this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Don't tell the forums that, they're convinced it's an unplayable woke government ops pathetic remake zoophilia kissing simulator insult to d&d. It's got so many bugs you can't play it on anything short of a super computer, and is targeting children with it's addicting gameplay and low system requirements.
Every day there's a new 3 page screed expanding each of the above adjectives into paragraphs of garbage. Yet somehow most of the authors don't own the game, and it's has a overwhelmingly positive rating...
And it's always people that have private profiles.
If you're profile is private on steam you're automatically disregarded.
TBH it's really not that surprising, just classic gatekeeping - cRPGs were very niche for a long time and those people dislike the fact many new people are suddenly interested in them because of this game.
I kinda get it in a way, I think some other games in the genre deserve this success more, but at the end of the day it's still better than most of the shit released lately.
Got any examples? I've been a crpg fan since my teens, but there's so many I haven't tried. Any game that deserve success more than bg3 is a game I should probably give a shot!
I think Pillars of Eternity is way better than BG3 - I prefer its combat, story, writing and art style. It's also a very big game, fairly similar to BG3 I think. It also has a sequel which I haven't played yet.
I just played through Pillars of Eternity, and though it's very good, I don't think it's even close to BG3. So many times there appeared to be a way to talk your way out of a thing, only for the NPC to decide that it can only be resolved via combat, and there was so much combat that it became exhausting. Your party would start taking damage that they shouldn't have just because you're advancing combat faster than you should out of decision fatigue. Even with liberal auto pause settings, 15 different events could trigger in combat in the blink of an eye, and it's very easy to miss what even happened. Leveling up most classes has minimal depth, and the way priests and druids in particular gain new spells is far less elegant than 5e's "upcasting".
For all those gripes, I still enjoyed it. And in the first 5 hours of Pillars of Eternity II, nearly all of those complaints are well addressed. Even with the vast improvement in the sequel thus far, I'd still say not only the production value of Baldur's Gate 3 is better but BG3 inherently benefits from the systemic framework Larian's had for about a decade now, allowing you to come up with creative solutions to problems. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I think it's a hard sell to say Pillars is more deserving of that success.
I can respect the first paragraph, even though I disagree (it honestly just sounds like you prefer turn-based combat, which is fine but not an issue with the game). The other points apply to many cRPGs (combat is part of the game, even games like Planescape have unaviodable combat). Levelling is worse in Pillars though, I agree.
The second paragraph doesn't really say anything though - Obsidian have also been making cRPGs for a long time, and Pillars is full of intersting solutions for problems. Honestly it's very hard for me to say which game is better in this regard.
All in all these complaints (even if I completely agreed) do not lead me to the conclusion that "I don't think it's even close to BG3." The only thing "not even close" between those games is how much they cost to make (which IMO makes some of BG3's issues, like launch bugs and the state of the third act, much less acceptable).
Combat is part of the game, and unavoidable combat at times is part of that too, but the option to do anything else was just so rare in Pillars 1. I do prefer turn-based combat, but RTWP is made more manageable when the information is more readable. Pillars 2, for instance, color codes all sorts of stuff in your combat log and zooms in on events like enemy kills. Those two things alone make it much easier to parse what's happening compared to its predecessor. And the amount of combat in Pillars 1, while it may be similar to Baldur's Gate 1 and, at times, BG2, still suffers from the same things those games do. If you're sitting at a tabletop setting and getting through a combat encounter, you'd probably feel like your DM was lazy if they just threw 4-6 trash mobs at you in between finding points of interest in a dungeon; it doesn't make for the best pacing. Again, Pillars 1 was very good, but it's also very restricted by comparison.
Well you managed to convince me to finally play Pillars 2. I actually don't mind the chaotic nature of RTWP (kinda makes me feel like it's a real fight, in a way) but zooming in on events to effectively relay info is very clever.
I have unfortunately never had the chance to play D&D (only ever had one friend who was interested), so I compare cRPGs to other video games, where having shitty enemies between points of interest is pretty much expected.
But I understand what you mean by it being more restricted. Still liked it better though, honestly in large part because I think the writing and story are much better (very subjective though).
Did you finish BG3? The plot is very by-the-numbers, but the characters' stories weaving in and out of it was the main event in that game, and lots of those reach their conclusions in Act 3. In Pillars 1, the problem I had with the party members' stories were that they all felt like the beginning of a storyline instead of a complete arc, but a friend of mine who's finished Pillars 2 tells me that they deliver on this front much better in the sequel.
One word of warning to you on Pillars 2, since you think so highly of the combat in Pillars 1, is that part of the reason it might be more readable this time around is that battles are smaller-scale, by a smidge. Your party size is restricted to 5 instead 6, and I'm assuming that enemy mobs as the game goes on will scale down proportionally compared to Pillars 1. But skill checks in dialogue to solve problems by means other than combat? Character build depth? Environment readability, conveying the approximate level of the quests in your journal, the inconvenience of managing your stronghold while you're out adventuring...I think the developers agreed with me on all of my complaints with the first game, because what I've seen of the early hours of this game is an answer to all of it.
I think this is par for the course with RTWP though, since the quicker pace of combat means that the developers have incentives to place more of it in the game, but I do think that leads to worse pacing. It reminds me of a really good article analyzing Batman: Arkham Asylum and X-Men Origins: Wolverine with regards to breaking up the type of gameplay you're having the player do.
Lemmy is the opposite. Don't dare criticize or say you dislike BG3 or else they will come for you.
Video game forums are always garbage.
But partially in their defense, it makes my 4070 work and the only other time it gets that warm is when I'm running stable diffusion on it constantly.
It did have a "literally unplayable" save deletion bug on Xbox until recently. I just waited for them to fix it before spending my money.
I played 100+ hours on Xbox before that was patched and never had a problem so "literally unplayable" is really a bit much.
A bunch of less lucky people did exactly that and then lost 100+ hours of progress.
It's an essential feature of the game. Literally. Unplayable.
😂
Omg I've been destroyed
I'm just saying I LITERALLY PLAYED it during that whole time so it LITERALLY wasn't UNPLAYABLE.
🤡
I lost 20 hours on Witcher 3 after a save corruption. Can I say Witcher 3 is literally unplayable?
I haven't researched that game so I don't know its frequency or severity.
Well bg3 allows and encourages several saves, so if you have put 100 hours into it and then lose your only save slot - which doesn’t make sense to me because it also auto saves independent of your manual saves - then ultimately, I blame user error. Especially since the bug was so limited.
That doesn't make sense to me either, how so many people were heartbroken when all they had to do was simply load an auto save. I can't confirm because I just didn't give them money until it worked properly.
I love BG3 as a video game, but I feel like Hasbro is going to take a lot of the ideas and try their best to translate them into the trrpg space and shittify both on the way through.
I mean, my partner and I actually did stop our play through because it was too buggy and it was effecting our enjoyment. Been meaning to get back to it after all the patches, but like... It was pretty buggy around launch by my standards.
Act 3 is pretty janky at times and they seriously need to give you vertical camera controls (xcom figured this out like 15 years ago!) but it’s still a fantastic game. Lots of valid critiques, but still a great game
Like the tactical view/o? Or just move up and down? Because that's annoying sometimes.
If you’re in a multi-story fight (very frequent in act 3 in particular) there is no way to force the camera and cursor up/down a story. You have to physically travel with the cursor and pray it doesn’t freak out OR click on pictures in the turn order and hope the pathing can figure it out on its own (which it often can’t).
This is far too many Steam forums lately, and I don't know why or what hurt these people. If you ask the Steam forums, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League failed because it went woke and hired some diversity consultancy firm that only these people know the name of and hold up as the antichrist.
You mean to say that you didn't already know what Sweet Baby Inc. ~~really weird name by the way~~ is before some chuds declared them to be the biggest bad influence to human culture?
Right. I'm afraid to start googling for the answer, but I suspect there's an Alex Jones type, or the equivalent that cares about video games, basically painting them as the George Soros of video games.
You don't leave a detailed review unless you want to support the artist in question or you fucking hated it so much that you would take the time to warn others away or you want to be intentionally confrontational and act like a troll. In a huge game like bg3 or Suicide Squad the artist support is fractured at best so all your left with is the bile
The reviews are 96% positive, the forums are filled with toxicity past comparison.
These aren't the reviews, they're the forums. Used to be you could ask a question and get an answer from a fan or often times the developers. Now it's just people crying about games being "woke", as though that word actually means anything anymore, even in a game as near-universally beloved as BG3. But you can find the same thing happening in Starfield, Suicide Squad, or even Skullgirls.
Forums have always had losers and trolls dwelling there, the issue is the helpful people went elsewhere like discord, reddit, and the fediverse.