Hi Everyone,
After about 1.5 Playthroughs and a couple of abandoned restarts I thought it was time for some feedback, that's what EA is for after all.
As for my background, I have not played any Baldur's Gate games before nor DOS and I don't know anything about DnD aside from a vague idea of what Pen and Paper RPGs are about.
Because of that many of my problems might just be me not understanding mechanics or problems with DnD rules that cannot really be changed.
I also went through my first try completely blind (I did check DnD mechanics when I stumbled upon terms I didn't know) as I read the recommended way to play is to just go with whatever happens.
I will go further into the no reloads policy later.
So first some of the (probably) usual stuff.
I needed a WAY more expansive tutorial of the mechanics.
Some explanation of how character progression works compared to action RPGs, which I have more experience with, would have been nice.
I had no Idea that the stats (str, dex etc. not sure what their name is here) from character creation are what I would be stuck with for most of the game(or all of EA if I want to take a feat).
Also the needing 2 points for any change (I guess that's DnD? But I don't get it there either).What's that for except a trap for new players?
The UI needs work.
There is something weird with not registering clicks that makes the game feel unresponsive, especially noticable when switching characters via their portraits.
Controling the entire group was painful with companions walking through ground effects or getting stuck, me switching so I could move them manually just for the rest of the gang to come running back.
Sneaking with the group was a nice(not) combination of both those problems.
I can't tell how many times I have wasted potions because my brain for some reason thought 1 is the basic attack. Please let me change that (maybe that's already possible and I just missed it).
A bunch of those little buttons (changing characters during dialogue or the inventory sorting) are easy to miss, some part of the tutorial maybe.
Also PLEASE give me a panic pause button, actual pause not that turn based stuff. Allow me to give orders in pause that I can cancel if I notice I made a mistake after clicking.
Dialogue Skillchecks.
I played a ranger pretty good with nature/animals etc. pretty bad with everything else. The point: I Thought I had a specialist that could do only one thing but that somewhat reliably.
Sooo many situations where I got 50/50 chances at interactions where success leads to nothing useful anyway. I traded my ability at combat and social skills to still be eaten by bears and be belittled by a SQUIRREL!
I bet in DnD the worlds best surgeon kills every 3rd patient. I know my character is still fairly low level, but why would I not just take combat skills, the one outcome I can get 100% percent of the time.
I just feel many of the early checks in dialogue are too hard, even with a 75% success chance (a DC of 5, haven't seen many of those) my "specialist" still messes up 1 of 4 tries and chains are just as likely as misses in combat.
It's not like most of those checks lead to some insane reward.
Dialogue options.
First, an effort was made, credit where it's due. More is needed though.
There is almost always an option to offer help, the typical good guy answer from every RPG ever, often some variations of that to allow a nice amount of roleplay.
There is also often the option to rob or attack. I guess if I am not a good samaritan I must be a thug or a psychotic killer.
Options to leave or tell people I am not interessted in their problems if they cannot help me with mine exist which is very nice but that just makes it stand out more in those cases where they don't.
I am often missing the more moderate, reasonable but not nice guy responses.
What I wish for the most is the ability to tell Shadowheart to mind her own god damn business after this b insults me in every sentence. Seriously you initiated dialogue with me, I've never talked to you, I am not following you, you are following me!
IRL I would have a restraining order against you, f off.
Sorry for the rant.
Balancing. I will keep it short, you have probably heard it all before.
Ground effects and consumables feel! (not sure if they actually are) overbearing. I was wondering what I and the enemies even have weapons for (or armor for that matter).
Why do I feel like every enemy is stronger than me? In addition to outnumbering me their average dmg feels like double that of mine. Where are the goblins getting those 1-2 dmg rolls?
I am not a fan the extreme RNG (Yes I know, DnD rules, that's how probability works etc.).
So let me ask the DnD players (that I assume cannot reload idk). How frequently does your party get wiped out? And I don't mean because you attacked a dragon at level 1, just because of bad RNG and maybe one or two not ideal decisions?
This really brings me to my main problem with the current game:
Am I supposed to reload or not?
I went into this game with the ironman mindset, where you don't take unnecessary risks and when things start going south you deal with it or run, but usually these games are designed to allow recovering from that.
I assumed when I did everything to the best of my knowledge and ability I would not lose. Sure, things would not go the way I want them to more often than not, but I would not have to reload and instead would have my own personal story afterwards.
Here I ran into a couple of situations where I felt I had done nothing unreasonable that resulted in a game over. If this game had an ironman mode, I would have played it and uninstalled after those.
The first example was the gith patrol. I played a gith myself, had Liesl with me (The companion I trusted the most then), that kept pushing me to find that patrol and saying how that was the only way (no reason to doubt that right? They are likely to know far more than some random druid that saw a tadpole for the first time a couple of days ago and since that has been rotting in a cage). And I am one of them (where is that skillcheck for my character's knowledge? I am supposed to be more experienced than her).
So I go to them, party at level 3, and I get wiped the f out.
Second example was my first encounter with my favourite mole. My party, now at level 4, was sneaking through the underdark (tbf even going there seemed like a bad idea but it's like half of EA and I cannot reach level 5).
mole burrows under my party, turns around and jumps at me 3 of 4 down before I even get to do anything. Last one tries running, it's as futile as every other time I've tried it, and reload.
That DM would have been kicked out of the house and never invited to play with us again.
There where a couple of interactions too, where a streak of bad luck led to game over, I would like those to be extremely rare, not happening at least once per act.
Wow that got long, anyway I am interested in what some of you think about that. Where did I mess up badly? What mechanics did I miss?
