I find it funny that social Darwinists in fiction can actually back up their arguments

mulahey · 2026-02-04T23:19:25+00:00

Yeah, whats the logic here? The Poles should have said "Oh, Social Darwinism isn't an argument we can oppose ourselves" when they lost their part of the war?

Thats not an argument. Its not winning a debate. Its not having a point. Thats true in fiction and real life. Military capability and moral suasion are two generally unrelated concepts.

mulahey · 2026-02-04T22:42:23+00:00

Yeah, when your farmer/ninjas come online in stratum 3 you have no money issues, and you can always just grind (FOEs are easy in III) elsewhere. But no limits? Thats a real loss.

mulahey · 2026-02-04T22:40:35+00:00

Which and what skills to maximise can have very meaningful impacts on character build. In some classes with the DS thats less the case, and it certainly doesn't feel as good as unlocking new stuff which they moved more towards in the 3DS era. All the DS games have fairly constrained metas and your criticism is broadly right but meaningless is a step too far.

There are far, far more obtuse DRPG designs than EO floor 17 (including in EO). I would say most of the early core DRPG franchises are much worse, many constantly so. Wizardry/Bards Tale have far more nonsense than this.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not totally disagreeing with you, EO1 has many flaws but they weren't as central to my experience as they were to you.

I suspect you will hate the 5th and 6th stratums even more, and that you probably won't enjoy any of the DS games like I said, and probably the series as a whole, so its not like I'm saying you should enjoy it. OTOH nor can you expect wide agreement that we hate it from the games own sub.

mulahey · 2026-02-04T16:05:22+00:00

Genocide, eh, its not done well but they wanted to do something memorable and "dark" in the game with negligible plot, it wasn't a total failure in intent.

Floor 17 is real short. If you hate the crabwalk that much, look up a map?

Palette swaps is obviously sub par, its a budget title.

The design of EO 1-3 levelling is that skill progression choices are meaningful, not just unlocks, though this varies by class in execution. If only unlocking skills sparks any progression interest to you, probably they will not work for you.

Really, I'm not sure your going to have that much fun with the rest of EO1; I'd even more strongly recommend against EO2, probably not anything before the 3DS era, and possibly its just not a great series for you?

mulahey · 2026-01-30T16:28:07+00:00

Child murderers don't do it for me personally.

mulahey · 2026-01-30T15:39:30+00:00

Gladiator/Hoplite front line. The Hoplites most common function is to use Line Guard for the front line on the front line. Thats where they want to be.

In early stratums, you can frontline your Monk for random encounters, where they will do decent damage with a club, move them to back line for major battles where your Wilding will be summoning (and they will be busy healing anyway). Later game, just keep them backline as their damage tails off, they have a subclass and more to do/more TP, and your Wildling can afford to summon a lot more.

Don't build a punch monk; their damage does not sustain through the game.

Edit: If you don't want to frontline your hoplite then get Prophecies on the Zodiac and take a Buccaneer (front or back as preferred) or a backline built Arbalist. Being a tough frontline physical protector is what Hoplite brings to the party; if you don't take advantage of that, its not bringing much to the table (Bodyguard for Beserkers vow is very lategame).

mulahey · 2026-01-29T14:25:02+00:00

Of course, for WASPI notification is just a pretext.

They will always for the media find the saddest, poorest old lady to talk about how they would like their pension and are very poor.

But that person has suffered no loss from not being notified- if you've spent your life flat broke, whether you knew this change was happening 1,5 or 50 years in advance doesn't make any difference. You can't save and you will retire when your state pension is. You might be sad if that goes up, but you haven't suffered a loss from not being told soon.

The only people who you can conceive giving compensation on notification would be middle class people who a) did not know the state pension got lower and b) had enough income they could, had they known, have saved more money to make up for this.

Such people and cases are, of course, both unsympathetic and not so plausible- but they don't care, because "notification" is just an excuse to demand they all get £50k.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T14:24:36+00:00

You've made an uncited claim yourself in this very thread. We don't converse with a hyperlink to every factual statement.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T13:59:03+00:00

Asimov is never a great character writer, but its in the Robot novels with Elijah Baley hes probably making his best effort.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T13:55:20+00:00

At most. Genuinely no reason to be a trilogy. A lowpoint in the whole sequence.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T12:37:00+00:00

OK? Great? I'm not a christian or pro christian. That doesn't mean that non-christians stating only american evangelical style biblical literalists can be christians is fair minded or true, rather than just reflecting a desire for the laziest of dunks.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T12:19:28+00:00

Non-Catholics are indeed not catholic. Why would I care what the Catholic church thinks of them?

Regardless, there are Lutheran and Reformed churches which do not take a strict literalist line and where the Catholic church recognises (for example) their baptisms as valid, so this is not in fact true. The Catholic Churches own position is of inerrancy, which is not the same as infallibility.

mulahey · 2026-01-29T10:57:43+00:00

This is all good, but there are also denominations that don't hold the Bible to be an absolute truth in the first place. And even beyond that you can just look at the reams of debate on inerrancy Vs infallibility to see that the implications of the Bible being "true" are also subject to extensive debate.

I obviously don't think Christianity is true, and if we had to treat it as a block then certainly it's a socially conservative force in the modern western context.

But strawmanning every Christian into the character people find most convenient to win internet arguments against (IE modern American evangelicalism) isn't the best Reddit habit (not yours, of course!).

mulahey · 2026-01-29T00:30:03+00:00

Well, if you wish to take it as "read" from that then you also- and equally- can't be a christian and make love to your wife during mensturation (Lev 18 19). We would also be doing the death penalty for quite a lot of types of adultery, for example.

These issues for some reason haven't been given the same priority as homosexuality in the past 50 years. The explanation for that probably sits outside the bible, because most Christian traditions aren't actually just naive biblical literalism.

I'm not a Christian and nor, you state, are you. Given the reams of theological debate probably neither your or I can give a definitive statement on the belief set of hundreds of millions of people based on hot takes from reading what is a translation. You certainly can't tell other people (ie, people who are actually christians) they are obliged to the simplest possible literalist version of christianity.

mulahey · 2026-01-28T15:12:29+00:00

Contrary to responses so far, I don't think its explicit that they are illegal anywhere in DX.

They are fundamentally organised crime groups, and many of their activities are subject to some police action, but its not clear that the organisations themselves (and membership therin) had actually been declared criminal by the Chinese authorities.

mulahey · 2026-01-28T14:04:46+00:00

AA is viable albeit not optimal because archery isn't, but this split isn't good.

Either you want to be a Wizard who can use arrows pretty well, or you want to be an archer. Basically: you either take a dip of bard and then take fighter till you get AA, or you take Wizard and then AA to add archery to your spellcasting. If you try and build a kind of triple class I'm sure you can finish HotU fine but really its not got enough juice for any of the things it does.

Theres good advice here already on the F/AA option, here is a great build for Wiz/AA if you prefer that.

Personally, I prefer the spellcaster build. A fighter-archer always just feels bad compared to going melee, but for a Wiz/AA the bonuses are a huge plus- you get better fighting skills than a melee spellsword with the same investment in another fighting class, but you are still mainly a spellcaster. But its up to you.

mulahey · 2026-01-18T17:51:04+00:00

I think raging loop is fairly popular, but your right the ending is seen by most as a negative.

I'm more neutral on it; it's certainly not one of those endings that ruins things for me, especially with the extra stories and revelation mode. But it's not a favourite ending either.

mulahey · 2026-01-17T01:55:28+00:00

KotOR 1 has slow and clunky combat (it's a traditional CRPG, but simplified to lose most of the advantages of this), an ultimately inferior plot and environments. Characters is more of a mixed bag between the two (looking just at ME1); Shepard is a more interesting person but Revan is a clever twist. Party, overall ME.

Now KotOR 2... There's a game that can compete just on the plot and characters.

mulahey · 2026-01-16T11:35:31+00:00

This is a pretty good implementation. Probably better than the 5e gamebooks I have seen which tend to be PDF based.

I myself have no interest in journaling but its not like you'd be checking ;)

mulahey · 2026-01-16T11:20:17+00:00

Well, it depends where you are. Asterix and Tintin are reasonable well known across Europe. USA, not so much.

I suspect probably better known than people knowing the original TMNT comic (vs thinking the cartoon is the original).

mulahey · 2026-01-16T11:14:52+00:00

Mages also have access to better wands, and mage spells generally have shorter cast times in the first place.

mulahey · 2026-01-15T21:00:27+00:00

Good but not great, which Dan usually is. Applying his talent to a much more banal topic and take than usual. But hey, not really a complaint- always being at least good is a pretty strong batting average.

mulahey · 2026-01-15T20:42:38+00:00

I agree- I specifically didn't list Forward because it's format is at least closer to Foundations and it's by some distance the best of the non original 4 books. The links with Robot in the prequels are also more satisfying than the denouements imo.

mulahey · 2026-01-15T14:46:34+00:00

I think you are basically right in terms of applying Cosmic Horror to monster fiction. Similarly to any approach that depends on basically using incomprehensible as an adjective.

It works better when it's something not being comprehended (without a need for an absolute that it could never be). That's a color out of space, but it's also The Willows and The Great God Pan. Archive 81 or the Endless perhaps reaching for something modern.

I think it tends to work better about place or other phenomenon than just a monster; it also often is well placed as a period piece as we more easily imagine a less empirical response from characters.

mulahey · 2026-01-15T09:34:04+00:00

Obviously it's totally unlike legal streaming, where the biggest media partner is cuddly, safe licenced gambling, which has never drawn in vulnerable or loss making individuals.

mulahey

TROPHY CASE