I heard about the recommendation to do few side quests and rush the main story too, which is.. a odd way to design it, yes. I think the biggest problem for me was that the formula just isn't that exciting anymore. I played Diablo 3 for a few hundred hours at launch and did all the content back then, but clicking things to death and grinding dungeons just doesn't have the same magic as it did back then. Something like BG3 has a bit more meat on the bone than just pure hack and slash. I'll get back to it eventually and finish it. I don't want to feel that I wasted 70 euros.

At least it's not like Pathfinder: Kingmaker, where, contrary to most games, you need to prioritize the main story over side quests or you'll have serious issues.

(Or, as an opposite case, Romancing SaGa, where you have to spend in-game time doing side quests before the endgame becomes accessible.)

I still find it weird that you associate ACTUAL ROLE-PLAYING with "Another Genre". It feels to me like you've got it all backwards, but this is starting to sound like another "What is an RPG" type of discussion that I've had way too many times in other threads and I no longer wish to argue semantics.

Anyway people who don't want much story and prefer to focus on combat should look into ARPGs. That's the whole point of that genre. Action, rather than a balance of all elements.

Except that:
* I want a focus on (turn-based) combat.
* I *do not* want an action game.

I wanted to make a question for BG3 players and wanted to create a new thread for it, but it seems to me its clever to ask it here than create a new one just for it.

No offense to BG3 fans, nor Laurian studios that as far as I know is an awesome studio, but, is it me or Baldurs Gate 3 feels more like "Divinity Original Sin 3" than "Baldurs Gate 3"?

Or at least, something in between: "Divinity Gate 2.7"?

Asking this honestly because I have not played it, but by a full playthrough I watched from a Youtuber called Rurikhan that I follow (140 hours playtime), Baldurs Gate 3 for me feels by watching more like Divinity than Baldurs Gate.

They UI, the way characters interact with each other, the way they interact with the world and the situations around them.
Specially voice acting for everyone, which is specially amazing for Jennifer English as Shadowheart, for Tim Downie as Gale and Amelia Tyler as the Narrator to me.

(To give credit to them all anyways: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13258344/fullcredits

Applauds to them all!
Amazing voice actors.
If you consider that most have probably been recorded during quarantine, you see how good and invested they were.
Amazing!)


Everything seems top quality and well made. - - (SPOILERS: except Act 2 and 3 drama SPOILERS.)


...But the way that it is done feels, albeit amazing in quality as said, feels way too modern for the themes in (what looks like) a magic medieval setting in almost apocalyptic events, both personal (end of self / characters) and world wise (end of the world as the characters know it).

So, how does you guys that have played it / are playing it feel about this?

In defence for a "Drow dominatrix", she had a really hard time and its a way to show her prowess, she is a Drow Nightwarden after all (call it "tradition", and it fits D&D lore perfectly), also you can dominate her instead. In my opinion she is the most interesting romance character even if not suited well for a good character (but it's possible to be neutral and then good), and some might find her voice and face a bit unattractive.
[EDIT: Also if you played BG2 I don't see how it's any different to Phaere's "reward" for doing well in Ust Natha]

Wyll only hints about wanting to have you during the "celebration night" and it's possible to ignore it without hurting anyone's feelings (the same way as with Karlach), the dance however is an unexpected intrusion which can not be avoided. In a way Wyll is fine, a confused would be lover. But I can't *forgive* him for hitting on my Shadowheart though, this was impolite to say the least.

Astarion's first attempt can be excused given the *circumstances*, but his advances at "celebration night" is clearly an intrusion, however he is honest about it.

Gale's advances I can't forgive! He is not clear about his intentions until it is too late, it's like he tried to trick me into having sex with him, grown people don't behave like that, I felt like a kid talking with pedophile (yuck!).
[EDIT]: After a time I was invited by his projection to check the stars, I had to Google it first to know that now it's finally safe to act like friends.

Engine and interface - maybe. I didn't like Divinity Original Sin game, it was unbearable for me to progress (I will try again after I finish with BG3). Baldur's Gate 3 gameplay and dialogues felt good to me.

The thing I don't like the most (after the interface and camera mechanics) is the ability to place explosive barrels in front of neutral characters without them noticing, only to blow them off for an instant kill. I'd rather not have those barrels at all, or to have them glued to the floor without an option to move or pick them up. I don't ever use inventory barrels technique.

Fine. But the idea that story and character interactions are somehow not role playing is just wrong.
You apparently only want character actions to be things like "Sneak Attack" or "Smite".

That's fine. But it's not more of a role playing game by being solely focused on fighting. It's less.
True. They should be suspicious of an explosive barrel being placed next to them. I think it's there for people who want to have fun with the systems in place or need help with the combat. Because it's very optional.

Also you may want to try a camera mod. There's one that lets you zoom in and out much more than normal and you can play the game more like a 3rd person action game if you want especially with another mod that lets you walk around with WASD.

I think combat is DOS2 was very good (though it's been a while). My main issue was with the tone of the game. It's just very quirky and sort of poking fun of itself much of the time.

I know some people don't like armor in DOS2 but I think armor feels better than misses in D&D.

Yes, I know about the mods and I'll probably use them for my second playthrough. At the moment my PC overheats and shuts down over the game (minimum requirements are met) so I had to play it in cloud (no mods option).

Camera mod might not solve all my issues though, with the mod I could finally aim with AOE arrows on higher floors true, but I get used to Dragon Age mechanics. For example I need to place my characters for an ambush attack in a special way, in Dragon Age I could move one character in place then select another one to move somewhere near, in BG3 the camera will move all the way to the newly selected character and I have to move the camera all the way back to select the place near the previous character - I'm not happy with that extra camera switching and moving. In Dragon Age and BG1-2 I could have select all party members and change their formation and move them at will, in BG3 my 3 characters are going several steps behind after the leader (very bad for some battle sequences). In Dragon Age when I loot chests my companions don't move an inch or make a few steps closer if I move too far away for another chest, in BG3 I had to press "ungroup" (G) button to loot the place otherwise they would run erratically sometimes climbing tables and boxes with unberable "oomph" shouts.

I wish they'd design it the way it was in Dragon Age.

CRPGs do not need role-playing.

Computer games with role-playing are not necessarily CRPGs.

Thing is, the notion of CRPG doesn't actually relate to role-playing, due to the way things have involved.

So, in saying that story and character interactions are not RPG elements, I'm not saying anything about whether such actions constitute role-playing.
Actually, assuming an RPG-ish battle system, I'd say it's more of an RPG by having more fighting and less role-playing.

It's actually quite common that I've found armor to not be worth it in CRPGs.

The reasons, of course, depend on the game:
* Weight of armor. In many WRPGs, you can only carry a certain amount of weight, or you suffer penalties based on the amount of weight you're carrying. Hence, in some such games, including Wizardry 8 and many Elder Scrolls games, I end up not wearing the strongest available armor because of this. (In Wizardry 8, I'd much rather wear some Robes of Rejuvenation over the late-game plate armor you get, even for a front-liner.)
* Armor requires extra maintanence. Some WRPGs have armor lose durability when hit, and then there's cases like Might & Magic: World of Xeen where armor frequently breaks and has to be repaired (and in WoX there's also limited room for armor in your inventory). At this point, there's the question of whether it's worth it.
* Game penalizes you for wearing armor. You might move more slowly, especially a pain in a game like Morrowind or Oblivion. Your magic might be weaker, as seen in Oblivion and Final Fantasy 2. Or, as is the case in FF2, heavy armor might ruin your evasion; in FF2 this issue is so bad that it makes the difference between winning the battle without taking damage (if wearing no/light armor) and a party wipe (if wearing heavy armor).
* Armor often doesn't provide enough protection to be worth it. This is often the reason why, in JRPGs, I often ignore armor upgrades in favor of weapon upgrades, or better yet, new spells (in games where they're buyable). When combined with other aspects (WoX again; there are entire areas, including the starting town, where AC is completely useless), it becomes hard to justify the use of armor in the first place.

Also, the D&D AC mechanic, other than it not making sense that plate armor makes dodging easier, has the problem of not scaling. When levels get too high, attacks either (almost) always hit or (almost) always miss, with the in-between case being so small it's not going to happen unless the game is very finely balanced, and such balance is fragile. Just take a look at games like Pools of Darkness and BG2: Throne of Bhaal for examples of this. (Or WoX late game; in the Southern Sphinx, if your AC isn't incredibly high, it makes no difference.)

Me too actually. I went to the bios and disabled the turbo boost feature on my CPU and then I no longer had the problem. I can't say that I noticed any speed difference either.

What nonsense. That's like saying strategy games don't need strategy or first person shooters don't need to be in first person or have shooting.

As for armor I'm no designer and I may be wrong. I just know that it feels bad to me when a melee attack misses but feels OK when no damage is taken because I can see it was absorbed by armor.

That is, however, how things have evolved, ever since games like Wizardry 1 have been called RPGs.

I'd argue that you could have a first-person shooter with only melee weapons. Even though you wouldn't be shooting anything, such a game could still probably be called an FPS. (Said game would still need to be first-person, or at least be primarily first-person.)

A strategy game that's so easy that you don't need strategy to win is still a strategy game, just like a racing game where there's no time pressure (I'm thinking Big Rigs here) is still technically a racing game.

Incidentally, Wizardry 6-8 take the approach where armor still makes it harder for attacks to hit, but if an attack only misses because of armor, the attack is said to hit but not penetrate. It still has the same scaling issues, however.

Edit: There's also the case of Morrowind, which has the look and feel of an FPS, but actually uses RPG-like accuracy mechanics under the hood. There's the issue in that particular game where there's no way to distinguish between a lack of collision and an attack that collided but did not roll well enough to hit. You see that in Daggerfall and Arena as well, which additionally have the "armor makes you harder to hit" mechanic.

That's not an evolution. It's a sloppy use of words leading to meaninglessness.
Anyway, it's not worth arguing over. It's mostly just a tag for sales purposes in practice.

Thanks for the tip. I'll try some tinkering with my BIOS settings and see if it helps.