Baldur's Gate 3

[Fabricated]

This is an insanely good game but I really don't need 80% of encounters to be elaborate puzzle boxes that I'm intended to solve with environmental objects and massive wombo-combos of throwables/magic/etc. Like maybe just let me do some more straight-forward encounters and don't put me up against stuff that's *just* higher level enough to effectively have 1.5-2 rounds of actions and damage to my own constantly. I have no idea how you deal with the Githyanki Patrol if you lose the roll to make them fuck off. I made the roll but tried the fight for the hell of it and the one fighter quite literally gets 5+ fucking attacks on their first round. I asked around about it if I wanted to try killing them all for loot and the general answer was the kind of boring-ass shit I've seen where it's just "lol stack a bunch of explosive barrels around them and blow the entire encounter up on round 1". Lame.

[Zetor]

In my experience, 'barrelmancy' isn't needed for any of the encounters. I've gone through the game without abusing barrels -- I *did* use the hell out of my own characters' soft and hard CC, summons and consumables (grease flasks and various damage/control arrows for the main part), though...

The act 2 gith patrol was basically a lot of soft cc and kiting while my melee ground down their archers, I don't remember much from it. Fighting the patrol in act 1 didn't even cross my mind since they had a bunch of super high level dudes* and a fully grown red dragon with them. I figured that even if I killed them, there's no way I could get into the creche later without having to murder everyone... so I helped Lae'zel bullshit her way out of the situation instead. If I had to fight them, I'd probably initiate combat from the fortifications to have high ground and then just unload cc from range via grease, hold person scrolls, and once they blow their 1/day misty step to get to my position, use more soft cc as well as shove / eldritch blast knockback / thunder arrows to drop them back down (if they use misty step, they can't shove in the same turn).

* I assume they have a level 5 fighter who'd indeed get 2 attacks + action surge to get 2 more attacks once in a fight, which is pretty bullshit yeah. Get your own dudes to level 5 and do that right back at them!

[Falconeer]

Githyanki patrol from act 1 is really just an exercise in F5-F8. If you fail the roll to avoid the fight, or try the other options, you get a fight where 1 if not 2 of your characters (depending on dice rolls) are dead before you can do anything. I am sure these fights exist to make some people happy with their Fortnite kind of bullshit stuff, but for me they are a let down. It's fine having to reload sometimes, and even realize that you picked the wrong answer in a given situation, but the whole interaction seems ripe for opportunities if you have Lae'zel in the party while it actually is just a murder box that you have to reload a few times to fully understand.

[eldaec]

I'm not as far in as some of you, bit I'm finding simply not barrelling in and starting out of position is enough most of the time.

There aren't many fights that can't be solved by choke point management and a carefully placed ghost cat.

I do agree though, that consequences of bad rolls or not spotting an ambush are far too extreme and it's not cool that reloading becomes an inevitable mechanic.

[lamaros]

I've played the heck out of it and love it but really wish there was a higher difficulty mode and they fixed a bunch of the overpowered bugs and such.

Kinda bored with my solo play as even without cheese it's not that challenging when you know the skills and such, and solo plays are also narratively boring.

Act 3 is still a bit of a mess of bugs and triggers firing wrong at times.

I might just leave it for a while now and come back in six months or so.

The game is really good. Better than I thought Larian could pull off. Hopefully they make some even better DLC and sequels, and we get more companies willing to make turn based party cRPGs as a result!

[Khaldun]

There's a fight near the end that has its own theme music that's really epic-feeling in part because of the music.

[Riggswolfe]

There's a fight near the end that has its own theme music that's really epic-feeling in part because of the music.

I LOVE that fight mostly because of the music and the fact the music is 100% diegetic as far as I can tell. I almost wanted to drag the fight out to hear more of the music!

[Typhon]

It took me awhile to figure out how sneak leaves those that haven't been discovered separate from those who have (who enter into turn-based mode).  It's super important to not end the turn of those in turn-based mode until all the other folks are engaged (possibly by launching an attack as the way they enter tbm).  Until then, sneak seemed to be a giant disadvantage to entering a fight.  After that, fights got much easier.

[Khaldun]

I was also frustrated by that for a long while.

[eldaec]

Just playing this well into act 2, my main complaint is the combat difficulty drops way down and, because it mirrors tabletop where turns take a long time, very few combats even take two full rounds - so I don't really get to use my cool toys.

I think this, and the experience people have finding combat hard, is two sides of the same issue. Some of the tough early encounters feel bad because you get ambushed and can hardly react before it's over, easier late encounters you find yourself winning before you even unload a full rotation of abilities.

Its still very good ofc.

[Phildo]

That's also a bit of an issue with the design of the D&D 5e ruleset where your characters experience a tremendous power spike at level 5 and then again around 10/11.

[Riggswolfe]

Just playing this well into act 2, my main complaint is the combat difficulty drops way down and, because it mirrors tabletop where turns take a long time, very few combats even take two full rounds - so I don't really get to use my cool toys.

I think this, and the experience people have finding combat hard, is two sides of the same issue. Some of the tough early encounters feel bad because you get ambushed and can hardly react before it's over, easier late encounters you find yourself winning before you even unload a full rotation of abilities.

Its still very good ofc.

I'm curious to see how you'll react to Act 3. The level of polish drops pretty noticeably in Act 3. It's still great but you can definitely tell a difference.

[eldaec]

Fwiw, my initial reaction to act 3 is that act 3 and act 2 are the wrong way around.

Walking into act3 feels like side quest city. I would have enjoyed that at the start of act 2 which felt too linear.

Whereas I kind of want to get on with shit at this point but I am psychologically incapable of walking past optional content.

[lamaros]

Yep.

[Falconeer]

The density of stuff in Act 3, when you get to Rivington, is overwhelming. But then you get to the Lower City and holy shit. It's weird to complain about a game being packed with three games worth of content, especially in the age of DLCs and shit, but this is frankly too much. As Eldaec said, it's all skippable in theory and that's probably the way to go, so one cannot truly complain. Just, fuck me, it's like they were trying to prove a hundred points and make a thousand statements, and managed to be right on all accounts.

Incredible.

[Khaldun]

As I read various BG3 forums I've realized how much I missed in my first playthrough--I didn't rescue the prisoners in Act 2 because I did the Temple of Shar first, so there's a bunch of stuff that depended on that which I didn't see in Act 3. I didn't even meet Minsc even though I bumped into the two groups fighting about the Stone Lord. I also buggered off a few things in Act 3 that I just found too annoying--the house with the ghosts is a rare piece of bad design on their part.

But that's great--I'm looking forward to a second playthrough to a greater extent than I normally might. The game is a fantastic achievement, really.

[eldaec]

I'm not quite at the end, but my issue with all the 'content you might need another playthough to see all of', is that with the exception of the goblin/tiefling/druid standoff in act 1, its all very bioware. You miss a conversation or cutscene because you missed a specific character on your content grid search, but it's not really different paths.

The endings, as far as I can see, are endings you pick from late in the day, rather than endings you earn by achieving things in the world.

And it's exacerbated by the game turning into a point and click adventure, there really is no threat after act 1. The last battle I had to think in was when I accidentally aggroed the entire goblin sanctuary and village at once.

I find it hard to even justify casters at the moment because they run out of spell slots no matter how much I ration spell use, and martials are barely using up their short rest resources let alone long rest stuff. I've got into the habit of swapping casters had way through a 'day' just so I can use spells.

Long rests are mainly things I do to trigger plot events.

That said, it is a really good point and click adventure. And the power fantasy is fun sometimes. Once I'm done I might well go back and do a playthough intentionally aggroing every military encampment in the game

I particularly want to see if I can face roll the Gortash ordination ceremony that Karlach of all people told me was too much.

[Falconeer]

I hope I can finish this before December 7th when Rogue Trader comes out.

[Phildo]

Rogue Trader is due out in less than a month and you can't pre-order it?  Weird.  But also, it's an Owlcat game so you'd be well served waiting 6 months to a year before actually playing it.

[Falconeer]

You can, from the official website. That's where I bought it, because it gave access to the beta too (not anymore).