BALDURS GATE 3 HYPE

[john]

im a bit miffed ngl
60 dollar pricetag
spend 4 hours downloading the game
roll up, character creation screen
aw ye lemme get some of that noble warlock so I can have charisma for dialogue + combat and an epic demon buddy
oh shit origin character with those exact traits that i planned to play AND more personal story shit + added dialogue? fuck ye dude

cant do origin characters


aw well at least I can roll for my stats like in all the other baldurs gate games like im used to so I can breeze through and give the early access a run for its money

naw man sorry point buy
the actual recommended ability scores for the different classes make no sense either and are very misleading for the different classes to anyone that doesn't know 5e
the spells and cantrips aren't actually default 5e either so running with old builds is basically impossible

dialogue is really fucking cool though, there are also dialogue animations and stuff that's really engaging to see
the graphics are great - and at any point in the middle of dialogue you can roll dice to do different things like in dnd which i found pretty epic

apparently there's only about 20 hours of gameplay right now so what you'd have to do is bust through those and then wait for however many months it takes them to get out of early access at which point you'll probably want to restart anyway. in other words its really not worth picking up at launch. im gonna get a refund

 

[MaXenzie]

hearing a lot of people not liking the alpha

 

[john]

hearing a lot of people not liking the alpha

it's actually a lot of fun as a game. love the dialogue, the writing; the animations and the dnd system.
its just they delayed it a million times only for some of the primary features to be locked behind another wait timer despite tossing up a 60-something pricetag.

 

[MaXenzie]

it's actually a lot of fun as a game. love the dialogue, the writing; the animations and the dnd system.
its just they delayed it a million times only for some of the primary features to be locked behind another wait timer despite tossing up a 60-something pricetag.

yeah

people dont seem to like the rolls out of combat since they encourage save scumming
and hate that your entire party hates you and wants you dead

 

[sots]

Think I’ll get wasteland 3 to tie me over till it’s out of EA, sounds rough

 

[john]

people dont seem to like the rolls out of combat since they encourage save scumming

can't people just not savescum if they don't enjoy the game when they do that. i think it's genuinely interesting to see a video game where you can only pull off so much within some margin of error; also I'm pretty sure modifiers account for?? unless it's literally just a d20

and hate that your entire party hates you and wants you dead

I'm gonna be honest I haven't gotten this far but I imagine that leaves a lot of room for character development and for everyone to become buddies overtime, Larian Studios are nothing if not good at their character writing.

 

[MaXenzie]

also I'm pretty sure modifiers account for?? unless it's literally just a d20

they add modifiers

the issue is it's blatant RNG that only really works when you have a DM to account for it

as of right now there's an inescapable situation in the game where if you fail a intelligence save you instantly die on the spot (illithid eats your brains)
if your character is a dumb barbarian you literally have to just keep reloading and hoping you pass the save, so not only is savescumming encouraged, it's actually mandatory for certain characters

 

[john]

they add modifiers

the issue is it's blatant RNG that only really works when you have a DM to account for it

as of right now there's an inescapable situation in the game where if you fail a intelligence save you instantly die on the spot (illithid eats your brains)
if your character is a dumb barbarian you literally have to just keep reloading and hoping you pass the save, so not only is savescumming encouraged, it's actually mandatory for certain characters

that sounds more like a poorly planned dialogue tree than an issue with the rolling system inherently though

 

[MaXenzie]

that sounds more like a poorly planned dialogue tree than an issue with the rolling system inherently though

i'd personally prefer they take a fallout/wasteland approach where just having a stat at the relevant bonus is enough to succeed

right now the best speedrun strat would be AVERAGE STAT man with +1/+2 in everything, reloading immediately if they're not lucky enough to roll high on every roll

5e skill checks are dependent on having someone at the table to go "okay you failed it but only just so something good still comes out of it" instead of just going "YOU DID NOT HIT 15 YOU FAIL"

 

[john]

i'd personally prefer they take a fallout/wasteland approach where just having a stat at the relevant bonus is enough to succeed

right now the best speedrun strat would be AVERAGE STAT man with +1/+2 in everything, reloading immediately if they're not lucky enough to roll high on every roll

5e skill checks are dependent on having someone at the table to go "okay you failed it but only just so something good still comes out of it" instead of just going "YOU DID NOT HIT 15 YOU FAIL"

i just hope all this stuff is toggleable, it really shouldn't be hard to have an automatic fail / success based on modifiers - giving people a reason to max out certain stats instead of going average. i also hope rolling for stats is a toggle because i want to spend an afternoon spamming those dice like i did all that time ago with the first two.

i do want to point out that the combat is very punishing so making average man probably wouldn't work anyway since it'll fuck your fighting hard. i do really enjoy the fighting in this game.

 

[Pict]

Just about finished the Goblin camp arc and boi the games quite a experience.

Custom characters in a rpg look real nice with the engine and the animation when it works is gorgeous af.

few nacks that got me concerned is shadowheart's stats are off, cleric with no heavy armor prof and odd settings for dump stats makes her trash for frontlining,

-some invocations don't seem to function? ( I don't know if agonizing blast is calcuating additional damage correctly but atleast I got some funny dialogue with speak with animals)

-You can sometimes break the AI's pathfinding if you set yourself on a high-ground where they struggle to reach you if they're not ranged and waste time screeing at you, combat is still generally brutal but fun.

-some spells don't do what you expect from 5e standards, Silence for example doesn't stop one of the goblin bosses from crying for help within the silence grid, only nulifies spells except sound which was annoying.

love how you can abuse shove being a bonus action to yeet people off cliffs for easy kills and still have an action to give a quick ranged attack at somebody else, haven't played much of Divinity games but I do like their level design for environmental use in combat.

Dialogue can get a little tedious when you start em and then you're not given anything to say when its just a repeatable line they'll state that didn't need to load a close-up shot for 2 seconds.

one thing to also note is that it does have the D&D spirit with fuckup charisma rolls and supposed tough fights that get's cheesed with stuns and abilitys some DM's wouldn't see coming when they planned a high CR encounter.

TLDR: Game is fun in its first act, some bugs and lacking features but overall promising.