Baldur's Gate 3 - “It’s Rockstar-level nonsense for scope”

[Mnementh]

HoloDust said:

Eric2048 said:

If it had a different combat system I would get it no hesitation. Never been a fan of these cRPG combat systems like Divinity and Pillars have to slow for my taste. But looks like a great game otherwise.

Turned based combat in a system like DnD is sort of given. Though, both BG1 and BG2 had real time with pause that really worked well, and I would be much happier if they kept that.

BG3 combat suffers from bad camera view that acts as if it's made for some mobile game action RPG, rather than proper isometric cRPG, and bad implementation of 5e rules - namely no Dodge and no Ready Action as biggest culprits. Dodge in 5e gives your attackers disadvantage to hit (approx -4/-5 on the role) and is a very important tactic for both front line tanks and spell caster trying to maintain concentration on an ongoing spell. Ready Action gives you a chance to wait for a certain trigger to happen to react, which obviously has tons of uses. They're both in Solasta and work as intended, so I have no idea why Larian decided to ditch that. Add to that some of their homebrew nonsense, and it's quite a mess. Oh, and did I mention that inventory is complete and utter rubbish?

But...the game gives you a lot of choices. That itself is its redeeming quality, if you like that. I've played it only a bit and so far it doesn't feel much like Baldur's Gate, it doesn't feel much like a proper VG representation of DnD 5e, but the chance to take different approaches and paths and do some of the inworld stuff you would expect for the modern VG games to have, yet they don't (and Ultima had it 30 years go) is a driving force behind it.

About the bad camera: did you try tactical view (o-key) in fights? Might make it a bit better. Also the key below the Escape-key (dunno how it is named) outlines all characters and NPCs, which is helping *a lot* to keep track of the participants in a fight.

About the D&D compliance. While I played Pen&Paper and also D&D (though not 5 specifically, I played 3.5 and Pathfinder), I think a video game is different enough to be OK with changes. I am not sure if every change Larian made to the system is good for that purpose or not, what I can say is, that the results works well. A thing Pen&Paper is usually better than video games is the flexibility (as the DM is a person that can react to the actions of the party). But BGIII is very good in that regard. I haven't even come close to all the stuff I can do. I love pushing enemies if I can, I also love if I anticipate a fight to hide and place my party and let only one person talk to the people (or just attack without talking). Throwing healing potions at my party members is also excellent. Throwing shit overall is quite fun and has cool effects. Throw a barrel of alcohol at the enemies and then set it ablaze, good times. Yeah, I think Larian did well with all the options the allowed for players.