So, I want to give my feedback now after finishing the game once and making it nearly to the end a second time.
The 1st time I played on normal with a bard as dark urge. I left every companion with the regular class/subclass and did not respec.
The 2nd time I played on tactician difficulty as shadow heart and changed her to shadow monk/rogue. I also used multi-classing for the other companions without changing their main class.
From the difficulty I have to say that the 2nd run on higher difficulty felt much easier because I used more effective class/subclass combinations. Might be worth to balance the class/subclass skills a bit more (trickery domain, wild magic etc are quite weak)
Here is also the link to my feedback during the early access I will refer to that a few times and write it as quotes:
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=798804So, obviously you know you did a great job, and you deserve all the praise you got. But I want to add my opinion on a couple of things that could be improved (at least in my opinion).
Let’s start with a couple of obvious ones that you probably have already seen here multiple times:
- You probably know about the hiccups in act III. This is also the reason why I stopped playing since a lot of cut scenes did not seem to happen. Many interactions with Orin did not occur and my romance just did not advance. (In both of my playthroughs it never evolved past the first “we are together” scene even with full approval)
- You also probably know of the whole item management issue. It is really a pain to share items among all companies. I also mentioned that already in my early access review.
- I have also seen criticism to the way act III feels. Some players lose motivation when they arrive in Baldurs Gate, and I have to agree completely. For me it was just the difference coming from such an epic location/battle to the city. Moonrise towers and the surrounding area felt like late game with all the shadows, and fighting a god’s chosen and going into underground tempels etc. (It felt comparable the end of Neverwinter nights II with the siege at crossroad’s keep and the battle at Merderlain) And then, you come into the city and you have to discover the whole area again and on first glance the problems seem to be a couple dimensions smaller than before (like killing rats in a cellar). One possible solution to prevent something like that would be to introduce the main city earlier in the game so that you already have seen everything, and you can just go ahead with the quests. (But that is just a recommendation for future games).
- And I also have to agree that the evil playthrough is not really rewarding because you lose a ton of quests, npcs and companions. If you side with the goblins and become a chosen of Shar you get one new companion and a lame armor from Shar for the price of losing 4-5 companions and all the tieflings that give access to more quests and way more items. I wish there were some semi-evil choices that don’t just nuke everyone. (ignoring a quest for that neither feels intended nor satisfying)
In my early access feedback I mentioned:
Time pressure: I really don't like it when the game puts pressure on the player to resolve a certain problem but then encourages the player to explore the world at the same time. Now I have to listen every time to go to a certain place to fix the problem and that it is sooo important that we do it right now, but if I would run there immediately, I would be totally underleveled. And if I explore the world and take my time, I don't seem to have any negative consequences. My opinion is: If there is a time critical problem, it should be possible to solve it immediately. If you want to encourage players to explore, the problem should not be time critical. (Well at least no short-term) In the lore of D&D it says that the time of no return is 1 hour for tadpoles. If you want to satisfy the lore and give the player time to explore you could give Lae'zel (or some other person/goddess) a skill that delays the ceremorphosis for a bit.
Also, from my previous feedback:
Level Design: You are going a similar way that Original Sin 2 and Dragon Age 3 went, where you present the whole world as a couple of big open world levels. I personally do prefer smaller levels that are connected over a map. Your design gives a feeling that everything interesting is super close together and that you can't really travel further away. It also makes it difficult to create different environments if you want to stay consistent (and logical). I would prefer something like Dragon Age 1 or Neverwinter Nights 2 - Storm of Zehir with a map, travel, locations, random encounters, hidden locations that can only be revealed with a perception check etc. That would feel more like pen and paper and like a big world where not everything is crammed together in one spot. A mix of both ways with some big areas and a lot of small ones might work best.
Skill checks:
Not sure how much effort that is but I would like to see different outcomes based on my dice throw. Like passing with 10 more than required gives you something extra, while failing with 10 or less punishes you.
And I still propose a "Continue" button in the launch menu that immediately starts the last save game.
A couple of new ideas: - Pushing attack/spells: In my opinion pushing attack is too strong, at least combined with a level design that often has chasms. I think pushing attack should be a regular action instead of bonus.
Also, both push attack and spells often don’t make too much sense. Why should I be able to use a spell to push Cazador in his gaseous form down a chasm. He could easily just glide back. You have a system like that already implemented for the mindflayers in act III right before the final battle (unless this was a bug). I would use it for every character that is capable of flying, teleporting or has a similar skill. Give them one turn in mid air where they can use a bonus action to come back. - You have built such great system that can react to so many different variations, you could also maybe add some randomness to the story? Like finding a companion/character at a different location etc. This might increase replayability.
- I think it might also be an idea to have more enemies give up a fight. Especially when their leader is killed. (not for the brainwashed crowd)
- Finally, a conclusion I came to after playing all neverwinter nights, both pathfinder games and bg3:
D&D has a great lore but the system is made for pen and paper and not for video games. The whole spell/skill per long/short rest system only works because you don’t have as many battles, you have less npcs in the battles and because having something like cooldowns would be really messy in the pen and paper. But as video game there will be more battles and more enemies because that’s how video games work. A game master can hand pick the battles and play intelligent while a game cannot and relies on quantity over quality. I think having cooldowns or mana or a similar system would make the whole game easier to design also again with respect to the camp cut scences.
So, for the next game stay with a system similar to original sin 2. (If you are allowed)
This got quite long. I hope this can help you. I probably have forgotten a couple of things I had in mind during my playthroughs. I will add them here once I remember them.
Thanks for creating such a great game. I know you are not big on DLCs etc but even if you just create a "buy the delevopers a beer" dlc I would buy it to support you.
So long.
