Baldur's Gate Baldur's Gate 3 RELEASE THREAD

[Sarathiour]

Sure, your companions are hilariously chill after you stab somebody in the camp so many times that the body looks like abstract expressionist art piece.
Durge occasionally feels a bit "glued on". But it's the murderhobo path, I'm willing to accept some jank.

Also, BG3 has so many awful writing moments - sometimes atrocious in new and innovative ways - that getting angry at Durge path feeling a bit silly seems like a wrong tree to bark on.

Yeah, it's one of the thing that rubbed me wrong.

"I'm sleeping soundly between a serial killer and vampire, what are they going to do, stab me ?"

 

[Tyranicon]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

 

[Lagole Gon]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

Not a fan of evil companions? You prefer Wyll and Karlach?

 

[Tyranicon]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

Not a fan of evil companions? You prefer Wyll and Karlach?

None of them are evil though (except maybe Asstarion? Never recruited him). They're morally and sexually whatever the player chooses them to be.

The companions remind me a lot of the Dragon's Dogma clone-slave things, where they give a semblance of personality but at the end of the day, they just do whatever you want them to do.

Here the difference is that Laezel will bitch and moan the entire time and Gale will rape you in the night.

 

[Darkwind]

I don't know if any game can ever have writing as bad as BG3

PC just fucking murders a dude by severing his hand after losing it during a conversation. Then Shadowheart who just met PC says in a voice of a slightly annoyed schoolteacher

"You were supposed to lend a hand, not take one"

Moves on, never comes up again

Only possible to enjoy this garbage if you're a subnormal redditor.

Go back to Niggerfield™ which is clearly where you heart is leading you to. There is definitely some Shakespearean level writing and dialogue in that game and sheeeeeit.

 

[Darkwind]

has anyone found a way to get minratha without sacrificing all the other companions? not that I mind since I hate most of them, im just curious

If you don't raid the grove or kill the goblin leaders, but just move on to Moonrise, you can recruit Mintharra without sacrificing Wyll or Karlach. You don't get Halsin, but who cares.

I've already told you once, 100 pages ago, this does NOT work. It is 100% bugged why do you keep shilling this Larianshill?

Yes you can get her in your CAMP but half her dialogue is missing, she randomly glitches out by not appearing in SOME camps but does in others, and you absolutely can NOT take her into combat as a companion she will never join the fights and bugs out. Stop promoting this BS to people.

 

[Jaedar]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

The funniest bit is that after I recruited Karlach, on the next rest Wyll showed up in camp threatening to kill her (and by proxy, everyone else). After effortlessly talking him down (wouldn't want to have any hard choices in your RPG) he goes "well ok then, can I join you?". Who wrote this? If someone threatens to kill you you don't invite them to sleep 1m away 2 minutes later. Astarions intro has the same issue, although there you can at least maybe argue it's a case of mistaken identity. But would you really be able to sleep if a guy who held a knife to your throat 6 hours earlier was lying next to you?

 

[Lady Error]

I just used the opportunity to kill the nigger and nobody said a word. His body then lay around at every camp, so I put it in the chest instead.

/psychopathic tales from the Sword Coast

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I find shadow pussy an oddly written character on the evil path. So she's a merciless, perfect assassin of the evil goddess Shar but she also acts and sounds like a goofy teenager around you. Minthara is a lot better written, shame she has so little content.

 

[Anthedon]

Sure, your companions are hilariously chill after you stab somebody in the camp so many times that the body looks like abstract expressionist art piece.
Durge occasionally feels a bit "glued on". But it's the murderhobo path, I'm willing to accept some jank.

Also, BG3 has so many awful writing moments - sometimes atrocious in new and innovative ways - that getting angry at Durge path feeling a bit silly seems like a wrong tree to bark on.

It's the Codex's usual way nowadays; they will nitpick on one line of dialogue out of a thousand, insisting that the best RPG ever made is terrible, while praising some unknown indie game like Cave of Lore and pretending it's the best thing ever now of course ignoring any flaws. Or they'll praise an action RPG like Oxaca. They seem to do their best to make it look like the place where people are retarded and wrong about everything.

But Caves of Lore is actually a decent game. Maybe not the best ever.

 

[Mortmal]

Sure, your companions are hilariously chill after you stab somebody in the camp so many times that the body looks like abstract expressionist art piece.
Durge occasionally feels a bit "glued on". But it's the murderhobo path, I'm willing to accept some jank.

Also, BG3 has so many awful writing moments - sometimes atrocious in new and innovative ways - that getting angry at Durge path feeling a bit silly seems like a wrong tree to bark on.

It's the Codex's usual way nowadays; they will nitpick on one line of dialogue out of a thousand, insisting that the best RPG ever made is terrible, while praising some unknown indie game like Cave of Lore and pretending it's the best thing ever now of course ignoring any flaws. Or they'll praise an action RPG like Oxaca. They seem to do their best to make it look like the place where people are retarded and wrong about everything.

But Caves of Lore is actually a decent game. Maybe not the best ever.

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

 

[jf8350143]

I find shadow pussy an oddly written character on the evil path. So she's a merciless, perfect assassin of the evil goddess Shar but she also acts and sounds like a goofy teenager around you. Minthara is a lot better written, shame she has so little content.

I would argue that lacking content is exactly the reason why Minthara is better written. She is a after thouhgt, a "one note" character, she just needs to be the evil power hungry drow. The writer didn't want to add more "depth" to her and she has one and only one romance scene.

And that's what makes her great, she doesn't have a personal quest and romance storyline(sort of) so her personality stays consistent, won't be influenced by the MC or romance.

 

[Tyranicon]

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.

People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.

Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.

 

[MerchantKing]

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.

People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.

Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.

KotC2's flaw is its engine and its limitations. It's not so much of a problem if you're just looking for a tactical dungeon crawler. But that's what it was designed for. I've never played CoL though.

 

[Bohrain]

Finished the game after restarting for god knows how many times. I know you can reclass anytime, but I wanted to see how much C&C there is. Did a fairly completionist run, think I only skipped two quests in act 3. The level cap should be 2-3 levels higher, you reach 12 so fast when you get to Act 3. Game could've alternatively been shorter but more reactive. Lot of illusion of choice, like all the ways of getting rid of the tadpole in Act 1 and defying Vlaakith or Emperor at the earliest opportunity just results to game over. And most of the class or race related dialogue options are just flavour text for a skill check that is there anyway. Game is also made with good characters in mind, you lose out so much content with the amount of people you kill or piss off on evil route. I didn't play evil past Act 1, but I think the only recurring character evil run nets you is Minthara, while you automatically lose Wyll, Karlach and Halsin if you kill the tieflings.
Combat feels fine. Yes you can cheese it very easily with stuff like dual hand crossbow builds, twinned haste, barrelmancy and what have you. But I enjoy the game more with the leeaway of having couple of less effective characters in combat. Larian's environmental gimmicks and homebrewing makes it feel distinct enough from tabletop, where I've grown bored of 5th ed already. At least GWM builds don't feel nearly as strong as in tabletop, since you often end up using bonus action for jumping.
Regarding the writing, I like it overall. I never really found myself skipping text that I hadn't read already. This alone is a major feat, since it was an issue with past Larian titles as well as Obsidian's games after New Vegas for me. There were occasionally amusing moments and I liked some of the character arcs, particularly for Durge, Lae'zel and Astarion. I can see why many codexians hate it, with the companions being very playersexual (and having broken flags until patch 2.0 or something) and some characters feeling way too contemporary.
Itemization feels alright. Lot of unique items, they feel powerful enough and everything is hand placed. And since you can reclass anytime, a particular build not having good gear earlier on isn't catastrophic. But it does feel that fighters and paladins that use two handed weapons and either medium or heavy armor have the most options. In comparison, I found only two unique hand crossbows and only one duelist rapier in the entire game. Inventory management also feels really primitive, I didn't want to change party members much because equipping a benched character takes a lot of clicking.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

The writing is good? The writing for the main quest sucks. It's not interesting and convoluted. The best writing was in act 1 where the main question was more grounded with the refugee situation and the underdark. The grander the story gets, the worse it gets.

 

[dukeofwoodberry]

I find shadow pussy an oddly written character on the evil path. So she's a merciless, perfect assassin of the evil goddess Shar but she also acts and sounds like a goofy teenager around you. Minthara is a lot better written, shame she has so little content.

I would argue that lacking content is exactly the reason why Minthara is better written. She is a after thouhgt, a "one note" character, she just needs to be the evil power hungry drow. The writer didn't want to add more "depth" to her and she has one and only one romance scene.

And that's what makes her great, she doesn't have a personal quest and romance storyline(sort of) so her personality stays consistent, won't be influenced by the MC or romance.

Maybe but Shadowheart's personality just doesn't match a devoted follower of Shar. I guess it's just another character they wrote with the good path in mind. Because she acts all silly and lovey dovey down the dark justicar path also. She acts like aerie the Shar follower

 

[Grunker]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

If someone threatens to kill you you don't invite them to sleep 1m away 2 minutes later.

oh ho ho you should try playing dark urge if this bothers you lol

 

[Lady Error]

She acts like aerie the Shar follower

Which she is I guess, considering that she was a Selune follower who was basically abducted and memory-wiped.

 

[Mortmal]

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.

People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.

Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.

KotC2's flaw is its engine and its limitations. It's not so much of a problem if you're just looking for a tactical dungeon crawler. But that's what it was designed for. I've never played CoL though.

It's exactly what I am speaking about. Flaws are a lot more numerous than this, much, much more so, from the plot and writing to the encounter balance and presentation. And the budget has nothing to do with that. While BG3 has some flaws, they are very minor and nitpicking in comparison.

 

[Ryzer]

The plot and story in Kotc2 are almost non-existent, these are just arguments to kill everything that moves.

 

[Jaedar]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

If someone threatens to kill you you don't invite them to sleep 1m away 2 minutes later.

oh ho ho you should try playing dark urge if this bothers you lol

It doesn't bother me, because you get the option to kick them out.

I am playing durge (because I heard you can chop off Gales hand and prevent him from joining the party that way). I roll my eyes every time the pc introduces themselves with "Hello, my name is The Dark Urge".
But yeah, the companions sure do take it in stride when you explain that you sometimes kill people for no reason.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

The codex has never been a big fan of post BG2 bioware, and BG3 sure is eerily similar to something bioware would make if bioware weren't a soulless husk ruled for decades by ea beancounters.

Anyway, the game is fine. It has lots of flaws, but also cool stuff, while being somewhat mechanically destitute (not sure if 5e or larian are to blame for that one). I guess if you've really missed bioware games it makes sense to see it as the second coming and hope it will transform the rpg genre. Personally I'm leaning towards a solid 6 to 7 out of 10, taking into account the expected quality drop and lack of consequences people report in the later acts.

 

[MerchantKing]

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.

People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.

Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.

KotC2's flaw is its engine and its limitations. It's not so much of a problem if you're just looking for a tactical dungeon crawler. But that's what it was designed for. I've never played CoL though.

It's exactly what I am speaking about. Flaws are a lot more numerous than this, much, much more so, from the plot and writing to the encounter balance and presentation. And the budget has nothing to do with that. While BG3 has some flaws, they are very minor and nitpicking in comparison.

KotC2 doesn't need a complex plot or anything like that. The Augury of Chaos campaign is a structured combat dungeon and there is no illusion from anyone here that you play it for any reason other than its superb combat. It does exactly what it's designed for. It's encounter balance is excellent since most encounters are difficult while being reasonable enough for a player who is able to figure out a strategy for the encounter. The AI is excellent, still the best AI in any tactical game to this day. Your characters going through the dungeon is the plot and there doesn't have to be anything else.

The writing is passable in KotC2 and there's little enough of it that you can ignore it.

The problem with KotC2's presentation is the 3d sprites and 2.5d map added into to Augury which clashes with the original token/grid art style of the campaign. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that. Though if you ask me, the biggest mistake was not just using the soulful sprites and textures from KotC1 for everything. There is nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that.

BG3's encounter balance is non-existent since most of the encounters are extremely easy even on Tactician difficulty. This is even if you don't exploit the gimmicks that made their way into the game from DOS2. The plot itself which is retarded from the beginning is a huge flaw. Invasion of the body snatchers was a shit movie and recreating its plotline in this game was retarded. And then you get the terrible globohomo writing and gay cutscenes that happen everywhere--a major flaw in itself. The game would have been better off without those things, especially without the cutscenes.

The attempt at photorealistic 3d graphics is always a mistake. It tends to be nothing but a waste of disc space and is always ugly.

 

[Mortmal]

Possibly yes, but I hate the double standard around here. If you criticize those games the same way BG3 is criticized here, they are all terrible, utter shit. And the Codex review will be yet another joke, further undermining the credibility of the site, if that's even possible.

Codex being contrarian is nothing new, don't take it to heart so much. If everybody else loves a thing, codex will more than likely hate it.

This is especially true if it's from a big studio, seeing how Larian is "kind of AAA" now, whatever that means.

People arguing in good faith here (lol) generally dislike BG3 because they see it committing the same mistakes that BioWare and its ilk have years ago, as well as some serious flaws with the writing, worldbuilding, C&C, etc.

Do games like KotC2 and Caves of Lore have the same issues? Undoubtedly, and plenty of other ones to boot. But those games do not have budgets in the millions and they're passion projects, so they get a certain pass.

KotC2's flaw is its engine and its limitations. It's not so much of a problem if you're just looking for a tactical dungeon crawler. But that's what it was designed for. I've never played CoL though.

It's exactly what I am speaking about. Flaws are a lot more numerous than this, much, much more so, from the plot and writing to the encounter balance and presentation. And the budget has nothing to do with that. While BG3 has some flaws, they are very minor and nitpicking in comparison.

KotC2 doesn't need a complex plot or anything like that. The Augury of Chaos campaign is a structured combat dungeon and there is no illusion from anyone here that you play it for any reason other than its superb combat. It does exactly what it's designed for. It's encounter balance is excellent since most encounters are difficult while being reasonable enough for a player who is able to figure out a strategy for the encounter. The AI is excellent, still the best AI in any tactical game to this day. Your characters going through the dungeon is the plot and there doesn't have to be anything else.

The writing is passable in KotC2 and there's little enough of it that you can ignore it.

The problem with KotC2's presentation is the 3d sprites and 2.5d map added into to Augury which clashes with the original token/grid art style of the campaign. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that. Though if you ask me, the biggest mistake was not just using the soulful sprites and textures from KotC1 for everything. There is nothing wrong with the presentation outside of that.

BG3's encounter balance is non-existent since most of the encounters are extremely easy even on Tactician difficulty. This is even if you don't exploit the gimmicks that made their way into the game from DOS2. The plot itself which is retarded from the beginning is a huge flaw. Invasion of the body snatchers was a shit movie and recreating its plotline in this game was retarded. And then you get the terrible globohomo writing and gay cutscenes that happen everywhere--a major flaw in itself. The game would have been better off without those things, especially without the cutscenes.

The attempt at photorealistic 3d graphics is always a mistake. It tends to be nothing but a waste of disc space and is always ugly.

Here we go again, nitpicking everything about BG3 but pretending that KotC2 is fine and doesn't need a plot. You start in a small village, then you explore the sewers, which already doesn't make sense for such a medieval village. In these sewers, there are armies of goblins with magic weapons battling, ancient dragons beneath ruins with mummies, and extraplanar levels. Eventually, you end up teleported to some castle without even knowing why for the final battle. You don't need a big plot for a dungeon crawler, I agree, but there's still a minimum of coherence to maintain.

As for the battle balance, KotC2 was unplayable at release and still turns down 99% of people. The fact is, no one plays it anymore. Regarding BG3 combat, it's not as unbalanced as you make it out to be; it may require some tweaking. If you follow the good path and do both the underworld and high mountains, you gain too much XP early, as I noticed in my second playthrough. This is easily fixable and doesn't make the game unenjoyable, you still stay in same encounter level tiers. Tactician mode, if you are reasonable with rests and don't save scum, is fine enough.

As for photorealistic 3D graphics being a mistake, it's only a problem when you don't have the budget, and mostly for indies. I can't help but picture a Codexer's kid spitting out caviar handed to him by Sven on a silver spoon. I could play with much lower-quality graphics, using pogs (with good art) and a 2D map. But why complain when you have actor performances with photorealistic graphics and superb 3D dioramas

 

[Grunker]

If I had to travel with the story companions, I would be in another camp with all kinds of traps set up and Alarm active.

Classic RPG companions: Your party is a lawful good paladin, a cleric of a neutral good deity, and a chaotic good thief.

Modern day RPGs: you get some fucking degenerate abominations, some of whom used to be in the monster lists.

If someone threatens to kill you you don't invite them to sleep 1m away 2 minutes later.

oh ho ho you should try playing dark urge if this bothers you lol

It doesn't bother me, because you get the option to kick them out.

I am playing durge (because I heard you can chop off Gales hand and prevent him from joining the party that way). I roll my eyes every time the pc introduces themselves with "Hello, my name is The Dark Urge".
But yeah, the companions sure do take it in stride when you explain that you sometimes kill people for no reason.

You know you can change the name, right?

As for my comment, my meaning was what you mentioned about how fast characters overlook it when they catch you in horrific acts, like murdering the bard lady.