It looked good from what I saw my friend play on his stream. I bought it… installed it… played it… and finally, refunded it.
It is because of the combat. It reminded me of Pokemon too much and it even felt like Pokemon to play. So in other words: lame and boring.
I’m sure the story is fine or whatever, and the cutscenes are miles better than anything Blizzard has EVER churned out but damn the gameplay is BORING.
I really don’t know what I expected. It is just like D&D, which is boring…
Baldur’s Gate has always been turn-based. It’s suppose be like D&D. It’s a D&D game. Based on the game footage I’ve seen, it’s a pretty hardcore D&D game. You even roll a d20 for various things. If you don’t like D&D, don’t buy D&D games, lol.
I figured it was very much like Neverwinter Nights but with better graphics. That was D&D and so is this.
The turn based takes a bit of getting used to, but is very true to how D&D plays out and it lets you figure out what you need to do/use at your own pace.
The worst part of the game, to me, is that horrific camera control. It’s very very close to a deal breaker for me. Can’t look up, can’t see what’s attacking you and the ‘tacticial view’ is moronic if your toons are on one side of a wall with a door and the others are on the other side AND on balconies. You end up seeing the top of your toons heads and…a wall. No way to see your targets.
You can finagle it but it is really annoying. It otherwise takes a bit of getting used to. Good graphics, decent to very good voice acting, decent story that has your character quite motivated to not stray too far from the main plotline though with lots to do/explore.
I keep comparing it to Skyrim/Oblivion, with the latter having a better camera angle at least.
This game feels super overrated imho. I find the Witcher 3 and DA:O to be much better games overall.
The combat system blows. It’s slow, missing is annoying, etc. Much prefer the combat system from DAO where you can switch between tactical and hack-n-slash.
Class system is very restrictive compared to NWN1 + NWN2 and even DA:O. In those games you could reach much higher levels and specialize into prestige classes.
Level 12 is the max unless you use mods.
The game is very unintuitive with telling you where you need to go or what level you should be at. You get no quest markers or hints and often I have to open the internet to find the answer.s You can’t backtrack to old areas to acquire XP.
The quest journal won’t tell you that to complete a quest requires being in a later act. Also, a lot of the acts felt like they’re just needlessly dragged out. The Temple of Shar took me several hours just to acquire all the orbs.
Cutscenes glitch out quite often.
Story is the same exact cookie-cutter plotline used in every single fantasy game. I.E. you’re the chosen one to stop a great evil from destroying the world.
The maps are bigger, but mostly empty.
The rest system sucks. If I want to long rest between major battles I’m often forced to go through cutscenes and spend a couple of minutes dealing with that.
Haven’t played it myself, but have been watching streams and Youtube videos. The game looks very much like it’s appealing to hardcore D&D fans. It’s very heavily focused on the story-telling, adventure, and the character building aspects rather than fast-paced combat. Have a high enough Charisma stat and buffing your Diplomacy, Bluff, and Intimidate skills… you can essentially talk your way out of ever getting into combat in the first place.
The Bladur’s Gate series actually came out before Neverwinter Nights. The first two entries in the series were made by BioWare back in 1998 and 2000. I didn’t play them myself, but they were also turn-based, dice-roll combat. A spin-off series, Dark Alliance, was a more action-oriented game for consoles made by Snowblind and Black Isle studios in 2001. Neverwinter Nights, came out in 2002 and was considered a spiritual successor to the original Baldur’s Gate series. The series when dormant after Dark Alliance 2 (2004) until 2012 when Atari and Beamdog got the license from Wizards of the Coast to make “enhanced editions” of the original two games.
Seems like a hold-over from Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2, which was also made by Larian. I had the exact same issue playing those games.
I feel like they dropped the ball a little bit in multiplayer with regards to letting people experience the game as a cohesive whole. I understand the whole “but they wouldn’t know!” aspect of DnD in letting one player get into a conversation or even combat without the rest having any quick way to join in, but as a game that just means people are going to tend to get left out - which is a big problem in something so heavily story-driven.
Combat very nearly makes sense. Some kind of more obvious alert (it probably brought up a little message somewhere) and maybe an indicator to show you where the combat is taking place would be all that’s necessary.
But conversations… even if you’re standing right next to them you get nothing unless you opt-in. And after having “observed” the conversation the other players still can’t directly interact with it, so there’s little reason to make it both a secret that it’s occurring and a nuisance to even learn what’s going on. “But they wouldn’t know!” doesn’t extend to being able to stand next to two characters in an idle animation loop that should be audibly talking but aren’t because you didn’t push a button.
If people are far apart, you obviously should not be able to chime in.
But I have discussed this with my friends, and we felt that the best way to go about multiplayer convos in a video game like this, would be the SWTOR route where people roll dice to be able to be the ones to say their chosen line in a specific branch of the dialogue.
Of course, it works different on the table-top because that can actually evolve dynamically. But in a video game, even if based on D&D, the SWTOR way would probably work the best.
We also tried talking about whether rolling a dice outside of the game for ‘persuasion checks’ as a show that the character currently in convo would be convinced to pick an option not in line with his character, but we ended up just saying that if we were convinced IRL after a short discussion, then our character was also convinced.
It’s not even about joining in. Even if you’re “observing” the conversation in BG3 all you can do is offer a suggestion based on the options that would be presented to whoever started the conversation - it’s their character who determines what’s available, and it’s their player who ultimately gets to pick what’s said or done.
My issue is the awareness that it’s even happening at all. It may technically be “accurate” (aside from the whole “mute unless you’re observing” aspect) but it’s terrible gameplay.
In fact it comes from the system that SSI Strategic Simulations is an expert in making various types of RPG strategy, mostly for D&D videogames series like Darksun.
video games whose characteristics are the same and never changed, as they aged well.
The system is different from an RPG that you play or from WoW itself, but do you know what makes WoW different, especially with DF?
The thing is that they did not forget that they are making an RPG, they did not forget the purpose of fantasy, and they do not make video games of care-bear hugs and friendly dragons to a video game where its meaning is becoming a bait about war, about WARcraft.
So there’s a lot of variety, but aren’t you the fat idiot Steven Universe who said that Starfield is boring just because of the pronouns?
Not technically. Yes, but also no - Baldur’s Gate has traditionally been RTWP (real-time with pause), which most cRPGs have stuck to. Only a few, such as BG3 and Solasta, went with a turn-based system as the default/only method.
I can see why some might find it boring. I’m ambivalent about it; either variety works for me. Turn-based just gives a bit more of that ttrpg feeling versus RTWP.
That said, finally got the game and am loving it thus far - but realized how much stuff I missed in the early zone, so I restarted my drow fighter’s save to go through stuff a little slower. I think my brain was still remembering early access, so I didn’t think to go a bit slower and explore more, to see what had been added since.
