{"id":3883,"date":"2017-11-02T02:05:49","date_gmt":"2017-11-02T02:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=3883"},"modified":"2020-09-07T00:26:25","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T00:26:25","slug":"elminage-gothic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/elminage-gothic\/","title":{"rendered":"Elminage: Gothic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are two kinds of difficulty, fake difficulty (primarily arising from having the adversaries cheat) and real difficulty. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gog.com\/game\/elminage_gothic\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">This game<\/a> unfortunately includes both varieties in a particularly tedious and hassle-filled combination.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand it features enemies that can do all the same things your characters can (including instant-death attacks) in great numbers (encounters range up to groups of 18). This is real difficulty. On the other&#8230; it also gives enemies abilities your characters <em>can&#8217;t<\/em> possess (even if you Summon Contract them; such as formation switching), gives them infinite spell casting, resets your attributes to the racial (not class) minimums if you multi-class, has equipped items reduce your free carry space, completely disallows resting outside of town, and restricts having a basic map to a specific spell\/item (L1 Mage\/Magic Map). That&#8217;s all fake, artificial difficulty.<\/p>\n<p>The two real deal killers are the map system, since the environmental graphics are incredibly bare-bones and floors are filled with miles of identical walls and doors which inexplicably auto-close behind you (more fake difficulty), and lack of a dungeon-based resting system which makes primary spellcasters dead weight most of the time&#8230; unless you had the fore-knowledge to make them Dragonewts for the Breath attack. It also doesn&#8217;t help that leveling is unexciting; apart from gaining new spells (which you&#8217;ll rarely use in normal encounters) the only other useful level-up abilities come from &#8216;mastering&#8217; a class at level 26+.<\/p>\n<p>If all that wasn&#8217;t enough though, there&#8217;s also the technical issues. Sometimes left-clicking won&#8217;t work as a selection command (such as when transferring items between characters) and you have to use the relevant keyboard command instead (Enter by default), using the &#8216;repeat last round commands&#8217; function does not repeat the character ordering if you set it, the identify\/disarm traps menu is a clunky mess, and the town menus are an unintuitive labyrinth.<\/p>\n<p>So no, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll be playing any more of such a highly random and deliberately antagonistic game. Some resources if you decide to attempt it:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/sharedfiles\/filedetails\/?id=321865136\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Useful Information and Walkthrough<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/fearlessrevolution.com\/viewtopic.php?t=2432\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Cheat Engine Table<\/a> (GoG Version)<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/files\/Guides\/Elimange_Gothic_-_Age_Spirit_Pact_Info.txt\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Age Stat Growth and Spirit Pact Information<\/a> (GoG Version)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are two kinds of difficulty, fake difficulty (primarily arising from having the adversaries cheat) and real difficulty. This game unfortunately includes both varieties in a particularly tedious and hassle-filled combination. On the one hand it features enemies that can do all the same things your characters can (including instant-death attacks) in great numbers (encounters range up to groups of 18). This is real difficulty. On the other&#8230; it also gives enemies abilities your characters can&#8217;t possess (even if you Summon Contract them; such as formation switching), gives them infinite spell casting, resets your attributes to the racial (not class) minimums if you multi-class, has equipped items reduce your free carry space, completely disallows resting outside of town, and restricts having a basic map to a specific spell\/item (L1 Mage\/Magic Map). That&#8217;s all fake, artificial difficulty. The two real deal killers are the map system, since the environmental graphics are incredibly bare-bones and floors are filled with miles of identical walls and doors which inexplicably auto-close behind you (more fake difficulty), and lack of a dungeon-based resting system which makes primary spellcasters dead weight most of the time&#8230; unless you had the fore-knowledge to make them Dragonewts for the Breath [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[148,477,28,472],"class_list":["post-3883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-action-rpg","tag-exploration","tag-fantasy","tag-first-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}