Having played a dual cleric party with MC tempest cleric and Shadowheart I felt bad for her. Tempest just feels OP due to getting all these AoE spells meaning you basically have half a wizard along for the ride, who can also do all those cleric things.
Meet Melissan, the sweetest mass murderer you've ever met.
Which companions do you like? The companions are the best part of the game, imo. My favorites are Shadowheart, Karlach, and Gale. I really wish there were more to choose from.
Depending on which companions you want to bring along, you could multiclass one of them into a rogue if that’s better for you.
That's a fair assessment tbh!!! Honestly I'm always excited to Long Rest and see how my approval stuff is doing, and always fun to anticipate how the companions are going to react to your decisions (and honestly disappointing when they don't react when it feels like it makes sense for their characters to)
I was typing down my favourites before I realized it's pretty much all of them HAHAH but probably my least fave is Lae'zel
AND THATS A GREAT IDEA ACTUALLY. But who would go well with Rogue multiclass (
The WotR fextralife wiki was pretty dire, which generated a lot of frustration - considering the Kingmaker Fandom one was pro, combined with their auto-playing videos and the like; the BG3 one is much better.
i've only looked through the BG3 one cause of my friends and the Totk oke since i had a phase hahah, i found their lists to be really easy to look through and some of their walkthroughs to be straight to the point.
That's a fair assessment tbh!!! Honestly I'm always excited to Long Rest and see how my approval stuff is doing, and always fun to anticipate how the companions are going to react to your decisions (and honestly disappointing when they don't react when it feels like it makes sense for their characters to)
I was typing down my favourites before I realized it's pretty much all of them HAHAH but probably my least fave is Lae'zel
AND THATS A GREAT IDEA ACTUALLY. But who would go well with Rogue multiclass (
I attempted to recreate my BG character Six Middling to crash the low end of the ability spectrum, but you can't create a character lower than the 27 point buy, which seems a little odd. Like sure, who would try that I guess, probably not for a while. But an MC with Six Middling's stats is currently unachievable, cause you can't get out the character creator without spending the max available. It won't let you proceed with a low baller. Oh well, maybe mods will free it up there at some point.
That's a fair assessment tbh!!! Honestly I'm always excited to Long Rest and see how my approval stuff is doing, and always fun to anticipate how the companions are going to react to your decisions (and honestly disappointing when they don't react when it feels like it makes sense for their characters to)
I was typing down my favourites before I realized it's pretty much all of them HAHAH but probably my least fave is Lae'zel
AND THATS A GREAT IDEA ACTUALLY. But who would go well with Rogue multiclass (
Well, every companion except for Astarion only has 13 Dexterity, so you will likely have to respec the chosen rogue replacement. That said, if you’re going with a warlock yourself, then Wyll would probably be the best choice, since a second warlock will likely not be a useful addition to your party (unless you like having two warlocks).
Lae’zel is definitely my least favorite as well. Anyone who tries to be the boss and order everyone around, including me, is not a likable character. She’s well-written, sure, but she’s not likable.
I also slid into another MSI laptop too! hehe How I play... Caught this one on a clutch sale, lit up like a xmas tree now lol.
It's a bit more than I need, but the all red light vibe is alright when in Hal 9000 mode. I mostly wanted the screen, but it runs BG3 nicely. Then I swooped the lowest profile budget mouse, the one with the cable still on it, cause the center mouse wheel on that one felt the lowest to me. Like first time I bought a mouse based purely on the height of that button lol. Worth it though, on both counts. Like I'm sure I'll kick myself for not holding out for more ram or whatever, but that's always the case, gotta swoop into something at some point and they were slicing and dicing.
I also was in the same camp about Lae'zel when I just started playing. However, after getting to know her more and especially after the events in the Mountain Pass, I changed my mind entirely. She's one of the most deeply-written companions in the game. With a certain approach towards her personality, eventually, she'd even fit in a good party. I know this sounds very unlikely for those who start BG3, however, character development is real.
I also slid into another MSI laptop too! hehe How I play... Caught this one on a clutch sale, lit up like a xmas tree now lol.
It's a bit more than I need, but the all red light vibe is alright when in Hal 9000 mode. I mostly wanted the screen, but it runs BG3 nicely. Then I swooped the lowest profile budget mouse, the one with the cable still on it, cause the center mouse wheel on that one felt the lowest to me. Like first time I bought a mouse based purely on the height of that button lol. Worth it though, on both counts. Like I'm sure I'll kick myself for not holding out for more ram or whatever, but that's always the case, gotta swoop into something at some point and they were slicing and dicing.
Which companions do you like? The companions are the best part of the game, imo. My favorites are Shadowheart, Karlach, and Gale. I really wish there were more to choose from.
Depending on which companions you want to bring along, you could multiclass one of them into a rogue if that’s better for you.
I'd say Shadowheart, Karlach and Wyll. But after the latest event, Lae'zel joins the pack. I totally agree with @Antimatter about her development as a character.
So, a couple of more reflections after 70+ hours into the game and wrapping up Act 1.
This game is really amazing, and it keeps better and better with time. Some areas, like the Underdark, Grymforge or the temple of Lathander are a design masterpiece. While some of the companions had a slow start, their stories evolve in an extremely satisfying way, where some characters that initially didn't impress me, has grown on me in a way I didn't expect. The voice acting is stellar, and can easily compete with other AAA games (like The Witcher 3, Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, or Rockstar hits).
As a Forgotten Realms fan, I entered myself into a nerd state, stumbling on the first legendary item in the game. Not only reaching it requires some effort, but also (and this is really important for me), the lore behind it is not something Larian came by themselves, but it's heavily rooted in official lore. If hunting legendary items will look like this, it would be truly a homage to collecting legendary items (like Crom Fayer, the Wave, Carsomyr) in BG2, where there was also a story behind it and players felt, it isn't just some random magic item they just stumbled upon.
What this game really needs are quality of life features for inventory management. There are many games that do this better. While I don't expect Larian improves the voice acting issues we discussed (muted protagonist or their anticlimactic facial expressions), I do feel improvement in UI and inventory management area is quite possible. Some of the players requests don't require UI redesign, just adding new filter, sorting option, or similar kind of things. Personally, I can't wait for a first big patch, where we see some meaty changes, not only bug fixes.
What this game really needs are quality of life features for inventory management. There are many games that do this better. While I don't expect Larian improves the voice acting issues we discussed (muted protagonist or their anticlimactic facial expressions), I do feel improvement in UI and inventory management area is quite possible. Some of the players requests don't require UI redesign, just adding new filter, sorting option, or similar kind of things. Personally, I can't wait for a first big patch, where we see some meaty changes, not only bug fixes.
1 click inventory filtering for Weapons, Armor, Scrolls, Equipables etc and "sell all junk/non magical gear" like in WotR would go quite a way to making things more palatable.
I enjoy Lae'zel, like she was my favorite character in EA, and I feel she is the most plot essential of the companions as presented. It's really hard to think of a reason not to have her in the camp. My problem is trying to find a reason not to have Lae'zel in the party at all times hehe, which is tough with only 4. Shadowheart as well, cause again, feels like it just suits the plot there. If playing along the standard beats, you encounter both before the crash, and they both basically owe you a life debt, so it works very well for a villainous path, or even neutral to good, despite them both presenting as evil-ish archetypes. They set them up as an either/or break pair, but if you have an alright primary in Charisma or just some persuasion you can carry em both and it's good for the interparty drama I feel. Like if the plan is to pit them against each other to keep control of the party, standard villainous PC move there. The game does quite well in that it makes playing a formerly monstrous type of PC or having those sorts of companions in the party seem more palatable (Gith, Drow, Duergar, Tief, Dragon, Vampire etc). The standards like regular old Humans and Elves and Dwarves and Halflings feel somewhat less developed. Gale is fun. Astarion is fun. Wyll and Karlach are fun. They're all memorable, but my "goodness" playthrough felt kinda similar to my "villainy" playthrough in terms of the party camp and party comp. They needed a few shorties in there also, like at least one Dwarf right? I could see that. A Goblin too, the Goblins were great! I feel like if they were to do an expansion or just a big patch-in of content, that it should probably have a bit more on that front. Like just a gang of models and voice assets.
Then something along the lines of a Return to Durlag's Tower, with just a big ass dungeon crawl that adds in some new monsters, a few new spells, and a bunch of new set-piece fights. Just to round it out in the way Tales of the Sword Coast became part of the standard BG1 game package. You know, add a class, a few new companions, raise the level cap by 2-3 or whatever. But have it mainly focused on UI and char creation type stuff. Then BG4 with an engine upgrade hehe. One can hope!
ps. playing catchup with the other crew. I blew past Grymforge with my Sorcerer, but taking more time with Scratch on team goodness, since we don't really have a striker in that party. MC Druid is stepping into that role for now, but gotta double back and grab Karlach I think before we catch the boat. Meantime though, the black and green dye is pretty nice!
It's funny just trying to get them all to point the same direction to cap a screen lol. Some kind of basic direction like loose or tight formation or "about face" to get everyone to face the camera would be nice. The character sheet I think could also use a little work, it should do those animations like in the character creator and show more flash by the stats like class and skill. Cam unlock so you can issue movement commands more easily from the map. Spells like jump I think should just apply the way feather fall works and apply to the group if you're grouped and not in combat. I think some of the dice rolling for rogue archetypes could be streamlined too. I'd rather have an auto roll for things like disarming traps or opening chests unless it has a really high challenge rating. In general I think it'd work fine, if the PC could order to the rest of the party to "trace my steps." As a player I should be able to control the walking speed for characters or toggle the entire group. The animations for encumbered and heavily encumbered should just be available as a "walk" button and when in that mode the other party members should stay, eg the chain radius is extended. Should be the default after combat or anytime exiting turn based mode. Finally you should be able to set the game to autosave on combat or area transition as this would save a lot of reload time for people that are just playing on the base difficulty level. Plenty of time later on to make it harder on oneself, but for the default it would save on a lot of backtracking.
That's a fair assessment tbh!!! Honestly I'm always excited to Long Rest and see how my approval stuff is doing, and always fun to anticipate how the companions are going to react to your decisions (and honestly disappointing when they don't react when it feels like it makes sense for their characters to)
I was typing down my favourites before I realized it's pretty much all of them HAHAH but probably my least fave is Lae'zel
AND THATS A GREAT IDEA ACTUALLY. But who would go well with Rogue multiclass (
I thought more about this, and actually personally have come to the realization the game requires you to toss party members based on the situation you're now in. As I play more, I get more comfortable with any set of companions for any combat, now that I know their strong and weak class/subclass features and possibilities. In other words, you don't NEED to have a rogue constantly in the "main" party for the sake of it. You can set up a camp, change the companions, come back to the same trap/chest, disarm/unlock, and change the companions again.
I learned to switch between different companions in Dragon Age: Inquisition, based on the dialogues/content I want to go through with them, so here it's very similar. While I still have my preferred party of my Warlock, Astarion, SH and Gale, I've now won a few hard fights in Act 2 and at the end of Act 1 with totally different setups, e.g. my MC, Lae'zel, Gale and Astarion, or my MC, Wyll, Karlach, and SH.
Those areas that are "hostile" e.g. the hag's lair, - you can't change party members inside, but you can always retreat a bit and do what you need to do, and come back.
I have become increasingly frustrated with the story-thread of this game. Too much shit thrown at the wall to see what sticks. Should have either a) ditched the mindflayer thing and gone with the "classic baldurs gate" story, or b) gone all in on the mind flayer thing. This hybrid just feels like too much. Its just the story is actually 2 or even 3 stories botched together in a really ham-fisted way. I have actually lost track of all the mcguffins in this.
Also while I like all the companions individually, each one having their "super special issue" they just have to tell you about dilutes the whole thing. I really think both of these complaints are larian falling foul of a "more is less" paradox.
The Dark Urge is about as close as the game gets to how I feel a "baldur's gate" game should be, but the whole dual a) ceremorphosis and b) everything else that is "revealed"
you know what i'm talking about
is too much.
A lot of the issues about origin characters were raised in EA but Larian's commitment to them means your "camp" feels something like a freakshow lineup - especially as you are bombarded with this so rapidly at the beginning of the game. Anyway, that's my moaning, I just feel like I'm pinballing from one cool set-piece to another with so little actual plot drive.
I both agree and disagree with @alice_ashpool on this. I hadn't had 300 hours in Early Access, so I played through Act 1 now looking at new (for me) content in the majority of cases. The game is full of mysteries, and it's fun to think about possible outcomes when you're early in the story. For example, I had fun imagining the true past of Shadowheart. Turned out I had been correct in my assumptions.
I also didn't play Dark Urge, so at least, I don't have that part in the dual. I would be only prepared to play with that background after finishing the game at least once.
Yet, I agree some companions could be simpler/less special. Think of Dragon Age: Origins companions, or Mass Effect. Not every one of them had something that could destroy the whole universe, or a town at least.
But for my first full playthrough, I'm enjoying the story. It has uneven writing, and often I found myself being angry about this and that, and yet, generally, I like what I've seen and read. But ofc, I still don't know much after Act 2 begins, so I'm giving them a lot of benefit of the doubt. Right now, I'm thinking hard about who the Guardian might be, what are their motives, who is the Absolute, what will happen to Shadowheart, etc etc. It's fun. It might turn out not fun in the end, but so far, it's been good.
As for the classic BG story, there was another thread somewhere where I said that it was full of tropes. Not that BG3 doesn't have tropes in it, it's just that a classic story is a bit too... classic and thus over-used at this point? All IMHO ofc.
I thought I might try and develop my points about the companions. I like them all, but there are some issues about their world placement. This is, first, due to their de-protagonising effect, and secondly, because we encounter them in media res rather than in situ; now these aren't quite the right terms but I think they do to get my point across. They are all so strongly within their own storylines that they, in many ways, de-protagonise the protagonist, or else they provide competition to the attention of the storyline: like you are watching a spiral or interweaving narratives, rather than playing a leader or a group. You don't, despite the terminology which is used, recruit these companions. You just join up with their own storylines to march forward. Now this is not quite true as you progress, but I can't shift that act 1 feel of just being first-among-equals further on.
Essentially, each companion has been written as a protagonist, with a protagonist hook. This rather shoe-horn hook, then runs along-side and unrelated to the overstory of ceremorphosis and the absolute. So essentially the game is filled with main characters - everyone has a terminal case of main character syndrome because they were all written as main characters. I don't think I'm wrong to describe it as a rather absurd line-up
Gale, with a story to marty stu you out of this damn world
Shadowheart with her mission and memory loss and the "big reveal"
Lae'zel, the only normal character, and she's a Githyanki
Wyll, pact with a demon
Astarion, A vampite(spawn)
Karlach, the first sword of the ruler of Avernus
All together in one camp they form this mass of post-isekai level absurdity.
As far as their encounter locations are, we don't recruit them from various encounters on our journey where they are situated in the world. Instead we encounter them all as a result of one specific event which they are all caught up in. This is a subtle but powerful variation away from recruitment since the over-goal of both recruiter and recruitee are the same: tadpole. They are closer to uncomfortable bedfellows in encounter, though the writers then vacillate around really knowing how to develop this and it comes across as simultaneously overwritten in the MC-companion dialogues early in chapter 1,. and also underwritten as the nature of the relationship seems to not really even properly conceptualised/understood by the writers. I sometimes feel like they're more like co-workers on the same salary, but ones you for some reason are bossing around endlessly - which is pure dissonance for me. Basically the game fails to adequately lay in the the bed it has made for itself.
In BG3, unlike all the Dragon Age games before (where your companions approved/disapproved your lines), you can actually change companions' personalities without disapproval. Not totally, mind you, sometimes they'll still disapprove of this or that. But what I've seen about Lae'zel and Astarion (not even talking about Shadowheart), it's me picking some actions/variants they didn't disapprove of (so the writers/designers accounted for that) yet which seemed opposite to their "true selves", that changed them a bit and made suitable for my good/neutral party.
So while their peculiarity can almost de-protagonise the protagonist, YOUR player agency can change them, and thus make you feel special about your protagonist again.
So while their peculiarity can almost de-protagonise the protagonist, YOUR player agency can change them, and thus make you feel special about your protagonist again.
I think that's what makes it so weird for me though, as per my last line. Because the protagonist is not really anything special at all and yet they have this effect? "Why am in charge?" is a question I have asked myself a few times as I play. This bit:
I sometimes feel like they're more like co-workers on the same salary, but ones you for some reason are bossing around endlessly - which is pure dissonance for me.
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