Baldur's Gate 3: Quicksave is my favourite spell

[IlyaP]

Noped out of Portal 2, though the wife loves it. Not my kind of game. Puzzle games have their audiences, but I am certainly not one of them. Learning as I have that DOS2 also has them only makes my abandonment of that game feel further justified. Plus, turn-based combat is, with the exception of BG3 and Solasta: Crown of the Magister, not my jam. 

(Also, seriously, check out Solasta, it replicates the texture and feeling of a homebrew campaign so well, down to the occasional delightfully cheese voice-acting.)

[Poobah]

9 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Why are achievements even a thing?

They're just for fun. Plenty of people like having checklists to go through, they can inspire a bit of challenge, a bit of structure, a bit of guidance towards doing things one might not otherwise try. I've never met anyone who was competitive about steam achievements.

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, Poobah said:

They're just for fun. Plenty of people like having checklists to go through, they can inspire a bit of challenge, a bit of structure, a bit of guidance towards doing things one might not otherwise try. I've never met anyone who was competitive about steam achievements.

There are some games where Achievements give you a bit of direction for other stuff you can do in a game. Lots of strategy or open world games, I quite like them because I might go play as a different faction or try and do something I wouldn't normally bother doing. Certainly would never be a completionist about any of it though

 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

Planning to respec Wyll as a warlock 5/Bard 7 for the co op playthrough just cause I haven’t actually used a bard yet and for thematic reasons!  Using Shart as a cleric 10/paladin 2 as my PC, while my friend is co oping as a monk 9/barbarian 3. Should make for a fun play style all around. I’ve come a long way since just using barrels to kill tough enemies lol, not that that ain’t still fun. Planning to go to Tactician at level 7. 

Edited April 4 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Planning to respec Wyll as a warlock 5/Bard 7 for the co op playthrough just cause I haven’t actually used a bard yet and for thematic reasons!  Using Shart as a cleric 10/paladin 2 as my PC, while my friend is co oping as a monk 9/barbarian 3. Should make for a fun play style all around. I’ve come a long way since just using barrels to kill tough enemies lol, not that that ain’t still fun. Planning to go to Tactician at level 7. 

I respec'd Wyll as a Level 4 (maybe 3) Warlock and the rest of his levels into fighter. Just so I could get Pact of the Blade and then have him whip his Rapier around. He just feels completely underwhelming like this however, the amount of damage he does is minimal even with a decent weapon. Of course could go full Warlock with him but seems kind of out of character given the way he enters the game.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

I respec'd Wyll as a Level 4 (maybe 3) Warlock and the rest of his levels into fighter. Just so I could get Pact of the Blade and then have him whip his Rapier around. He just feels completely underwhelming like this however, the amount of damage he does is minimal even with a decent weapon. Of course could go full Warlock with him but seems kind of out of character given the way he enters the game.

Yeah I’ve heard fighter as another viable multi for him but I want to try bard cause it’ll be more interesting for me to try a new class. I don’t care about having the most optimal build, just doing it for RP reasons.Also tired of just spamming eldrich blast with him.my friend doing a monk barbarian and me playing as Shart made me realise there so much more awesome dialogue options for classes, when I did my first playthrough as paladin the dialogue options were boring as fuck

Edited April 4 by Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II

[Heartofice]

43 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Yeah I’ve heard fighter as another viable multi for him but I want to try bard cause it’ll be more interesting for me to try a new class. I don’t care about having the most optimal build, just doing it for RP reasons.Also tired of just spamming eldrich blast with him.my friend doing a monk barbarian and me playing as Shart made me realise there so much more awesome dialogue options for classes, when I did my first playthrough as paladin the dialogue options were boring as fuck

Apparently its a viable option but I'm not quite getting the best way to use him.

I've tried a barbarian build and that has a lot of quite amusing dialogue options. Just being able to grunt and growl at people at every opportunity is a lot of fun.

[IlyaP]

Every time you abbreviate Shadowheart with that particular word I twitch. 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

As much as I love Bg3 , this game does NOT have a functioning tutorial at all…my friend would’ve given up on this game for sure if I was not constantly guiding him about how combat,exploration,choices, inventory and levelling works. And he’s played other rpgs like cp2077 and JRPGs without any problem. 
 

I myself was struggling a lot in my first playthrough until you guys suggested respeccing the various origin characters into better subclasses/stats. And even then without google,Reddit and YouTube I would’ve probably given up too….makes me respect you guys for growing up playing those hardcore CRPGs in the 90s and early 2000s even more so, how the fuck did you manage it back then without the online help?!  Were the tutorials and manuals that much better in the good ol days ? 

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

13 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Every time you abbreviate Shadowheart with that particular word I twitch. 

I’m open to alternate nick names cause I ain’t typing that full name out each time lol. Blame the internet for picking it not me ! 

[IlyaP]

26 minutes ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

I’m open to alternate nick names cause I ain’t typing that full name out each time lol. Blame the internet for picking it not me ! 

SH! That's all you need! Or just treat it like a first and last name and call her Shadow.

Shearting in Baldur's Gate 3 is going to break the intarwebz. 

[Caligula_K3]

I know I shouldn't read anything in this thread so I don't get spoilered, but I started BG3 and am about six hours in. Considering that "old-school style" CRPGs are hit or miss for me (I got into Pillars 1 and especially into Tyranny, but not Pillars 2) and especially considering that I usually have no patience for tactical turn based combat (I bounced hard off of Divinity 2), I'm surprised by just how much I'm enjoying this.

Playing a bard probably helps. There are so many great role-playing opportunities and funny bits of dialogue. Plus I just enjoy enthralling NPCs with my drum solos while Astarion steals all their belongings.

 

[Ser Lany]

13 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Why are achievements even a thing? It's only in Steam, as far as I can tell, and I've always ignored it, as it just felt like it was a way to artificially make players more competitive over completely arbitrary accomplishments. Seems like someone at Steam said "what if we gamed games further?" 

*Shrug*

Just for fun. Gives me different, minor things I can change on playthroughs. There are some weird and interesting things I had no idea were possible until I saw the achievements, like having an all alcohol long rest, petting Scratch and the owlbear cub at the same time.  I mean, I didn't even know you could get the cub into your camp.  Did a druid playthrough just so I could get him

I also didn't know they were a steam thing, I thought they were a game thing. Anyway, just adds little extra goals for myself (and I like having more than my SiL  )

 

Edited April 4 by Ser Lany

[Darryk]

2 hours ago, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II said:

Were the tutorials and manuals that much better in the good ol days ? 

Manuals were certainly a lot more fun. They had descriptions and art work and stuff, but you didn't really need them to figure out how to play the game.

Ironically Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were easier to learn despite being based on 2nd Edition D&D which was much more complicated. A friend of mine who never played D&D and hardly played games got hooked on Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, and to me that's a testament to how user-friendly those games were despite being quite complex under the surface.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Darryk said:

Manuals were certainly a lot more fun. They had descriptions and art work and stuff, but you didn't really need them to figure out how to play the game.

They were often works of art on their own! It was one of the things I used to really look forward to when opening a game, that and the map. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Lucasfilm games) had an amazing notebook that comes with it.

On a side note, I used to keep my Baldurs Gate 2 guide book that I bought and I would just randomly read bits of it for fun, reading through character bios and stuff was really interesting. I probably read it more than I played the game.

[Darryk]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

They were often works of art on their own! It was one of the things I used to really look forward to when opening a game, that and the map. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Lucasfilm games) had an amazing notebook that comes with it.

On a side note, I used to keep my Baldurs Gate 2 guide book that I bought and I would just randomly read bits of it for fun, reading through character bios and stuff was really interesting. I probably read it more than I played the game.

My favourites were the manuals for Blizzard games. I remember the Warcraft 2 manual had a description of each clan and I was obsessed with it.

[Ser Rodrigo Belmonte II]

1 hour ago, Darryk said:

My favourites were the manuals for Blizzard games. I remember the Warcraft 2 manual had a description of each clan and I was obsessed with it.

I had a Warcraft 3 manual which had some great reading about characters and lore. Used to read it endlessly!  

[Kalbear]

The Ultima manuals and game box was absurdly cool. It had things like a cloth map, and a crazy detailed manual, and all sorts of things. Later on RPGs put in a ton of actual text from the game that you needed to use a specific key system to read from - along with a bunch of random things to throw people off - because storing that much information on disk was actually taking up too much space, plus it was something of a piracy fix. 

[Ran]

The old copyright protection check. Brings back memories. It did lead to great extras with games, like the manuals with lore. Wing Commander had ClawMarks, Frontier: Elite II included a book of short fiction dramatizing done if what you'd be doing and seeing in the game

 And Ultima, of course. Maybe the gold standard of that era.

[Durckad]

5 hours ago, Darryk said:

Manuals were certainly a lot more fun. They had descriptions and art work and stuff, but you didn't really need them to figure out how to play the game.

Ironically Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were easier to learn despite being based on 2nd Edition D&D which was much more complicated. A friend of mine who never played D&D and hardly played games got hooked on Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, and to me that's a testament to how user-friendly those games were despite being quite complex under the surface.

IIRC, the BG1 manual was pretty much a primer on how to play AD&D 2e. I know I learned quite a bit about playing AD&D before playing AD&D just by obsessively reading the manual.

The Warcraft 2 manual was also a treasure trove of information: lore, story, and even some stuff useful to actually playing the games!

Some other good manuals from the bygone days were for the NES Zelda games. I loved reading about the various monsters in the games.

3 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The Ultima manuals and game box was absurdly cool. It had things like a cloth map, and a crazy detailed manual, and all sorts of things. Later on RPGs put in a ton of actual text from the game that you needed to use a specific key system to read from - along with a bunch of random things to throw people off - because storing that much information on disk was actually taking up too much space, plus it was something of a piracy fix. 

The copy of BG2 that I have came with a cloth map as well, which I still have to this day thankfully. The manual, alas, has been lost for a long, long time.