Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Did Baldur's Gate3 have too much monster variety?

There is something that I have been mulling over in my head - and that's BG3 has a very impressive enemy variety. You fight a lot of enemies across the 100+ hours of the campaign and Larian repeats itself very little.

Obviously, large roster of monsters is very welcome! It is more common to have the opposite problem. I find however, that I struggle to recall what those monsters were. What were the encounters in the mountain area? Or in the 2nd act? Temple of Shar? A complete blank. Most things I can recollect are returning monsters from BG1&2 - ones I recogised and had pre-established connection. A lot of new monsters, though, unless they had narrative content tied to them, I just found forgettable, in spite, or perhaps thanks to their uniqueness. I think of other RPGs, and enemies I encountered in dugeons were often one of the defining aspects of those areas - either narratively, or gameplay or both. Maybe it's another reason why I see Goblin Camp (and Githianky's Creshe to a lesser degree) as best bit of BG3 - there is a clear theme to it, you get to know monsters, and if you decide to fight them, you will fight quite a few of them, increasing chances that you will notice their little quirks. That, and it's early enough into the game that one doesn't (or at least I don't) have a capability to clear the room before the enemy gets to do much.

I loved the shades in Act 2, each with their individual little bit of memory that, by giving glimpses of life in the area before the shadow curse, helped give that curse more impact. And hated those bloody Death Shepherds (not really, I just found them tricky to beat especially in my first playthrough and then in my second when I first visited the area where there were two at once).

And yes, I appreciated the drunken kobolds in the Rosymorn Monastery partly because of the connection to the earlier games but also as it was an imaginative encounter rather than just a bunch of stock enemies, as was the one with the magic hating cat thingies whose name I’ve forgotten. And the fact that the majority of enemies did have at least a bit of narrative content attached to them was a major strength of the game as a whole, I feel, and I agree the goblins in particular were a triumph.

I don’t think there is too much variety, and find that variety adds to replayability. But while there are too many enemy types for me to reel them all off the top of my head, I don’t think that’s because (most of them) are forgettable. On the contrary, if I stop and think about the places in the game, because the enemies are mainly well connected to those areas I can recall them pretty clearly at least after two full playthroughs.

Which isn’t to say all the encounters work well. I recall on my first playthrough finding the poltergeist encounter in Lady Jannath’s estate unbearably frustrating. I unknowingly went in with a party that didn’t seem to have any way to combat the cursed skulls and it also took me an embarrassingly long time to work out why my party would suddenly and periodically get chucked around the place. I appreciate the idea behind the enemies and encounter and it was very atmospheric, but for me that one didn’t come off, and wasn’t much fun even the second run when I knew what I was doing and went in with appropriate spells prepared. Though I’m willing to believe I still haven’t worked out the best way to tackle it! Next time maybe.

Honestly... I had the opposite problem. There was not much variety.

This might stem from a "We need to insert combats so people won't get bored" type issue (Which in of itself is simply a manifestation of the lack of actual gameplay outside of combat - One of the major fails when it comes to video game adaptations of DnD, where a DnD session isn't just combat, combat and more combat but actual interactions with the story, where all the skills are useful because they're actually relevant rather than being entirely pointless unless it's Sleight of Hand...)

The other thing is that the game is overall quite small (Yes, I know some people argue it's massive and "I spent 5000 hours in Act 1 (Just standing around doing nothing apparently)" but in reality the game is pretty tiny). So most of the time you have just one-off encounters with a particular enemy type which doesn't stick in the mind very well nor give much of a feeling that they even belong in the environment.

I thought they did a pretty nice job of pacing out the monster types. The way my memory works it's easy to recall the who's who and the where's where for the broader categories of monsters, like I can run down the last list and remember where in the campaign we fought a set piece battle, say Harpies or Needles or whatever, but I think it's more about the monster types which we fight multiple times throughout the campaign. So say Goblins and Ogres or Ettercaps and Phase Spiders, or Gnolls vs a one off like say the pair of Minotaurs or that nest of Hook Horrors, which feel more like singular encounters. We do fight a second Spectator and see some repeats like that towards the end, so some monsters definitely stand out more. For me the interesting types are usually the gangs of goons, like Party vs Party where the 'monsters' are rando guards or mages. Those are the ones that kinda recede into the background as a monster type and I start thinking of them as their named characters. For that we got the Goblins, the Duergar, the Drow and the Gith, the various Absolutists along the way, but those are different than say facing down the Fish people a couple times, just for good measure. They had some definite standout skeletons and zombies though, and that goes a long way for me.

Some stuff I did miss, Basilisks (obviously) and Trolls. Although Ethel did sorta carry the Troll vibe with her hag form look so I guess I can maybe sneak that in somehow. Yuan-Ti would have been fun. Like I mean come on, we had the Kagha set up and everything! Battling snakes and snake people would have been cool. Gibberlings. Xvarts as well. Gotta love a Xvart getting got! hehe

I really liked the Kobolds though and how they were handled. Drunk Kobold hitting the floor was a campaign moment for sure. I remember right where we were! lol

I think they get an A+ for Undead across the board, and a solid A++ for the Goblins and Ogres. Gith and assorted astral monstrosities also an A. For Dragons I think it's more like a B honestly, but what could we expect really for a lvl 12 campaign. I'd do that more pass/fail. We got to fight a Red and an Undead Bronze so that's pretty solid. I could probably have used a bit more Dragon lore though, especially since we have Draconic Sorcery and Dragonborn people running around now. The game was rather light on supporting that stuff. I honestly didn't come out of BG3 feeling like I learned a whole lot about what Dragonborn even are in FR. Aside from Shovel ribbing us about it lol.

Tieflings on the other hand they did exceptionally well. I feel like I got an alright grounding in whatever they're meant to be now, from just the Hells being so well stitched into it all, and some murky background just enough, like ok got it. The Gith also, just excellent. To me that's a tough sell cause those were Monsters before, but now I feel like they're fully fleshed out courtesy of Lae'zel. I think they did an alright job considering some of the hurdles they had to overcome on that score, with monsters in the crew. Orcs I think they could have done a bit more for. Dwarves and Gnomes and Elves at least we had the Duergar and Deep Gnomes and Drow to cover that angle I suppose. For just the sorta standard surface variety Elves though, bit of a miss for me. Like we're really relying on the Half Elves to sell us on all the Elven stuff in BG3. Shadowheart and Jaheira seem to do a better job than the actual Elves like Astarion or Halsin who are both more their specific thing (Vampire/Druid) than Elves, least in terms of what makes them interesting. Not really a monster type granted, but it would have been cool to run across a party of roving Elves at least. Just something that makes them seem a bit extra. Also again, not monsters, but it would have been nice to kill Drizzt one more time for the scimitars and the mithril. They could have probably made that work somehow with portal antics or a mirror from Hell. Might have happened in the Gauntlet of Shar with some shade version, or Viconia foreshadowing.

Fighting the Matriarch and a Drider was pretty excellent for spider stuff, although I for sure thought there was going to be an act 3 follow up there, especially after Lur Xantha took off and convinced the spiders to join the team. I kept hoping being a Lolth Sworn drow might end up meaning something in the final Act, cause a lot of the other gods made surprise cameos to pretty great effect. Some Sword Spiders to really drive it home maybe. But yeah anyway, can't ever have too many spiders. Except for people who don't dig spiders I guess. Perhaps it would have been a bit much in that case. To do her right, like full on black widow. Matriarch was fun though! That was a standout early on for me.

Imps and Cambions up to the various Devil types were also a solid check. I'd say at least as good as the Undead showcase there. I'd push for more monsters to be included in some sort of large interconnected dungeon tower that somehow leads back to the Underdark as well. But I don't know, what's that going to take, like a thousand modders and some super pro modelers? I guess I'd start with the Xvarts, cause those are probably easy enough to pull off. Just obnoxiously giant domes and a couple hamlet villages. The game probably needed a few more homestead farms or cabins or caves along the way. Little side spots where things can happen. The dinosaur Jungle was a cool one. I mean we fought dinosaurs, a couple displacer beasts, and a bunch of Doppelgangers, so I can't really complain. I just want more - predicably lol

I don't think, there were too many monster types, it was exactly right.
I liked act 2 the most in that regard, it was more dark and gritty and the enemies did fit into that very well.

Black Elk: as an arachnophobe, I think we had enough spiders, thank you very much . Though it was nice to not have all spiders be evil and attacking you. Being the reason of a spider rebellion was nice. But the matriarch and Kar'niss triggered my arachnophobia quite a bit.