Gonna try and keep most of my comments on how the patch is shaping up to new things, so I’m not repeating what I’ve already said in previous reviews/impression posts, unless it something that really needs to be restated. These impressions are based on roughly 10 hours of gameplay.
New Interactions:
New Shadowheart and Astarion interactions and scenes are fantastic. There are a few moments where Shadowheart’s tone changes a bit too drastically from one exchange to the next, but I imagine that will get cleaned up over time. The Astarion scenes have a nice variety of dialogue options, but the ones with Shadowheart often only have 1 or 2, which isn’t good (maybe its because it’s unfinished, and you’ll add more dialogue options latter). The exclamation mark indicating a character wants to talk is often too hard to see, so some players will miss them. This was an issue in Divinity: Original Sin 2, but it’s worse here. You’ll want to make it more pronounced and visible. Maybe have the exclamation mark also appear on the portrait of the character that has something new to say.
The problem of characters taking priority over others for conversations is somehow even worse than it was in patch 4. There is no reason everyone present shouldn’t say what they have to say at every opportunity. Like Auntie Ethel, or the ogre bugbear scenes. There’s no reason Shadowheart and Astarion shouldn’t say both their lines. Sometimes Gale doesn’t say his line about booyagh when you talk to Sazha. Characterization and character interactions are some of the best parts your games, and this is still the case for BG3, so the game at random just deciding to obfuscate, and not show me these things is incredibly frustrating. When you get your illthid dream you will only get to speak to one character. Before you would get a full scene with one of your companions, and the rest would get truncated versions of their scene. That was terrible, but this is even worse. Just let us see the full scenes for all of them. This is the kind of stuff CRPG fans play the genre for. There is enough replay value in the permutations of each scene that you don’t need to artificially inflate replay value in this way. Active Role & Backgrounds:
Active role system is fantastic. Before I would dread whenever the difficulty check is high, now I relish the challenge, and it makes inspiration feel more meaningful without it feeling like I need to hoard it. There are some things that kind of weird me out like urchin vs criminal. There are some urchin quests I felt should have also been for criminal but its whatever. Friends cantrip doesn’t turn characters hostile, which I’m of two minds on. On one hand it isn’t accurate to D&D rules, and somewhat devalues the charm spell. On the other hand, friends is one of the worst cantrips in 5E, so it not turning characters hostile in BG3 makes it actually useful, and not a waste of a cantrip slot. Charm also always works when used in the active roll system, which I’m cool with, because otherwise I would NEVER use this spell. Now if only we can get a system for allowing the player to choose who triggers conversations, because the automatic triggers are the most frustrating things in the world. I just want to use MY character for social interactions, not the character that just so happens to be slightly closer to the speaking NPC. If there was some kind of pop up that let me chooses who speaks, or a toggle to just let me always use my character that would be great. If I wanna talk to someone as one of my companions, I’ll select them, and have them talk to a person, but you shouldn’t force that on the player.
Dialogue Skip Bug:
There have been a lot of moments where characters cut themselves off early, and move on to their next exchange. Gale and Auntie Ethel are big examples of this. Speaking of Gale still waiting for him to get as much love and touching up on his interactions as Shadowheart. It’s weird how little I get to talk to him. Also sometimes when you skip through dialogue too fast the game desyncs, and sometimes outright softlocks, which wasn’t an issue inn patch 4.
Long Resting:
I like the new rest system…in a vacuum. I’m actually thinking about when I should be long resting now, but the restrictions aren’t too restrictive that just refuse to long rest. Short rest should probably be bumped up to 3 from 2. I love the new camp locations: my favorite being the cave camp. This is where my complements end. The resting system makes other things that were annoying before way worse, and doesn’t work with other changes you made.
Camp Scenes:
Please for all that is good and sacred in this world, please allow multiple scenes to be obtainable in a single rest like Kotor 2’s Ebon hawk (or Dragon Age Origin’s camp), where as long as you met the perquisite for a scene, or conversation to take place, it would just happen, and you wouldn’t have to leave and come back over and over just to trigger another: The fact I have to rest over, and over, and over to get through all the companions scenes is not only frustrating, but deflates a lot of the excitement I have over these scenes. Instead of being excited over new scenes I’m getting frustrated, because in my head I’m thinking “what conversation is gonna stop me from getting my next Gale approval scene this time?” I have not seen the scene where Shadowheart messes with the Gith artifact since patch 2, and getting The Weave scene is still an exercise in frustration.
Inventory & Encumbrance:
This is the worst inventory system you have done so far. Though your inventory systems in the past were rough at best I didn’t have much of an issue with them like other members of the community. In the past, for the most part my main character in your games would carry the loot, and on occasion I’d give my other party member some loot to hold when I needed to start selling. Now I can’t even do that, because no one in the party can carry much without getting encumbered (the only character that has any strength is Laezel), and they have to worry about having food and camp supplies. I started trying to get around this a bit be sending food to camp, but the process of transferring loot from one character to another, or to the camp, takes way, way too long. The more I did it the less I wanted to play the game. I know you guys said you are working on a new inventory system, but this patch makes it painfully clear how much BG3 desperately NEEDS it, because this is easily one of the worst parts of the game. I really hope the new system will be ready for patch 6. Honestly just scrap the tiered encumbrance system, or make it way more lax, because this is intolerable. Also movement speed outside of combat options setting would be much appreciated. Traveling, even with fast travel points, is just too slow. I know Swen would fight me on the side of the street for this remark, but the movement speed mod for DOS2 exists for a reason. Enemy AI:
The game does feel more challenging, which I like, but it’s a bit too early for me to comment on the overall difficulty. I am happy that the Auntie Ethel cage and Raindancer Staff bugs were fixed, because those bugs made me so angry I quit patch 4.
The druid groove:
The changes to the secret entrance suck. The traps are really annoying to sneak past, and that trapped chest is the worst. Even though my character noticed it was trapped there was no option to disarm it. Since you will get injured upon opening the trap, your character will come out of stealth, which promptly leads to the other traps start shooting them again.
Half-Drow:
Half-drow interactions are still broken, inconsistent, and unsatisfying. I’ve mentioned this before, but it really does urk me how little was done to fix them. I’m crossing my fingers for patch 6.
Point and Click dialogue:
I love this for the Origin Characters, but there are some lines for the custom character my brain immediately went “my character wouldn’t say this”, which is a similar complaint I’ve had with the dialog system in BG3 with cut scenes. It would be great if there were multiple toggles for “origin characters only”, or maybe change what the custom characters say based on their background and class if you aren’t doing it already.
Final Thoughts:
I love a lot of what was changed, and there are a lot of things that still really frustrate me, along with new things that frustrate me, but I’m super excited to see progress being made, and happy to see you guys experimenting and trying things out. I’ll do another full in-depth review again when I finish patch 5. Keep up the good work Larain Team!
