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I like the “Free The Artist” side quest.
That is all.
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…
The spell VFX don’t feel incredible after level 3.
Me casting Curriculum of Strategy: Artistry of War expecting the coolest shit and getting lame ass skulls that don’t even explode
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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.
Unpopular for sure ha ha
It’s not super fleshed out, but it also isn’t time consuming. Like if you are talking to your companions regularly, we are talking about selecting a couple of extra dialogue options here and there.
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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.
Is it though? Surely it can be made less obtrusive
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
I loved the character design because I hated the characters too: Lae’zel was a close minded warrior, Shadowheart a smartass, Gael Mr nice guy not so nice when you do something he doesn’t approve, Astarion the vampire rapist… Etc.
But then I kept on playing and I realized they were really deep characters. Lae’zel was indoctrinated super hard, but she’s smart and can recognize when things don’t make sense, even if she totally believes those things. Shadowheart has been lying to everyone, including herself, and putting a mask on; but she’s a really sweet woman. Astarion was abused in every possible way for centuries, and being a total asshole is his way to cope.
My point is, yeah, the characters are flawed and can come across as dicks, but many real people do too until you understand their circumstances. Not saying that what they do is justified, just that they are interesting characters and redeemable from my PoV.
I feel like a lot of characters were just standard RPG archetypes with maybe a wrinkle added in. Like Wyll is the classic “Warlock that makes the deal for the right reasons” and the wrinkle is that he has dad issues.
Compare him to one of my favorite RPG companions. Classic elf wizard nerd with an abusive father that made him hit the books and hit him also… but because of his childhood trauma his soul’s past life, a foul mouthed woman from a long time ago awoke within him and when sometimes he dissociates and she takes control because she wants him to be assertive… which, along with his fears of animancy, caused him to have an obsession with control, and why he accepted to join the baddies some time before you meet him.
Oh they’re great characters and well written. I just don’t like them though. I can’t justify my tastes.
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.
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).
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
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The original vision for the game would have been better. EA was more interesting.
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Pacing and toes of gear is done poorly. There’s swords for days but only 2 interesting tridents, war picks, or hand axe for example. There’s barely any usable druid gear (anything that actually matters if you wild shape). And the most useful stuff for monks is found only in act 3.
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A lot of people are nitpicky only because it won so many awards and it’s not their own perfect game (if such a thing exists).
I still give this game a 10/10 for what it is. Despite knowing if it baked another year it might have been so much more.
What was different in the Early Access?
tl;dr, the story and motivation for everything was far more fleshed out
Here’s just some of the things. Not even going into mechanics that are removed (like Wyll’s eye). Or my personal opinion some of their starting looks were a bit more interesting/better (you get a bit of an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MeutkQFliM or from the CohhCarnage videos I link later)
There used to be way more dialog options for one. Your class/subclass/god/etc actually got reflected in more options. There was a great video of a cleric giving some unhinged prayer to the tiefling that opens the gate. It’s not major, but it adds to a lot to the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KameRUsFv8Y (with all the BG3 videos now, it’s harder to find some of the classics). Also, Shadowheart had a much more interesting conversation if you were also a cleric if you were a Cleric of Shar too.
The camp was way more interesting. There’s a ton of story ripped out of the game from the camps. This, was the thing that hooked me in EA. Daisy (the in-game code name for what would be replaced by your dream visitor) would entice you with power, encourage you to use the illithid powers. And when you finally do, and the narrator says “you’ve lost something you can never get back” probably makes more sense now. Once you did that, you got a class specific illithid power. There was no weird illithid skill tree, it was based around how often you used the powers. But going back to the camp, the companions would comment more about each other. Shadowheart and Lae’Zel’s hatred for each other was shown way better, even commenting if you talked to one or the other first. Here’s a couple of examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRe2jHhBRc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw5q6u_iMN0 but overall, the camp at the end of the day was 1000x more interesting and really fleshed out the characters more and I’d say in important ways.
I’d even say the starting area (Nautiloid) was better. The current one is sufficient I guess. But the original showed you more about the fight the Illithids have with the Gith, you got to see more of the ship, what the Illithid did to people, what it meant to become a thrall (to really sell it that this is a terrifying process). But it showed you a few more mechanics too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-GWA_Yj2c starts at EP2, but you’ll want to go to EP 3 as well. But you can see the differences.
Tav used to talk.
For me, the story around “Daisy” was way more compelling. The song “Down by the river” is in reference to these encounters. Here’s a video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTw_9vM5LgA
… So these are just some of the things, lol. There’s more like when you got down to the Underdark and some serious changes that happened there. And I haven’t even touched on the stuff that never made it in (like the extra companion that was to be a werewolf… or the original Nightsong) (you can see some of it cataloged here https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cut_and_unimplemented_content ) and I’m fairly certain all the companions were originally supposed to show up in Act 1 instead of 1, 2, and 3. There’s a lot of dialog from characters for places they’re not “supposed to be” like the eagles (can’t find video, but its out there). But none of that is EA stuff, just cut stuff… but if the game had baked longer… I’m just saying… it might not have been cut sutff.
Why’d they change it so much? EA dialogue does seem better. Especially what they did with the dream visitor.
Is there any way to play the EA version still? And it’s it possible to complete the EA version (all acts)?
I have not found a way yet to play EA again. I’ve legit e-mailed Larian asking for it too.
I can only guess as to why there was such a drastic change. Because one day (in EA) I’m playing the last EA patched version and the following day on release… a bunch of stuff blinked out of existence. My guess, is they ran out of time. Various zones (like Upper Baldur’s Gate) are just removed (said zone is just a stage now). Various story lines are incomplete. There’s story threads that stop cold (there’s supposed to be more Hags if the various letters/notes/and NPC conversations are to be believed). The whole end sequence were the capture dragon shows up… how they got that dragon is never shown… etc. So, that’s my guess, they had more ambition than time.
Oh another idea that wasn’t completed. Karlach (the last character added/worked on) is the only origin character you play that you can hear the inner thoughts/monolog. Everyone else is silent.
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I hate multiplayer in pretty much any game where there’s a lot of menuing. And being able to wander off? There’s a reason you don’t split the party IRL and it holds here. Having a shopping session also is boring IRL and it is here, too. Oh, there was important plot stuff happening? I didn’t know the other person was in a conversation.
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Just let me auto follow the party leader, please
You can do this and also listen to conversations you aren’t present for from the active character portraits without changing settings. There’s even a prompt for ongoing conversations to join in on them as a listener remotely.
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.
You can’t be a cleric of any of the interesting gods: Umberlee, Gond, Bane, Bhaal, Loviatar, Myrkul
I kind of hate how you can not only nope out of nearly every puzzle with lockpicking but rogues get like half a dozen bonuses during the skill check so why are you even rolling the damn dice?
The marketing oversold the idea that if you wanted to do something it would amaze you to find it was expected.
Most of the, I thought at the time, very obvious thing I wanted to explore thematically were not there. Also, Romance felt clunky and unnuanced.
In Act 1 there is a downed bridge. I had something like a scroll of fly and it wouldn’t let me cross.
