Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
Itemization, vendors and pick pocketing completely ruined DOS2 for me. Its way too hard to ignore, in a RP sense.
Way too many random magical items with random stats randomly spawning in vendors every 30 minutes. And its also everywhere in the world. After 2 hours of gameplay didn't care for anything. Nothing felt special and 90% of the <<<unique>>> items were junk. The game <hooks> you with that stupid WOW rarity color system; green, blue, purple, red...it gets old VERY fast. Only purple/red items are useful and also are everywhere, especially out of Fort Joy.

That actually is one thing I adore in BG2. I always go back to the game for the items. Some much cool stuff and I love that long history bit that explains where the item came from. Like your reading a D^D items lore manual wink POE also did that, kind of.

Very much this. Well, I can't say much about D:OS2, not having played it, but I hate this modern trend of coloured-rarity junk shower loot. Horrible. I'm sad and disappointed every time I start a game and realize it has this shit.

Also...

Originally Posted by mr_planescapist
[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]

Varscona! My last Ward had it for most of BG1. Pretty much became this character's iconic weapon. And this is exactly it, you REMEMBER those items from BG1&2; they were special and some of them stay in memory for years, even if they aren't that important or used much.

Originally Posted by Tuco
Most thought it was bad, many thought it was downright awful and for few people I know it was downright a deal breaker, enough to put them off from playing the game despise any recommendations that “It does even some things well”.
Sometimes without even enough insight to be able to point what didn’t work exactly. They knew only that dealing with loot in the game was tiring busywork and it didn’t feet right.

Several people I know recommended D:OS2 to me, but the more I hear about it, the less I want to play, even though I already have the game. And the itemization is certainly a factor here.

As a side note, I was really surprised CDPR hadn't scrapped the shitty TW3 loot system and put something more reasonable in Cyberpunk... which apparently has a loot system that's even worse? Then again, at this point I'm hardly surprised at anything being bad in Cyberpunk.

Originally Posted by Tuco
The fact that BG was a game where you could get stomped if you went in unprepared and/or with a poor understanding of its systems but you could also curb-stomp the encounter once you understood what was needed to deal with it was one of my favorite things about it, actually.

Yes! It also rewarded actually scouting ahead instead of face-checking every room. (I may be biased though, I love Fighter/Thieves.)

And something related (depending on whether you mean "prepared" as in just "knowing systems" or also knowing the upcoming encounter by reloading or replaying) - I really liked that I could get into a room, start the fight, get stomped because I didn't know what to expect and wasn't prepared, reload, change approach, rinse and repeat until I find a strategy that works. Kind of feels like a puzzle. I know some people call it bad game design since you need metaknowledge to effectively tackle encounters on the first attempt, but I found it very fun. (And you can greatly reduce the "need" for metaknowledge by scouting and preparing for a variety of situations.)