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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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Honestly I think the gameplay issue is that the engine works a lot more interestingly with the logic of Divinity than it does with DND 5e translation. Stuff like the armor/crowd control/floor systems in DOS2 just worked better, IMO.

The lack of a free/cheap teleportation ability really hurts it - 75% of the fun of DOS2 was from having that thing ready to go at all times. You get telekinesis as a level 5 spell, but that's obscenely expensive to move some crates around, and dimension door only teleports one person. It's a bit painful.

Surfaces , the gorgeous if a bit kitschy graphics, ability to destroy stuff and the elemental / environmental effects are the only thing better than BG2.

Still, it's a fairly good if flawed game, I hated Dragon Age, but BG3 is like a prettier and more annoying stupid sister of BG2.

Maybe I should wait for mods.

I hated Dragon Age

Same here, I was really disappointed with it and one of my first ever long form pieces of writing was a lengthy review I did about how disappointed I was with a game that I'd been told would have been a successor to BG2. I still don't understand why it has such a good reputation, or why the developers thought that the Fade was an area worth including at all.

I didn't hate the lore or story- the little I saw of it seemed okay, potentially good, but the simplistic combat made me quit.

Dragon fights in BG2 were a treat, usually over in seconds for good or ill. Dragon Age fight that made me quit was my mage spamming minor health potions whittling down a dragon sitting elsewhere...

BG3s most impressive feature apart from the athletic elf maidens are the combat encounters. I'm playing it on the hard difficulty and ..I think it took me like 30 times to beat the hand grenade throwing fatso.

Partly because the transition between combat/ non combat is retarded- I kept losing haste due to some chars being 'outside' combat..and partly because once you kill the bastard and he throws his 'nades all around him and you think, nice, he will clear his mob for you, his minions will pick them up and throw them at you.

So you have to kill him and have someone missile or fireball the 'nades.