Things that I feel need an overhaul
-Fight with guts is incredibly hard. The amount of Goblins with double Hp, class levels, etc is just TO much. I had convinced the Ogres to be mercenaries for me but honestly have no clue how I would have managed to pull this fight off without it.
-Camera in the wizard room under the abandoned villaga kept tripping balls. It kept zooming in and out at a very rapid pace as if it was trying to give me seizures or something. Rotating the camera also seemed to be very frowned upon as that in particular seemed to have some serious issues....
-Adding to that, cameras in every place where multiple floors are involved make the camera having a bloody seizure. The abandoned village as a whole was a chore to rummage through because the camera keeps tripping up.
-XP gained from kills seems to be INSANELY low compared to what XP the kills should give by dnd standards. A normal (8hp) goblin for example should give 50XP. A phase spider should give 700xp etc.
-Speaking of Phase spiders. Phase spiders DO NOT teleport. They phase in and out of the material plane. The lore behind them is that people have the false belief that they teleport because they can appear out of nowhere. They also dont have a poison spit but a very poisenous bite that causes paralysis. The encounter right before the spider queen (as I call her) could work just fine if they appear invisible to the player and suddenly appear out of nowhere rather then sitting in the back spitting poison. It would be true to lore and still make for a challenging and interesting fight.
-The game doesent pause when you press esc. It keeps running in the background which imo shouldnt happen.Now you have to namnually press turn based mode if you dont want the world to keep advancing while you are nosing through the game settings.
-Mud Mephits have a ranged attack of opportunity? Not to mention the ranged attack itself that the MM doesent mention it has. On the flipside, its also missing abilities that its supposed to have.
-I tried jumping down (with featherfall) pretty much every gap in the goblin camp to see if it would bring me to the underdark. Given the proximity to the ruined village I figured that should be a possibility but it isent. I also knocekd 1 of the Goblin leaders (the drow) down the hole and basicly was looking for her body the entire time but never found it because they dont seem to be connected frown missed her loot (if any) that way which was a shame.
-Hook horror fight in the underdark. Where to begin. This fight is insane. They can jump absolutely INSANE distances (longer distances then my spell distances which seem to be 18 meters), can then do multiple attacks and seem to have some oform of aoe knockdown or something? A normal Hook Horror without all of this additional fluff is still a DC3 monster, never mind that there are 4 of them and a Drow wizard joins them right as combat starts. If you dont manage to kill them at a pace of 1 per turn you will get absolutely crushed. I dident find this fight fun or engaging and while I managed to win it eventually without losing someone this encounter needs a serious overhaul. The encounter also has no reward to speak off. Unless the quest item nearby and fast travel points are supposed to be the reward? A overhaul is required, in my opinion.
-Speaking of insane fights in the Underdark. The Minotaur fight is INSANE. I saw them move effectively TWO HUNDRED feet in 1 turn (equcated guess when comparing the distance that they moved compared to my spell distance), including a charge attack amongst that. What. The actual. Fuck? They are fast(ish) at 40 feet but this is borderline insane. Tthey have multiattack (which they shouldnt have), can do an AOE knockdown alongside that and are resistant to damage to put a cherry ontop. The fight wasent hard actually, I ran into them when I almost out of spells and aside from using some consumables which I normally wouldnt have needed to do I actually managed to win the fight the first time I ran into them. I think its because they give you advantage on all attacks against them so hitting them was incredibly easy. That said, these monsters are doing things that they arent supposed to be capable of doing and its almost parody levels of silly.
-Radiance of dawn (Light cleric channeled divinity) does not light up the bog frown
-Gith fight at the cavern exit is borderline insane. A group of lvl 5 Gith fighters if you dont have a Gith with you (very nice touch that disguising as a Gith also works btw), fail at dialogue and/or pass dialogue but get your mind read. This encounter is so much nope that im not to sure where to start. Im sure it can be won but this early on in the game its serious overkill. Die hard players can get past it probably but I suspect most wont without either very stubborn players or cheese tactics.
-The specator in the Underdark is not a specator. A specator is human sized. This was a large creature, I.E. a normal beholder. They also have no pertrification mechanic and are generally actually friendly. So long as whoemever approaches them isent trying to tamper, touch, get close to or steal what they are defending they are generally friendly creatures. The character model looks great, dont get me wrong.... But this wasent a specator.
Looking back, I think most of the counters need an overhaul honestly. Alot of creative freedom was taken with monster stats and abilities and when people say 'its not bg3' this is about the only part of their argument where I agree with them. The monsters that you see in game are not dnd monsters. The encounters arent dnd or baldurs gate encounters but Larian encounters. There are to many encounters in the game that completely suck up ALL your resources if you want to beat them without having anyone dying. Some fights are fine. If the guts fight for example is very hard thats fine. Thats a (literal) bossfight! That fight should be hard! Every encounter in the underdark though? Thats stretching it a little. And before someone mentions 'but the underdark is supposed to be dangerous'.... Yes. Yes it is. The underdark as a whole. Is very dangerous. But 1 square mile having THIS MANY dangerous fights? No. All these encounters are basicly monsters/creatures that also fight eachother. They dont allow that many dangerous rivals to be alive near them. (good example? Look up the lore for the Bulette)
