Baldur's Gate 3: On the Highway to the Nine Hells

[IlyaP]

5 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

The camp mechanic is a bit weird and slightly breaks immersion.

Kinda reminded me of Dragon Age: Origins a bit. You?

[DanteGabriel]

22 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Kinda reminded me of Dragon Age: Origins a bit. You?

Quite so. Especially as camp conversations are needed to advance relationships.

[IlyaP]

13 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Quite so. Especially as camp conversations are needed to advance relationships.

And to moon over Alistair. 

...What? He's cute. 

[Heartofice]

45 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Does the game remove one of the potential game companions if your custom character has the same class as theirs? I went with Fighter, and after the ship crash I've yet to encounter the gith? chick that is a fighter, too.

Also didn't realize that you can only have 4  characters in your party, others have to wait at the camp. The camp mechanic is a bit weird and slightly breaks immersion.

No, I wondered that, but I started as a Rogue and the second person I met was the vampire guy, and I quickly dumped him realising I don't need 2 rogues. The camp thing is weird though, to just teleport to this other area in the middle of something feels a bit off.

[Corvinus85]

45 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Kinda reminded me of Dragon Age: Origins a bit. You?

Never played DO. Tried it for like a minute and crashed out.

[IlyaP]

24 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Never played DO. Tried it for like a minute and crashed out.

Oh dude. It's a lot of fun. Derivative as it gets in some ways, structurally, but lots of cool lore, great music from Inon Zur, and terrific Bioware-style gameplay. 

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Corvinus85 said:

Does the game remove one of the potential game companions if your custom character has the same class as theirs? I went with Fighter, and after the ship crash I've yet to encounter the gith? chick that is a fighter, too.

Also didn't realize that you can only have 4  characters in your party, others have to wait at the camp. The camp mechanic is a bit weird and slightly breaks immersion.

Nope, they stick around. I actually restarted because I was playing a barbarian but liked the barbarian party member too much to bench her all game. The Gith is pretty close to the crash site. 

24 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

No, I wondered that, but I started as a Rogue and the second person I met was the vampire guy, and I quickly dumped him realising I don't need 2 rogues. The camp thing is weird though, to just teleport to this other area in the middle of something feels a bit off.

It is a little off, especially when you can do it freely in areas where there's lots of potential hostile enemies. It is cool though that there's multiple camp layouts depending on where you are.

 

Anyway I encountered my first progression bug and looking online it seems like lots of people have many different issues with the quest (it's a big quest it seems). Which is very unfortunate. I don't want to roll back my save (also I've no idea how far back I'd need to go) but I don't want to push on either. It's not a main quest (I don't think) but if I don't finish it I believe I will miss out on the first of the non-origin party members you can obtain. And I don't mean the mercs/hirelings; there's some number of full party members that aren't origin characters that can join you.

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

No, I wondered that, but I started as a Rogue and the second person I met was the vampire guy, and I quickly dumped him realising I don't need 2 rogues. The camp thing is weird though, to just teleport to this other area in the middle of something feels a bit off.

Yeah, this is why I really would have preferred if you had 6 party members like in BG1 and 2, or in the Pathfinder games. You "must" have a tank, cleric, arcane spellcaster, and a martial DPS, and can't really afford to deviate from that party structure. With 6 party members, you can experiment with different combinations, and also to build your party around companions whose personality you actually like. I played Pathfinder games with two rogues for example.

[Heartofice]

19 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Yeah, this is why I really would have preferred if you had 6 party members like in BG1 and 2, or in the Pathfinder games. You "must" have a tank, cleric, arcane spellcaster, and a martial DPS, and can't really afford to deviate from that party structure. With 6 party members, you can experiment with different combinations, and also to build your party around companions whose personality you actually like. I played Pathfinder games with two rogues for example.

I think thats a good point. I haven't played these games for years but even I came straight into the game thinking I need:
1 x Tank
1 x Support caster
1 x DPS / Ranged fighter
1 x Offensive caster

On top of that will need someone for dialogue options and general thievery. It's hard to think outside of that box

[Fez]

43 minutes ago, Gorn said:

Yeah, this is why I really would have preferred if you had 6 party members like in BG1 and 2, or in the Pathfinder games. You "must" have a tank, cleric, arcane spellcaster, and a martial DPS, and can't really afford to deviate from that party structure. With 6 party members, you can experiment with different combinations, and also to build your party around companions whose personality you actually like. I played Pathfinder games with two rogues for example.

I do generally agree with this. However, the game does give you the tools to break free of the mold somewhat. For instance, I've found a necklace that lets a character cast guidance at-will and another that lets a character cast a heal 1-8 HP at will (to prevent it from being OP, it's basically unusable in combat; whoever is healed has to pass a saving throw to avoid falling asleep for 2 turns). With those 2 things and Paladin you don't need a cleric anymore and you've already got your tank.

Likewise, to compensate for the change in how ability scores are assigned at character creation, Humans and Half Elves were given the 'civil militia' trait, which grants several weapon proficiencies and shield proficiency. Which means you can slap shields on to Wyll and Gale and it doen't hamper their spellcasting at all. In fact, Wyll can end up being a decent tank himself while also being your arcane caster (or your martial DPS, they gave Pact of the Blade several of the benefits from Hexblade to buff it).

Basically, you still want to be able to buff and heal, cast arcane spells, take hits, and do serious damage. But there's more flexibility on which classes can fill each role than 5e usually allows.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Oh dude. It's a lot of fun. Derivative as it gets in some ways, structurally, but lots of cool lore, great music from Inon Zur, and terrific Bioware-style gameplay. 

As I specified in a previous post, these are not the types of games I play. Crashed out of Divinity 2, as well. There are really only a few party CRPG games I've had the patience and drive to play over the years.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Heartofice said:

I think thats a good point. I haven't played these games for years but even I came straight into the game thinking I need:
1 x Tank
1 x Support caster
1 x DPS / Ranged fighter
1 x Offensive caster

On top of that will need someone for dialogue options and general thievery. It's hard to think outside of that box

There is a mod - I say a mod, I think it's a tiny file you just drop into one directory - that allows you to play with anything from 5 to 8 characters. In fact, Larian seem to have designed the game to actually allow this, as there's already a slider in the code to move the party list on the right hand side of the screen up and down to add more characters to the party. It also doesn't confuse the game's dialogue system (unlike similar mods for other games where 2 or 3 characters' dialogue can trigger simultaneously). 

The only problem is that it just unlocks extra characters, it doesn't rebalance the game for having that many characters, so especially with 8 characters it can become a total curb stomp. 6 isn't too bad, apparently.

[IlyaP]

7 hours ago, Corvinus85 said:

As I specified in a previous post, these are not the types of games I play. Crashed out of Divinity 2, as well. There are really only a few party CRPG games I've had the patience and drive to play over the years.

Oh crashed out in... I interpreted that as, in, like, a blue screen of death crashed out! 

*Facepalm*

[Arakasi]

So is this a schtick here with Larian games or do they always start with a ship wreck and getting washed up on shore? Like they are really going out of their way to echo the original sin 2 plot.

Also I’ve not figured out the UI yet but it seems awful so far. I have to bring up some wheel every time I want to use Eldritch Blast to choose it from the wheel instead of some button or something? This constant having to go to the wheel to do anything but basic attack is getting tedious. Hopefully it’s just that I’ve not figured out hotkeys or something.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

I really wished that my companions would stop running into traps and dangerous surfaces by themselves. Party control is so far the game's worst aspect.

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by ASOIAFrelatedusername

[Corvinus85]

26 minutes ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

I really wished that my companions would stop running into traps and dangerous surfaces by themselves. Party control is so far the game's worst aspect.

 

Aren't you supposed to use turn base mode when moving around an area with traps?

[karaddin]

I'm on leave at the moment and been playing a ton so up to Act 3 now and still having an absolute blast. There's still a decent amount of surface interaction, but I like that it's toned down from D:OS2 which got a bit out of hand with the divine modifiers to surfaces - that fight in Act 2 (I think) on the gallows with oozes stands out as being excessive.

I've had a few fights that have really spiralled out a lot more than I intended but been able to just keep going and eventually close it out.

Spoiler

The fight against the big orc (?) Razglin in the Goblin camp started out exactly the way I wanted and was going great until he blasted MC and Shadowheart down into the spider pit. I'd pre cleared the side rooms near him but left the entrance area alive and the fight with the spiders slowly dragged the rest of the building into the fight.

I managed to regroup down in the spider area and pick them off and finished the fight completely drained but just alive.

I knew nothing about 5e but did play Act 1 in EA, was curious about multi classing and saw a suggested Fighter/Warlock/Sorcerer build that fit how I wanted to play and it's fantastic fun. Started as Fighter for heavy armor, first 2 levels into Warlock to pick up Eldritch Blast and power it up, 4th level into Fighter to grab action surge (refreshes your action once per short rest) and then everything into Sorcerer after that. 

I'm doing a lot of knocking people off whatever they're standing on and it's so much fun.

I don't think any of the fights have devolved into slugfests I haven't found fun and I've done almost everything I've run into. I did wind up missing one encounter in Act 2 that just seemed absurdly hard, I think there's a trick to it I was missing and thought I'd be able to come back to it.

Spoiler

It's the Tollhouse, I was getting 1 shot at level 9 still.

JK Simmons is so distinctive when you get to him, but I was so distracted by him I didn't even notice one of the others was Jason Isaacs. Voice acting on the whole is pretty great.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

44 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Aren't you supposed to use turn base mode when moving around an area with traps?

That's horribly slow though since there is usually only one trap disarmer in my party. I don't want to be forced to constantly press space and wait for the environments turn because Larian didn't feel the need to program in a rather QoL feature.

And on a related note the perception checks to spot those traps are taking far to long or/and have far too short a range. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by ASOIAFrelatedusername

[IlyaP]

35 minutes ago, karaddin said:

JK Simmons is so distinctive when you get to him, but I was so distracted by him I didn't even notice one of the others was Jason Isaacs. Voice acting on the whole is pretty great.

BG3 definitely one-ups Solasta on this front, which has....almost B-grade quality voice acting by comparison, where everyone's only *just* barely trying. 

Whereas JK Simmons doesn't know how to turn in a bad performance. 

[IlyaP]

Just now, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

That's horribly slow though since there is usually only one trap disarmer in my party. I don't want to be forced to constantly press space and wait for the environments turn because Larian didn't feel the need to program in a rather QoL feature.

And on a related note the perception checks to spot those traps are taking far to long or/and have far to short a range. 

Did they not get any user feedback about this when doing testing? This just seems like SUCH an obvious thing to address early on.