I'm struggling to figure out why I haven't enjoyed WotR more--why it isn't engaging me more. Part of it's the bugginess and the fear that if I don't seek out spoilers the game is going to lure me to dead ends: builds that may rely on abilities that don't yet work properly or which just aren't suited to the immunities of this campaign, the need for meta knowledge to know which quests need to be done before timed events in order not to be shut out of things I want to experience, apprehension about the state of campaign mode, among other things. Also without anything being really wrong, the game just isn't luring me to turn the next corner in the expectation that I might see or experience something interesting.
I had a pretty similar feeling, I gotta say.
Just another point of comparison that hasn't been brought up much yet, but the different ways BG3 and Pathfinder approach Maps.
I'm a big fan of maps, and typically appreciate a good world map with some interactivity. But I think Pathfinder leans on it too heavily, and introduces it too quickly. Too much of the game takes place on that map I think, which makes the gameworld feel somehow more disjointed than connected. Its a weird thing too, because at first the map was something that impressed me quite a lot. Its a different approach than I've seen lately so it felt kind of classic, and I liked the throw back game table vibe. But the more time I spend navigating around, the more I miss the more simplistic approach of BG. You know, where walking to the edge of one area naturally brought you to the next "area." In WotR the map definitely feels like an expedient, like where the game couldn't really function otherwise and they needed an easy way to stitch stuff together. WotR is just showing me too much map I guess, and it pulls me out of the adventure somehow. Which is a little weird, cause again, I love maps!
In BG3 I have like the exact opposite impression, I guess because we haven't really seen much of the map since the EA game pretty much ends at the first transition. Hard to say how it will feel once that part of the game is opened up. But in BG3 the map, and by that I guess I mean more the minimap, feels like a hinderance. Like it doesn't present enough information to really feel useful, and I find that if I look at it too much I get more disoriented than if I'd just been paying attention to the environments instead. In BG3 the minimap is supposed to stand in for the actual environment you're currently walking around in, but it's hard to tell what's a path vs cliff or what's a door vs a wall, the elevation and topography just kinda gets lost in the muddle, and I find it difficult to tell where the camera is oriented relative to the characters/map. I've tried it both ways, with the orientation locked and free rotating, but neither feels particularly comfortable.
WotR doesn't provide a minimap, but instead gives an area map, similar to what we had in BG1/2. But its super awkward to use too, and I think is maybe even more disorienting for me than the BG3 mini map. The jump to view doesn't seem to work very well in either game. I think what I miss most is being able to issue movement commands from the mini map or jump to area view, like if its going to exist that would be what I want it for, which neither game really provides. I don't know that Pathfinder can do much at this point to make their map system more engaging for me, but BG3 certainly still has time to put some work in.
