I agree with pretty much all the points you lists.
* Climbing is part of these things I gather under the label of "verticality doesn't work (yet)". Currently, many parts of the game still behave like in a 2D game.
* I'm somewhat glad to see I'm not the only struggling with the initiative track, characters out of combat joining the fight, not having a full go, not playing during first round, and overall feeling like I have turns stolen from me. It kind of confirms to me that I'm not completely stupid and that the system is not working properly yet.
Given that they initially unveiled a system where the whole party would play followed by the enemy party, and only changed the system to the individual initiatives a bit before EA (with the nice idea of having consecutive character being freely playable), I think they're still in the early stage of the initiative and combat system. I hope much work goes on this.
* They have publicly stated before EA that they were still thinking about how to implement reactions. The problem is that, much like playing spells out of your turn in Magic : The Gathering, reactions are a thing that might work well in TT, but will be a pain in the flow in a video game. I hope they can greatly streamline the rules around this. I don't want to have prompts asking whether I want to spend my reaction now. I think they could
- say that you can have at most one reaction type active at any given time, or even better (because it contains the first option as a particular case),
- say that you may activate several reaction abilities, but the first time one condition is met for a reaction, your character will spend their reaction doing that and thus won't be able to trigger the others.
* And yes, hopefully they will add variety in the enemy AIs.
I also used to be understanding of Larian's concerns that reactions would end up slowing down the flow of combat. However after playing the Solasta demo I've changed my mind and I now fully believe that the prompts can be implemented without feeling disruptive
at all.Currently BG3 either outright omits reactions or implements them as toggleable actions before you end your turn. Once classes such as Paladins get added I'm afraid this system simply won't be sufficient since this means you're bound to end up wasting class abilities like Divine Smite in situations where it's completely out of your control.
Think of it like this: You lose nothing by adding reactions, but you stand to lose one of the core elements of 5e combat by chosing not to include them.
