Baldur's Gate 3

[rusty_shackleford]

Viconia makes an apperance.
So the canon romance for the bhaalspawn is Aerie, then?

I thought it was Jaheira because she was saying people claim she bangs gods or whatever. Wasn't she the canon romance in the novel?

Jaheira is surprisingly well done wrt continuity, she leaves the story heavily open for interpretation without taking any specific stance by saying it's all just a bunch of retellings of the same tale. She refuses to give any specifics of what exactly happened.

[GhostCow]

Here's the real question I have. I already know that Jaheira, Minsc, and Viconia are in the game, so where the hell is Aerie? She should still be alive, right? Weird that they would include everyone who should still be alive except for her.

[J1M]

As someone who is still in Act I, let me say I appreciate the effort to avoid spoiling things.

[Shillitron]

I finally ran into the fat black tranny self-insert character at the circus and I know this is gonna get a lot of hate but - I didn't really mind them. (yet)
They are inserted as a borderline insane necroman-xer, have a deep manly husky voice, come off as crazed and insane, disgusting to look at and travel around with a circus of outcasts and untrustworthy insane scam artists and hucksters.

Essentially: They are a freak even in Forgotten Realms.

I dunno, tonally feels accurate to me.


--

EDIT: I also noticed that the black tran necroman-xer has a Massive neckseam on their texture. (You can see where they attached the head to the body)
They either made their head / face custom and couldn't be fucked to fix it.. or added it really late in production and forgot to normalize the faces..?

IMO

My head larp of the situation:
- a last minute addition to pander,
- the artist that did it was not the same artist that did the original face / bodies in the game (diversity hire?)
- the artist that did it was lazy and didn't give a shit.

[GhostCow]

Honestly this game is triggering me less than it should and I'm afraid that @krokodil is actually right and we're all going to troon out due to subliminal messaging

[rusty_shackleford]

Most of the pozz is skippable, the bad part is all the sex-hungry fag companions.

[Shillitron]

Most of the pozz is skippable, the bad part is all the sex-hungry fag companions.

If you avoid your camp.. this game is really not pozzed at all..
I can only think of two instances where I saw one gay couple and one lesbian couple.. and both can be killed / ruined if you want to.

And the necromanxer .. but again..

[GhostCow]

Most of the pozz is skippable, the bad part is all the sex-hungry fag companions.

The only guy I've brought around with me is Astarion and he hates me, so I've not had to deal with any faggotry. I went ahead and installed the no homo mod just in case though. I'm more worried about Karlach trying to fuck me at this point.

[Shillitron]

Most of the pozz is skippable, the bad part is all the sex-hungry fag companions.

The only guy I've brought around with me is Astarion and he hates me, so I've not had to deal with any faggotry. I went ahead and installed the no homo mod just in case though. I'm more worried about Karlach trying to fuck me at this point.

You can cuckold cucklach and she cries.

[J1M]

Most of the pozz is skippable, the bad part is all the sex-hungry fag companions.

The only guy I've brought around with me is Astarion and he hates me, so I've not had to deal with any faggotry. I went ahead and installed the no homo mod just in case though. I'm more worried about Karlach trying to fuck me at this point.

You can cuckold cucklach and she cries.

Like invite her to a threesome and make her watch or just decline advances?

Exactly how degenerate is Act 2?

[rusty_shackleford]

There's a major quest in act 3 that is heavily railroaded
Gortash & the iron throne. There's no way to prevent him from knowing you're going there and blowing it up.

So strange, not a single quest in the rest of the game was like this. I feel like they might have rushed it and it will end up getting expanded.

[rusty_shackleford]

There's a major quest in act 3 that is heavily railroaded
Gortash & the iron throne. There's no way to prevent him from knowing you're going there and blowing it up.

So strange, not a single quest in the rest of the game was like this. I feel like they might have rushed it and it will end up getting expanded.

Don't try going after Gortash either, because then everything is just blown up anyways… Really dumb. Feels extremely rushed.

[Red7]

is it me or narrator voice is untrustworthy (cause its vagina) and sounds like patronizing cunt telling player how he(im sorry they them) feels and what to think instead describing enviroment?

doesnt it get incredibly annoying after while?
also can your character get raped by handsome werewolf instead gay bear?

[GhostCow]

The narrator telling you how your character feels definitely bothers me. She has a nice voice though. Another thing that's really bothering me about the game is the large number of tieflings everywhere. Aren't they supposed to be extremely rare?

[rusty_shackleford]

They should have split the third act map up, on a submap now and loading is about 10x as fast.

[rusty_shackleford]

Probably 90% of my reloads are due to NPCs I have to protect getting shoved into insta-kill zones. Terrible, terrible design.

[Shillitron]

Probably 90% of my reloads are due to NPCs I have to protect getting shoved into insta-kill zones. Terrible, terrible design.

This type of mechanic feels very anti-dnd in general.
The whole concept of DnD and especially 5.0E is to slow combat down.. Being able to deal 6 billion damage from lava or 'chasm' is very much a D:OS mechanic and it doesn't fit at all here.

AKA I've one shot like 2 bosses with this.
It's broken in both directions. It's unfun when used against you and ruins the game when you abuse it.

Like invite her to a threesome and make her watch or just decline advances?

Exactly how degenerate is Act 2?

Lol no.
You tell her you cheated on her and she starts bawwwing. Although it surprised me because in act 1 she can't really do stuff with you and so gives you permission to fuck around a bit.. like she actually says its ok.. but if you are too loving then she gets upset.

BaldurBros.. what if this game is lowkey teaching people how polyamory is evil???

In any Bioshit game you can just bang everyone with no consequences.. This and Witcher 3 are the first games to actually punish you for being an unfaithful whore.. although in W3 it was basically a meme.

[rusty_shackleford]

would prefer invisible walls over insta-kill shoves
I'm fine with shoves from up high to low doing some damage, but insta-kill is just stupid

[Shillitron]

would prefer invisible walls over insta-kill shoves
I'm fine with shoves from up high to low doing some damage, but insta-kill is just stupid

100% agree.. Shoving someone off a cliff to deal damage and prone them feels like a great tactical challenge to introduce.

10 billion damage holes and lava pits literally breaks the game.

[Acrux]

Being able to deal 6 billion damage from lava or 'chasm' is very much a D:OS mechanic and it doesn't fit at all here.

10 billion damage holes and lava pits literally breaks the game.

[KnightoftheWind]

Are you denying the 14 Billion damage holes?.

[NotAI]

Re: Paladin vs Fighter. After playing blind.

Fighter with with Potions of Speed and action surge is the optimal build. However, that's already Laezel.

In which case, for the first two acts, you really benefit from somebody with three different heals during combat, which is a Paladin, and the third action for fighters which makes fighters better than paladins occurs usually at start of the act 3. Barbarian can have upgraded heavy armor, of which there are three top armors in the game by act 3.

The barbarian with heavy armor becomes the tank. Has around 10 hitpoints more than the rest.

There are items that passively give extra 3-5 hitpoints after every heal.

So when you just make a paladin for the two actions by start of act 2 plus all the heals, and simply upgrade the barbarian and the fighter you get in the story, and you stock them all up with speed potions, you get the optimal build. Anybody who fall in fighting can just be healed.

20-25 x 4 DMG + 20-25 x 8 DMG + 20-25 x 4 DMG = 320-600 DMG. For example, Gortash goes down right during the coronation. All you need is Jaheira to make those summons to just stand there and distract away the Fist and Steel Watch and then block movement around the three fighters; Jaheira goes down but takes most of the big hits then just gets healed and party flees combat.

So you can defeat anything in the game within two rounds guaranteed.

The absurdly low level 12 level cap ruins level progression because you reach that well before you enter the city. But can see why they made it level 12. They ran out of time to add content that could stop a level 11 party already. Multiclass is useless because spell slots limited. (So all the mods that allow higher levels via multiclass have no point.)

What surprised me is that the game basically only half-handles Gorash going down. The game recognized the event and plays along, and party members make voiced jokes about Gortash being slain during the coronation. So it was expected as a possible valid route to progress. But the problem is a bug that the game does not correctly detect whether or not Duke Ravengard is still alive or was also slain. For example, you party never fought him when defeating Gortash, taking his gear, and fleeing combat. He should be still alive and possible to save by doing some quest. But they game glitches and simply says, when back at camp, that the duke is dead, and asks whether you want to trade Wyll for Ravengard via Mizora. Except that the duke is clearly fine, if you travel to the area of the coronation.

[Shillitron]

Being able to deal 6 billion damage from lava or 'chasm' is very much a D:OS mechanic and it doesn't fit at all here.

10 billion damage holes and lava pits literally breaks the game.

You misquoted me.
I never said it was 12 billion damage holes.

[NotAI]

I only lost a character two times to holes or cliffs. One of those times only because I had assumed it was a way back into the Underdark. Because of the green glow and wind. Like in the cave in Act 1. So cast feather fall and...floating orb. WTF.

[Fedora Master]

https://www.nexusmods.com/baldursgate3/mods/864

@rusty_shackleford

[rusty_shackleford]

Aaaaand finished.
Solid 8/10.

Bad:

• Bad OC companions. Terrible. Awful. Rotten. Except for you shadowcute, you're fine.
• Companions are really bad. And overly horny. The fags will try to rape you, not even joking. You'll tell them you aren't interested and they keep propositioning you for sex.
• Companion variety is bad. Yeah, you can respec them, but the character doesn't match the class which isn't fun.
• Feels a bit rushed towards the end altho much better than Larian's previous late-game content. You can feel the railroading start to hit after an entire game of extremely open-ended content. But it's maybe the last 5% or so of an otherwise massive game.
• Act 2 drags on for far too long, the entire undead city should just be cut. It adds nothing.
• Respeccing breaks the game. Don't believe me?
  
• Being able to magically teleport your items to your stash also unfairly penalizes strength-based characters and gives away one of their primary benefits.
• They gave every race the human racial bonus on top of what they already had, presumably because they wanted people to play as non-humans so they just made humans the worst. Ridiculous.
• I spent about half my play-time at max level which sucked. XP curve needs rebalanced, should get to level 5 faster then dramatically reduce XP gains.
• Not enough vendors. Major symptom of the lack of towns. Again, the area in act 2 that should be cut should have been an actual village instead.
• Started getting quite a bit buggy towards the end too. Not overly so, but some cracks definitely started showing. I expect this to be fixed in the upcoming weeks.
• The camera really needs work, especially anything to do with verticality. Keeps cutting shit out I'm trying to look at or click on. Probably the #1 criticism after companions for me because vertical combat, and even vertical environment traversal, is so core to the game but the camera does not work for it because it keeps moving shit out of the way you want to click on. STOP IT.
• Act 3 loading times become insane due to how big the map is. They really should have split it up like they planned on doing. You go to a sub-map at one point during the late game and loading times reduce to 1/10th of the main map, so the cause is obvious.
• Pits of death you can get shoved into. Just put up invisible walls, I don't care. If you think invisible walls are worse than getting shoved into water and dying, you are retarded.
• Shove, it should not be a bonus action. Simple as.
• Level-up screen UI needs major improvements. I need to know what these classes get at higher levels rather than this level.
• Badly needs more feats. In fact, separate out the ability-score "feat" from regular feats. Screw 5E here, it's just dumb.

Meh:

• Expecting the end to be tighter in the finished edition. Can't wait for that.
• Really should have been a 6 member party game. Always felt like I was lacking things I shouldn't have been in a D&D game.
• Camping supplies stop mattering halfway through the game, should be really more scarce & act 3 reworked.
• Gets too easy in the latter half even on tactician.

Good:

• Performance is pretty great everywhere except the densest areas of the city in act 3. That's a small miracle for a game made in 2023, and the game looks great so I have zero complaints. Had maybe 2-3 crashes total, too. Congrats on making a game that's actually in a playable state, something very few devs are capable of now.
• The returning companions are fine. Quite good, actually. I used them the entire time I had them. The only issue is they are introduced way too late. Good stories, too. I suspect the people who wrote them were not the people who wrote the bad OC companions.
• Also liked Jaheira's voice actress. I haven't heard the original in a long time, but it does sound like her but older according to my memory
• Itemization is actually very good, lacking jewelry & cloaks though. Necklaces are OK, rings are dire, cloaks are even worse. Wish there were more item slots like belts, and gloves/bracers as separate. Didn't think Larian could pull it off, but pleasantly surprised. Well done.
• I liked that were corpses to speak with all the way to the end, even in the very final areas.
• My champion fighter could jump incredibly far, was really fun tbh. Able to dominate the battlefield by quickly moving around. Fun.
• I love the turn-based on demand feature, you can make the game turn-based anytime you want rather than only in combat. Makes for fun stealth sequences and such. Lots of non-combat times to use the feature.
• Really enjoyed the final area/final battle. I can list on one hand the number of times I enjoyed the end of an RPG, so again, well done. If I had to nitpick, the difficulty needs to be higher, but I already stated that.
• Combat reactions are well implemented. I didn't think they'd even do it, but they nailed it rather than half-assing it. And for people who don't want to manage it, it can all be done automatically. Well done.
• Large selection of spells to pick from, very few bugs. The only major bug was gaseous form caused a crash every time, but it was actually something added in the most recent patch.
• Main story itself was quite good, one of the few times I can think of in a video game where I was conflicted about who I should trust, so that's gotta count for something.
• #1 RPG for reactivity, hands down. So many tiny things even get acknowledged.
• …Which goes hand-in-hand with goal-based quest design, rather than step-by-step(think a cooking recipe) quest-design. So many different outcomes are thought up of by the devs, and the care they had for it shows in every inch of the game. No other dev even gets close to Larian in this department and it's sad.
• They managed to make 5E fun. I never finished Solasta because it was so damn boring.
• My characters looked completely battered due to me resting as little as possible, and I loved it. DAO did something similar but definitely not to the same level. My character's entire armor would be spattered with blood, face caked with dirt, blood in my character's hair, etc., I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff.
  
• The diverse amount of rest areas they added is kinda insane. People complained in early access that you always went to the forest, so they completely overdid it in a great way. Even minor areas like some cellars have their own unique resting area. Might not have been all that much extra work, but it adds a ton to the game's atmosphere.
• Lots of cool stuff in NPC's pockets that they don't offer for sale.
• Loved all the various ways to get through areas. Blocked by a fence? Just turn into gas and float through it, or have your druid shift into a cat and crawl through a pipe to unlock the door for you. Love it.
• The game repeatedly passed Rusty's Good Samaritan Test with flying colors. I consider this to be one of the most important factors in deciding if I consider the game to be great or not, as odd as it sounds.
  • "Rusty's Good Samaritan Test" = The game acknowledges that you helped a character without any prior request to do so, and it must not be in the form of a dialogue option. I first came up with it during Shadows of Undrentide for NWN, there's some NPCs I saw that were injured and I healed them, and the game acknowledged it, and rewarded me for it. There was nothing that prompted me to do so, or anything to suggest you'd get something in return for it. The game just expected you to pay attention to what's happening, and involve yourself in the game world.

Things I wish the game had:

• More camp stuff. More involved camping. Camp ambushes. Camp roles to keep watch, etc.,
• More vendors. Way too few.
• Some sort of item customization system. Not crafting. I don't know if modern D&D even has anything like this.
• Really hard to come up with more for this, honestly. The game is so full of content and yet almost all of it is great.

Story spoilers:
Yes, you can become an illithid. And a half illithid. And yes, it is effectively its own class. First D&D game since the Dark Sun games with real psionics, I think. I didn't become one so I have no idea how you get treated.

► Show Spoiler

A boss singing his own music made me grin pretty hard, felt very true to Raphael's character.

M-m-mega spoiler:
I was frequently conflicted on who to trust, but I never once trusted the illithid in my head because when asked, Jergal states illithids have no souls. If he says that, then it's simply true. I assume there's some sort of echo of the memories that it was, but it's something entirely different now. He even comments on this again in the post-credits scene.
Yes, Abdel Adrien is acknowledged. Altho it does not confirm he was gorion's ward, I assume he's just a different bhaalspawn instead.

If it wasn't for companions this would be a contender for my favorite RPG of all time easily. Not just because I consider companions to be a core part of any RPG, but because of how terrible they are overall. Complete net detriment and waste of resources for nearly all of them.

[rusty_shackleford]

BTW, major late act 3 spoiler which references act 1:

► Show Spoiler

When I found this, my character asked how it got there. You couldn't even inspect it, unless you use the hotkey for inspect. This is the inspect window, something I assume nearly everyone didn't view because it lacked the context option for it:


Alright, so it's referencing the robots in the underdark wizard tower from act 1. Why? Who is LDH and YTS?

Also, here's a tip:
Can't inspect something?
Just press 't'. Even if it doesn't have the inspect context menu, 't' still works.

[General Reign]

[Shillitron]

Village pacing is rough. By the time I got to Act 3 I was so fatigued from zero downtime and then I got face smashed endless village and No outdoorsy areas.

Also, no Candlekeep, No Beregost. I would of loved some of the Baldurs Gate budget to get spread out to other places a little.. and things to be more open exploration wise. So far Act 1 feels the most explorable.. Act 2 is .. sp00ky place and Act 3 so far is just a really huge fucking city / city outskirts.

It's such a feast or famine pacing.

[rusty_shackleford]

Village pacing is rough. By the time I got to Act 3 I was so fatigued from zero downtime and then I got face smashed endless village and No outdoorsy areas.

Also, no Candlekeep, No Beregost. I would of loved some of the Baldurs Gate budget to get spread out to other places a little.. and things to be more open exploration wise. So far Act 1 feels the most explorable.. Act 2 is .. sp00ky place and Act 3 so far is just a really huge fucking city / city outskirts.

It's such a feast or famine pacing.

Act 3 has a lot of side areas that break up the city, if you haven't gotten to those yet. Plus an entire sewer + undercity.
Act 2 i s quite dire, it really should have had an entire village.