82-T/A

So... I'll try to be as politically correct here as I can. I would say for the most part, you have to recognize the current "movement." Back when I was in school, being gay was weird, and we'd make fun of you unless we know that you were outright gay, in which case we were understanding and most people were cool with it (at least my friends). Today, more than half of middle and high schools are some form of "other," and well... being bi is super-acceptable. I'm not going to make any judgements here, but you know, most kids are trying to figure themselves out in middle and early high school... so it's just what it is. Almost all my daughter's friends are "other." With all of that in mind, you have to recognize that most of the people this game attracts is going to be the younger generation, and well... it appropriately reflects the staffing at WoTC. Also, this is really indicative of the people in the Steam Forums too. Mostly younger kids... mostly all biologically white males... almost all of them trans or have furry-related names. As for what you're saying... yes, pretty much. Basically, everyone you recruit is kind of hitting on you all the time, regardless of what your gender is. Honestly, I should have a female character because I'd much rather be looking at a shapely 4K female but than some dude walking around... but when I play these games, I always attempt to do so how I would want to portray myself in these times... so I pick a dude / Paladin. But based on my assumption, if I was to create a female character, everyone would still be hitting on me, regardless. Think of literally every character being "fluid" ... and there's no mention anywhere of sex or gender, or preference. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, except for the fact that you might start going down a conversation path with one of your teammates, that ends up being sexual in nature when you don't want it to be. One of the earlier conversations you can have with the first male characters you find that joins your party, is where the wizard offers to teach you magic. I'm like... OK, this sounds great. Now... I've never been on the male dating scene before, so maybe I missed an obvious innuendo there, but I was going right along... and then the Wizard started getting really close to me, speaking softly into my ear, and I'm like... dude... I'm not really into this. Except, there's no "Dude, I'm not really into this," option. So, you either have to fail a roll... (ah man, I screwed up my magic), or click the "Leave" button. I mean... I wanted to learn some magic... that's all I wanted. And then the thief... if you fail a perception roll (he tricks you), he'll get on top of you and puts a knife to your neck, and starts commenting about how sexy your neck is. Later in the game, he starts trying to get really intimate with you and asking if he can just take a little nibble, and that it'll be great for both of you (he's a vampire). And again, there's no... "Dude, I'm not into this," option. Again, I have to assume the responses are exactly the same regardless of whether you pick a male or female (or... the male / female body type, because they aren't defined that way). Easiest way to say it is... everyone secretly wants a piece of you... even when they're pissed. So, you just have to pick your responses carefully or it could take you down a certain path. You can't be innocent when you play this game, you have to assume literally everyone wants your junk. Once you get the hang of it though, it's really not a big deal. The game plays really, really well... but the time-suck thing is a problem for me. I've got tons of home renovations and schoolwork I should be doing, but for like 5 days straight after work, I've been playing it. I think I've got 29 hours so far, and I feel like a loser. Hahah... I was asking a question on the Steam Forums, and I couldn't remember the characters names, but used descriptors "the one-horned Devil Lady" to which I was very scolded and reminded that her name is Karlach of the Tieflings (apparently you can bang her too). This one guy got really mad at me, and told me I was trying to be cool and act like a rapper (or something). I don't know, but I looked at his information and he had over 790 hours in Balder's Gate 3. I politely reminded "Lord Nibbler" that while I'm not trying to be judgy, 790 hours equates to literally half a year's worth of full-time work at 40 hours a day. So... you can apparently really get addicted to this game. A friend bought it for me... so if you want to save your money... don't buy it. It's good... go out and start running every night, do push ups... do anything other than play this game.

Lol, I got all the way to the fourth page before I realized that "Last Chance" was the name of the game being sold. I kept thinking... "ok... this is my last chance for... what???"

Other than the fact that I don't have a whole lot of time to play it, I think it's pretty awesome.

I don't know man, I am always careful about making sure I use the term envious rather than jealous, but I think in this case, I downright hate you! Hahaha...

Game has been pretty good so far. Graphics are amazing, and the fights are actually quite good. There seems to be stories within stories, and I've found that I've had to temper what I do for fear that I'll upset one of the party members over the other. What one party member might approve of, is not always something everyone approves of. As a Paladin (Good), I am also more or less obligated to make certain decisions that may upset other party members. There seems to be a lot of discussion of slavery in the game, so as a Paladin I generally need to disadvantage these people and / or attack them outright. There are dozens of potential "party members" as I cheated and looked up more or less a list of them. They can all be convinced to join your party at one point or another. You can include them or leave them in your "camp" which I find interesting. As of this point, I don't have any stragglers... meaning that I've flat-out rejected anyone except the people immediately in my party. There can only be 4 total people, and I've taken the vampire thief, the cleric lady, the wizard, and myself (who is a Paladin). Another thing I noticed... not to offend anyone, but apparently every single male character is gay (if you're playing a male character I guess). Like... apparently you can romance them (from the IGN page that shows the character list). Alternately, there are only 2 female characters that you could potentially do this with, but like 9 male characters. I mean... I guess this is just what it is with WOTC today, but I found it odd. I'm not going down that path, but I'm having to constantly say things that are "less than nice" because some of the phrases are interpreted as encouraging a "relationship" with these male characters. I'm not aware of any positives to having a relationship with someone in the game other than the story building, but I have noticed that it affects your character's performance when someone with a very high "emotion" toward you is gravely injured. It causes a disability roll if you will against you for future attacks (probably not the best way to word it). Either way, the game has been pretty cool, and I hate myself for getting into it. I'm shooting through it quickly, but there's a lot of smaller quests and such that an individual could follow along. A lot of hidden things too which I find myself skipping over (but hope to go back to). It really feels like a "find your fate" kind of book, because there's so many possible solutions to a variety of different things. Really... it's probably the closest thing I've seen to one of the original games, Pool of Radiance (SSI Gold Box), where you just have a wildly open world, and you can basically do whatever the heck you want. Most of the other games in between all seem to focus on getting from point A to point B while not having a lot of diversion. So this has been really cool.

I'm happy to hear this. I appreciate what Wade Rosen is doing. I do hope he has deep pockets, because he's rebuilding an empire, but I hope he's not doing it too quickly. But, it's not expensive to buy-back licensing and rights. Either way, glad to see it!

In a lot of the games I used to play in DOS, there were usually two drivers that needed to be loaded... one for the Adlib/MIDI/OPL music, and another for SFX. So I'd imagine that it's just a programming issue, more than it has anything to do with the cards. My guess... Atari (then) probably tried to rush it out at the time, and didn't put a whole lot of effort into little things like that.

Oh dude... I really do like this. It definitely doesn't have the RLL sound, but it does emulate well the later 486-era IDE drives.

We used to take our graphics cards for granted back then. But like Sauron is implying, I think you should consider upgrading your graphics card. The link I posted above for the $50 dollar one uses one of the higher-end Cirrus Logic processors. It's literally one step down from the $150 one I also posted next to it. It really does make all the difference in the world. Like I mentioned, if you notice graphics "skipping," then it's the graphics card. If you notice graphics going incredibly slow, then it's the processor. But really, you should be busting out a came of Scorched Earth on that and call it a day! Haha...

Ugh, the game is good. I'm so pissed at myself for getting into this damn game. Like, I wouldn't have even bought it myself... but now I'm addicted to it.

If you're missing the .exe file that enables the cache for whatever reason, I have the latest version of it. I have a 386 SX-25 that was upgraded to a 486 DLC-25 Cyrix processor also. Just let me know and I can e-mail it to you.

Hahaha... yeah, I can tell the sexual undertones are hard-core. The troll lady was pissed that I freed the elf lady, and the elf lady keeps going on about how I saved her and all that. Man, these games are hilarious. So far it's been pretty good... but I can tell that as you say, there's a path that takes you down one way, and another that takes you down a different way.

So... I looked up some videos to see what I could expect, man... I guess I'm from a different time. There's a male-on-male relationship... ok, whatever, but one of them is a mind-flayer, and there's some "odd" activity that occurs during that with the tentacles. Man, I grew up with games like Civilization, Kings Quest, Starflight, Star Control, the AD&D gold box series games. About the naughtiest stuff I saw was when I'd go into the cave on Legend of the Red Dragon BBS door game. Hahah... I think I'll probably play with the mind-flayer sex option turned off.

This is super lame... but I installed one in my 8088 KayPro PC-10. It has an NEC V20 8088 processor, and originally came with a Seagate ST-225 RLL hard drive. The "sound" was every bit what made the computer what I remember it. I saved my original one, but put in a non-working one (hardrive spins, but tons and tons of bad sectors). Removed the old RLL controller, and installed the PC-XT card with a 128mb DOM, and then I still plugged in the Seagate RLL drive... just with power, so it turns on with the power. You hear it running, it doesn't give the beep/boop sounds of loading files, but you still get that disk spinning sound, even though I'm using the DOM. hahah...

This one is really cool! I wonder if someone scanned / transcribed these? I'd love to read these...