Deus Ex: Invisible War is the greatest game in the entire series. Let me go into a bit of history here. I'd heard about Deus Ex back in the early 2000's when it was first released. Never gave it the time of day because back then I was a console gamer and didn't own a powerful PC. Then, around December-January of last year, I decided to buy Deus Ex: GOTY off Steam. I loved it. It was 20 hours of some of the best gameplay I'd ever experienced. But there were a few problems. The first Deus Ex separated the RPG elements into two distinct categories: Skills, which you acquired from gaining experience and completing objectives, and Augmentations, which you acquired from augmentation canisters. A third RPG element was introduced called upgrade canisters. These would allow you to upgrade one of your augmentations to the next level. Augmentations were a big selling point for the first Deus Ex, but as I played it, I found that they were largely useless and didn't matter. This was really disappointing for me. It didn't matter what augmentations you had equipped because there was always a way to do what you wanted to do. I just couldn't help but feel that the augmentations were an unnecessary addition to the game, and were even poorly implemented. Almost all augmentations in Deus Ex: GOTY were active, when I felt many of them, such as "Run Silent" should have been passive. The real meat of Deus Ex GOTY's RPG elements were in its skill system, a system that I felt was more a formality than anything else. How did you play Deus Ex: GOTY? Did you specialize in a weapon type of your choice, of which there were only 4, get a point in Computers and Electronics, and then max Lockpicking? So did I. As far as RPG elements went, Deus Ex: GOTY felt as watered down as they come. At best, helpful in select situations, and at worst, totally unnecessary. This isn't to say Deus Ex: GOTY was a bad game. It's one of my favorite games of all time. However, what skills and augmentations you chose didn't have a significant impact on how you played the game, unless you went out of your way to play differently, which usually involved you in some way handicapping yourself. The RPG elements just were not that deep, and even somewhat of a hindrance at times. Enter Deus Ex: Invisible War. This game is not without its technical flaws, but in terms of its gameplay, story and RPG elements, it truly shines in my view. In Deus Ex: IW, the skill system was done away with altogether. Now you won't specialize in Low Tech weaponry only to find out later you don't need it when you get a particularly powerful sword. Nope. Skills and augmentations have been combined into "biomods", which is just another name for augmentations. Now the player has to choose: Do you want to be a supreme hacker, or do you want to have a cloaking ability? You can't have both. And it's in this area, ladies and gents, that Deus Ex: Invisible War shines. You actually have to devise a build, and your build will have a significant impact on how you play through the game. Want to hack? You can't cloak then. Want to regenerate health? Then you have to choose between the Regeneration biomod, which locks out all eye-related biomods, or Health Leech Drone, which locks out all other movement-related biomods. Biomods can only be upgraded to level 3, and biomod canisters are abundant in this game, meaning you can even switch your build later on if you don't like the one you're currently using! I loved that. Some people say it's "dumbed down", but I believe this simplified system creates more freedom to roleplay, and has a greater impact on how you play the game, therefore, it has more depth to me. Another improvement over GOTY is that many of IW's biomods are passive. You no longer need to activate your Strength augmentation. It's always on, and it doesn't consume any bioelectric energy (Deus Ex speak for "MP"). Not only that, but unlike in GOTY, you can play a true super villain in this game. So many choices you make in Invisible War are morally gray, and even though Alex D sounds like your run-of-the-mill good guy, but I never felt that his "nice guy" demeanor got in the way of my villainy. Maybe that's just me, though. Deus Ex: IW is a true roleplaying game through and through, if you allow yourself to get into that headspace. To give you an example, I remember on my first playthrough, I didn't know who I wanted to ally with: The WTO or the Order Church. I got picked on by some thugs, ran away, and one of the Order Church's followers came to my aid with her bolt gun - after I had just told her off! It was then that I decided to see what the Church had to say. It was fun for me, but be warned - to enjoy IW to the fullest, you *must* roleplay in it. There is so much I can say about this game that was great, but I think I will stop here. A fantastic, wonderful, misunderstood game with a very strange HUD that can be difficult on the eyes even at the best of times. But you can, however, reconfigure the HUD and turn it off almost completely in the options menu.
This isn't a review of Realms of Arkania's gameplay as much as it is a review of its character generation system. Let me start by saying that I have not gotten past the character generation screen, but I wanted to give my thoughts on it and warn potential buyers about the complexity of this system. Many people assume that because a system is complex, it's hardcore. They couldn't be more wrong. Realms of Arkania actually has a fairly straight forward, simple system for those of us who are used to pen and paper RPGs and the number crunching involved therein. The problem with complex systems such as these (and Dungeons and Dragons for that matter) is that it doesn't allow the player to fully exercise their creativity. Instead, choices that -should- be left to the player are left to random dice rolls or racial/class stereotypes. For example, why are all Thorwalians better with an axe than a sword? What if I want to play a Thorwalian who's got an affinity for swords? How is that incongruent with a culture that's clearly based on Norse Vikings, who were excellent swordsmen? So because I want to play a Thorwalian, I'm forced to use an axe or I'll forever lag behind a fighter class, who can begin with a score of 7 in Swordsmanship to my Thorwalian's 2? That isn't fair. This sort of thing is prevalent throughout the entire system. A character's identity is shallowly based on cliches and stereotypes, and this is forced on the player by a set of tired, overly complicated rules and dice rolls that do more to kill creativity than to spark it. You cannot reduce a living, breathing person, with a history and a personality, down to a few pages of dice rolls and racial attributes. Initially, I had trouble coming to grips with Realms of Arkania‘s stat system. This is because of a lack of helpful information online, and the manuals being poorly written, uninformative and downright misleading. The Realms of Arkania 1 manual hints that Ice Elf magic is in some way different from other forms of magic, when - at least in the case of Realms of Arkania 2 - it‘s not. The Realms of Arkania 3 manual (more on this later) says the same thing, and it's not true. This comes from the developers trying to make their manuals more interesting by injecting some lore into them, but this just ends up confusing the player, who will look to the manual to explain the rules of the game to them. In manuals, there should always be separate sections for lore and game rules. The player begins the character generation process by rolling 1D6+7 for all of his or her positive attributes. 8 is the lowest a stat can go, and 13 is the highest it can go. After this, stats are rolled for the character's negative attributes, with 2 being the lowest and 8 being the highest. Rolling for the positive and negative attributes happens in one fell swoop. So if the player manages to get exactly the rolls they want for their positive attributes, and ends up with three 7's for their negative attributes, good luck min/maxing your stats - you'll probably do better rerolling, which can sometimes take hours (I'm not joking.) This is made even more frustrating because the manual that comes with Realms of Arkania 2 doesn't even tell you what the stat requirements are for the different classes. The Realms of Arkania 1 manual does, but the requirements are different for the two games. What does this mean? It means that I had to consult the Realms of Arkania 3 manual to figure out the aforementioned stat requirements, and considering that the games are sold separately, this is downright shameful, but not a fault of GOG's so much as it is the fault of the developers' for releasing such an awful manual. I could not find any information about the attribute requirements for the different classes online either - not as a native English speaker. Being a German-made game, I'm sure there's more helpful information in German, and I even found at least one German RoA forum with an English section, but by this time, I had already consulted the RoA 3 manual to find out what I needed to know. I'd like to compare this system to Might and Magic, another fantastic CRPG. Might and Magic has a very simplified stat and skill system, where stats such as Intellect or Personality will determine the amount of spell points that are available to that particular character, but not his or her damage with spells, which is determined separately by their ranks in their magical skills. From a roleplaying perspective, these stats have no real bearing on the character itself and can quite easily be raised to astronomical heights, rendering them meaningless and useful only for determining the character's ability in combat - the way a stat system should be in a CRPG. This simplified stat and skill system allows players to create their party quickly and jump right into a Might and Magic game, never to look back or worry about whether their stats or skills truly represent their characters. Might and Magic's approach was to fill the game with interesting quests and dungeons while relying less on stats and numbers that, for most gamers, will only ever be a means to an end and not the end in itself. Realms of Arkania's character generation system represents everything I hate about RPGs in general. These systems are why I found it impossible to enjoy games like Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate, despite them having such well-written storylines and interesting gameplay. I always felt like these games were telling me, "You can roleplay, but you can only do it -my- way." It’s like having a bad DM. If you're looking for a good CRPG to play, I highly recommend the Might and Magic 6-Pack, also available here on GOG. I rated this game 4 Stars because once I move beyond character creation, I know I’ll enjoy the game. I know what to expect and I know that the simulation elements, although tedious for many gamers, will be fun for me. I just don’t like being told how to play my characters.
