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The DnD aspect made the combat worse than Divinity’s Original Sin’s combat. DnD is probably fine on table top setting, but as a video game, it’s terrible. Auto/normal attacking was the strongest build in BG3…
I find Astarion severely overrated
I leave him out entirely. Can’t stand him
I killed him after he tried to bite me. I felt a little bit guilty and replayed that part but letting him draw a little blood from me. He killed me and the next day acted like nothing had happened, like he didn’t know why I was dead. Fuck that guy, reloaded the save where I killed him.
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
Hard agree the ruleset is the mayor shackle to the game. I think the DnD part also includes the whole lore of the forgotten realms which is the incredible foundation in which the game could bloom tho. I’m not saying larian can’t create fantastic worlds and I’m looking forward to the next games, but the lore aspect of the DnD license is mayorly beneficial to the game
Act 3 destroys the pacing
They should have just let you dye equipment at will from the character screen
The Emperor isn’t even that hot
It’s weird, but I suspect that Act 2 and Act 3 were swapped originally. It makes more sense to have Act 2 be where you go to Baldur’s Gate, learn more about your companions, resolve their personal stories, explore a large open map, and THEN move on to the big confrontation against the Absolute at the tower.
From a story perspective it’s really weird how you confront the Absolute and then go on to sort of aimlessly do all that other stuff in Baldur’s Gate. It makes more sense if the story acts are swapped, imo.
I like the “Free The Artist” side quest.
That is all.
This game is great, but if it came out only a year or two after BG2, it wouldn’t have been as highly praised being much smaller and also because contemporaries would have been on par mechanically.
The romance aspect is a complete waste of time and the time spent on it could have added so much more to the game.
Unpopular for sure ha ha
You can only bone your companion the one time and they turn the lights off in Sharesses Caress.
I want my companions to have a “Let’s fuck” button.
4 max party size was a mistake
If they went any higher they’d have to make some encounters even larger and lengthier for balance, and some of those encounters already feel like they go on forever 💀
Isn’t it laughably easy to mod? I’m okay with them saying “this is what we balanced for, anything else is on you”, though it should be like those divinity “prepackaged mods” like the zoomy boots
I don’t think the writing is particularly good, and it is particularly problematic in Act 3. The pacing falls apart, all urgency disappears and there is also a big problem with the villains. Gortash and Orin are pretty bad characters and the nebulous blob that is the Nether Brain is not a compelling antagonist. The Emperor is a pretty interesting character, but he sadly doesn’t really play out as an antagonist - which I find a massive waste in itself. It also felt like some parts of the plot only make sense if you’re playing as Dark Urge.
The companions all being extremely horny and protagonist-sexual gives off a weird vibe, and the progression and design of the relationship system is extremely bad. As an example, Shadowheart can say you’re her soulmate that changed her whole life on like the second day you spend together! There is also a severe lack of bonding moments that are purely adventure party/friendship and not avenues for everyone else to hit on you.
There being literally 0 consequences for dabbling in Mind Flayer powers felt weird and bad and generally undercut the impact of the entire main story. There is no reason not to fill out your whole tadpole tree (including becoming half illithid), and there is no reward for completely abstaining. No specific dialogue, no impact on the ending. Not even an achievement.
Lots of small attempts at fanservice for fans of BG 1&2 feel like surface level lipservice made by people who never played the originals. The Flail of Ages being a shitty rare regular flail sold in a random shop is just depressing.
I wish they left more BG 1&2 characters alone if they didn’t know exactly what to do with them. Jaheira is mostly fine, but even Minsc felt out of place and shoehorned in and the character assassinations of Viconia and Sarevok just felt terrible. Especially since the role of both of those characters in the plot could have easily been replaced with brand new NPCs.
On a similar note, it strikes me as extremely weird that they seemingly outright refused to have any voice actor reprise their role. Heidi Shannon has disappeared from the face of the earth so Jaheira needed to be recast, but Grey DeLisle (Viconia) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Sarevok) are still out there working for example and Jim Cummings (Minsc) was asking random fans at cons to remind Larian he exists.
Haste isn’t a great spell, even twinned by a sorcerer.
The moment the caster loses concentration, the recipients lose an entire turn. Even if the fight lasts a few turns and you manage to keep concentration, you’re sacrificing a lot of action economy for that extra action. And if you do lose concentration, you’re likely in a net negative for action economy.
At higher difficulties, it’s even worse. The extra action only grants at most one attack (the extra action ignores the Extra Attack feature). And enemies are smart enough to do everything they can to pile damage on your caster until it drops.
It’s not a bad spell, but it’s not the gamechanger lots of people seem to think it is. Especially with items like haste potions and haste spore grenades, which can’t be interrupted (though still need to be timed well).
I’m annoyed you can’t
Tap for spoiler
free Orpheus and have him protect you from the brain worm. Instead you have to forcefully ally with the dubious deceitful dumb hentai face dream guardian.
I dont care for the lengthy skill checks with the dice roll animation
You are able to click again to skip the animation. The rest of the setup though is important to be able to apply bonuses.
It’s a glitchy, unpolished game that, while being fun and having amazing dialogue, did not necessarily deserve GOTY.
I don’t know about unpolished, wasn’t my cup of tea in a lot of ways but felt very polished in almost every regard I can think of
The flaming fist can see you steal things from like six buildings away.
When I fought Gortash the first time (I didn’t do the foundry) his steel watchers kept kicking my ass. “Ah ha!” I thought, “I’ll close the door and cast Arcane Lock on it to keep them out and trivialize this fight!”. The watchers teleported next to gortash as soon as the fighting began and wiped the floor with me.
During the Ketheric fight, Ketheric decided he… Just had enough? I guess? He went to stand in the center of the platform and fucked off for five entire rounds while I killed everyone else and started phase 3.
Inventory management is impossible with a controller.
I play on a Steam Deck and while the game runs amazingly in Acts 1 and 2, the instant you set foot in Rivington you’re lucky if you can get 20 fps. And I hear its the same on a PC?
Speaking of Act 3, the entire act is awful. Acts 1 and 2 were incredible and then the whole thing just falls apart. The pacing is all wrong, and you pretty much forget the absolute entirely. Someone else said they stopped playing after moonrise and ended their game, and honestly I like that idea more every day.
Felogyrs Fireworks. That’s all I need to say.
You need to loot literally everything or you’ll miss critical items, and the loot overwhelmingly sucks ass. Oh boy! Another rotten tampon I can sell for 1g!
Potion tooltips are less than useless, especially on the crafting screen (oh man don’t get me started there). What does this potion do? No idea! But at least you know it tastes like Troll cum!
I really do love this game, but a lot of parts of the game are just steaming piles of shit. I also don’t believe it deserved all the awards it got, and it’s kind of amazing it did.
Inventory management was horrible. Party management was horrible (but I’ve heard they improved it a bit). Camera management was horrible around areas with multiple floors, especially when they weren’t flat. (The othon fight in particular was awful.) I encountered a few soft locks with enemies sort of teleporting to the shadow realm or some shit and getting stuck inside the illusory door in the hag’s den. Specific graphics settings would get unset every time I opened the game. Stuff like a bug preventing tons of Minthara’s dialogue not being in the game. They fixed that, which is great, but there’s just so many little things like this all over the place. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people say it’s polished. It’s fun and I enjoy it, but it’s certainly not polished.
Also, putting a character (Gale) behind a skill check is insane.
For everyone but a few obvious folks, all the voice acting is way too posh.
I think is supposed to be how they set the Bauldurians apart.
It was too long and had too much content.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
Would have been nice to finish the game then still be able to poke around in all the acts.
It felt like turning in quest coupons and getting your magic item/promise of aid and otherwise very low stakes.
In terms of pacing and stakes, it would have made much more sense for the PCs to have gone to Baldur’s Gate earlier in the game to do all the “adventurers faffing around” stuff, then revisited the city during the endgame. Though it would have clashed with their “each act is one set of maps” setup.
Instead, in the last act we have Gortash, supposed 5D chess player, centering all his plans on the PCs flipping to his side. Then he sits back and lets them wander all over the city, undermining him. Ultimately, when they don’t take up his offer, his backup plan is “whelp, guess I’ll die”.
Maybe the excuse is that the Elder Brain was making him stupid…
