Ehhhh... they are about the same really. Circle of the Moon gets credits for having one of the hardest final Dracula forms (in my opinion) and it takes a while to learn the pattern. But other than that... Harmony of Dissonance is easy...Aria of Sorrow... pretty easy... Dawn of Sorrow: Easy. Portrait of Ruin, Easy. Ecclesia: Said to the be hte hardest of the handheld Castlevanias, but it was mostly easy when I bought it 8 years ago...when I was 11-12.

It's just sad the game very nearly breaks down when it comes to the actual, you know, gameplay.

Most are probably at least a little harder than SotN. Order of Ecclesia especially can be pretty challenging at times.

Have fun with Galamoth though.

Have fun with Galamoth though.

I never beat Circle of the Moon. Couldn't beat Dracula. And the game was pretty challenging overall, from what I remember.

The combat is not great, but does its job. What I don't appreciate are the crap healing mechanics. So Geralt needs to set up shop & daintily sip on the potions before/after combat, & can't quaff it down while swinging a sword.

... You wot?
Reminds me of the first encounter with Letho (Chapter 1). I lost count of how many times my piss weak Geralt died to the bald dude & his gayass energy shield before I called "fuck this", drank some regen before the bullshit cutscenes & winged it from there instead. Urgh.

Yep, all it'll take is one flop.

That already happened. It's called The Old Republic.

From the few things I've heard from friends that have friends or connections to people that have been in the business, it just sounds godawful on every level. Great pay I guess, but long hours and zero job security. I've also heard this more than once, but those who work on games kind of stop playing them altogether because they have no time for it or the work kills the hobby. Glad I ditched the idea of game design after taking a few courses, sounds like one ticket to hell. I'll just play them thanks.

Reorganizing? Nah, just EA being EA:
http://kotaku.com/an-updated-list-of-st ... 1689498614

Is the allegation that EA buys smaller competitors to close them? Because four of those EA kept alive for a decade or more after buying; Maxis they kept alive for almost two decades. Hell, I assumed they went out of business years ago, I was shocked when my friend told me there was a new Sims out.

I think it's much more likely EA are just terribad at management and basic accounting, which is about par for the videogaming industry. I read an interview with someone in the industry last year who said that most of the studios are one flop away from insolvency. Not just being dropped by their parent company for not selling as much as their greedy corporate masters would like, but from actual bankruptcy. Which, when you think about the huge amounts of money these companies make, really implies they have a spending problem.

Money. It all comes down to money. EA as a corporation doesn't share our sense of obligation out of sentimentality. Hence today's announcement.

The long gap is probably caused by several factors. First was that the expansion for SC4 didn't print cash like The Sims was at the time. Sure it made money, but The Sims had a HUGE (I remember reading 16x) return on the investment. So it got deprioritized to make The Sims 2. Which again made huge returns.

EA has adopted a greenlight gating process. Where by with little or no capital invested they have a few highly talented senior designers/creative types come up with the framework of a game. They develop what they can as proof of concept, usually simple gameplay prototypes and concept art, which is then presented to EA. This sets up a series of gates and reviews whereby they get more money and manpower as it seems necessary and the time to work on the gameplay, engine, and artistic style. This whole period is called preproduction, and can last from a few months to a few years. At some point you go into production, which means you know what you are making, how you are going to do it, how they are going to sell it and hard numbers to back all of that up. Some time after that, when marketing thinks it is right, they will announce the game to the public. From that point on nothing changes from the public facing. Once locked into 'online-only' there was no way of changing it. People complained that the cities were too small but there was no way to address that without compromising the numbers and forecasts when the game was sold to EA's corporate overseers. EA can't be negotiated with at this level, you can't change their mind, you REALLY have to fight to get dates changed etc.

So, during that 10 year wait there was almost 9 years of silence. 3 or 4 of those years had active development of the game that shipped, with another year or more of a small group of creatives. There were other attempts that never made the light of day, and products (Simcity Societies comes to mind) that didn't deliver that 'SimCity' experience.

I offer all of this with the caveat that they don't even tell us (read 'the devs') all of this and some of it is conjecture.

I also don't fault EA with this process. It is meant to minimize risk and it does pretty well at that. EA is a very large ship, it takes a lot of energy and time to get it to change direction. That long process steers the ship and adds predictability. Smaller companies are able to pivot much faster but lack EA's resources and ability to 'play the long game'. All of this stuff happens out of necessity, and all of it comes down to money.

EA is actually a great place to work these days. In the past there were difficulties (I was part of the EA Spouse/class action) but a lot of that has turned around. They really do want to retain talent and minimize layoffs. Not everyone shares this experience, but I haven't worked back-to-back weekends in almost a decade. EA has a really good benefits package, competitive pay, and a strong sense of progressive public responsibility. Maxis, in particular, the Sims side has what is probably the highest level of gender equality in the industry.

"Great place to work", but apparently any IP you work on during your free time belongs to EA... I don't even know how this can even be legal, mind. But fuck, even if they're not as evil as they used to be, they're still greedy fuckers.

I'll have to second this. That game was out for blood.