idbeholdME: Evil Islands.
CarChris: I wanted to ask someone about "Evil Islands". Is it as diffiult as I've read? The Rages of Mages games were difficult (for me). Maybe their overall balance is a bit to the "being difficult" setting!
Also, I've watched a video and the protagonist of Evil Island, was always crouching and killing unseen (something like a bonus damage to the first hit), as the only way to kill enemies! Is that so? It isn't played like a normal "I'm the strong hero" action-Rpg? It's stealth or nothing?
And what about enemy respawn?
The game can be quite difficult, same as Rage of Mages. Finished both RoM games.
The entire series is pretty pissy about it's damage x armor checks and attack x defense checks. The moment you are behind even a little bit, you will have trouble hitting the target and when you do, doing damage if you don't penetrate the enemy armor value.
As for sneaking backstabs in Evil Islands - no wonder. It is a guaranteed hit with backstab bonus. If you target the head, it is an additional massive multiplier and in many cases, it can outright kill or almost kill a lot of enemies. Otherwise, you have to go through the whole ordeal of hit checks and armor checks. I just recently spent like 5 minutes fighting a single black boar, where normal hits were doing 0 damage due to armor, so I had to target the head (which are guaranteed criticals), but has a much lower hit chance. Result was hitting like once every 15 swings, slowly chipping it down through the regen while my tank was being constantly pumped by heals and the boar also constantly pelted by ineffectual arrows and firebolt doing like 3 damage every once in a while....
So yes, it absolutely is not a game where you will roll over everything easily. Not even close. Sneaking is even mandatory in a lot of places. There are enemies even in the first part of the game you simply will not be able to touch for a loooooong time like Ogres/Trolls due to insufficient attack and damage values. Can't even hit those once yet, let alone start damaging them, while they squash me in a couple hits.
Enemies also love targeting your hands, which slows your attacks/casting to a crawl. It is an ordeal, but still somewhat satisfying, managing to find a way to progress through the gauntlet.
Important to note though, the game has 2 difficulty options. I picked the harder one (normal IIRC), but there is an easier one too. Not sure how much easier it actually is.