I love the game, but nothing is perfect and I can't help but share feedback that I believe is important to tweak the game where it falls short. I'm not going to talk about bugs, those are for a different topic. This is more importantly about certain design choices that I feel lock out the player out of more fun that could be had and can be easily fixed by Larian.
Here's a list of frustrations with the game so far as of middle of act II:
1. Long breaks are easily avoidable, food is too available.
Food is readily available everywhere, I have about 1000 food or more in camp. Long breaks themselves are easily avoidable and can be cheesed through with potions, or swapping companions at camp anytime, I don't think it's a deal breaker but it also shows that players end up with a bricked up amount of camp scenes that only show up after additional 2-3 rests. For example the owlbear as such will not appear until all those pent up scenes are released.
2. Karlach romance design is extremely flawed.
I stepped into this rotten egg myself, apparently you cannot romance Karlach if you did not hit on her during the party in Act 1, that's the single one cut off point. Come on Larian, you've put her on the further end of the map, many people (including me) might not even encounter her until after clearing the goblin camp. This is so much of a problem you'll find many reddit threads, and people going so far as to edit their save games after going tens of hours in only to find out there's no way to romance Karlach despite completing her quests and maxing out her approval.
People should not be resorting to dissecting their saves (and ultimately losing achievements) to compensate for a flawed companion romance design.
3. Barter system is largely useless. Approval is meaningless
The gains for gifting items is negligible. By the time you would gain enough approval by investing with gifts you would want to move on to other areas of the game, at best you would come back to dump your loot, but at that point the vendor wouldn't have the amount of gold. Approval at least, could be easily fixable if vendors gained approval of you, after completing their quests and gaining their favor. You saved the druids/tieflings or the inn and approval is still 0, seriously? Cough up those discounts for your hero!
4. Minthara's design is not provocative enough.
Her offer to join her in massacre of the druid sanctuary is not tempting enough, be honest Larian, how many people accepted? Slim pickings... The stats didn't even mention Minthara. The problem with her design is she comes with strings attached, you can't persuade her to join, you can't find her before goblin camp, and she basically has nothing to offer you to convince you, it doesn't help either that she has a dominant personality with a niche appearance, an androgynous look and a voice, something of an enigma if we consider drows are supposed to be the perfect specimens of allure as a result of their eugenics, meeting Minthara therein is tantamount to seeing a tall gnome, and I have yet to find one... In short, she can't appeal to any of our hierarchy of needs
5. Dirty faces too common.
This one is a minor irk. It's a cool effect but there really is no way to instantly wash off the face apart from unconventional means like throwing a water bottle (how many of those are lying around encounter scenes?) to wash off the blood. It ends up so that the player character is often looking blood-soaked in cutscenes, it got so out of hand to a point that my character had their hair dyed red from all that blood. Some sort of way, like a usable rag would be nice for the player to be able to clean away the constant blood-spattered look.
Last edited by Faustus; 16/08/23 10:11 PM.
