Perhaps my days of Baldur's Gate are too far behind me.
So I loaded up the game, loved the first few moments of the game. However my memories are just that poor memories.
I know what an action is, and what a spell is, and a percentage to hit and I also remember everything used to be off a dice roll, and everything was transparent. Now though, I am thrown into a game where the opening scene is beautiful, it has a simple command interface, and it doesn't take me long to figure things out. My first real battle off the ship is simple enough, use the environment to kill 2 adds before taking out the other two. Things slowly start going horribly wrong for me.
By the time my characters are at level 3, I am completely confused. The UI is so cluttered, why does my fighter's action bar look like so long and why does my rogues one look so small? Why does everything just go to my action bar? Even crates are heading into my inventory. Why does the inventory not have some kind of auto sort feature, or even a search function?
For players more accustomed to button mashing, this game is exciting because its about strategic use of space and resources, but there is no feedback ANYWHERE in the game about combat. So I have no clue whether my lack of wisdom is letting me down when I want to do a specific action in combat. The combat log on the right which pops out simply spits out what I see on the screen, its not a combat log at all, so I have no clue how the dice rolled? If we aren't going to see dice roll in combat, then can we please have % to hit , a chance to hit and or something that gives me more information. I am very disappointed by the lack of feedback in the game with respect to combat. It is either intentionally obscure, or poor design, and this being EA perhaps there is a chance for it to improve.
Pathing is a nightmare, I tried to sneak past a camp and my characters all went DIFFERENT WAYS. One took the leap and one went east and another two went NORTH. Imagine my shock when I landed immediately in combat. On hindsight I should have split my party up. Movement is something that I will figure out, but for now, combat should have a better tutorial explaining, cantrips, actions, what kind of spells are one use only and require a recharge, the use of blessings, curses.
While I appreciate the existence of a hardcore DnD community out there who can probably coast through this, let's not ignore the other part of the community who have never sat and played a game like this before.
