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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a masterpiece built on a bad tabletop game
(www.polygon.com)
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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Tbf, it screamed click bait before I went ahead and knowingly clicked the bait, but they could have at least come up with something. 90% of it boils down to "it's hard and I can't cheese my way out of it by wheedling a computer program like I wheedle my DM."
For being a *tedious, unfun system in which to play a video game," my ass has barely done anything else in four days and I have only stopped today because I find myself in a moral quandary about murdering known enemies that have already let me pass.
Since when was murder an issue for me. I'm coming to realize my approach to gaming is not my approach to tabletop for some reason and I'm not atm sure what to do about it.
Two days ago, I was in the underdark and VERY proud of myself for successfully taking down not one but two random minotaurs above my level via luck and careful planning. Had the last one down to 19HP or so, hamstrung on a bed of spikes and more or less trapped in cloud of blades.
You know what happened? It jumped clean over all of it, landed right in the middle of the group, and soccer punted Wyll into a chasm, to my audible horror.
You know what I did? Thunderwaved it into the same fucking chasm, revived him, and moved the fuck along. And now we stay away from the edge, and now I use that spell a WHOLE lot more because it's funny and because fuck you.
I get the genuine sense that the author just needed something to write that they didn't necessarily believe in but they knew would get attention, because no gamer worth their salt would take much issue with saving often, I don't feel like any worthwhile D&D player would complain about bad dice rolls, and shit goes wrong in both of them.
If it's really hard...there's Bitch Mode for a reason. You take a hit to your pride, but pride is hollow and you get to play the game vs...not getting to play the game. Although what with me barely understanding the stats/rules myself, repeatedly and catastrophically ending my turn by accident when I least need to, and still feeling like I can likely pull this off if I remain clever enough, I suspect the difficulty part is hyperbole.
I want to know what exactly they're used to doing, if they can skate so lazily by so regularly that they're complaining about moderate strategizing. I wanna know how this happened. They sure as shit don't play turn-based games and their table must resent them.
Tell me you're young without telling me you're young.
Saving before every corner used to be SOP
Yea this reeks of the writer only ever knowing games that pander to the player so you stay happy and more likely to spend money on mtx. Games used to kick you in the balls repeatedly and laugh as you cried, some people didn’t grow up on that
It still would be if developers would let us fucking quick save anymore. Why that power got ripped from our hands I'll never know
I clicked the wrong dialog option and ended up having to fight an entire camp of <no spoilers>. First I panicked when I realized my mistake. Then, knowing I'd saved recently I decided to give it a try. Mid battle I find myself hunched forward anticipating the next move. I pull off some epic shit with water and lightning, they counter with acid puddles, I almost lose to a giant bouncer but I save myself last minute. Somehow, through my panic and adrenaline, I managed to wipe out the entire camp and I am fucking elated.
Not a single person who plays this game walks away without stories to tell. Stories that are completely unique to them, either by choice or mistake. This is what gaming is all about. I don't understand what sort of horseshit this article is spouting. This game is phenomenal.
I think their biggest problem is this
It's something I too struggled with at first. I tried to win every fight cleanly. But BG3 is super forgiving when a fight gets messy. Death isn't nearly as much of a deal. You just use a scroll or head to camp and revive them for a small fee.
Once you accept that, reloading becomes less common. There are just a few fights so far that are near impossible unless you do everything right. And that's my only combat-related complaint, some fights require you to initiate them in a certain way but due to cut scenes you can be in a starting position that's nearly impossible to win from.
The bigger issue is that 5E is just extremely unbalanced and certain builds are so much better than others. On Tactician you are forced to go down that route. But no-one forced you to play on Tactician. I don't know how optimized you need to be on Balanced.
The new version of DnD is apparently fixing a lot of this imbalance. And would make for a better rule set.
Days later, and I am still cracking the eff up at “soccer punted Wyll into a chasm”.