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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2373 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 4, 2023

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So this post should be higher effort, but that'd take away from important Baldur's Gate 3 time, so all I'm going to say is: Hot damn did Larian deliver, at least so far. I've got a few minor nitpicks, but I can't recall the last time I enjoyed a game this much. Was up until 5 AM playing it last night.

I'm also trying to figure out when exactly I got hyped for it. I ignored it all the way through early access, then a week before launch, I suddenly was all-in, and I don't remember seeing any news or reviews or anything other than "Oh hey, it's about to come out."

Is it Woke?

Ok, part 2 of my response.

This post over at Blues News spoke to my curmudgeonly soul.

Eh, I'm kind of frustrated with the game. There are so many little annoying things that I'm finding that are adding to to my frustration.

The UI need work. The "mini" map is way too big, and FFS get rid of the fucking version number always visible. I wish they had an option to turn off quest markers. The descriptions on some abilities and spells are missing important information, which is driving me insane. This is especially frustrating during character creation. I had to re-do my character a couple of times because of this.

I'm somewhat familiar with D&D 5e rules, and they've made so many questionable changes to the rules that they might as well not even be allowed to call it D&D.

They've made all races the same by giving them all a selectable +2 and +1 attribute bonus instead of each race being unique.

They've removed detect magic and identify. Part of what I like about D&D that's missing from other home brew RPG systems is picking up magical items that can be enchanted or cursed, but you don't know until you identify them, either with a mage in your party or by paying a vendor. You can take your chances and equip them without identification, but if they're cursed, you have to get someone to remove the curse before you can remove the item. Remember the cursed ring in the original Baldur's Gate that you can find pretty early that changes your character's gender? I figured Larian of all developers would have had had fund with stuff like this.

Spell casters that have to prepare spells don't have to rest to prepare them, they can switch them any time outside of combat.

Spells don't have verbal, somatic or material requirements.

Apparently the game does have ritual casting for classes and spells that support it, but the spell description doesn't indicate if it can be ritual cast until you take it.

It seems like anyone can cast spells from scrolls regardless of class, without any requirements or restrictions.

I'm sure there are more that I haven't found or can't think of right now. Most of these are clearly done to appeal to casual players because they're ruining the role playing experience for me. I can't believe WotC approved of some of these changes.

I'm fine if Larian wants to use a modified home brew rule set, but at least put in the option to play with the authentic rules. Solasta handled this perfectly. It had several presets for difficulty from super easy, to the default Solasta rules, the authentic rules, up to a super brutal rules, or you can tweak every option of the rules to your liking.

So many people and reviewers are jizzing their pants over this game claiming it to be the best RPG ever. The game good and has the potential to be one of greatest RPGs, but currently it doesn't deserve that title. People need to take their blinders off, give it proper constructive criticism, so hopefully Larian can turn it into something great.

I don't think BG3 has any overtly woke current year nonsense. However, I am getting the impression BG3 has a very progressive design aesthetic towards excessive accessibility, blank slatism, and against conventionally attractive women/"male gaze".

Those rule change points are all autistic nitpicks. Spell don't have verbal, somatic, or material components? Those barely come up in actual tabletop unless a spellcaster is tied up or something. This reads like someone who's only RPG is D&D 5e, the rules of which are holy writ. I played Neverwinter Nights, and that played fast-and-loose with the tabletop rules too, and I didn't have a shitfit over the "parry" skill.

And the game is full of conventionally attractive women. Unless you mean that the female dwarf faces are way hotter than the human ones.

Those rule change points are all autistic nitpicks.

I mean... maybe. But when I bought Baldur's Gate 1, it basically had an abridged version of the D&D rules as it's game manual. It prided itself on how autistically it adhered to the AD&D 2e ruleset. They made some technical concessions, but they weren't "streamlining" things willy nilly.

This Baldur's Gate 3, I'm just not seeing it as the sort of spiritual successor in the same vein that Doom 2016 was. I don't intend to invest $60 and 200 hours into it so I can definitively make that claim. But what I'm seeing says this is not a game for the sort of grognard who liked the first two Baldur's Gates. It's for a modern, more laid back, more casual audience. They seem to be doing very well with their new audience. Good for them I guess.

Compared to other modern RPGs, BG3 is very UNforgiving. You can easily get in over your head and wind up having to re-load an earlier save. The game plays for keeps, there's no take-back-sies apart from save-scumming. I wouldn't call it dumbed down to appeal to casuals, that sounds like boilerplate criticism of all modern games, because all modern games are beset by the scourges of feminism, anti-westernism, anti-whiteness, and appealing to filthy casuals. Or something.

BG3 ADDED weapon-intrinsic short-rest maneuvers, too, shit that isn't in 5e at all, and even the 5.5 playtest has those as always-on, not limited resources. And it has new conditions that don't work the way 5e conditions work, and there's no grappling. 2/10, elbows too pointy.

You can almost always go back to camp and for 500 gold re-roll and re-spec your entire party for the current encounter.

That's not unforgiving.

Underrail is. 15 hours in you're forced to go into a garbage dump full of landmines, acid-spitting mutant pitbulls, traps, sentry turrets and more traps and more acid pibbles and people who try to have a jack-of-all trades character suffer impressively.

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