Is this game supposed to be so tedious?

[Pivke]

made characters, started playing, great start, some talks, some fights, had fun, got to the city...
now i have spent 8+ hours in the city, zero action, just running around, talking to town people, listening to endless npc yapping and trying to solve the stupid murder :s all for no visible progress in game, and im starting to get very sick of it.

SPOILER
i found the sheep corpse and got the grave digger arrested, and i found love letter and "how to murder someone" book. and i wasted ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 8 hours for this.
SPOILER END

quest journal sucks donkey balls and is not helpfull at all.
so far i refused to look up some walktrough guide. maybe i should have done that right away, because from all this boredom im now drained of all will to play this game any more :/

[Dragon]

I don't agree with how your comment characterizes talking to NPCs as "tedious" or as "not progress." IMO everything you do in the game is progress, including talking to NPCs or reaching new environments.

If the game were instead to be 100% combat like Path of Exile or Diablo, that would be tedious.

DOS is non-tedious because it isn't a repetitive trash mob grinding fest like ARPG games are.

Having said that, DOS does have some stretches that become tedious because they have too much combat in a row, and not enough NPCs and story interspersed into those segments.

I do agree with you that the quest journal sucks. DOS is not like most games where your quest journal actually tells you useful information about where to go and what to do.

Instead, in DOS, the quest journal is more like lore flavor/fluff, but almost entirely useless as any kind of practical guide.

[Raze_Larian]

The mortician may have told you his list of suspects, or you can search the place for his journal, if you don't already have it. Between that and the crime scene, that will narrow down the places you need to search for that quest. If you have Pet Pal, speaking to Jake's dog is another way to progress (though still involves searching the houses or work places of the suspects, or pickpocketing the suspects).

Did you do any other digging in the graveyard? Specifically, the largest mound leads to combat suitable for level 3, or so.

There isn't anything preventing you from leaving town, and taking a break from questing there. The easiest way to go would be out the only gate that isn't closed (with a check on party level and number before opening the doors). You'll probably want to have explored enough to pick up a couple of companion characters, if you are not playing lone wolf main characters.

[Wovan]

There are only two "tedious" tasks I find in the game.

First: Cyseal due to people complaining.
I happened to have pet talk and got it quickly done without spoilers first run. Seems like people played too righteously, you pretty much can't proceed Cyseal without stealing a needed thing or two (red colored!), which I dont blame them.

Second: The Immaculate/garden trial, puzzle, this time I was too righteous.
Had to finally look for help here. This was where I finally realized the shortcut gaming mechanics, except they're required here now and not optional shortcut/cheese/dishonored or whatever prevented me from utilizing them till now (teleport and perception potions).

Metaphorically speaking, this is a wall breaking game indeed.

[Rad-Icarus]

It's a classic CRPG done in a modern style.

It's not an action RPG.

Play Victor Vran or Grim Dawn, both are excellent ARPGs with action for days.

This is more of a thoughtful, character driven classic RPG experience along the lines of Ultima, Baldur's Gate, or Shadowrun.

[Shucks]

Im surprised no one else said that they also found the city tedious.

It was actually my least favorite part of the game (besides some of the puzzles like the entrance to the temple). I honestly think the game gets way better after the murder mystery.

The combat gets so much more fun the more abilities you find too.

[Kiru]

Pacing issues. First you hit the town and waste hours without anything really happening, full of dialogue that could definitely be shorter and quests that really don't feel like anything these supposedly so sought after people should be bothered with.

Once you are done with that, you spend hours outside, doing nothing but exploring and fighting, barely seeing a word of dialogue.

Doesn't take much to see how that's not exactly a great way of doing this. Then again, there are plenty of other things in the game, where I'd say the same. Movement speed. Stealing being way too OP. (why can you even sell that stuff in the town you stole it?) Item menu, especially the crafting. Apparently you can also kill people, if nobody is looking, as nobody cares. The only corpse mattering is the one in the story.


Good battle system for sure. But I'm not so sure about the rest, as an rpg. Although if the walking speed would be normal and the map system not so sucky, I think the town would've been much much more smooth and maybe last 2 hours, including sidequests. Which would be fine.

[Chrisme]

I found that part to be very tedious as well. Too much pointless NPC blabbering, even though some of it is admittedly funny. But a lot of it feels more like a filler and to think that all of it was even voiced baffles me a bit.
This is a general problem with RPGs of this kind though (actually, coming to think of it... even more action oriented RPGs suffer from this). Going to a city always means spending hours to talk to NPCs. They should probably have spiced it up with a few fights though.

Anyway, try coop-mode if you can. The game really shines when you play it with someone else and then even the boring stuff won't feel so bad. I'd go so far as to label it my best coop-game experience so far even and I have played a ton of games in my life.

[v0]

ymmv. i'd blast with dos1. even though it isnt rpg ;)