First of all, I'd like to point out that I'm fully aware that this game is still in development and that things are likely to change. Having said that, this is my impression of things so far.
A little background to myself that is probly irrelevant. I'm no stranger to DND though anything past BG2 is new to me. My first computer adventure was Secret of the Silver Blades (1989) and I still have fond memories of rescuing Valla. Played a lot of first edition stuff on the PC including DND (telengard) and Zoarre back in the day (and I still have both of them and my original saves). I've played BG1 and 2 so many times that I can likely describe just about every encounter to you even now. My computer is from 2011 and falls under even the minimum system requirements but it actually plays quite well. It does stop responding frequently and I have to wait for my PC to catch up, but that's no ones fault but my own hardware. Just to be clear, I'm not including any technical difficulties my system has in running this to any criticism I may have. Over-all though, it runs more or less fine on my outdated hardware. Not exactly relevant to the game, but I've been having issues the BSoD's for about the last month that I have yet to resolve. They're very random. For the record, I spent a week tearing my entire system down completely and cleaned, rebuilt and rewired it all about a week ago to see if I could solve it, but no dice.
Trying to play this game has been incredibly frustrating for me so far. The main reason I'm writing this right now is because I *want* to play, but I just don't think I can stomach it right (though I probly will later). The lack of a compass on the main screen is a major over-sight to me and needs to be addressed. I like my mini map to stay steady and not rotate around but there's no way to correlate the in-game camera view to the map. I see the mini-map and I see what way I need to go, but I don't know what way I need to go on the main screen. I could be looking south and need to turn right or I may be looking north and need to turn left. There's no way to know. I very frequently have just move my characters around to see which way they're moving on the mini map to get my orientation. In short: the main screen NEEDS a compass. It would probly be even better if the mini map had a 'view finder' to show the camera position on the mini map too. Many games have this feature, so I don't think I need to go into detail about how that would look or feel.
The autosave needs to save more often. It needs to save when you leave your 'camp' and it needs to save after changing areas. I'm used to games doing this and don't save manually nearly as often as I should be. As a result, I've had to repeat the same battles and encounters over and over again. This is partially my own fault for not saving enough, but I really feel like the autosave needs be doing more than it is, especially with my current BSoD problem.
I was playing last night and was just about to go out and find some goblins and a missing druid. I went to the trader to clear out my inventory and gear up, but I accidentally hit the 'barter' button instead of the scales and ended up just giving the trader all of my stuff. My last save was quite a ways before that point. I ended up just turning it off and I'm not too keen on repeating a whole bunch of stuff again. Before going to the trader I did what I could to fully explore the druid grove as best I could and now I have to do all that again. A very silly mistake to be true, but incredibly annoying as well.
Before getting to the druid grove (or even being aware of its existence) I was exploring the area outside of the crashed ship. One of my companions said something like' there's some noise ahead'. I wandered in some vague direction since 'ahead' was rather vague and came across those 3 guys at the gate. I walked my party up to them and then the cut scene came in. After the cut scene my party was literally surrounded by enemies and my main character was killed instantly. The main problem here is that my characters got into a position that the cut scene did not anticipate so that my party was basically just standing there watching all these enemies march right around them and of course no actions could be taken during this time. I had to reload again and again had to repeat a lot of stuff again before I could get back to that point. The second attempt at that encounter I placed my party on the large rock structure over-looking the battlefield which is surely what the game designers were expecting.
The whole 'waypoint' system seems very out of place to me. I get it, kinda, but I'm very much not a fan. The ability to just 'send items to camp' from deep inside some dungeon area really bothers me. The fact that 'camp' is a safe place that can be accessed from just about anywhere does not seem right. It's nearly identical to the pocket plane from BG2, but lacks any sensical reason to exist or behave the way it does. Our characters are supposed to be 'people from the realm' more or less, and this gives them a great power they really shouldn't have. It feels like a system that does not belong in this game.
Inventory management in this game is a nightmare. There's no good way to sort your inventory by weight. I want to get get rid of anything heavy, but I have to investigate each item individually. While it's probly my hardware's fault, but clicking and dragging items is almost impossible. There's a delay between clicking on an object and the game engine registering a 'grab' so more often than not I click on it to drag it, but drag nothing instead. Even when I wait patiently for the engine to register the grab it still rarely works and I have no idea why that is.
There are other things too, smaller things like not having to carry or worry about arrows (I kinda feel like this should be a game option at the very least), but those are the main things. I really was looking forward to going goblin hunting and druid rescuing but these are the reasons that I'm not doing that right now. I'm kinda expecting for either no one to care or a lot of hate for not playing the game right or trying to play with an old computer. Might try to finish exploring the druid grove again later and going out to find those goblins, it just seems like more work than it's worth atm.
![[Linked Image]](https://i.imgur.com/hPAgRpR.jpg)