My husband and I have been waiting for this game for years to come out for the console, so we could play it together. We played DOS2 on PS4 and we loved it beyond words. Knowing that we can safely expect the story and mechanics of the highest quality from Larian, we were so excited, and we even bought the Deluxe edition.
And then we realized that we can't play BG3 in couch co-op split screen. The game is freezing so much that it destroys any joy we're getting from it.
We have started our playthrough as soon as it came out for PS5, in Early Access (because Deluxe), and we've been on that playthrough through all the patches so far... but there was no noticeable improvement. It was only getting worse.
Our console functions normally with all other games, it's clean and maintained, so the problem is not there. We're even playing in the Performance mode. We're near the end of Act 1 and that's where we were finally forced to stop, because the game froze twice to the point it froze the console. There's a shopping list of instances where the game regularly freezes for approx 5 seconds, but the gist of it is that we can't do things with our respective characters at the same time without the game choking on our actions. I've noticed that the freezes are getting longer and more frequent the further we progress in the game.
Other notable issues beside freezing:
- The player in combat will sometimes be completely immobile. Not by spell or effect, they just won't move or be able to target anyone. This state persists until the combat ends.
- Voice of the characters from one player's dialogue can sometimes become inaudible if the other player is doing any activity in the meantime (besides walking around).
- Fast travel is impossible to accomplish for both players at the same time.
- Inventory descriptions will often disappear if both players are managing their inventory at the same time.
- When the freeze/lag happens, players' actions often reset. For example, if I was marking multiple items in my inventory, and my husband is performing some action at that time, all the items I've been selecting will deselect. If I'm trying to loot a container and my husband is also looting something else on his end, our actions cannot happen at the same time - either his or my action will reset/nullify.
- The chest for the second player always resets and it's never the same one upon a game load. There was a similar issue in DOS2 as well.
- Upon game load, the second player's follower will load as detached from the party and only the main player can control them. Since I am the main player, this forces me to re-attach the follower and then tell them to leave my party, and then my husband has to go to the Camp to recruit this follower again.
- Followers will sometimes stop following. They'll just... stop. And they refuse to move until the player switches to them, and sometimes this needs to be repeated several times to make them move again.
- This is more of a question than an issue (although it is an issue): Why can't one player talk to the other player's follower?? Our followers can converse with each other while we're exploring the world, but we can't talk to each other's followers. It's ridiculous.
I understand there aren't many people who play in couch co-op, but for us it's essential. We're basically heartbroken right now. We've become attached to the story, we love the characters, the mechanics are dear and familiar... and performance is appalling. Look, we understand that people are hungry for super-fancy visuals, but we're ready to accept reductions in visual quality if only to have a smoother playthrough.
