Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games to play other than BG3 only?

My issue with Bethesda titles isn’t difficulty (to have difficulty one needs a well designed systems first) but overall lack of design and compelling content. Let’s call it difference in taste. Bethesda clearly has its fan base. I am curious how Starfield will be received. I feel like wider public aligned with my opinion on their titles with Fallout76 - yes, it was exceptionally flawed, but frankly criticism that game got, was pretty much the same I would criticise their previous titles for. So I am curious to see if the spell was broken, or if a less outrageous release will satisfy the fan base.

Geala: "For WHATEVER reason..."
Tuco: "For being GENUINELY GREAT, you mean"

BG3 has had two and a half years worth of legs over Starfield. Anyone who hasn't already bought BG3 at this point is either waiting for reviews or sales, more likely the latter rather than the former.

Moving full launch to mid-August won't move the needle at all anyway, it'd have to be late July/early August for it to matter.

Can't remember who posted it, but BG3 likely hasn't even hit half the sales of DOS2. People are waiting for full release, and most people don't pay full price for an early access that only covers the first 1/4 to 1/3 of the game.

But I agree with you on the idea that moving it a week won't make a difference. So move it to early August.

I doubt they move it up. I think the only scenario that makes sense is they move it back to a 'holiday' release in November or very early December. But even doing that I am sure it would just run into other big releases as well around that time of year.

Mmph, will buy both, will play the guts out of BG 3 (3 or 4 builds and a solo run) and move onto Starfield, rinse repeat. For now, D4 will fill the vacuum till BG 3 launches. I'm a gamer one is not enough (I'm no Highlander).

I a really have not been following the Diablo 4 publicity at all. With BG3, FF16, FF7Rebirth, LoZ:TotK, Armored Core 6 and maybe Starfield, I was assuming I probably wouldn’t have the time or interest to play any more games.

Then I watched the Necromancer trailer and my inner angsty teenager was resurrected from the dormancy of its slumber and now I really want to command an army of the undead whilst looking like Elric of Melnibone or Sephiroth.

Dang.

This year’s releases are nuts.

so RE4 Remake is looking pretty good

Massive mistake by Blizzard to do an open beta before the launch of Diablo 4. Diablo 2 is a top three favorite of mine and I thought Diablo 3 was... average at best, let's say. Diablo 4 looks like a mash up of Diablo 3 and the mobile game that they released. It looks really, really bad.

And while it is sad that game just looks like complete garbage to me...

The good news is I get to save $70!

Just got Midnight Suns and am having a lot of fun with it!

Glad to hear it! I bought the game when it came out and I really love it. As a comic fan I keep finding so many references and deep cuts, you can just FEEL how much the devs love Marvel Comics and wanted to play with as much of the universe as they could. And the gameplay is also super satisfying as well.

Glad you like it. I had more good time with it during a free weekend a while back than I expected. I would probably pick it up by now, if Season Pass's price wasn't as inflated.

I liked it but I feel it lands in a deep discount/gamepass for me. Combat was satisfying but not deep enough for me too play it for a long time to come - and I didn't care much for the rest of the package.

Yes, the game is on sale now, so the season pass costs more than the base game! I just bought the base game for now but might get the Storm dlc when it comes out. I love all the story and character stuff in the game and like the combat, too!

I'm a sucker for relaxing farm games like SDV, so I've been playing Coral Island. Very cute and enjoyable. One of those 'just one more day' kind of farming games for sure. Very Early Access though, so not for those expecting a full game.

I played and finished during the winter holidays.
It's not bad. The combat is fairly better than I anticipated and not too far behind XCOM 2 (in fact, I hope SOME elements of MDS may "trickle" to XCOM 3), but there are also several aspects of the game I was absolutely not too fond of.

For context, this is what I wrote elsewhere after a full playthrough:
_____________________________________________

I finally got to the final mission, which marks the end of my first playthrough.

I can more or less confirm all the partial impressions so far, but to summarize:

- Combat is great. Fun, simple but with decent depth, visually pleasing.
- Heroes offer a massive variety in playstyle, to a degree not even XCOM classes could approach.

BUT

- maps/missions are too few in variety and the same goes for the enemy types, which lead to a strong sense of repetition fairly quickly, even by XCOM standards. War of the Chosen was far more diversified.
- The Abbey exploration is mildly enjoyable
- "Social linking" with heroes is a fucking chore and dialogues are seldom interesting or amusing to witness.
- writing is bland as hell and occasionally even a bit cringey. In all fairness the same was true for the XCOM franchise, but at least everything related to narrative there had the courtesy to sideline itself most of the time, while here it pretends to take front and center.
- as already pointed, the resources system had the bad aftertaste of something aimed to the mobile/free to play market and not organic to the game.
- the level up/progression system feels almost completely vestigial. Everyone keeps bumping up their stats bit by bit and so do enemies, which in the end it makes it stat bloat for the sake of it that doesn't really add much to the game. This and the "gatcha"-inspired system to open containers to unlock new cards leave the bad impression to be a Skinner's box for the sake of it.
- I'm still not convinced making it a card game rather than a cooldown based system like its [pseudo]predecessors was so fundamental to its core mechanics nor crucial to avoid having "RNG elements in combat" , but... Oh well, you don't even pay any attention to it after a while.

Some parts of the game feel like a jewel, but at time they also feel like the proverbial diamond in the rough as they are drowned in unnecessary subsystems and pacing issues.


Is it fun? Abso-fucking-lutely. Well, most of the times, especially in combat.
Is it an improvement over the studio's previous output? No, it definitely isn't.

The action adventure/dating sim angle is not as lean and enjoyable as the base building/management in War of the Chosen and what's worse, I can see becoming even more grating on repetition after a first playthrough.

That said, it DOES have part of its design that feel like they would add a lot to their future titles. The knockback system is a blast to play around with, for instance, and IF XCOM 3 is something that exist and Firaxis is actively developing at the moment, I hope it will find its way in it.
Same goes for the occasional chance to make use of environmental props to attack the enemy.

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For the record I don't think a bunch of minor "hero DLC" are going to address the problems with variety/repetition.
The game is in dire need of a "big expansion" in pure Firaxis style to have any life expectancy that will go past the first playthrough. And given the abysmal sales, I doubt it will ever get one.

But for context DOS 2 didn't even see a TENTH of its sales during Early Access period and peaked at something like 15K concurrent users in EA (even less, in fact), while it reached almost 93K only at its peak after launch.
Meanwhile BG3 peaked at 73K at the start of EA and you people can bet your sorry asses it will do far higher numbers at launch.

Still, I doubt it will do better than Starfield and i don't feel like making the two launches too close is a particularly good option for Larian. Which pairs with Swen VIncke openly admitting on video that they try to be very conscious of what the competition is doing (except when it comes to toilet chains, somehow) and have moved launch dates around in the past to avoid overlapping with other heavy hitters.

I see Bethesda games as a base for self-structured gameplay, and mods. I ended the main story in Skyrim once (I think it was the end, not sure) and in Fallout 4 never ever, despite more than 2,000 hours of gameplay. Main stories are not Bethesda's strength in my opinion.

I tried most of the "Souls" games, they are great, especially for people positioned best on an assembly line. So Souls games have an amazing training effect for our economy, similar to raids in MMOs. I love it.


BTW, last weekend I watched a video on Youtube about the game "Spaceborne 2", a 1st/3rd person (kind of) RPG shooter/space combat SciFi game, a bit like No Man's Sky, Elite: Dangerous (which I all don't own and only know from videos) and ... the coming Starfield . It seems to be amazing. It's in Early Access on Steam, allegedly made more or less by just one person. I think I will buy it as my first SciFi game (it's just 20 dollars), and if only to support the developer.

I have no idea of what this is even supposed to mean, frankly.

It kind of sounded like nonsense to me as well, except speaking as a FFXIV player, I have noted people taking their behavior from that game in regards to responding to certain game mechanics into other MMOs. Kind of like how someone's approach to Souls games can be applied to things like Monster Hunter and Dragon's Dogma too. As an extreme example, I even managed to apply that kind of MMO knowledge into playing Crystal Project, which is a turn-based game but with class/skill design that largely mirror that of MMO abilities (along with having an actual threat system that does away with the trash concept of enemies utilizing RNG targeting that typically makes defensive strategies worthless in the majority of traditional Japanese-style turn-based RPGs, leading to offense being heavily over-emphasized and difficulty taking a nosedive halfway into most of those games as a result).

I think that's what they're trying to say. But I don't get the 'economy' part.

I'm not totally earnest and a bit sardonic, sorry. You are doing the same things a lot in a row to succeed, especially in boss fights but also because of the spawn mechanic, it's more or less in many games but it is a special game principle of Souls games. Same happens in MMO raids. I don't like it and always imagine Mr. Chaplin in Modern Times then.