wrong character

I always found it funny how little champions had to do with everquest

like literally, aside from the player character choices and some name dropping, there's no correlation at all, like they had an entire generic high fantasy game ready to go then just made a few superficial changes once the ip was licensed

>>11945015 (OP)
Is Norrath or Return to Arms better? Gameplay wise

Speaking of these games, wtf is up with the Snowblind engine? This was like one of the last things for PS2 emulators to get working and even to this day those games are prone to slow down, graphical glitches, and even crashes in specific parts.

>>11945015 (OP)
This is one of my favorite action RPGs. Champions and Return to Arms are easily the Diablo-Clones that I sunk the most time into.
I can tell you a few little odd things about the game that may shed some light on the difficulty:
>The games were made with multiplayer co-op in mind. There's a scaling difference between single player and coop, but it's not much
>Many of the enemies were designed with multiple players in mind, if you don't know the shield or positioning exploits then you're basically guaranteed to die
>Some of the maps in the game were re-organized so that some late game enemies and maps were pushed to the early game, this makes difficulty spikes go EVERYWHERE until your first cycle
>You know the enemies that summon or resurrect other monsters? The game's experience track is weighted on them summoning two additional enemies at each time. So if you kill them immediately, you're losing small amounts of exp each time you don't let them summon/res
>Not all builds, abilities, or classes are equal. Some classes really struggle at certain portions of the game that were designed to counter them. (I once made a sexy lady ice-wizard who was one of my favorite characters, but every time I got to the frozen sea portion of the game I felt like breaking my television.)
>Usually the most boring abilities are the ones you actually want to level up first. For some reason the game is built upon you having them at the highest level you can get them first
>Item drop rates and scaling are completely unweighted, yet are the thing tied most heavily to character growth. You can play through the game 10 times on the same class and build and because items are so random you'll have a completely different experience each time, which is cool... But also really crap if you're just trying to play through the game with a new class for the first time.

>>11947815
Whats a noob friendly build? I want to get back into it, playing solo. From what I understand youre supposed to make a build around blocking

>>11947831
Blocking is really important if you don't know how to exploit positioning (Which is something you just naturally learn after playing for a really long time.)
But the first two builds that I would recommend playing through the game are a barbarian Dual-Wield build and the ShadowKnight Disease Bolt build. For some reason, those are the two that get players through the game the easiest when they don't really know what they're doing yet. Also, don't be afraid to reset while keeping your levels by starting a new character, deleting said new character, and then porting over your higher level character, (Letting you start from the beginning with your acquired levels and items and get more experience.) This will help get you through the game the first time so that you know what to expect in each area.

I also like to make a high strength/high con character with the Endurance ability so that I can use him as an item bank for my other characters.

>>11947189
Youre suppose to replay the game at harder difficulties
Norrath is my jam
I miss having it on disc

>>11947935
but I beat it on the hardest

>>11947189
>>11948153
Level grind.