My Core Party: Charlatan Human Rogue Trickster, Shadowheart, Gale, Lae'zel
Most difficult battle? The Fish-people in the underdark chasm. The Trader and her company in the explody room (Goblin fortress).
TLDR: I really liked it! Thanks for the preview! I definately felt the BG-vibe, just needs a tad more tuning!
Here are some inconsistencies and general feedback as well as some bugs:
Story inconsistencies/bugs:- In the waukeen's rest Zerathum hideout - if you previously opened the chest and bottle while one of the survivors gets beaten up there is no dialogue before hostilities are engaged (i.e. dude tells me to talk to leader but shed just auto-aggros) which kinda left me wondering if it was a bug.
- The obvious beholder/petrified drow with yellow circle, auto-aggro situation in the underdark.
- In the goblin fortress: Boss Rha-something (dude with absolute power-hammer) is a bit to gullible as to my allegiance (no dialogue interaction from my side). I would have loved to be able to drop one of those big chandeliers on him from above and make it look like an accident instead of having to manual attack him in the end (because he gave me no dialogue option to initiate battle).
- Wyll assumes I know about his whatever friend (saving that story arc for another playthrough) without talking about her before.
- Goblin camp: Bugbear cub disappears after saving it and sending it off (after winning race, before killing goblins), some dialogue chatter in the fortress seems to point to the cub being there as a pet or sth (something along the lines of "hope it finds is way to the camp by the scent"), but it's nowhere to be seen.
- Paladin order/Hellchick quest never completed properly (killed the paladins and talked to her but she never leaves).
- You can kill the goblins in the priestess "throne room" without the spider-cage guards picking up aggro.
- Caged goblin acolyte is auto-aggroed by fighting with his guard without a quip to explain why.
- Trader/Guards guarding powder room in Fortress need some dialogue after I killed the bosses. I just got the usual "You can't go here"-line.
- I never got the weird dude in the hole outside of the myconoid camp to come out :-(
- Small explody spores in Underdark camp propper giving -attitude was :-( Either make them not explode or not give attitude penalties.
- Knock out needs looooots of work story-wise (relatives of hag zombie girl, goblin kids in the fortress, 3 masked dudes in the hag's lair).
- Romance after completing refugee quest felt a bit on the nose (I like the random love sub-plot a lot, but imho make it feel a bit less like "pick&choose at the party-camp brothel" - doesn't need a mayor rewrite, but a "Are you interested in anyone?" Dialogue prompt and not a "talk to everyone and keep a bucket of water handy"-approach would feel less forced).
- Why does druid guy in camp always utter the "you should be banished line"?
- Find some excuse to remove helmets/armor while in camp that doesn't feel like a toggle option.
- Waukeen's Rest Fire interactions felt buggy (dialogue with chancelor balcony-door, being able to "jump" through locked obstacles, getting stuck on corpses while rescuing dowry dude...). Quest also didnt' update properly.
Mechanics / Generic feedback:- Food/Healing: I collected ALL edible items. By the time I finished I was nearly out, so that seems ok - never really used healing potions outside of combat and barely any healing spells. IMHO, limit number of food one can consume per "day"/short rest.
- Should priest scrolls really be learnable by wizards? I never really tried to learn spells (or used scrolls outside of the shadow-step and talk to the dead) but it seemed odd.
- Paying gold to learn spells was a bit immersion breaking (I know D&D did it, but imho make it either use a consumable or a rest ability).
- Spells like charm/friend/Guiding hand should be castable inside the dialogue interface (I either never managed to use because of range or forgot).
- Consumables need better tooltips ( i always wondered if if i could toss some of the weeds i collected at people to create a vine surface... ).
- Talk to dead should show when there is no extra-dialogue and/or probably have no cooldown (or work like talk to animal potion, i.e. until next long rest).
- Allow casting spells by targeting character portraits!
- Party Movement: Make party members move less if if you move your active character only short distances (makes applying buffs like guiding hand annoying).
- Party Movement 2: Secondary followers (animals, summons) should be able to be "decoupled" from their owner or have a "stay" order or just not trigger things.
- Party Movement 3: Followes should be more reluctant to move onto surfaces that can harm them.
- Allow me to use healing items on "pets".
- Jump down should indicate if you will take fall damage. In that vein: If I am just going to take 2-5 pts of damage, how about i take none and you just knock me prone - feels less like a "bug".
- Allow me to use ropes to climb stuff or get down from high places!
- Surfaces (especially caustic stuff which you can not easily get rid of without triggering explosions) should disappear quicker and not stick around permanently. The areas I enjoyed the least were the house-fire in waukeen's rest and the poison fog in the hag's lair/underdark because the surfaces could not be gotten rid of permanently (the mushroom part felt ok). They could also be a tad smaller by default imho (again, worked in DOS/2 and was/is super-fun, here it seems a bit over-the top).
- Tossing water at explody stuff should make it not explode when subsequently attacked/fired at.
- Arcane turrets need to trigger combat!
- Inventory: I am some kind of an OCD inventory manager, which means I stored potions/scrolls/books/food/weapons inside nested pouches and backpacks. A sorting option for bags would be AWESOME and was what I probably missed the most in DOS/2.
- OCD 2: If i move an item (pictures, rocks, mirrors...) they should snap to walls/edges again (I moved lots of stuff around looking for levers).
- Inventory 2: Sending items from one party member to another should be more restrictive: it worked in DOS/2, but here it felt a little bit like cheating, especially in combat (make it use an action maybe?).
- Inventory 3: Auto-scrolling to top when adding items at the "bottom" of a container is super-annoying.
- Inventory 4: A Multi-select option would be cool.
- Inventory 5: More different containers! (Key-ring style puch? Mark used keys/read books!)
- Better highlighting of story items (IMHO put the quest name on the item description or where you found them, especially for scrolls/books, it's been done for some and was greatly aprecciated).
- Switching weapons should require a minor action.
- Disengaging by jumping felt gimmicky. I liked the overall mechanic for repositioning a LOT, but either the animation should be different or the jump distance decreased.
- "Helping" teammates up repeatedly should add to their death counter (or add some kind of injury mechanic). I semi-abused this sometimes.
- I outright save-scummed through most of the dice-roll interactions. IMHO either give me an option to hide those skill checks or give me better options to get the result i want ( I faintly remember a "roll again" option early in the playthrough. How about you turn those into dice-roll points which are recoverable by a long rest?)
- Seeing hidden rooms on the map was :-(
- Discovering hidden stuff needs a more distinctive visual representation (and different cues for traps, items).
- Obvious bug: Knockout does not intitate combat. You can cheese some encounters with it.
- IMHO: Only use up weapon abilities if you actually hit with them (allow me to pin down beholders to stop them from "jumping"...)
- Add a better option to light torches (maybe some minor item) and allow them to be quipeed in the off-hand.
- Descriptions on savegames are not working (I want that!).
- Map Markers!
Stuff I REALLY liked:- Many enchanted items having some sort of balancing "cost" which made equipping them a bit more of a tactical thing instead of a "whelp, guess I'm using axes now". The absolute enchated items penalizing me felt "right".
- Party members being a bit snarky. So far everyone seemed interesting! Party chatter felt very BG2y
- The story so far rocks! Strikes the right balance between non-stop action-movie and fantasy road-trip.
Keep up the great work! Makes me want to hibernate until the final game comes out!
