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LifeLynx posted:Died to Mind Flayer Magic Missile barrage. Kind of insane how no enemies use that spell until the very last battle. My Tav as 11/1/1 sword bard put in work, but I wasn't loving the damage output. My TB OH Monk was crazy and I wonder if it's viable to have two in the party. I didn't like TB thrower at all, kind of all-in on not much damage, just knocking two enemies prone isn't enough. And a lot of guides recommended a support caster cleric but I spent most of the game wishing Shadowheart was dishing out more damage. The singing/shrieking sword takes up her entire turn and it wasn't THAT good. drat that's rough. tb oh monk is definitely crazy, though if sword bard and tb throwbarb aren't doing enough damage, there was something wrong with the builds you were using. sword bard should be your control guy with arcane acuity hat and bonus action cast ring, using titanstring bow with strength elixir or deadshot with bloodlust elixir. having a level in wizard would also have negated magic missile. throwbarb is mainly your "disable legendary action" guy, but should still be doing strong damage. the path interrupted thing is due to spears extra reach, using a hammer like dwarven thrower will give you a clean shot.
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May 20, 2024 08:13
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crepeface posted:all the post victory beat downs in this game own. that poo poo was cathartic. That one, and basically anything involving Dame Aylin is impressively brutish. I totally get why, but drat. Everyone knows her bit stomping Ketheric's head into mush, but snapping Lorroakan in loving half needs a shoutout for sheer angry energy.  like, god drat And, quite literally as the credits roll*, what do I actually make of this game? Let's start with the negatives. The music, by and large, wasn't really that memorable. With a few exceptions, of course. Hello, Raphael's Final Act and some of the more bombastic versions of the main theme. TO BE FAIR, this might be a technical issue to some degree: I had a lot of trouble finding an audio balance that was acceptable on my speakers, and messing with dynamic range didn't help much either. It's also a matter of taste, to be fair: I'm an FF XIV nerd and that game really likes its soundtrack to be front and center, as compared to something that's meant to be more ambient or background music. *i was not expecting them to keep rolling. and rolling. and rolling. and rolling, good god that's a lot of credits. A couple of quests were a bit lackluster, and that stupid fireworks one was just bad (and had the misfortune of being one of the very last things I did, so it's fresh in my head), and a lot of Act Three felt a bit detached from itself. Like most things in Acts One and Two felt like they tied into your main goals of "get rid of parasite", "get rid of goblins", and/or "get rid of Ketheric's stupid army" in some way or form. Though given that a lot of it is, essentially, fixing your party members' various problems and ghosts of the past, it's probably hard to avoid it turning into a bunch of vignettes. Not to mention I probably broke sequence a few times, and as such missed some connecting plot bits. Along these lines, there's a few minor bugs, though nothing game-breaking so I'll forgive that in a game of this scope. I never did figure out what the deal was with Halsin, 30 STR/CON/WIS Lord of Destruction, for example: if anyone knows Please Advise thanks. And since I'm on the subject of Halsin, I can't tell if I bugged him out, or if he's just not as written as everyone else, because his various companion dialogues just kind of...stopped not long after I got him. I'd think he'd have as much dialog as, say, Minsc, who you get super-close to the end, but nope. It could just be from me not using him enough, I guess? I'm not a shapeshifter/pet class fan as a rule...unless someone at Square brings back FF XIV 4.x Summoner, that was a glorious job. And finally, I'm going to stick in a shot at the camera. What I wouldn't give for completely free camera controls. Or even the ability to force it up and down Z-levels. Yeah, this isn't a very long list of faults. That's because Baldur's Gate 3 was a very, very, really, extremely, incredibly good game! Perfect? No. Best game ever? Let's not get ahead of ourselves...though it probably deserves some serious consideration for that title. People have been over all of the things it does right a million times, but I'm going to repeat one point I've brought up so many times: the voice acting. Like, the game's script is almost hard for me to rate on its own merits because the voice work elevates it so much. And let's finish things out. Episodeon CXXXVI: With Hearts Aligned     I'm not going to prattle on too much here FOR ONCE, but I was kind of wondering what The Emperor would do after, you know, everything. I still am, kinda. even his letter at the reunion thing is very...ambiguous. Also GOD gently caress they scared the hell out of me with Karlach. Thankfully, Wyll is here to save everything.     From doomed fools aimlessly wandering around the woods to a place among the legends of the Coast. We did pretty well, didn't we, Mr. Dekarios?     I guess that makes me Mrs. Dekarios then.      Zariel could barely contain Karlach. With Wyll...not a chance in the hells.     And of course, a few months after everything, the reunion. Owlbear: still loving big and best boy. Scratch: still best boy. There can be two best boys, don't question me. I could spend an hour typing out a recap of what everyone says here, but why?     Shadowheart, Lae'zel*, Astarion, Gale... *she blinked right when I took my screenshot so I had to use one with text  also surprisingly not that mad about me killing Orpheus, since everyone apparently hated Vlaakith anyways    Wyll, Karlach, Minthara, Halsin...     Jaheira, Minsc (and Boo), and of course Withers. I see you, Jergal A toast to the greatest friends anyone could dream of.     also, the stinger is pretty funny, just for Jergal dunking on the idiot three. y'all didn't think this through, did you? And so, everything ends, mostly well. For now.  idk if i'm going to dive straight back in, but it's kind of tempting tbh. Solo Wing Pixy fucked around with this message at 10:13 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 08:52
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alright, minty's getting a bit precious with my dark urge about how when she followed the voices in her head, she was blameless, but when i follow the voices in my head, i'm a wild and dangerous beast might have to hit the ejector seat, or at least make her wear the clown makeup in perpetuity
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May 20, 2024 09:21
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https://i.imgur.com/SzWcg5O.mp4
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May 20, 2024 09:58
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:and a lot of Act Three felt a bit detached from itself. Like most things in Acts One and Two felt like they tied into your main goals of "get rid of parasite", "get rid of goblins", and/or "get rid of Ketheric's stupid army" in some way or form. Though given that a lot of it is, essentially, fixing your party members' various problems and ghosts of the past, it's probably hard to avoid it turning into a bunch of vignettes. In DOS2 all the optional party members that aren't in your group at the end of act 1 die, and show up as enemies in an encounter in the last act. I'm finishing Act 3 at the moment and part of me wonders if it would have been a better option to trim the party down to just the people you're using. A lot of the characters in this game are pretty flawed from the outside and show a lot more depth from having them in your party and seeing all the little comments they make, or building relationships with them, and so on. I've ended up in an act 3 where I am finishing up a lot of these companion quests sort of for the sake of it, because it's a long game and I don't know when I'd do a replay of it, but some of these act 3 quests (for me it's been Wyll, Astarion, Jaheira) are for characters I've never even kept in my party, so the emotional impact was not really there for me.
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May 20, 2024 11:33
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nice work! I truly enjoyed your journey. thanks for sharing it with us!  click here to view ^maybe somebody can add this link to somewhere? 
wizard2 fucked around with this message at 11:44 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 11:41
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I was juggling party members a lot for variety, but I did feel like I was doing it more than I wanted to in act 3 just because it kind of drops all the companion quests on you at once there and it's not super clear what the "optimal" order to do them would be to avoid constantly shuffling people in and out. I was really wishing I could just have 5 people in my party instead of 4 since it would have helped a lot to avoid situations where I'd get to a new area, talk to an NPC, and be like "oh I should probably have Gale here for this", head to camp and swap someone out for him, then end up doing it again with someone else five minutes later. I know there's a mod to expand the party size limit but that has pretty major game balance implications (as opposed to the game having been designed from the ground up for a larger party), and I was on my first playthrough so I didn't want to dive into mods right away.
The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 11:49 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 11:45
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 Jesus christ, Larian is full of crazy people.
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May 20, 2024 11:49
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Jack Trades posted:Jesus christ, Larian is full of crazy people. yeah I don't like it
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May 20, 2024 13:09
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Larian is precisely as good as it is because they aren't obsessed with ever growing profit quarter to quarter, and that it is run and staffed by crazy people.
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May 20, 2024 13:16
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Shard posted:Larian is precisely as good as it is because they aren't obsessed with ever growing profit quarter to quarter, and that it is run and staffed by crazy people. 
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May 20, 2024 13:22
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Goa Tse-tung posted:yeah I don't like it I agree, they should be making THREE RPGs plus Divinity X-Com.
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May 20, 2024 13:25
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exquisite tea posted:I agree, they should be making THREE RPGs plus Divinity X-Com. an xcom crpg where one of the romancable party members is a cyber disk
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May 20, 2024 13:34
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My visit to the shadow land inn started off well although I probably muffed some of the small decisions. But then I headed upstairs to get a blessing to make it easier to travel and all poo poo broke loose. I definitely wanted to put a Hold Person on the obvious greatest threat but NOPE just because he has wings he's no longer humanoid. I spent a turn getting people inside the room to jump him and then BAM it's over and everything goes into the toilet, and in a spectacular fashion. I was maybe ten minutes into trying to deal with it when I decided that I wanted to reload and try to avoid such a horrible outcome. I can't tell yet if this is a scripted sequence where you have no chance of winning, but the alternative is so jarring. I don't expect the game to necessarily telegraph everything so I can get ready but yikes.
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May 20, 2024 13:46
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Dick Trauma posted:My visit to the shadow land inn started off well although I probably muffed some of the small decisions. But then I headed upstairs to get a blessing to make it easier to travel and all poo poo broke loose. I definitely wanted to put a Hold Person on the obvious greatest threat but NOPE just because he has wings he's no longer humanoid. I spent a turn getting people inside the room to jump him and then BAM it's over and everything goes into the toilet, and in a spectacular fashion. I was maybe ten minutes into trying to deal with it when I decided that I wanted to reload and try to avoid such a horrible outcome. I can't tell yet if this is a scripted sequence where you have no chance of winning, but the alternative is so jarring. I don't expect the game to necessarily telegraph everything so I can get ready but yikes. there is a tiny constitution check at the beginning while he’s finishing his stupid evil villain fight that does make it easier, but yeah, i find myself reloading a lot if cerys or alfira die. keeping all those level one folks alive is a challenge.
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May 20, 2024 14:00
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Dick Trauma posted:My visit to the shadow land inn started off well although I probably muffed some of the small decisions. But then I headed upstairs to get a blessing to make it easier to travel and all poo poo broke loose. I definitely wanted to put a Hold Person on the obvious greatest threat but NOPE just because he has wings he's no longer humanoid. I spent a turn getting people inside the room to jump him and then BAM it's over and everything goes into the toilet, and in a spectacular fashion. I was maybe ten minutes into trying to deal with it when I decided that I wanted to reload and try to avoid such a horrible outcome. I can't tell yet if this is a scripted sequence where you have no chance of winning, but the alternative is so jarring. I don't expect the game to necessarily telegraph everything so I can get ready but yikes. This is winnable but yeah you have to be very on the ball to get everyone through it alive. Sometimes you just get lucky and the enemy will choose to go after NPCs who can defend themselves but potions of speed are very helpful if you want to try to avoid leaving things to chance. Keeping Isobel alive is mandatory and being able to clear the threats out of her room as quickly as possible is key.
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May 20, 2024 14:07
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I am not good at cheese but I suspect that I will have to cheese my way though this one. Maybe spells to lock the doors to the room? EDIT: Barrels! Lots of barrels! Dick Trauma fucked around with this message at 14:19 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 14:17
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Dick Trauma posted:I am not good at cheese but I suspect that I will have to cheese my way though this one. Maybe spells to lock the doors to the room? Now that you’ve done the fight once, position your party around the room while talking to Isabella. I find having people in the four corners of the room helps as you can focus on the main bad guy and the scrubs. Also make sure you win initiative
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May 20, 2024 15:34
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I learned a fun thing about him yesterday (reading about, not doing). If you kill Naaber (or otherwise arrange his demise), he will not care if you're his killer if you use Speak With Dead. You are also not restricted to five questions. "The spell's power wanes - but the spirit refuses to be silent."
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May 20, 2024 15:38
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LifeLynx posted:Died to Mind Flayer Magic Missile barrage. Kind of insane how no enemies use that spell until the very last battle. My Tav as 11/1/1 sword bard put in work, but I wasn't loving the damage output. My TB OH Monk was crazy and I wonder if it's viable to have two in the party. I didn't like TB thrower at all, kind of all-in on not much damage, just knocking two enemies prone isn't enough. And a lot of guides recommended a support caster cleric but I spent most of the game wishing Shadowheart was dishing out more damage. The singing/shrieking sword takes up her entire turn and it wasn't THAT good. I also had a lot of issues with the throw builds due to the pathing problems, but personally I didn't find the damage to be substandard. I pretty much breezed through no-powers Honour Mode with my party comp of TB Monk Durge, Luminous Orb Shadowheart, Frost Wizard Gale, and EK Throw Lae'zel, with first Lae'zel and then Gale being swapped out if I had a quest that needed one or--at a push--two other party members (e.g. taking Jaheira and Minsc along to the Tribunal). With a bunch of stacked up gear and a light cleric build Shadowheart could pump out significant damage that also debuffed enemies significantly. I'd open up with Spirit Guardians and then use her channel divinity to deliver AoE radiant damage alongside spells like moonbeam and sumbeam, and it only really got to be a problem in the handful of fights where the enemies have Radiant Retort. Frost Wizard Gale pumps out huge amounts of damage just dropping whatever the most powerful cold-type spell he can get his hands on over and over again, and his evocation specialisation means he can't do friendly fire. The ice surfaces he creates have his spell save DC as the slip DC and there are gloves which apply Encrusted with Frost on enemies which impart disadvantage on dex saves, which means enemies will routinely miss their turns once you pick these up. Stick any of the various boots that mean you can't be knocked prone or slip on ice on your melee characters and have fun. Those two plus my Durge essentially trivialised most fights, so whoever was along for the ride on this quest just had to put out some minor modicum of damage to not feel like a liability.
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May 20, 2024 15:43
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I handled last light by always drinking an elixir of vigilance for the day and casting Banishment. That guy had bad CHA saves. Some of those bigass trees are susceptible to this as well if you aren’t about to immediately take them out.
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May 20, 2024 16:02
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I pick up all the black medium toughness chests and block the doors with them. cheese ftw
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May 20, 2024 16:08
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:a lot of Act Three felt a bit detached from itself. Like most things in Acts One and Two felt like they tied into your main goals of "get rid of parasite", "get rid of goblins", and/or "get rid of Ketheric's stupid army" in some way or form. Though given that a lot of it is, essentially, fixing your party members' various problems and ghosts of the past, it's probably hard to avoid it turning into a bunch of vignettes. Not to mention I probably broke sequence a few times, and as such missed some connecting plot bits. I think this is a very valid criticism. Nothing really felt "side-questy" to me until Act 3 when almost all of it felt that way. I'm over 400 hours and multiple complete playthroughs into this and I still haven't done most of Act 3's side stuff. I've set that stupid painter free like three times now and every time told myself okay this time I'm going to actually find this dude in Baldur's Gate and it's just never happened. It would make a lot more sense if you could keep playing after saving the city when handling all these relatively very small potatoes might make more sense. Like, seriously you want me to find how many clown parts? Friend the city is literally being ripped to pieces, this can wait. Every time I finish a game I tell myself okay next time I'll do all that stuff. And then I don't want to when I get there. Maybe some day. That being said I don't consider this really that much of a strike against the game, I don't feel like I'm missing anything by skipping most of that stuff or, you know, I would do it. And yeah, camera angles are my biggest technical gripe too. I would just remove the whole path interrupted for throwing weapons for anything that isn't like, a wall. As for best game of all time....I don't think that's really a question that you can have a real conversation about anymore beyond just listing your personal favorites. Video games are so diverse in what they set out to do and how they do it, it's not just apples to oranges its like, apples to thanksgiving dinner. I think if you narrow that category down quite a bit BG3 is probably my answer for best, say, turn based RPG, or companion RPG, or big budget game of the 2020s, etc., but go any broader than that and I don't really know if there's much of a point in trying to answer what the best video game ever is. SlothBear fucked around with this message at 16:19 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 16:12
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SlothBear posted:I think this is a very valid criticism. Nothing really felt "side-questy" to me until Act 3 when almost all of it felt that way. I'm over 400 hours and multiple complete playthroughs into this and I still haven't done most of Act 3's side stuff. I've set that stupid painter free like three times now and every time told myself okay this time I'm going to actually find this dude in Baldur's Gate and it's just never happened. It would make a lot more sense if you could keep playing after saving the city when handling all these relatively very small potatoes might make more sense. Like, seriously you want me to find how many clown parts? Friend the city is literally being ripped to pieces, this can wait. To be fair to the Circus at least... the entire reason they want to leave is BECAUSE the city's being ripped to pieces, and they simply don't want to leave without Dribbles.
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May 20, 2024 16:14
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The circus is my favorite part of early Act 3. It’s what finally breaks you out of that slow comedown from the Act 2 epilogue to the two hours of interstitial dialogue. It’s also definitely the most “classic Larian” that BG3 ever gets in terms of the tone and humor.
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May 20, 2024 16:21
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SlothBear posted:I think this is a very valid criticism. Nothing really felt "side-questy" to me until Act 3 when almost all of it felt that way. I'm over 400 hours and multiple complete playthroughs into this and I still haven't done most of Act 3's side stuff. I've set that stupid painter free like three times now and every time told myself okay this time I'm going to actually find this dude in Baldur's Gate and it's just never happened. It would make a lot more sense if you could keep playing after saving the city when handling all these relatively very small potatoes might make more sense. Like, seriously you want me to find how many clown parts? Friend the city is literally being ripped to pieces, this can wait. Honestly the camera would probably be fine if it at the very least let you manually move up and down Z-levels. The fact that you can't makes trying to jump/fly to a higher floor a real crapshoot since depending on your positioning the game may simply make it impossible to actually click the floor up there, even if it would be a perfectly valid path. I think in act 3 they really wanted Baldur's Gate to feel "big" compared to the act 1 and act 2 areas, so they made it super dense with a ton of stuff going on and that's why it can feel a bit aimless. Every time you push one more block into the city you get like 5 more sidequests. I think it comes down more to a problem of framing than anything else - it's that classic video game problem of "the story says that you should be treating the main plot with some urgency but we're also going to throw a million distractions at you". I am curious how many people had a similar experience to me, which was going for Orin super early because I went to the Elfsong, into the Emperor's hideout because he said I should go check it out, then took the exit out back to the sewers, not knowing this would trigger her "I've kidnapped a party member and I'm gonna kill them" event and basically rushed straight through the murder tribunal/temple of bhaal quests without taking a single long rest because I wasn't sure if the time limit was real or not
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May 20, 2024 16:42
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Solo Wing Pixy posted:idk if i'm going to dive straight back in, but it's kind of tempting tbh. I too enjoyed your travelogue. When I finished my first run I felt like I needed a nice long break to process everything and do something else for a while In less than a week I had started up a Tactician run and looked like the Always Sunny conspiracy board meme with all my plans for builds and romances and plot points I wanted to make sure I hit correctly. When this game hooks you, it really hooks you lol. I would suggest Dark Urge resist for a second playthrough. It doesn't really get going until the end of act 2 but it ends up being a very different perspective on the same main story. (To be clear, "resist" isn't something you're presented with at character creation, just how you react to choices throughout the game). Or embrace the Dark Urge I guess but only if being a serial killer who does warcrimes against your closest friends and allies appeals to you. Honor mode is also a lot of fun, which I can finally say now that I've beaten it after multiple failed runs where I loudly declared that honor mode is dumb and bad and only for stupid assholes. You do have to be open to a single bad roll totally loving up the story, which based on your posting may not be your cup of tea. It certainly keeps things fresh and interesting, and makes combat more difficult and rewarding. Dick Trauma posted:My visit to the shadow land inn started off well although I probably muffed some of the small decisions. But then I headed upstairs to get a blessing to make it easier to travel and all poo poo broke loose. I definitely wanted to put a Hold Person on the obvious greatest threat but NOPE just because he has wings he's no longer humanoid. I spent a turn getting people inside the room to jump him and then BAM it's over and everything goes into the toilet, and in a spectacular fashion. I was maybe ten minutes into trying to deal with it when I decided that I wanted to reload and try to avoid such a horrible outcome. I can't tell yet if this is a scripted sequence where you have no chance of winning, but the alternative is so jarring. I don't expect the game to necessarily telegraph everything so I can get ready but yikes. Yeah this is one of the fights that's notorious for loving up honor mode like I said above. Because the dude can one-round Isobel if you're unlucky and the outcome is SO BAD. You basically have to win initiative and immediately kill or disable him. You could cast Sanctuary on Isobel to buy a small amount of time but she will quickly take an action and dispel it anyway. Alert feat or a few Elixirs of Vigilance carries you hard here. The fight really does feel like an unfair surprise because there's plenty of ways to prepare but you'd have no reason to do any of them the first time you encounter it. I've never had an issue with the downstairs NPCs dying across a bunch of runs. Just luck I guess. A useless Harper might eat it but none of the plot-relevant ones ever did. I do usually leave one person down there to immediately start cleaning up demons. Reveilled posted:Radiant Retort. This ability is such bullshit. It doesn't ruin the game or anything but "your paladin and/or cleric might as well go make a sandwich" is not a particularly fun mechanic.
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May 20, 2024 16:57
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Docjowles posted:Honor mode is also a lot of fun, which I can finally say now that I've beaten it after multiple failed runs where I loudly declared that honor mode is dumb and bad and only for stupid assholes. You do have to be open to a single bad roll totally loving up the story, which based on your posting may not be your cup of tea. It certainly keeps things fresh and interesting, and makes combat more difficult and rewarding. I've found that, once you get a feel for it, honor mode is kind of the definitive way to play the game, the way it's intended to be played, almost. There's absolutely no shame in not putting up with any of the honor mode bullshit, to be clear, but I keep wanting to find the time to start a new honor run and pretty much nothing else.
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May 20, 2024 17:06
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Honor Mode is now the only way I can play the game. I'm definitely the type of person who will try to play the campaign the exact same way every time so throwing in a little chaos keeps things interesting.
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May 20, 2024 17:09
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I might not have been gearing Lae'zel right as an EK Thrower. It was kind of a late decision. I wasn't using Shadowheart to her full potential probably, and she tended to get focused down really quick. Since she was so fragile, and I only had one melee character, I never had her in Spirit Guardian or shriek range. I think my next party is: Tav: Sword Bard Astarion: OH Monk Gale: Sorc/Wizard of some kind. 11/1 Fire Sorlock seems very powerful. Shadowheart: RadOrb Light Cleric
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May 20, 2024 17:12
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act 3 kinda sucks. too long and disjointed and baldur's gate is a shithole full of jerks i don't care about. might just be me but i got bored pretty quickly after i hit the level cap. i went right back into it after i rolled credits and act 1 still owns. Docjowles posted:This ability is such bullshit. It doesn't ruin the game or anything but "your paladin and/or cleric might as well go make a sandwich" is not a particularly fun mechanic. i used that tadpole power that recovers your health when you hit 0 HP and then my biggest smite to kill the boss though it.
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May 20, 2024 17:14
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LifeLynx posted:I might not have been gearing Lae'zel right as an EK Thrower. It was kind of a late decision. I wasn't using Shadowheart to her full potential probably, and she tended to get focused down really quick. Since she was so fragile, and I only had one melee character, I never had her in Spirit Guardian or shriek range. I think my next party is: Clerics can be pretty tanky if you gear them up for it. I was running a war cleric as my avatar so she got heavy armour proficiency for free, so that plus a shield meant I could stick her pretty comfortably on the front lines since enemies generally had a pretty hard time hitting her. Spells are still a vulnerability, but you have a lot of options to beef up your saves and resists. If all else fails you can just spend your turns healing back whatever damage you took - spirit guardians is passive damage anyway so you don't even really need to be doing anything else. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:26 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 17:23
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crepeface posted:act 3 kinda sucks. too long and disjointed and baldur's gate is a shithole full of jerks i don't care about. 
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May 20, 2024 17:28
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crepeface posted:act 3 kinda sucks. too long and disjointed and baldur's gate is a shithole full of jerks i don't care about. might just be me but i got bored pretty quickly after i hit the level cap. I think I've decided act 2 is my least favorite. They were going for a depressing oppressive vibe and they stuck the landing perfectly. Doesn't make me enjoy that vibe though. It's still fun and there's a lot of great storytelling and encounters but I feel on edge and uncomfortable the whole time. Act 3 can drag but coming out of the shadow lands into this huge vibrant city feels amazing. Act 1 got the benefit of years of early access beta testing and it really shows.
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May 20, 2024 17:31
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Docjowles posted:I think I've decided act 2 is my least favorite. They were going for a depressing oppressive vibe and they stuck the landing perfectly. Doesn't make me enjoy that vibe though. It's still fun and there's a lot of great storytelling and encounters but I feel on edge and uncomfortable the whole time. Act 3 can drag but coming out of the shadow lands into this huge vibrant city feels amazing. This is one thing I really noticed about act 1 compared to 2 and 3 - I was playing a cleric of Llolth, and you get a bunch of unique dialogue options in act 1 for that (although a lot of them aren't super impactful and get you the same response as other "evil" options), but they seem to drop off pretty heavily in the later acts and my feeling is that they probably didn't consider it a major priority to do a bunch of unique content for that one very specific class/race combo. It did kind of give me an unintentional character arc where I was starting off fairly evil but ended up mellowing out as I made more friends (I didn't want to take the actual "full evil" major decisions since I knew that it would end up just cutting off a ton of content, so I was always going to end up "good" anyway, but it was still kind of funny that eventually the game just stopped giving me "mean" dialogue choices entirely). The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:38 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 17:36
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imo act 3 suffers from not having a home base you care about. i was surprised all the tiefling refugee quests/content was so disconnected (unless i missed something). my back seat game designer narrative would be to weave their stories together more, let us play through a progression of integrating them into the lower city. i bet some of this was planned but they ran out of gas because the blacksmith in rivington who gets killed by orin is begging to be replaced with dammon. i guess it would be time consuming/tricky to make it work with your act 1 choices if you let them all die. The Cheshire Cat posted:This is one thing I really noticed about act 1 compared to 2 and 3 - I was playing a cleric of Llolth, and you get a bunch of unique dialogue options in act 1 for that (although a lot of them aren't super impactful and get you the same response as other "evil" options), but they seem to drop off pretty heavily in the later acts and my feeling is that they probably didn't consider it a major priority to do a bunch of unique content for that one very specific class/race combo. It did kind of give me an unintentional character arc where I was starting off fairly evil but ended up mellowing out as I made more friends (I didn't want to take the actual "full evil" major decisions since I knew that it would end up just cutting off a ton of content, so I was always going to end up "good" anyway, but it was still kind of funny that eventually the game just stopped giving me "mean" dialogue choices entirely). yeah, you definitely notice the polish going straight from act 3 to act 1 again. crepeface fucked around with this message at 17:50 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 17:48
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crepeface posted:imo act 3 suffers from not having a home base you care about. i was surprised all the tiefling refugee quests/content was so disconnected (unless i missed something). my back seat game designer narrative would be to weave their stories together more, let us play through a progression of integrating them into the lower city. i bet some of this was planned but they ran out of gas because the blacksmith in rivington who gets killed by orin is begging to be replaced with dammon. Yeah I suspect the major issue would be there are so many possible permutations of who might still be around at that point that relegating them to side content/cameo encounters was probably a decision made for the designers' sanity. It's always an issue with really open ended RPGs - if you allow the player to kill characters at any point, the story has to be able to adapt to that. The earlier that character can die, the more the possible future branches end up spreading out unless you deliberately prune them by ending their plot relevance shortly after meeting them. New Vegas had a similar design problem and the way they dealt with it was by writing the entire game with the assumption that the player was going to kill every NPC the second it was possible to do so, so they only got physical access to a character at a point in the story in which it would be okay for them to die. This is why House and Caesar deal with you entirely through replaceable proxies until the main plot is pretty far underway. The Cheshire Cat fucked around with this message at 17:59 on May 20, 2024 |
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May 20, 2024 17:56
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Act 3 is the closest the game comes to what made me love BG2, dense urban fantasy with a lot of stuff to find around every corner. Just like BG3 you're supposed to feel rushed In BG2 because you're supposed to care that omg Imoen is being tortured right at this very moment. Sorry Imoen I found a lich in a sewer and I'm going to figure out how to kick that guy's rear end at level 9. My enjoyment of BG2 dips substantially when you finally have to leave the city and do the rest of the game. I wish there would finally be a game that fulfills the goal of Dragon Age 2 in making a game set mostly in a dense urban city for the entirety of it and doesn't suck.
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May 20, 2024 17:58
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I hated Act 3 the first failed run and first successful run, was only minorly overwhelmed the second time, now after the third, it is all good fun
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May 20, 2024 18:10
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Yeah I suspect the major issue would be there are so many possible permutations of who might still be around at that point that relegating them to side content/cameo encounters was probably a decision made for the designers' sanity. It's always an issue with really open ended RPGs - if you allow the player to kill characters at any point, the story has to be able to adapt to that. The earlier that character can die, the more the possible future branches end up spreading out unless you deliberately prune them by ending their plot relevance shortly after meeting them. i have a vague memory of the "diamond structure" of dragon age origins being used to get around this problem as well. being able to do the different chapters in any order let them tell fairly intricate stories that would have manageable outputs for the final chapter. Janissary Hop posted:Act 3 is the closest the game comes to what made me love BG2, dense urban fantasy with a lot of stuff to find around every corner. Just like BG3 you're supposed to feel rushed In BG2 because you're supposed to care that omg Imoen is being tortured right at this very moment. Sorry Imoen I found a lich in a sewer and I'm going to figure out how to kick that guy's rear end at level 9. My enjoyment of BG2 dips substantially when you finally have to leave the city and do the rest of the game. I wish there would finally be a game that fulfills the goal of Dragon Age 2 in making a game set mostly in a dense urban city for the entirety of it and doesn't suck. *grinning like the grinch* oh, check out this game called final fantasy 7
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May 20, 2024 18:13
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