I strongly dislike turn-based combat and I would love an option for real time combat. I just want fights to be over, they distract me from enjoying games. With real time combat I just mash the same attacks until it is over. BG3’s combat is a fucking chore and it’s the only reason I abandoned the game on the second map (in that monastery ruin).
In this community? Definitely. People tend to downvote me when I voice this opinion. But it is what it is. I’ve hated turn-based games ever since I first tried some X-COM game on the Amiga. It’s just not something I enjoy.
But I wish I could enjoy BG3. Everything apart from the combat is so much fun that I really want to finish the game. But for me the combat is such a major drag that I don’t think I’ll ever play BG3 again.
You might enjoy the Pathfinder games then. I’ve only played Pathfinder Kingmaker, but it has a real-time combat mode. I spent 3 weeks doing nothing except playing that game, so I think it’s fair to say that I enjoyed it. I did not use the real time combat mode though, so I can’t say how well it works. The game is good, but it’s definitely not as polished as BG3.
If you hate turn based games why do you buy them? It’s like if I bought COD and complained about everything being too fast and the lack of civ building mechanics
The good news is there’s a couple of decades where games in this style WERE real-time for the most part. A majority of players seem to like turn based a lot more, but neverwinter nights and the earlier baldurs gates have a pause-assign actions-unpause flow rather than turns.
With pen and paper d&d, guidebooks explain that turns represent about six seconds of action. Some of the older titles took this seriously and it makes trying to use mages in small parties absolutely insufferable, especially at early levels with a low concentration skill total.
Hilariously, this is one of the VERY FEW genre where I find I do prefer turn-based personally. I didn’t turn on ATB mode in ff15, I refused to use strategic view and pausing in dragon age, but for CRPG I’ve found solidly defined turns to really help drive my decisionmaking.
I love the turn based combat but sometimes it does feel like a chore, I wish I could do real time sometimes or purely rules-based AI, and switch to turn-based only when shit goes wrong. For those fights that really do not pose much of a risk and are not that interesting. Someone might say on the difficulty so no fight is trivial, but that can tire one out as well as now every fight can be a major obstacle and sometimes you just want to move the story on a little.
You’d probably like Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games. They’re dated (PS2 era) but really fun, and it’s literally just Baldur’s Gate, but more like Gauntlet-style rogue-like games. Real-time, not turn-based, and they’re just side stories to the Baldur’s Gate canon.
That’s as far as I got too before quitting due to boredom, but for different reasons.
Character building and combat are the main draws for me to D&D, but D&D 5E character building is a step backwards from 3&3.5E and micromanaging an entire party through turn based combat feels like a chore. I’d like to see a Borderlands or Diablo II mod that takes those gameplay styles into the Forgotten Realms setting - a fast paced, skill based game that focuses on action, where you control a single character who’s design and progression increase the skill ceiling by providing more options to make split-second decisions about what tactics to use during each encounter.
Really like the pathfinder games because you can swap between turn based or real-time on the fly, sometimes I want to think about my actions but other times yeah it gets repetitive
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.
the companion back stories are rich, and full of tragedy.
The thing is, they’re mostly exposition dumped at you. All of them already went through the worst of it and tell you about it. To me, Larian fell in the old TTRPG trap of making up those elaborate grandiose backgrounds for your characters and expecting the other players to be impressed instead of writing the story of their adventures during the actual game.
I was there when Jaheira found Khalid’s corpse. I accompanied Nalia when she came back to a ruined home and a dead father. I broke Imoen out of the wizard’s asylum.
Karlach told me how bad the hells used to be and we proceeded to make a few trips to the blacksmith together. Wyll told me of his pact and his crazy adventures, the rest just happened to us at camp. Gale told me he banged a goddess and I got to make a persuasion check at the end. Astarion told me of the torture he suffered, and the resolution was done in 2 fights after we met zero vampires before the last room (BG2’s Bodhi and her lair were so much ahead of this it’s not even funny).
Shadowheart is the only one I felt had a story that I actually experienced with her and wasn’t just politely informed of. Oh, and Minthara, but the evil play through really got the short straw in any other way.
That’s what a backstory is though, it’s what happened in their past, before you met them. If you’re experiencing it with them then it’s their current journey. I did feel like I was able to reach meaningful and entertaining conclusions to all of the companion’s personal stories after hearing their backstory. But I never played any of Larian’s other games, so I don’t have anything to compare BG3 to. For me it was a completely new style of game, and one I enjoyed so much that I consider it to be a masterpiece, and the best game I have ever played. That’s saying a lot considering I’ve lived through the entire evolution of gaming, starting out with an Atari in the early 80’s.
I dislike most if not all party members. Like not always actively dislike, but don’t care much what happens to them. Even if the writing and voice acting is more than decent. Too grimdark and fucked up is how I would describe it. It’s like Larian took all the criticism about previous games being too lighthearted and overcorrected. And not in particularly relatable ways, feels more like they sat down and brainstormed intensely in nerdy excitement and with little depth or restraint about what would be cool and extreme and fucked up, and oh wouldn’t that be awesome… creating freakish caricatures with oh so dramatic and cursed backgrounds rather than you know, relatable flawed characters. Of course I only feel like this because much is done very well and so any missteps are more striking.
There is no point in fights. They are easy and eventually the game has you pass them either way.
There is no point in loot and items. You can win fights either way.
Its just a linear story telling game… There are so many side quests and shit all over… your quests list has hundreds of quests you aggregated over the time and most of them are useless, easy, useless rewards and so on. The plot of the main story is so convoluted and complicated to follow especially when playing over a long period. Adding to that all the distractions of side quests…
Its not an rpg game where you progress with spells and items and and experience… you can have whatever bullshit items you find and still win every fight.
I don’t know how much I would actually pump up Old Bioware on that front, but yeah, the writing quality is actually something I noticed a few hundred hours in. The VAs and animators do such an amazing job that it can slip by for a while, but the writing, taken in isolation, is just kind of… acceptable.
The game is not that big, it’s far more linear than advertised, the maps aren’t really that big, and loot is lacking. The only reason people have 100+ hours is due to extensive conversations, dialogue, and the fact that it gives you no direction. Once you know what to do and where to go, the games shortness becomes apparent. The spell list is underwhelming, and so are the number of classes available. Not producing an expansion is going to hurt longevity, and eventually, people will stop playing because of it. The level cap sucks. Yes, I know, you dont need to be level 20, but who cares if you’re brokenly op? It’s supposed to be fun, and believe it or not, there are people (like myself) who DO enjoy grinding levels, and there are more of us than people realize. The level cap is a huge miss. The story is not that great (I’d even go so far to say it was very clearly rushed), and the only thing holding it up are the party member quests, which are far too easy to fuck up thanks to the lack of direction. Exploration is strongly discouraged due to the abysmal loot, and it feels unrewarding. There aren’t enough legendaries, and you often stick with the same weapons throughout the campaign and are rarely encouraged to try something new. Also, horny companion system makes no sense. Please, please tell me why I was a complete, total shithead to gale and halsin yet they still both “confessed their love” to me? Like, I literally went out of my way to earn their disapproval, and I chose the shittiest dialogue options with them every opportunity I could, and they still said they wanted to sleep with me. Wtf?
I very much agree on the loot. I had thought there’d be quite a bit more? It’s one of the type of mods I kept adding, just to get me some variety. What do you mean there’s no fancy swords for a paladin??
I agree with a lot of what you said. I’m pretty sure though that I read that the level cap was in place because after level 13 wizards gain access to level 6 spells, many of which would either be impossible to program properly or, if they worked as intended, would break the game.
Well, if you did you’d have the whole D&D community after you. Some of them weren’t pleased that specific spell effects and conditions weren’t the same in game, and that was a hot topic in the community when the game first dropped. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing, so why break the game or disappoint players?
But they already crossed that line. There’s tons of shit from 5E that aren’t in BG3 and lots of mechanics work differently. You don’t need a rope to climb, you don’t need to find and secure and area to rest, there are no hit die. Shit, Cleric is missing like 7 entire domains.
So what if they exclude a couple impossible to balance spells?
I mean. There’s a balance to walk between changing things to make game play more accessible and fun in a video game setting, and making it broken and perhaps less fun to play.
The alternate party member NPCs are generic stereotypes, and far less interesting for that. They don’t hold a candle to the NPCs in something like Wrath of the Righteous, who subvert expectations in a wonderfullly interesting way.
As a straight male, playing a halfling, when Gale tried to romance me I had an immediate visceral reaction of “I am not safe”. Really gave me perspective on what women and maybe some gay men have to deal with.
My first playthrough, I didn’t understand that you could recruit everybody. I thought, since my party is full that’s all I get. I never met Karl, never invited Wyll to camp, never rescued Lazy. So it was just Shart, Astarion, and Creepy Wizard for the first two acts.
Everybody ran out of stuff to talk about in act 2, which really made the tone even gloomier… until the creep started talking about his suicide mission. Not only did he skeeve me the whole time, he was now an active threat.
I abandoned him at camp the instant I could grab Papa Halsin and never looked back. So of course he was abducted and murdered by Orin. Lol. Sucks to suck, Gale.
Now, it is my stupid goal to do an honor mode playthrough with Gale as my origin character, so he and Astarion can both be the worst versions of themselves and ruin the world… but he’s such a butthole and I keep dying. Oh well.
Inventory management was horrible. Party management was horrible (but I’ve heard they improved it a bit). Camera management was horrible around areas with multiple floors, especially when they weren’t flat. (The othon fight in particular was awful.) I encountered a few soft locks with enemies sort of teleporting to the shadow realm or some shit and getting stuck inside the illusory door in the hag’s den. Specific graphics settings would get unset every time I opened the game. Stuff like a bug preventing tons of Minthara’s dialogue not being in the game. They fixed that, which is great, but there’s just so many little things like this all over the place. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills when people say it’s polished. It’s fun and I enjoy it, but it’s certainly not polished.
Also, putting a character (Gale) behind a skill check is insane.
The flaming fist can see you steal things from like six buildings away.
When I fought Gortash the first time (I didn’t do the foundry) his steel watchers kept kicking my ass. “Ah ha!” I thought, “I’ll close the door and cast Arcane Lock on it to keep them out and trivialize this fight!”. The watchers teleported next to gortash as soon as the fighting began and wiped the floor with me.
During the Ketheric fight, Ketheric decided he… Just had enough? I guess? He went to stand in the center of the platform and fucked off for five entire rounds while I killed everyone else and started phase 3.
Inventory management is impossible with a controller.
I play on a Steam Deck and while the game runs amazingly in Acts 1 and 2, the instant you set foot in Rivington you’re lucky if you can get 20 fps. And I hear its the same on a PC?
Speaking of Act 3, the entire act is awful. Acts 1 and 2 were incredible and then the whole thing just falls apart. The pacing is all wrong, and you pretty much forget the absolute entirely. Someone else said they stopped playing after moonrise and ended their game, and honestly I like that idea more every day.
Felogyrs Fireworks. That’s all I need to say.
You need to loot literally everything or you’ll miss critical items, and the loot overwhelmingly sucks ass. Oh boy! Another rotten tampon I can sell for 1g!
Potion tooltips are less than useless, especially on the crafting screen (oh man don’t get me started there). What does this potion do? No idea! But at least you know it tastes like Troll cum!
I really do love this game, but a lot of parts of the game are just steaming piles of shit. I also don’t believe it deserved all the awards it got, and it’s kind of amazing it did.
I kind of hate how you can not only nope out of nearly every puzzle with lockpicking but rogues get like half a dozen bonuses during the skill check so why are you even rolling the damn dice?
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