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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 find Astarion severely overrated
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.
I leave him out entirely. Can’t stand him
Happy cake day!
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
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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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 💀
I installed the 16-member party Mod and took all the origin characters (except urge) around for a while. Combat became a chore. Probably the biggest grievance is they’d block each other’s movement, but it just took REALLY long to do combat with them all present.
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
by the end game I was running around with two druids, Gale and a Karlach. It was enough to create an army
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x3 fire elemental lv 6
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x2 woodland being lv 5
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x6 ice elemental lv 4
spamming through “end turn” because moving them all will take longer than finishing the fight next turn was very annoying
though it did feel good to have a whole army at my command, the encounters took forever
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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.
I don’t think the writing is particularly good, and it is particularly problematic in Act 3. The pacing falls apart, all urgency disappears
Overall I disagree with you. I loved the writing in the game, and the companion back stories are rich, and full of tragedy. But I completely agree with you about act 3. We’re smack dab in the middle of literally trying to save the entire world. We just defeated a major contributor to the master plan. We finally travel to Baldur’s Gate, close to accomplishing our goal… and we stop all of that to help a little kid find their mommy, investigate dangerous toys, and go all detective mode for a missing prostitute. I couldn’t figure out how to get into Baldur’s Gate because I had rejected all of those story lines. They felt completely out of character, and not something I had time to worry about with the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. I think that they really could have used a smoother transition from act 2 to act 3.
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.
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
I wish they had done it without Tencent.
Interesting, I didn’t even know Tencent was involved, was their influence very visible?
The amount of money that was dropped on the making of the game is a clue but unpopular opinion? Who’s a fan of tencent anyway?
For those who don’t have the context Tencent is a huge Chinese company that has many investments in games. They are the type that plays it silently usually invest and they do let the people do their thing then take their share. But the problem is two fold first of all you cannot start saying much abou the ccp tencent wouldn’t send you to jail but would pull the plung of the funding. Secondly any client info that ends in Tencent hands is potentially viewable by the ccp. There’s no need of a Snowden to tell you that, the government made it law so if you buy the game your data goes to China.My thing about china getting my data is ‘so what?’ I live in the United States. Every major corporation will sell my data to the government, and no warrant is necessary. The fuck is China going to do to me? Send some of their secret police to my house? Fucking TIGHT. I can tell them to fuck off and eat my ass.
Yea you can tell them that but the more china as on you and other citizen of where you live the better they can make the propaganda and influence election and other fun thing like that sure they can do it without all the data but it will be less efficient
140 GB is wayy to much
Can’t they just make an optional smaller version with only hd textures and not so high quality audio ?
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).
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.
There’s a setting, I think it’s called eaves drop mode, where you will automatically listen in on any conversation that another player initiates.
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…
Gale’s “bad” ending is actually the best ending in the game.
Who cares that he doesn’t get character growth, he disappointed a cat and an old man, HE’S A GOD! Seriously, nothing else matters. So what if Ao is going to make him earn his spot on the pantheon? He’s immortal, he has literally forever to do it. Sure professor Gale is fun and more chill, but he’s still mortal. In six months Gale does what Vlaakith has been attempting for centuries. I don’t know how you can be disappointed in someone for successfully becoming a god
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 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.
