Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Help me love this game

I love turn based.

I played kingmaker in TB and it felt much better than rtwp. You have full control over everything.
In rtwp games I spend more time in pause than in real time.

I haven't been seduced like I was with the original Baldur's Gate either, but I think a big part of that is the loss of gaming virginity, when you see something new for the very first time. There's nothing quite like that first time.

The original BG was my first experience with an isometric, turn-based DnD fantasy game. I had never played tabletop DnD before, and still haven't. Now it's 22 years later. I've played a lot of other games with similar mechanics in both fantasy and sci-themes, and even with all the improvements in graphics and voice acting, it's more difficult for a game to really "wow" me. What it takes now is high quality story telling and character immersion, and frankly that's not one of Larian's strong points.

As an aside, I don't know why more game companies don't license classic fantasy literature for story telling, like Zelazny's "Amber" series, or Leiber's "Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser" stories (showing my age here). That's one reason the Witcher games were successful; CDPR had good material to work with.

Anyway, I'm still having enough fun with BG3 to look forward to the final release, although I think this may be my last play-through until then. There are only so many times I want to run through the same encounters in Act 1.

That is indeed true and may be the reason why BG3 will become the favorite RPG for many in the future.

But even with all nostalgia and all the prestige from the originals, it is not actually that hard to please the old hardcore fans. We’ve been craving for this for 20 years and many would be satisfied with something vaguely resembling it. But honestly, I don’t see Larian even trying to preserve the legacy.

Actually they barely (or at all) talk about the originals and why they respect (or maybe they don’t) or feel inspired by them.

It seems their passion is only for creating a D&D game with a renowned IP to get into “RPG hall of fame” as they said.

Sure, but there is quite a lot of land to cover between being wowed by new and groundbreaking experience and being luke-warm about a title in my favourite genre (which how I feel about BG3 - I found some enjoyment, but overall rather forgettable experience so far). Sure, StarWars prequels and sequels have no chance to capture my young imagination as original trylogy did, but it still doesn't mean they are just as good.

I am confident I would still enjoy Baldur's Gate2, even if I played it for the first time today - just as I did enjoy retro-playing Thief1&2, Systemshock2, UFO: Enemy Unknown, Freespace1&2, Deus Ex1 and more - all, aside from watching my brother play UFO when I was younger I have no nostalgia toward. Good games, remain good, even if some designs are dated, and there is a barrier to entry. All of those would fight for my top 10 spots with no nostalgia googles on. I am confident BG2 would too.

Still, I favour games that do less but better. IMO BG3 tries to pull on too many strings.

Turn base + Baldurs gate = Boring's gate. Its too easy, its too slow.
Turn base BG3 was designed for strategic RPG 101 gamers. Thats how I feel about it. Its like tea time at grandmas.
IF you make turns base mechanics it NEEDS to be comprehensively detailed, more like Solasta or the Pathfinder series. Otherwise it turns into a bore 10 hours in.

BG1/BG2 was fast, furious, strategic mayhem. Hordes of monsters coming down your throat. I always <SORTA> had control...It was amazing. I think that fitted the games better...But whats done is done.

What I think would been great in following the prior games footsteps is to keep the realtime with pause gameplay for minor/medium encounters and make it turn based for major/epic encounters WITH some elements of realtime. My good if Larian did this, the game urgency, pace and story telling would go through the roof! The goblins camp battle for example BEGS to be in realtime with pause with even more goblins.

I completely understand what Larian did though. Either copy paste a tweaked DOS2, add some D&D elements, and use the BG story. Game dev. takes around 3-5 years? Or make a new engine, start from scratch and make an modern upgrade of the prior games. Dev. time 5+ years.

Hi Silentsnake,

I was just thinking, perhaps you should start romancing a companion as a debut to "love" this game ?




I can't help with that one, I didn't exist in 1997. Was it in black & white ? And why try to comparable with a 2021 game ? The combat system back then might have been shorter because not enough memory ? Just trying to make sense out of your point ...

The point was that after I was introduced to having a choice between Real-Time with Pause and Turn-Based (which was the case for this 1997 game), the first one was much more enjoyable and simply faster.

At the end of the 90s, Real-Time with Pause felt like a natural successor to Turn-Based combat in RPGs and game companies were actively changing their games from TB to RTwP. Examples of this was Diablo 1, which was originally supposed to be TB, or Fallout Tactics, which also moved from TB to a choice between the two modes.

Of course, not every game has to have RTwP and some work better as TB, but my point is that since we already know that Baldur's Gate works well with RTwP, using TB for BG3 feels like a very unpleasant regress.

Combat in BG1 and BG2 felt dynamic and just fun, was a natural part of the game, allowing to enjoy both the story and the combat somewhat equally. I may be wrong on this (I haven't played the early access), but it seems like this balance is disturbed in the case of BG3 (usually if I go on a BG3 stream it features combat, maybe it's just coincidence, but it feels like combat is dominating the game because it just takes so long).

I will try romancing a companion, though, just like in previous games

I prefer turn based.