Those are the standards and those products have value. Buying an Xbox when Playstation has all games for both consoles makes no sense unless you just have to have Gamepass, specifically.
Scroll of Icarian Flight. It boosted acrobatics. AFAIK, there’s no way to make a spell or potion boosting a skill, just the 10 attributes. So the few jumping scrolls are all that you can get.
Also, a note about unexpected consequences. Boosting your strength to ridiculous proportions can cause your weapons to basically explode after one hit.
It’s one of my favorite games of all time. But choose a wrong setup and you’re screwed. Don’t get anything before heading out you’re dead. Attack a peasant, dead. Go in that cave, dead. Get winded before doing anything, dead and frustrated.
When wandering around, there’s always a cave or tomb around to explore. But yeah, there aren’t a lot of people out in the wilderness. Just the occasional naked nord or plantation.
It does work the same. The biggest difference is that there’s one or two player characters at any time that will give you a game over if they perma-die. But most of your crew are blank slates (with a name) that you build up, give a specific role, and can perma-die. The roles are more distinct, and there are more roles, so losing them feels like losing a party of your team. Like, your summoner might die, and that was the only summoner you had. You have to put in some effort to replace them.
Now, there is a difference of feel. Random mobs feel like they are for grinding rather than an actual threat. So deaths outside of the story feel like you should just reload your last save to save you the trouble. XCom generally felt like a person died, but it was easier to replace their role with the next man up.
Are names unusual? The only other tactical game like that that I’ve played is Final Fantasy Tactics and they all have names.
But I agree. In XCom you just accept that you’ll have losses. But they still hurt. My first run-in with Chryssalids was especially brutal. I escaped with two of my men and a failed mission. The rest were one-shotted or eaten by their own.
Unironically, that seems like a pretty easy game to remaster and turn for a profit. But also, they seem like they could ask Sony for funding in exchange for exclusivity. People don’t like exclusives, but sometimes it can fund stuff that wouldn’t normally get made.