Frankly, this is exactly what I was expecting from Wrath (I am not gloating, I still think it will be a good game and I have already bought it but I won't play it at least for a couple of months). I do think we should give them the benefit of the doubt, Owlcat is still a small studio and this project was extremely ambitious.
On the other hand, I don't really get the people here who hate on BG3 with an undying passion because it is "fundamentally broken" (an unfinished game still early in early access development) but cannot take any criticism for Wrath, because that's just "bitching" when you criticize a game whose developers apparently made little to no effort to publish a polished game. It's a legit thing to be frustrated with the game-breaking bugs that invalidate entire narrative paths in the game play.
Also, claiming that Kingmaker has no bugs still, that is just false. The TB mod is a buggy hellscape. Actually, I encountered more bugs with the official Owlcat made TB mode than with the fan-made Turn-based mod (where I don't really remember any game breaking ones, while in the official TB mode, it breaks the game all the time).
Originally Posted by Try2Handing
Looking at it from a different angle, though, I understand if they decided to just release the game and then fix it over time based on player feedback, rather than trying to find all the bugs by themselves and based on just the beta players. For a game like this and for an indie studio like Owlcat that would probably take forever. Not the coolest move, but understandable.
Originally Posted by Rhobar121
The longer I play this game, I have the impression that none of the developers have even tried to play it before the premiere. Already bypassing the amount of serious bugs, the game has terrible design problems.
Yeah, I'd like to believe that they do play their game, but the problem really is their design philosophy. It's very inconsistent, for one. If this game is anything like Kingmaker, then the early levels will be brutally punishing, but then it starts to get easier and easier, as you catch up and eventually get ahead of the power curve. Until they decide to come up with 2 or 3 of the cheesiest enemies and copypasta them 50 times all over the dungeon. And sometimes you get the feeling their idea of fun is to try and make things as painful as possible for players. So if you're playing the game for the first time, not knowing what to expect and what you should prepare beforehand, you're in for a world of pain. I play many other games on high difficulty, and I think the design philosophy in these Pathfinder games is the most... problematic.
I don't know about BG3, but compared to that, DOS and DOS2 encounters show a lot of careful consideration, in terms of enemy variety, placement, behavior, abilities, as well as intended approaches to encounters. So at the very least, I'll trust that BG3 encounters won't feel so cheesy and, I don't know, "metagamey"(?) on high difficulty settings.
I agree, I do prefer Larian's design philosophy. They make me think outside of the box, while Owlcat encounters usually just make me frustrated.
