Bethesda has two main games: the Fallout series and the Elders scrolls series. I've played both. Being them from Bethesda they have similar mechanisms.
I'll never understand the surprise about Larian (who has made its name known thanks to the Original Sin: Divinity pair of games) maintaining an obvious recognizable stile.
As I'll never get the comparision with the precedent Baldur Gates. I have bought them because I wanted to have a little of knowledge about the background story of this set. I got bored, not for the graphic that is old, but by the chaotic combat system, I've no problems in learning new playstyles tied to different approaches by the diverse software companies, but rarely (even in the past) was I so annoyed by a combat system.
Not the turn based vs paused but the overall chaos, the jumbled and mumbled system that forced to continuously move the pointer to the characters Icons because the graphics made almost impossible (due even to the abbundance of companions and enemies) to discern one character from another.
When I read some messages I feel like they are more about the warm memories tied to the age when we played them than to the actual worth of said games.
Larian has to do something about the battle system (in the goblin cam if you don't take a prehemtive approach eliminating little groups of goblins thus lowering their numberd in vision of the aftermath of killing Dor you have to battle 20 and more enemies, added to the four members of the party it means it takes a lot of time, too much, specially if the battle ends up with a defeat.
In the translation from DOS to BG3 they've managed this aspect in the worst way possible. Specially in a set of rules that made the most powerful tool (spells) very limited.
I don't care abut the party 4 vs 6. I really don't care, maybe because in almost all the games that I have who have parties 4 is the usual composition (a tank, a healer, a dps, a rogue, that is you have all the needed templates).
Furthermore I'm convinced that the problems came not only from Larian but from how the DnD rules are made the existence of slots instead of stamina or manapoints make it overly complicated any combat, specialy for casual players [that are the majority, sorry to rain in this parade of hardcore high strategist players] who don't delve in spending time creating complex strategies or restarting anew or from a far in playtime save [that by the way is a form of savescumming, you can not save just before any single situation but if you replay the game after a defeat you're savescumming but just convincing yourself that you are not because you don't use it as frequent as other player, and when you reload, it doen't matter if after countless hours of game or any five seconds, you are using metaplaying because you already knwo what is going on. The only players that could lament savescumming are those that when their character died stop playing because just like in real life when you f*ck up you can not go back in time and redo the thing you messed up] after a defeat.
Other iterations like Neverwinter made use of stamina and manapoints with a due regeneration time and spells/skills have a time of recovery, DOS too made use of AP and different times of refresh for different spells and skills, the Elder Scrolls did the same.
The system of DnD is messed up also because being based on dice rolls luck plays a major roll (is the trend of the various miss/miss/miss/critical miss/miss/miss threads in the forum) so you have limited amount of spells, you save your best ones to the right moment but luck mess up and you get fu*ed up because you consumed the slot.
In a table top game this is not a big problem because usually you're not alone so you are enjoying the company of your fellow players thus a series of bad luck rolls can become a moment of conviviality and fun, the dungeon master can use the situation to create a new piece of story and so on. In a video game that part is completely lost (even in multyplayer) and the problem with the system of DnD (but in reality of many tabletop games) explodes.
Larian, Solasta, whoever did the precedent BG, can try to come up with a system that is less or more complicated and so on but at the end of the road the problem relies with DnD.
That's the reason they made the game full with scrolls, because it would be insensate in a reality where adventurers know they would go from one fight to another with limited spell and skill slots not to have a way to overcome that problem.
Answering the original poster, I like the game. Love the cinematics, love the dialogues (even though I couldn't swallow how they, just to please a very sexist part of players, sweetened Shadowheart) but I hope they add more options, sarcasm, humour, irony, in the full release, the combat system is not complicated but the turn based system becames time consuming when the battles imply a lot of enemies (like in the goblin camp), I appreciate that the game relies in dialogues after all this is not a first person shooting game, but an rpg (even if is not the more theatrical oriented White Wolf set), the bugs and so on: this is a early access, what do people expect? The full experience? When even games released in full go through a lot of bugs and glitches and need patches and hotfixes? [i admit that I'm lucky and my computer support the game very well so only in one instance I had serious problems].
I just hope that they start adding more new material specially since it seems it's going to take months before the full release. I maybe have a very bad memory but at my third run I'm starting to get bored.
