One thing that's disappointing is how easy the game is when you know the mechanics and itemization. The very start can be tough because you have nothing, and there's a select few fights that remain difficult; but by and large, the game becomes trivial even on Tactician if you aren't making big mistakes. Doesn't even take supreme skill and knowledge of every single thing, just having played through the game once before and having a general understanding of D&D was enough.

Did the first playthrough on the normal difficulty setting and played it blind, so I missed a bunch of content and went a very inefficient route with regards to the timing of obtaining the big items. That made it moderately difficult. But on just the second playthrough, on the highest difficulty, it's not even really enjoyable when no fights pose any sort of challenge. It isn't even some min-maxed optimal party of OP builds, it's just four coherent builds that don't suck.

I hate when I have to actively handicap myself in order for a game to offer a challenge. Compared to the hardest modes in games like Pillars of Eternity, BG3's Tactician mode just doesn't do enough. Playing well should reward you with the ability to beat the hardest game mode, not punish you by making it trivial.

butt is where poop comes from

hope this helps

Yea apparently the consensus was anyone who was unfamiliar with turn based and dnd mechanics would say “this game is too hard on normal” and anyone who was familiar with these would say “this game is too easy on tactician”

This was why mods had to be made for BG1 and BG2 to greatly increase the difficulty, because after multiple playthrough everyone becomes an all-knowing psychic. Like “let’s throw a fireball into those bushes over there. Oh look at that, they were full of bandits”, etc

To be fair, the difficulty mods for previous iterations really did work well. They would improve the enemy AI, allowing enemies to do things like use magic items and drink potions while in combat

Not sure how that would work for BG3 since the enemy AI is probably much more advanced than previous games. But I’m sure a good difficulty mod will eventually come out

Why can't they just make Champions of Norrath again?

shit was so good

My buddy was telling me one of the hardest fights in the game is against some Demon Raphael in one of the 9 hells, mostly because you have to save some weak cleric that he really likes to throw fireballs at

He said the soundtrack was cool though. I thought the vocals were almost corny at times but I’m digging that organ and castlevania style theme

Didn’t realize that a lot of the soundtrack in the game involves singing? This was sung by the voice actors apparently

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=

I actually didn't like the commonly popular difficulty mods of BG2. Mind you, I did play with SCS, because the game was laughably easy without it; but it mostly boiled down to "enemies will wholly ignore anyone who has a defensive ability running" and "enemy spellcasters get to start the fight with every buff available to their class." While it did serve to make the game tougher, it did it in a lame way that didn't really hit the spot.

Sword Coast Stratagems even had some serious problems associated with it. It became impossible to play any melee character that did not have either insanely high AC or mage spell protections. Since this mod made the AI tunnelvision on anyone they could damage, playing any build that was lightly armored and not able to cast Stoneskin became almost unviable for the first half of the game, until you could stack enough unrealistic amounts of "this is essentially full plate +2 but it's made of dragonscales so we'll consider it leather armor lmfao."

Then we arrive at BG3 where the highest difficulty tier mostly just does two things: enemies have 30% more health and +2 to their attack rolls. But it doesn't change the fact that if you build your characters even slightly well, the fights are usually over in one or two turns. Even if you haven't quite finished off the last couple of inconsequential mooks after two turns, the battle is won if you didn't pretty much die right away.

I wish that there was a setting where the fights were legitimately difficult, but there isn't. You can play it on normal mode, where it's a joke, or on Tactician where they get a minor bump to HP and attack rolls. And as soon as you have the slightest idea of how to play the game properly, even the highest difficulty tier is totally trivial.

If we compare it to SCS (a mod for BG2), it takes a lot more to succeed. Many encounters are completely different, and even with the ones that aren't, you have to approach them in a new way. This is not at all the case in BG3. It just takes three instead of two attacks to kill each enemy, and they're slightly more likely to hit you.

My first impulse upon realizing this was "well, maybe I'll just make a really weak party that sucks and see if I can make it with that." Then my next thought was "but then almost all of the game's rewards are meaningless and there are no upgrades to look forward to." This is the main weak point in an otherwise excellent game.

BG3 is my first game of its type. I did absolutely zero research, went in completely blind. Playing a bard and I find it to be quite a challenge...but I'm only about 10 hours in. I have very little desire to play the game right now...its just not clicking for me and I went in thinking I would love it and do multiple playthroughs.

I think some of it is coming from the clunky PS5 controls. I watched a couple streams on PC and there is so much more information on the screen, inventory management is worlds better, etc.

But I've basically only played MMOs, FPS, and MOBAs.

Hope all is going well my monkly brother, rock on

CRPG's can be slow and tough if coming from Mobas or FPS for sure! I played a lot of divinity 2 and used to play a lot of neverwinter nights so it felt more natural. I was surprised how well BG3 did since CRPG's are usually not as popular.

But man I love the game Kenshi, there's like approximately 6 of us in the world who play it and like the average gamer would never be able to handle that torture ;D

Makes everquest classic look like fisher price ;D