You are not disagreeing with anything I actually said, so there's that.
In a sentence: It's min-maxers' hell?
Wouldn't that be Pathfinder?
I don't know, I didn't play it. From what little I have seen it appeared to be a character building porn first and foremost.
And he is.
It's three steps forward, two steps back in my opinion. Those ideas you're praising are all good in a vacuum, but they're implemented a bit thoughtlessly. Too many spells are tagged with concentration and in practice it makes being a spellcaster annoying - playing Solasta basically the only debuff spell I used in 90% of encounters was Blind, because it's the only one that has a flat duration and doesn't break concentration on the previous thing you cast. It would also be great for spellcasters to get 2nd and 3rd concentration slots as they reach higher levels, or maybe derive it from a secondary stat. The advantage/disadvantage system is also clever and fun, but hideously overused to the point where deep into a combat encounter you might have no fucking clue how many stacks of each one has, and since they all just cancel each other out it stops mattering.
I remember when there were just fighters. They just had armor and a weapon and ran around hitting things. It was better that way. Besides, they don't need abilities when they only exist to be mind controlled by a superior Gnome wizard.
welcome back, hows the wizarding world going smol-harry?
All is fine and good goy. Inflationary economies are actually great for profiteering.
On the other hand, what were they supposed to do when people cried on the forums that companions were mean to them (not even kidding at this point).
Larian has Hasbro money backing this up.
I do think they made your companions less conflictive towards you wasting time, but at the same time there was this bit where they wanted to make you act as quick as possible but every 10 meters you had yet another side quest and distraction. So it was a bit dissonant. The game's general tone is much more lenient now than what it used to be. It's been made easier and more "biowarian", the recent change in tone where everything is a joke is not entirely to blame on Larian, as I said before, the initial pitch and state of the game had it being much darker than what it is now, and people complained because it was not "Baldur's Gate" for them. When Minsc was announced to have a part in this game and the tone was shifted to a more jolly one people felt BG was "back".
Yes, slipping into Bioware area is a fact. And with every step Larian losing part of their identity. I know, for Codexers that Belgian company always was something odd, and not only because of the humour, but they had a spark of uniqueness making them different than others cRPG wannabe. Now...almost nothing left.
I'm talking about reaching out in relationship. You know, men and woman...oh, now I get it. You don't know.
I'm not familiar with the situation, but personally I'm quite fed up with ~narrative designers~, aka uncultured hacks, who feel obliged to write NPC dialogue in such a way that the NPC must always one-up the player in every conversation. This is a game the player is playing, if one side should one-up the other in conversations, it's the PC.
