Baldur's Gate 3

[Cepp]

It's incredible, it's everything I could have wanted in a sequel so far at least. 10 hours in and I'm still exploring the starting area. It's just so dense, and there's so much to see and interact with. The art style is gorgeous, although I'm forced to set everything to medium with my current hardware. I was going to create my own character but decided to pick Shadowheart and take Astarion, Lae’zel and Gale along with me. Astarion is the star of the show so far although the others are interesting as well. A lot happens straight off the bat and I've already had a few interesting interesting interactions with NPCs. One in particular I just wanted to agree to their terms to see what would happen, but chickened out in the end. Maybe next time.

Combat is engaging and can get a little dicey, I almost wiped fighting a bunch of spiders. I like the way they've integrated dice rolls into everything, it reminds me of Crimson Shroud a little with how it shows it on screen. I'm playing with the interactivity a bit, using grease where enemies are standing to make an area slippery, before throwing a fireball at it to make it catch fire and later using ice magic to cool it down so I can pass by. At one point I saved an NPC and was trying to revive him but couldn't via the context menus. I ended up throwing a healing potion at him which worked. I'm not sure if that was the proper way to do it, but the idea of throwing a glass bottle at a guy on his deathbed to heal him amused me.

First impressions are really good, I'm still getting used to everything but I can tell its going to be a hell of a journey.

[Finsbury Girl]

So tempted on this but I'm in the middle of Pillars of Eternity and Starcraft doh! Starfield is coming!

[MartyG]

It's good but the combat is way too difficult, I've turned it down to the lowest setting and the party is getting wiped almost straight away, enemies doing more damage than I have HP and it's hindering any progress. Ranged is next to useless as enemies just close on you, and if you try to make space, you get damage from turning your back.

It's really hindering any progress at this point and numbing my desire to go back to it tbh.

[Golgo]

The elemental nature of the combat in Divinity OS did me in. It was way overdone, I felt. I spent most of the game getting doused in oil and set on fire. Is there much of this in BG3?

[MartyG]

Yes, very similar.

[Cepp]

I'm playing on Balanced and combat can be challenging. I was just making my way into the hag's lair and there's a point where you fight four possessed characters. I had to try that a few times but I made it through. I did actually manage to beat them on my first try with a just a sliver of health but then walked through some kind of toxic sludge and got everyone killed I'm paying more attention to my surroundings now.

I carried on down and ran into vents spewing out noxious gas. I threw objects on them to cover them up so I could pass but not every spot had a vent to cover up. They were booby trapped with bombs though so I set them off and ran through in the few seconds it was clear. With the right spells, I think I could have blown some of that gas away. I finally made it to the bottom and realised I was super under levelled for this fight. Gale was almost one shotted so I'll have to come back later on to finish her off.

I've not had too much trouble keeping Gale at a distance as my only truly ranged character. He does miss a lot though.

[Finsbury Girl]

Looks like you need to reroll for natural 18s across the board

[MartyG]

The problem is the game seems to want to play it in a specific way as far as the combat is concerned, which kind of defeats the point of an RPG. I can't play as a ranged character and rogue because you'll get slaughtered in combat. I thought the story mode might change that requirement, but from what I can tell, it doesn't change combat much at all, enemies will still crowd you and do the same damage.

I really just want to experience the story and not have to fret about party wipes all the time (not helped by autosave not being proper autosaves) - there are also a lot of little niggles that detract from the game too, one example being looting - I perhaps missed something, but taking individual items needs multiple mouse clicks, there isn't a "take all" equivalent just to select a few at a time :/ Character screens don't separate the equipped items from the inventory items at all and there's no UI scaling which is annoying playing on a 4K.

The story is great, the other stuff gets in the way.

[Finsbury Girl]

just saw there are no stat rolls for this game, poor form from the devs it definitely puts me off the game a little bit.

[Brad]

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ability_Score_Modifier

What stat rolls are missing? I'm not a d&d guy so my terminology understanding is likely confused.

[Tobal]

I've been watching limmy on twitch play it this week(while working...), definitely uses dice rolls for everything, combat, interactions and dialogue.

[MartyG]

The game keeps crashing for me at the same point after a cut-scene now, so I can't progress it any further. Shame, can't really recommend the game on that basis given it's a game-breaking crash to the desktop bug, especially bad given it happens quite deep into the game.

[Finsbury Girl]

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Ability_Score_Modifier

What stat rolls are missing? I'm not a d&d guy so my terminology understanding is likely confused.

From an article on gamerguides:

Unfortunately, Baldur’s Gate 3 is taking a more balanced (read: frugal) approach to Ability Score distribution than the first two games did - gone are the days of rolling digital dice for hours to get an almighty 95+ overall to assign as you see fit. Also gone is the ability to sack an entire stat to its lowest possible value so you can scrounge up extra points for other, more build-friendly stats. In Baldur’s Gate 3 you’ve got a standard point-buy system, with each character getting 27 points to distribute between their six Ability Scores.

In old skool D&D you'd get to roll 3 d6 for each stat ; in the first 2 BG games at the character creation page you could keep rolling these stats until you got say 99, 100 or more out of a theoretical max of 108 so your character could have awesome bonuses from the start which is extremely helpful for a lot of different things (combat, searching, saving throws etc). This system is not in this game

[Deuteros]

My group ditched rolling for ability scores starting with 3rd Edition. A point-buy system is much more elegant and balanced.

You should get a feat or an ability score increase (one +2 or two +1) every four levels in Baldur's Gate 3. You should be fine as long as you don't neglect your primary ability score. 5th Edition is balanced around players' actions having a 65% chance of success.

[MartyG]

The issue I have with the dice rolls in this game, is that if you fail a check (and you don't always have the choice to re-roll, well, not without going thru a save/load process every time), is it makes you feel like you're missing out on content - it probably doesn't make a huge difference to progress, but it feels that way if you fail checks.

Plus as I said, I now can't progress at all, even having cleared cache and tried an earlier save, it crashes after the cut-scene finishes every single time :/