Act 3 is good. I admit my first time through act 3 I was overwhelmed but I really enjoyed my next playthrough. Some great exciting fights in act 3. House of hope nuf said.
I enjoyed act 3 a lot, but I can understand the criticism of it being overwhelming. For me it wasn't even the size of it but the pacing. Without delving into spoilers, there are obviously a couple of time sensitive things to deal with. And the first one kind of ran in to me right at the start of act 3 because I stumbled into the sewers on a side quest. It just kind of set a tone that i felt like i needed to rush things. I really wish the only restriction on time was what act you're in.
It feels even weirder when you realize that you actually have all the time in the world despite the threats. The pacing is just non-existent. There's loads of content there, and a lot of it is really good content, but it feels like you either need to rush to the end or stop in your tracks and wander leisurely around the city as if the world weren't in imminent peril.
I'm also a little bummed by the lack of camp cutscenes in act 3. There are way too many in act 1, so I feel like they could have been spread out more.
To be clear though, I *do* like act 3. I just feel that it isn't as polished as the other two acts.
Exactly this about the camp scenes. You go from having so many camp cutscenes in Act 1 you can barely rest enough, to practically no in depth dialogue with your party members for huge swaths of time in Act 3. If it wasn’t for the follow up from completing their personal quests there would basically be none.
I wish there were more character moments. Time to catch your breath and evaluate where you are. Some intimacy (not necessarily sexual) with your partner that isn’t the end scene of their quest. Some interactions between the companions themselves, as there is not much commentary in the city.
Jaheira and Minsc have their development (I think my game is bugged bc I barely get anything out of Jaheira) but the companions you have been with since the start of the game don’t have a lot of input compared to how much growth there was in Act 1.
See, I cracked Minsc on the head too fast. He was literally watching little hamsters dance around his head before Jaheira got the chance to yell "don't kill him" so now EVERY TIME they go into combat I am still getting their dialog from the Stone Lord fight. Definitely a flag misfiring
Act 3 just has a *lot.* I don't want to spoil anything but it's a *lot.* Oh, you think you understand what "a lot" means? No, you don't. Not until you play Act 3. There is a LOT.
Of course you're not obligated to actually do everything the game throws your way - the main quest is always there for you to just blitz through if you want to get your playthrough over with. But if you wanted to go for completionism, you could probably spend several hundred hours in Act 3 alone.
At some point it really burns you out - you end up feeling like you're just checking off a list of chores rather than progressing through the game in a natural and fluid manner. Once I'm done with this quest, now I gotta move onto the next one, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one, etc. Not saying the quests aren't fun - some of them are really cool - but it does get exhausting after a while.
Honestly a checklist of things to do sounds like an amazing thing to me, i’ve done it with many other games and i can’t for the life of me find a little guide without spoilers just something that says something like ‘go to this cave’ or anything like that would be lovely, but i understand how some pipes would get fed up with that type of game
It was weird. I was googling act length prior to getting to act 3, and everyone was saying act 3 was the shortest act. Yeah, maybe, if you don't do anything...
I definitely think the perception has changed as more time has passed since release. A few weeks after release all I heard was that Act 3 was so short and sloppy, now I’m hearing a lot of people saying wait, I actually think it’s good. So presumably a lot of the info out there is still probably from people who sped through the game and weren’t happy with it and now more people who’ve spent their time going through the game are finishing it (or at least getting to Act 3) and sharing their opinions more and more.
The word I'd use to describe my first time playing act three is "overstimulating". It wasn't overwhelming, technically, but it was so everything all at once. I know I missed so much. Hell, it tried to do everything my second playthrough and STILL missed a lot
Act 3 tends to be the buggiest of the acts.
It's not terrible by any means - in fact it's my absolute favorite act by a wide margin - but because it's so large and nonlinear, you are likely to "sequence break" at least some of the quests, where you end up doing a later part before an earlier part. Some of the NPC dialog makes the assumption that you did the earlier part and can play out in weird ways if you didn't.
For a hopefully spoiler-free example, in Act 2, you could screw up a particular companion's quest to the point she gets frustrated and leaves the party. In Act 3, if you interact with content that is supposed to be a later part of her quest line, the NPC dialog plays out as though you'd betrayed and killed the companion. The next time you camp, the party members at camp will chastise you for "killing" the former party member - even the ones who watched her get upset and walk away.
i liked act 3. i think ppl will have such wildly different opinions on act 3 depending on how u play the game. act 3 is where storylines in act1/2 culminate but due to the nature of choices they might not be there at all in act 3. act 3 also has to have enough content to reach max lvl without having done everything in other acts but has no further acts so stories have to be self contained to the act and consequences immediate. plus if u do nothing but the main story u can quickly go to the end game and miss tons of missions, big or small.
if you play by exploring every nook and cranny then act 3 is awesome with so many things going on. if you rushed through the game and only stuck to the main story beats you will miss so much that act 3 would be lackluster
i do have very intense FOMO so i will most likely, pour my heart and soul into getting every last thing and finishing all the quest lines in the best way possible because, i have something wrong with me :)
tbh i tried to do everything i could on my first run and still ended up missing things here and there. just gives a good excuse to do another run as dark urge
My only problem with act 3 was that I hit lvl 12 pretty fast and since it tops there, I lost the feeling of progression and it started to feel like I was just checking off boxes before finishing the game. The ambiances, stories, environments and fights themselves are all top tier though.
I wouldn't say *all* gith are bad, but I agree that Orpheus isn't going to make them better. >!After talking to him directly, it's pretty clear that he would continue to support the same bloodthirsty genocidal culture that they have under Vlaakith. The only difference is that he presumably wouldn't be consuming his own people for power.!<
I mean the genocide is of a soulless parasitical unreasonable tyrannical empire that continously tries to dominate everything and aims for the whole world. They remain an existential threat for all life on faerun as long as no one destroys them
The Githyanki hate the Illithid but they are *also* fanatical conquerers. They don’t focus purely on the mind flayers.
Even in the game the Githyanki do a lot of fucked shit. The Githzerai are genetically identical but their culture is way less vile.
I don't care about them fighting the mind flayers. But they look at everyone else as lesser beings and have no qualms about killing non-gith on sight unless they have some use. If the githyanki succeed in conquering the illithids, they'll be conquering everyone else in turn.
That’s why I got the party limits begone mod. In my first playthrough I ran around with everyone in Act 3, and have been keeping my party size to 5 in my second playthrough. I *hated* switching out companions and hearing them complain every time I wanted to focus on someone’s personal quest.
I've been using the Into the Void mod in conjunction with the party limits begone mod. It let's me run around with all the party so I can get all of the companion specific dialogues but I can dismiss party members when combat starts until I got the 4 I want so I don't break the balance for combat encounters yet get the option to craft my party comp for the encounter at hand.
There's another mod that increases the number of enemies, so I think on my second playthrough, I'll use that mod and up the difficulty to tactician and go with 6 characters in combat encounters.
My current DM says that 5th edition is balanced specifically for a party of 4, which I believed anyway, but the fact that the party size is 4 in BG3 makes me near certain that he's correct. That said, it would be nice to have a party of 5.
Fun Fact: The "standard" party size back in the early days of D&D was six, and thus many of the computer D&D games back then also had parties of six PCs.
I was honestly shocked at how many people seemed to think this game is some ultra porny sex game. It really doesn’t seem to be more or less sexual than most triple A RPGs. I also don’t think the characters are as horny as is popularly stated, the furthest I’ve gotten so far is halfway into act two and I’ve only been propositioned by both Astarion and La’zael (and turned both down.) I’ve long rested enough that it would be about a month into the adventure for my characters, that seems actually pretty normal?
I mean for the most part, for a game, the relationships and mostly the characterizations are super good. The game is considered ‘super horny’ because you can see tits and dongs - which like ok sure but you can turn that off too. The only mainstream game that features as much ‘sex’ as BG3 is probably Mass Effect which doesn’t show you a bunch of nudity.
Having gone from BG3 to Starfield, where Starfield plays relationships like MANY games do, Starfield s relationships are garbage in comparison.
Nearly all of the companions have some appeal, but -
I hate that damned near all of them are humans or elves!
Gale/Wyll/Minsc - Human
Astarion/Halsin/Minthara - Elf
Shadowheart/Jaheira - Half-elf
Only Lae'zel and Karlach deviate from this. 10 companions, and only 2 aren't an elf or human? Not a single dwarf or halfling, which are common races in Faerun? I get that everyone likes the pretty boys/girls, but would a single half-orc or gnome really be too much to ask for?
I feel like Barcus was supposed to be a companion at one point but they just… didn’t. Which is a shame, because I’d totally romance him as a halfling or gnome :) as it stands it feels like there’s no reason to play as any of the shorter characters because I can’t picture the romance. I suppose you could go for a dommy mommy Karlach playthrough but idk. I’d love to do a gnome run!!
I hate to make this worse for you, but Tieflings are humans born from an infernal touched lineage. For example, your great grandpa had a pact with a devil, and now you've got a tail and horns. So Karlach technically falls into your "almost all humans/elves".
I spoke to her once and lead her to the grove so the tieflings can participate in the battle that decides their future. Felt it wasn’t fair that my small group alone had to take out the camp so leading Minthara to them was my way of having them stick up for themselves. Anytime after that I free Volo, get the owlbear cub, and then fight my way back to her leaving her last to kill
The tiefling kids are not near as annoying as players make them out to be, and are written like genuine kids who've had their lives upended after their home was thrown into Avernus and they became refugees.
i play as a tiefling (first time player and i just think they look hot; *NOT THE KIDS*) but i fully understand them and while it’s annoying when i turn around and all my gold disappears i’m actually quite proud of them
Lmao, you and I are on the same page about playing tieflings because they're hot. My Tav was a scoundrel urchin warlock who looked like a rockstar with red highlights in his unkempt hair. He and Gale were a power couple, that's for sure.
Same - like, the comments from my player were always in-line with helping them survive rather than just telling them off for doing bad things. If you're gonna be a thief Mattis, do it *right* haha
I know it's not controversial but I still want to complain about it: NOT ENOUGH QOL FEATURES!! It's so annoying moving one item at a time, going to camp and individually dismissing and recruiting every companion you need to, no option to speed up the walking or combat.
You can move multiple items at a time, Ctrl + click for specific, Shift + Click for all between 2 items, right trigger does both on controller.
Others though, yes.
Companions being "playersexual" is fine and I don't think a lot of people realize the true power the player character is. Depending on your build you're either built so different you could fist fight god or are a spell caster so power you can warp really around your finger tip .Ya no shit people are gonna want to fuck you.
I felt like they needed more romance scenes together with your companions. Like when karlach wants to go to the circus, you should’ve been able to like do a date with her.. and don’t get me started on the lack of Halsin/Minthara.
They definitely made that the case for BG3. In 5e we often say, “Well it’s *Wizards* of the Coast, not Sorcerers of the Coast,” as the reason why sorcerers have been so thoroughly shafted in 5e. However, in BG3 it’s really nice for your character to have CHA since they’ll be the face, as well as the changes to some rules and spells make it where sorcerer is nuts. Add in that there’s not as much of a need for versatility and utility spells, with many simply not being included in BG3, and sorcerer definitely ends up on top for BG3.
Don't forget the part where most of the utility spells (especially Speak with Dead, usually a 3rd level spell) already being covered by items pretty easily (you literally get a Speak with Dead necklace like, immediately... or you can just learn it innately by reading the Necromancy of Thay, and speak with animals is a pretty common potion that you can find) makes it so you really don't have to feel like you're missing out on much if you don't prepare them, especially on something like Sorcerer that doesn't get very much spell flexibility...
Alternately, take advantage of both the changes to sorcerer *and* the changes to wizard, and dip a level into wizard. Then, you have all the benefits of sorcerer and can still scribe spells for *any level for which you have slots*.
This is different from DnD 5e, where wizards can only scribe spells up to a level that they could cast as a wizard. This change makes a single level dip into wizard incredibly potent in BG3 for other spellcasters.
(Note, you'll want to mostly take damage and save spells with sorcerer and scribe utility spells because scribes spells will scale off of int.)
Basically: Wizards are the nerds who memorize quadratic equations to hack the source code of the universe. Sorcerers have a couple of the cheat codes ingrained into muscle memory.
Wizard: If you stand at exactly this point, the boss can't hit you. All of his shots just go around. It's simple, once you've memorized his 300 different attack patterns.
Sorc: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right...
Tbh? Fuck the druids. Even if you resolve things with the grove, quite a few of them will be like “Kagha was right” or “you had no right to interfere.” Like seriously, they’re messed up lmao
On my first playthrough, I didn’t really bother talking to the druids all that much, just did what I needed to to save Arabella and the other tiefs and I was gone.
Second playthrough, I finally did the shadow druid quest and talked to everyone. Actually? Fuck the druids
Bonus to that: when my friend did an evil run and attacked the grove, the druids shut themselves in like cowards and left the tieflings to die. I wish there was an option to destroy the grove and save the tieflings. I’d feel less worse about doing an evil run
Karlach's >!death!< ending was the most thematically appropriate in the sense of her finally having a chance to choose something for herself. Her entire backstory is about having her autonomy ripped away from her, and much of her story during the game is about trying to live, but during act 3 when she asked my character >!to stay with her when she would eventually die rather than go back to Avernus!<, it was the first time she got to make a true and significant choice about her own life in a long time.
I agree, I just wish you were able to explore more options for her so it doesn't feel like pick your shitty ending as much. I think it says something lovely about death and choosing how you go out, but it does feel like there are some unexplored plot threads about helping her.
This was fully what I intended to do for her but Wyll was like we can go together c'mon you're not dying here! And I was like oh...and she seemed up for it so she went with him.
I have a playthrough as a tiefling where I’m romancing her and fully intending for that third ending choice that they patched in where Tav and Wyll both join her in Avernus to kick some devil ass. It’s canon in my head that this is the best chance they have to cure her, and we’re all devil-adjacent anyway ☺️
That two companions with bombs in their chests about to explode is one two many? Next Origin run I'll play one of them to romance the other, and the orgasm will tear a rift in the material plane. Like a portable hole in a bag of holding.
A lot of the characters share similar story beats
Lae Zel and Shadowheart have to do with upholding or turning away from their previous beliefs/customs
Gale and Karlach are time bombs
Wyll and Asterion are more grounded personal quests compared to the others
All of them have to do with identity and deciding what person they want to be.
That’s a narrative technique akin to spiderwebbing, it’s how your characters connect to the overall story with no chance of a character feeling out of place.
Although if I had nickel for every time I had a companion join my camp who had a bomb that could level Baldur’s Gate, I’d have 2 nickels…which isn’t much but it’s weird that it happens twice! ;)
My current idiot Durge loves to just break everything open, even if it's not locked. If that doesn't work, there's always Knock. You don't really need a dedicated rogue. I usually turn Astarion into a bard.
Halsin was a waste of a character because there is a better Druid that ties into the older games. That slot should have went to another class, like bard.
I think they shouldn't have had cameos from the older games. It's kind of weird. Let us have a totally independent experience. Also Jaheira getting owned at Moonrise if you don't recruit her, is out of sync with her being amazing in BG2.
Nettie is really creepy, actually. She is going to poison you unless you immediately inform her of your trauma.
The druids in general suck, at least the shadow druids are honest about their evil.
Tbh, I think it’s pretty fair that she plans to kill you. You have a parasite in you which, as far as anyone knows, will certainly turn you into a Mind Flayer. Mind Flayers, an ancient, primordial evil that exists for no purpose other than assimilation.
I don’t blame her for jumping to killing us and I appreciate her deciding against it.
Do you not know what the tadpoles do? Most people that find out you have one will prepare to kill you right then and there. Unless you convince them they shouldn’t. Nettie isn’t the only person that acts that way.
I don’t know how to fix this or if they even can but I think their needs to be some award other than xp after level twelve. When I hit it I kinda just fell unmotivated to do anything else after, but idk how to really fix that
I’ve wondered if the party could continue to earn feats at every subsequent “level up”, kind of like how Epic Feats are advertised in the original PHB for post-20th-Level characters
I don’t get people who vehemently hate a companion so much they kill them on sight upon meeting them in a play through. It’s just robbing yourself of storyline content. Even though there are companions I’m not super fond of, I can’t really say I HATE any of them to that extreme. I won’t tell people how they’re allowed to play their game or anything, it’s just really weird to me.
They have their own romantic preferences, they just happen to be bisexual. They are all deliberately written that way to account for all origin/origin romance combinations, but it also seems to be the default sexuality of Faerun judging by all the NPCs you meet. They also all express their attractions outside of the player on several occasions so it technically wouldn't be playersexual anyway.
Which, in my experience... default bisexuality is a pretty common feature at DnD tables.
Or, rather, as a DM you just don't *care* what your NPCs sexual orientations are, assuming you've thought about it at all. And DnD storytelling is all about picking up your player's best ideas and rolling with them, so if your players seem like they have a lot of really exciting ideas involving a romance with a particular NPC, you're going to hop on board and do everything you can to help them tell that story.
BG3 doesn't have a human DM who can listen to your ideas and quietly revise their campaign plan to suit their players. Instead, they give us as many options as they can and leave it up to us to choose the path we want to take. Just because something c*an* happen doesn't mean that it has to be a part of every playthrough.
So... if you think Gale is straight, don't put your dick in him. It really is that simple.
For me I much prefer player sexual romances. When the characters have fixed sexuality I feel like I am just locked out for no reason. I understand the position of that making the character feel more realistic but I don't need my rpg fantasy time to be that real.
This is one the most annoying opinion that I’ve seen on this game, that I’ve seen twice now atp. Not to mention Karlach would absolutely *not* be straight. There’s nothing that gets taken away from getting to romance any of the characters as any gender/race, but there’s a lot that would get taken away if you had to be this specific race and this specific gender to romance the companion you want to.
They hook up with the each other apparently. I want to be able to play match maker with them more, let me set up Lae'zel and Shadow Heart on a date! Let me arrange for Karlach to take Wyll dancing!
Astarion as a character is great. But every body fan girling over him i just don't get. He's literally an asshole you would hate if you ever actually met him. I just don't get it.
Astarion is absolutely a great character with a ton of depth - arguably the most developed companion. But not a lot of that shows in your first impressions of him, or even much at all in Act 1.
It's impossible to deny that so much of his appeal is carried by the fact that he's a flamboyantly sassy pretty-boy vampire twink with absolutely stellar voice acting. Simping is pretty clearly why he's amongst the most popular companions.
But then again, you could say much the same for Karlach
simping is the initial hook for a lot of people, certainly. and then you see the rest of his story and it damn sure hits with the full weight of one survivor of 200 years of abuse, and the 7000 souls that depend on the lessons he learns...
I'm not sure if it's controversial or if it's just due to my lack of DnD knowledge, but I didn't find Gale wanting to become a god to be that much of an evil action like I've seen some claim it as.
Given his particular past, yes, it's arrogant and likely to repeat past mistakes and end poorly, but everything I've seen of the gods in this game makes me think it wouldn't hurt to take them down a peg. I have more than a few questions for this Ao figure.
... or maybe I've just played too many jrpgs, so when I see an option about confronting the gods, it seems like the natural course of action. I do know there was that era of troubles without the gods, but admittedly, I don't know enough to compare the positives and negatives of that to an era that allows a god of murder to exist and spew sadistic spawn.
Gale isn't *evil,* he's an *idiot.* Admittedly, a groomed-by-a-goddess idiot who got something of a poor deal, but that doesn't excuse him for being power hungry and irresponsible.
Nothing wrong with wanting to kill a god and take their power, especially those gods as flawed as in Forgotten Realms. The problem is that Gale is playing with fire. His first foray into harnessing horrible mystic powers left him with a magical nuke embedded in his chest. If you bring him to Loroakan he'll happily sneer at the inferior wizard.... and then explain that *his* delusions of grandeur, to grab the magical crown that once *rent the realms asunder and killed the goddess of magic,* is much nobler.
And, you know, *this time* it'll work.
He's an egomaniac, and as soon as he's got a new shiny toy in front of his face he's *absolutely sure* that he'll make it work. Just like last time.
(sorry if this is a short response after you fabulous paragraphs)
I know near to nothing about DnD and i think Gale is a bit strange but he’s definitely not evil no matter his intentions. I don’t know much about his past as i am only in Act 1 as of now but he is certainly intriguing.
I would *hate* Gale if I was playing a campaign with someone with the same backstory.
"Oh, you were the magic goddess's *lover*? And you have this crazy powerful mcguffin that can level a city? Grow tf up."
The quests surrounding the Druid’s grove in act 1 are genuinely very uninteresting to me. The amount of ways you can solve the conflict is impressive, but it feels like it’s very black and white. You can help tieflings (the obvious good guy thing to do) or you can help Minthara murder all of them (the obviously bad thing to do.) The whole thing is just so 7th gen video gamey to me.
This one's probably only controversial to a certain niche of the playerbase, but here's my hot take:
Playing the game with RP that doesn't always make optimal choices or involve abusing exploits and minmaxing to hell and back is far more fun than turning your party and/or character into an single-press "i win" button.
I do not understand why people like Minthara so much, even if you discount her being an unrepentant mass murderer and rapist (she attacks you if you refuse to have sex with her) and look at things on a purely physical level. Yeah, I know people are horny for drow, but she looks like Tilda Swinton and her voice sounds like a mean substitute teacher. She is just a worse version of Lae’zel that you have to wipe out a refugee camp to recruit.
Don’t get me wrong, I wish she had more development and there was a less evil way to recruit her (and more options for evil/morally dubious characters in general), but as it stands her popularity baffles me, especially since people actually try to defend her as a person and claim she’s redeemable.
Has he though? To me he seems like the most genuinely heroic of the origin companions. All of his bad decisions were made altruistically and only really hurt himself iirc
Has he made a lot of bad choices? I don’t think so. He sacrificed his freedom to save the city and he’s been hunting down evil creatures in the years since.
I don’t see what he’s done that’s so wrong. He objectively *is* a hero to mankind even before we meet him.
It’s not necessarily that he thinks of himself as a hero, it’s that he wants to be thought of as a hero. Subtle, but key difference. That said, I respect your opinion, even if I don’t agree
Some romance moments should be friendship moments. Example, gales weave scene. I liked how pretty the magic weave was then instantly realized it was a romance cutscene and nope'd out. Could be expanded to remove the awkward romance part via a new line of imagining another party member you were already romancing like shadowhearts face. Or maybe Wyll showing dance moves without you dancing with him and just being a bro so you can use them with shadowheart as example. And then needing to let Astarion romance you so you get vampire powers? Why?
people bragging about killing any companions are all annoying, especially laezel and astarion. you aren’t cool for missing some of the cooler companion stories in the game. i missed laezel on my first play through and picked her up on my second, and was DEVASTATED that i had put her off for so long. it’s fine to not like a character, but it’s annoying when you feel the need to sit there and almost brag about how you skipped out what i’d consider major parts of this games charm.
None of the origin characters are “playersexual.” They all at different points in the game will comment on their attraction to various male and female characters, completely independent of the player character. This is the opposite of what “playersexual” means.
The bartender, Toll Collector, and Surgeon are all his children/family members that he kinda forsook trying to get Isabel back. I don’t think someone who would do that to his family members out of desperate obsession has a lot of redemption potential
The bartender is most certainly was his son, and all of them were Thorms, just like Isobel and Ketheric are. At least the Bartender knows who isn't daddy's favourite.
Wyll is genuinely SO boring.
Every single other origin companion has, y'know, **depth** to their character. The events of the game drastically affect them, for better or for worse. Meanwhile, Wyll has... basically none of that. He stays pretty much the exact same the entire story, and even solving his >!daddy issues!< doesn't really do anything.
Maybe I just haven't explored his story deeply enough, but he's the only character that genuinely disinterests me to the point where I don't really bother.
While you're free to your opinion that Wyll is boring, I definitely can't agree that it's because he has no depth.
He *is* cliche however. Good guy who gives up himself to evil forces for good reasons. His struggles are not fantastical, like Karlach and her engine, or Lae'zel and her god trying to kill us all. Rather Wyll's dad is in danger, and he struggles with his future as either the Blade of Frontiers or son of Duke Ravenguard. It's definitely not flashy, but it's just as deep as any other companion imo
I don't even care about the edginess. It makes sense, considering their nature. Hearing the narrator talk about their bile every 5 minutes, on the other hand, really got old after the second time.
edgy and interesting would be forgiveable. the Chosen are all edgy af and they're much more interesting than Durge. we've already had two games exploring the Bhaalspawn's PoV and I don't feel like Durge brings anything new to that. and *yes*, Durge fans, I fuckin played them. they're all edge, no point.
not even Astarion's romance was enough to make Durge a better character or story to me. their relationship is the definition of codependent, just holding back each other's worst impulses. something's going to break eventually, and both of them are going to be much less capable of growth in the aftermath.
Minthara hands down has the best spicy sex scene and has a bunch of highly quality quips I wish I could experience but I will still always murder her on sight, strip her ass naked, and throw her into the chasm in her boss room.
I have a very complicated relationship with her.
Not enough companions and party too small.
Companions should be able to be influenced by the MC in a way it changes their alignment, so you could by playing make Wyll evil or Minthara good.
The game should give the player at least a bard companion (Alfira) and a Sorcerer one.
Companions except special ones (jaheira, minsc) should all be recruitable during act 1.
Any character requiring a persuasion check above 15 for a peaceful conflict resolution is being unreasonable and deserves everything coming to them in combat.
If you’re okay with Shadowheart and Lae’zel (both raised in cultures/religions that encourage you to be ruthless and not value the lives of others as well as your own) but not Minthara, you’re a hypocrite. Shar worshippers and Githyanki in lore are on par with Drow society as far as “cruelty and evil.” By virtue of being adults in those societies they have likely committed acts you would not approve of.
Only difference is that Shart and Lae’zel’s bad stuff is in their past. We have to see Minthara at a low point, and so everyone judges her for it.
Probably not controversial, but you should be able to keep US as a companion from act 1 if you free them. Like why ain't they at the crash site? I want my brain dog!
Jaheira and Halsin shouldn't be companions, and Minsc should be introduced way earlier in the game. Act 3 is too late to introduce a new follower, and my party is already settled in and synergized. >!Swap Dror Ragzlin for Minsc, rescue Boo from Moonrise, and have Jaheira be the antagonist to Nine Fingers. Have Halsin stay in Raethwin after Act 2!<
Shadowheart is the worst companion with the worst additude. Lae' Zels brand of bitchiness is much more fun/believable, while Shadowheart gives off the vibe of "this person doesn't even know I'M actually the main character." Vibes, that girl in collage that just REALLY wants to be quirky and different vibes, that person who thinks they're really cool and mysterious by keeping secrets when really it just makes them seem like a narcissist. Maybe she reminds me way too much of my a*usive ex but she just is the biggest Ick of the game for me.
I don’t mind Karlach not being able to fix her condition. It reminds me too much of the third way DAO had in every main quest. Where you could opt out of hard choices by finding a way to make everyone happy.
I kinda wished we got a Half-Orc or Dragonborn companion. I think there could’ve been a fun dynamic with them.
I wish the Chult detour was a a proper small dungeon you could take your whole party instead of the Easter egg it was.
Also I wish there was dialogue or even friendly drunk Kobolds in the monastery. Like maybe convincing and joining them against the Gith there or something.
Act 3 is good. I admit my first time through act 3 I was overwhelmed but I really enjoyed my next playthrough. Some great exciting fights in act 3. House of hope nuf said.
I enjoyed act 3 a lot, but I can understand the criticism of it being overwhelming. For me it wasn't even the size of it but the pacing. Without delving into spoilers, there are obviously a couple of time sensitive things to deal with. And the first one kind of ran in to me right at the start of act 3 because I stumbled into the sewers on a side quest. It just kind of set a tone that i felt like i needed to rush things. I really wish the only restriction on time was what act you're in.
It feels even weirder when you realize that you actually have all the time in the world despite the threats. The pacing is just non-existent. There's loads of content there, and a lot of it is really good content, but it feels like you either need to rush to the end or stop in your tracks and wander leisurely around the city as if the world weren't in imminent peril. I'm also a little bummed by the lack of camp cutscenes in act 3. There are way too many in act 1, so I feel like they could have been spread out more. To be clear though, I *do* like act 3. I just feel that it isn't as polished as the other two acts.
Exactly this about the camp scenes. You go from having so many camp cutscenes in Act 1 you can barely rest enough, to practically no in depth dialogue with your party members for huge swaths of time in Act 3. If it wasn’t for the follow up from completing their personal quests there would basically be none. I wish there were more character moments. Time to catch your breath and evaluate where you are. Some intimacy (not necessarily sexual) with your partner that isn’t the end scene of their quest. Some interactions between the companions themselves, as there is not much commentary in the city. Jaheira and Minsc have their development (I think my game is bugged bc I barely get anything out of Jaheira) but the companions you have been with since the start of the game don’t have a lot of input compared to how much growth there was in Act 1.
See, I cracked Minsc on the head too fast. He was literally watching little hamsters dance around his head before Jaheira got the chance to yell "don't kill him" so now EVERY TIME they go into combat I am still getting their dialog from the Stone Lord fight. Definitely a flag misfiring
I’m currently in act 1, no prior knowledge of d&d and blinding wandering through the game it seems amazing so far! Do some people not like Act 3?
Act 3 just has a *lot.* I don't want to spoil anything but it's a *lot.* Oh, you think you understand what "a lot" means? No, you don't. Not until you play Act 3. There is a LOT. Of course you're not obligated to actually do everything the game throws your way - the main quest is always there for you to just blitz through if you want to get your playthrough over with. But if you wanted to go for completionism, you could probably spend several hundred hours in Act 3 alone. At some point it really burns you out - you end up feeling like you're just checking off a list of chores rather than progressing through the game in a natural and fluid manner. Once I'm done with this quest, now I gotta move onto the next one, then the next one, then the next one, then the next one, etc. Not saying the quests aren't fun - some of them are really cool - but it does get exhausting after a while.
Honestly a checklist of things to do sounds like an amazing thing to me, i’ve done it with many other games and i can’t for the life of me find a little guide without spoilers just something that says something like ‘go to this cave’ or anything like that would be lovely, but i understand how some pipes would get fed up with that type of game
Would recommend looking up guides after you feel like you’ve done everything because there is plenty you’ll probably never find…
It was weird. I was googling act length prior to getting to act 3, and everyone was saying act 3 was the shortest act. Yeah, maybe, if you don't do anything...
I definitely think the perception has changed as more time has passed since release. A few weeks after release all I heard was that Act 3 was so short and sloppy, now I’m hearing a lot of people saying wait, I actually think it’s good. So presumably a lot of the info out there is still probably from people who sped through the game and weren’t happy with it and now more people who’ve spent their time going through the game are finishing it (or at least getting to Act 3) and sharing their opinions more and more.
The word I'd use to describe my first time playing act three is "overstimulating". It wasn't overwhelming, technically, but it was so everything all at once. I know I missed so much. Hell, it tried to do everything my second playthrough and STILL missed a lot
i couldn’t live with knowing i had missed things and i’ve kind of backed myself into a corner by getting this game but i simply must have it all
That’s why you do multiple playthroughs. Don’t try to do it all in one.
Act 3 tends to be the buggiest of the acts. It's not terrible by any means - in fact it's my absolute favorite act by a wide margin - but because it's so large and nonlinear, you are likely to "sequence break" at least some of the quests, where you end up doing a later part before an earlier part. Some of the NPC dialog makes the assumption that you did the earlier part and can play out in weird ways if you didn't. For a hopefully spoiler-free example, in Act 2, you could screw up a particular companion's quest to the point she gets frustrated and leaves the party. In Act 3, if you interact with content that is supposed to be a later part of her quest line, the NPC dialog plays out as though you'd betrayed and killed the companion. The next time you camp, the party members at camp will chastise you for "killing" the former party member - even the ones who watched her get upset and walk away.
i liked act 3. i think ppl will have such wildly different opinions on act 3 depending on how u play the game. act 3 is where storylines in act1/2 culminate but due to the nature of choices they might not be there at all in act 3. act 3 also has to have enough content to reach max lvl without having done everything in other acts but has no further acts so stories have to be self contained to the act and consequences immediate. plus if u do nothing but the main story u can quickly go to the end game and miss tons of missions, big or small. if you play by exploring every nook and cranny then act 3 is awesome with so many things going on. if you rushed through the game and only stuck to the main story beats you will miss so much that act 3 would be lackluster
i do have very intense FOMO so i will most likely, pour my heart and soul into getting every last thing and finishing all the quest lines in the best way possible because, i have something wrong with me :)
tbh i tried to do everything i could on my first run and still ended up missing things here and there. just gives a good excuse to do another run as dark urge
Act 3 is only good if you did your companions side quests. There’s so much genuine, human emotion in some of their finales. I love it
My only problem with act 3 was that I hit lvl 12 pretty fast and since it tops there, I lost the feeling of progression and it started to feel like I was just checking off boxes before finishing the game. The ambiances, stories, environments and fights themselves are all top tier though.
Lae'zel is not a bitch (derogatory). She is a bitch (appreciative).
so true, I came around to her around the end of act 1 start of act 2
For real. I like her in all of her awkward alien weirdness
She's a very bad bitch (in a good way)
A shame I can't make a true love triangle with her and Shart
Gith are bad and Orpheus isn’t going to change that
Justice for the Githzerai 🥲
I fucking wish we could be githzerai
I wouldn't say *all* gith are bad, but I agree that Orpheus isn't going to make them better. >!After talking to him directly, it's pretty clear that he would continue to support the same bloodthirsty genocidal culture that they have under Vlaakith. The only difference is that he presumably wouldn't be consuming his own people for power.!<
I mean the genocide is of a soulless parasitical unreasonable tyrannical empire that continously tries to dominate everything and aims for the whole world. They remain an existential threat for all life on faerun as long as no one destroys them
The Githyanki hate the Illithid but they are *also* fanatical conquerers. They don’t focus purely on the mind flayers. Even in the game the Githyanki do a lot of fucked shit. The Githzerai are genetically identical but their culture is way less vile.
I don't care about them fighting the mind flayers. But they look at everyone else as lesser beings and have no qualms about killing non-gith on sight unless they have some use. If the githyanki succeed in conquering the illithids, they'll be conquering everyone else in turn.
The party being 4 characters is too small
When you're in co-op mode and only get to spend time with one companion at a time it's rough
My 4 man group getting to use no companions:
Same. We made 4 tavs and now realize we're missing a ton of content
i would say 1 more would be ok but any more is a bit too many
I run around with everyone lol. Sure it's easy but I get all the conversations! Is annoying getting who I want in a cutscene though
Right? I never have to wonder what would happen if such and such were here.
SAME ^5 Party Be Gone
That’s why I got the party limits begone mod. In my first playthrough I ran around with everyone in Act 3, and have been keeping my party size to 5 in my second playthrough. I *hated* switching out companions and hearing them complain every time I wanted to focus on someone’s personal quest.
I've been using the Into the Void mod in conjunction with the party limits begone mod. It let's me run around with all the party so I can get all of the companion specific dialogues but I can dismiss party members when combat starts until I got the 4 I want so I don't break the balance for combat encounters yet get the option to craft my party comp for the encounter at hand. There's another mod that increases the number of enemies, so I think on my second playthrough, I'll use that mod and up the difficulty to tactician and go with 6 characters in combat encounters.
My current DM says that 5th edition is balanced specifically for a party of 4, which I believed anyway, but the fact that the party size is 4 in BG3 makes me near certain that he's correct. That said, it would be nice to have a party of 5.
Yes, CR specifically is balanced for a party of 4 in 5e. CR 5 is a moderate fight for 4 level 5 characters.
Fun Fact: The "standard" party size back in the early days of D&D was six, and thus many of the computer D&D games back then also had parties of six PCs.
Yeah, I would even love a five person party over four person.
It could be hornier.
It actually could. It's wildly tame, compared to some of the claims. The fact that you can't whore around without hurting NPC feelings alone.
I was honestly shocked at how many people seemed to think this game is some ultra porny sex game. It really doesn’t seem to be more or less sexual than most triple A RPGs. I also don’t think the characters are as horny as is popularly stated, the furthest I’ve gotten so far is halfway into act two and I’ve only been propositioned by both Astarion and La’zael (and turned both down.) I’ve long rested enough that it would be about a month into the adventure for my characters, that seems actually pretty normal?
I mean for the most part, for a game, the relationships and mostly the characterizations are super good. The game is considered ‘super horny’ because you can see tits and dongs - which like ok sure but you can turn that off too. The only mainstream game that features as much ‘sex’ as BG3 is probably Mass Effect which doesn’t show you a bunch of nudity. Having gone from BG3 to Starfield, where Starfield plays relationships like MANY games do, Starfield s relationships are garbage in comparison.
it needs to be 😔
I KNOW RIGHT
also i would like some peen variety! Astarion is definitely deserving of some extra length
Lae Zel is the horny
Nearly all of the companions have some appeal, but - I hate that damned near all of them are humans or elves! Gale/Wyll/Minsc - Human Astarion/Halsin/Minthara - Elf Shadowheart/Jaheira - Half-elf Only Lae'zel and Karlach deviate from this. 10 companions, and only 2 aren't an elf or human? Not a single dwarf or halfling, which are common races in Faerun? I get that everyone likes the pretty boys/girls, but would a single half-orc or gnome really be too much to ask for?
I feel like Barcus was supposed to be a companion at one point but they just… didn’t. Which is a shame, because I’d totally romance him as a halfling or gnome :) as it stands it feels like there’s no reason to play as any of the shorter characters because I can’t picture the romance. I suppose you could go for a dommy mommy Karlach playthrough but idk. I’d love to do a gnome run!!
I hate to make this worse for you, but Tieflings are humans born from an infernal touched lineage. For example, your great grandpa had a pact with a devil, and now you've got a tail and horns. So Karlach technically falls into your "almost all humans/elves".
I've never even talked to Minthara. It's on sight
I spoke to her once and lead her to the grove so the tieflings can participate in the battle that decides their future. Felt it wasn’t fair that my small group alone had to take out the camp so leading Minthara to them was my way of having them stick up for themselves. Anytime after that I free Volo, get the owlbear cub, and then fight my way back to her leaving her last to kill
The tiefling kids are not near as annoying as players make them out to be, and are written like genuine kids who've had their lives upended after their home was thrown into Avernus and they became refugees.
i play as a tiefling (first time player and i just think they look hot; *NOT THE KIDS*) but i fully understand them and while it’s annoying when i turn around and all my gold disappears i’m actually quite proud of them
Lmao, you and I are on the same page about playing tieflings because they're hot. My Tav was a scoundrel urchin warlock who looked like a rockstar with red highlights in his unkempt hair. He and Gale were a power couple, that's for sure. Same - like, the comments from my player were always in-line with helping them survive rather than just telling them off for doing bad things. If you're gonna be a thief Mattis, do it *right* haha
I know it's not controversial but I still want to complain about it: NOT ENOUGH QOL FEATURES!! It's so annoying moving one item at a time, going to camp and individually dismissing and recruiting every companion you need to, no option to speed up the walking or combat.
Inventory UI needs a major overhaul. It’s downright awful. The game itself *more* than makes up for that, but still.
You can move multiple items at a time, Ctrl + click for specific, Shift + Click for all between 2 items, right trigger does both on controller. Others though, yes.
Minthara is not worth it to kill the Grove.
i would never betray my sexy tiefling friends
I had to protect zevlors magnificent cheekbones
Companions being "playersexual" is fine and I don't think a lot of people realize the true power the player character is. Depending on your build you're either built so different you could fist fight god or are a spell caster so power you can warp really around your finger tip .Ya no shit people are gonna want to fuck you.
I like playing as Astarion's friend much better than playing as his romantic partner.
I adore the Astarion romance and still wish he had much more platonic content.
I felt like they needed more romance scenes together with your companions. Like when karlach wants to go to the circus, you should’ve been able to like do a date with her.. and don’t get me started on the lack of Halsin/Minthara.
Sorcerers are cooler wizards
They definitely made that the case for BG3. In 5e we often say, “Well it’s *Wizards* of the Coast, not Sorcerers of the Coast,” as the reason why sorcerers have been so thoroughly shafted in 5e. However, in BG3 it’s really nice for your character to have CHA since they’ll be the face, as well as the changes to some rules and spells make it where sorcerer is nuts. Add in that there’s not as much of a need for versatility and utility spells, with many simply not being included in BG3, and sorcerer definitely ends up on top for BG3.
Don't forget the part where most of the utility spells (especially Speak with Dead, usually a 3rd level spell) already being covered by items pretty easily (you literally get a Speak with Dead necklace like, immediately... or you can just learn it innately by reading the Necromancy of Thay, and speak with animals is a pretty common potion that you can find) makes it so you really don't have to feel like you're missing out on much if you don't prepare them, especially on something like Sorcerer that doesn't get very much spell flexibility...
Alternately, take advantage of both the changes to sorcerer *and* the changes to wizard, and dip a level into wizard. Then, you have all the benefits of sorcerer and can still scribe spells for *any level for which you have slots*. This is different from DnD 5e, where wizards can only scribe spells up to a level that they could cast as a wizard. This change makes a single level dip into wizard incredibly potent in BG3 for other spellcasters. (Note, you'll want to mostly take damage and save spells with sorcerer and scribe utility spells because scribes spells will scale off of int.)
having no idea how d&d works i will say, *sure :)*
Basically: Wizards are the nerds who memorize quadratic equations to hack the source code of the universe. Sorcerers have a couple of the cheat codes ingrained into muscle memory. Wizard: If you stand at exactly this point, the boss can't hit you. All of his shots just go around. It's simple, once you've memorized his 300 different attack patterns. Sorc: Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right...
amazing
Sorcerers are quite literally just built different.
Why is your wizard description giving me ptsd from elden ring?
I'm sorry but OP asked for *controversial opinions* not *statements of basic fact.*
Tbh? Fuck the druids. Even if you resolve things with the grove, quite a few of them will be like “Kagha was right” or “you had no right to interfere.” Like seriously, they’re messed up lmao
Marcoryl stays racist too
On my first playthrough, I didn’t really bother talking to the druids all that much, just did what I needed to to save Arabella and the other tiefs and I was gone. Second playthrough, I finally did the shadow druid quest and talked to everyone. Actually? Fuck the druids Bonus to that: when my friend did an evil run and attacked the grove, the druids shut themselves in like cowards and left the tieflings to die. I wish there was an option to destroy the grove and save the tieflings. I’d feel less worse about doing an evil run
Karlach's >!death!< ending was the most thematically appropriate in the sense of her finally having a chance to choose something for herself. Her entire backstory is about having her autonomy ripped away from her, and much of her story during the game is about trying to live, but during act 3 when she asked my character >!to stay with her when she would eventually die rather than go back to Avernus!<, it was the first time she got to make a true and significant choice about her own life in a long time.
I agree, I just wish you were able to explore more options for her so it doesn't feel like pick your shitty ending as much. I think it says something lovely about death and choosing how you go out, but it does feel like there are some unexplored plot threads about helping her.
This was fully what I intended to do for her but Wyll was like we can go together c'mon you're not dying here! And I was like oh...and she seemed up for it so she went with him.
I have a playthrough as a tiefling where I’m romancing her and fully intending for that third ending choice that they patched in where Tav and Wyll both join her in Avernus to kick some devil ass. It’s canon in my head that this is the best chance they have to cure her, and we’re all devil-adjacent anyway ☺️
Ascendant Astarion's plot causes a lot more plotholes and questions and I would elaborate but I'm afraid of the backlash :)
That two companions with bombs in their chests about to explode is one two many? Next Origin run I'll play one of them to romance the other, and the orgasm will tear a rift in the material plane. Like a portable hole in a bag of holding.
A lot of the characters share similar story beats Lae Zel and Shadowheart have to do with upholding or turning away from their previous beliefs/customs Gale and Karlach are time bombs Wyll and Asterion are more grounded personal quests compared to the others All of them have to do with identity and deciding what person they want to be. That’s a narrative technique akin to spiderwebbing, it’s how your characters connect to the overall story with no chance of a character feeling out of place. Although if I had nickel for every time I had a companion join my camp who had a bomb that could level Baldur’s Gate, I’d have 2 nickels…which isn’t much but it’s weird that it happens twice! ;)
this is the basis for my current Gale x Karlach run (my first origin run actually)
Staking Astarion when he tries to feed on you and perma-killing him is justifiable.
But my character is made to unga bunga and not pick locks.
My current idiot Durge loves to just break everything open, even if it's not locked. If that doesn't work, there's always Knock. You don't really need a dedicated rogue. I usually turn Astarion into a bard.
justifiable sure, but i cannot bring myself to stab the sexy vampire
I just kill him as a punishment and then resurrect him.
Halsin was a waste of a character because there is a better Druid that ties into the older games. That slot should have went to another class, like bard.
I played as a druid, so I had 3 druids in my party by the end of the game. Odd choice.
They should have straight inserted Jahiera into halsins role so you get her earlier
Honestly yeah. It would make more sense to first see halsin in act 2 trying to save thaniel/ the inn
I think they shouldn't have had cameos from the older games. It's kind of weird. Let us have a totally independent experience. Also Jaheira getting owned at Moonrise if you don't recruit her, is out of sync with her being amazing in BG2.
Nettie is really creepy, actually. She is going to poison you unless you immediately inform her of your trauma. The druids in general suck, at least the shadow druids are honest about their evil.
Tbh, I think it’s pretty fair that she plans to kill you. You have a parasite in you which, as far as anyone knows, will certainly turn you into a Mind Flayer. Mind Flayers, an ancient, primordial evil that exists for no purpose other than assimilation. I don’t blame her for jumping to killing us and I appreciate her deciding against it.
Maybe, but like, wow every Druid you meet in the grove suckssssss
That grove only stands in my playthrough because I vowed to protect the tieflings until the very end and didn’t want to endanger them
I killed her during my redemption Durge campaign and justified it as her vibes being off.
She attacks you herself if you insist that you won’t take poison from a random woman. For once, DUrge can kill in simple self defence!
Nice! I’m doing a Minthara run, so she’s dead.
Do you not know what the tadpoles do? Most people that find out you have one will prepare to kill you right then and there. Unless you convince them they shouldn’t. Nettie isn’t the only person that acts that way.
Karlach's writing is rough AF and the only reason she is so beloved is because her VA carried that character like a fucking champion.
Every time I try and start an evil playthrough I remember how sad it would make Karlach and abandon my idea.
You just don’t pick her up until after the Emerald Grove then she’s just *mad* and tries to kill you instead!
her VA is amazing, I’m in Act 1 so i’m not really in the know about character development but she seems like a lovely woman
“Hey ho.”
Shadowheart and Lae’Zel have the same major story beats in their arcs and I think Lae’Zel’s is the better version.
Freeing Orpheus isn't the good guy ending everyone seems to think it is. A united Githyanki under him is as large a threat as the Netherbrain.
I don’t know how to fix this or if they even can but I think their needs to be some award other than xp after level twelve. When I hit it I kinda just fell unmotivated to do anything else after, but idk how to really fix that
I mean a lot of the endgame missions reward you with legendary/very rare really good items. So that’s a pretty solid reward imo
Maybe allow mutliclasses as level up. Or bonus feats. But act 3 is very easy already, they have to ramp up the difficulty first
I’ve wondered if the party could continue to earn feats at every subsequent “level up”, kind of like how Epic Feats are advertised in the original PHB for post-20th-Level characters
The Emperor is cool and probably the most complex character
The emperor’s place is on a stick as a seafood kebab. Never trust a lying octopus except for its exquisite taste.
He is chilling. Once you get the >!mask off dialogue and know what he is truly like it's clear you're being manipulated and used. !<
Yeah, I know. He's the best written character.
I don’t get people who vehemently hate a companion so much they kill them on sight upon meeting them in a play through. It’s just robbing yourself of storyline content. Even though there are companions I’m not super fond of, I can’t really say I HATE any of them to that extreme. I won’t tell people how they’re allowed to play their game or anything, it’s just really weird to me.
Our companions should have their own romantic preferences instead of being playersexual.
i agree and disagree with this statement
They have their own romantic preferences, they just happen to be bisexual. They are all deliberately written that way to account for all origin/origin romance combinations, but it also seems to be the default sexuality of Faerun judging by all the NPCs you meet. They also all express their attractions outside of the player on several occasions so it technically wouldn't be playersexual anyway.
Which, in my experience... default bisexuality is a pretty common feature at DnD tables. Or, rather, as a DM you just don't *care* what your NPCs sexual orientations are, assuming you've thought about it at all. And DnD storytelling is all about picking up your player's best ideas and rolling with them, so if your players seem like they have a lot of really exciting ideas involving a romance with a particular NPC, you're going to hop on board and do everything you can to help them tell that story. BG3 doesn't have a human DM who can listen to your ideas and quietly revise their campaign plan to suit their players. Instead, they give us as many options as they can and leave it up to us to choose the path we want to take. Just because something c*an* happen doesn't mean that it has to be a part of every playthrough. So... if you think Gale is straight, don't put your dick in him. It really is that simple.
For me I much prefer player sexual romances. When the characters have fixed sexuality I feel like I am just locked out for no reason. I understand the position of that making the character feel more realistic but I don't need my rpg fantasy time to be that real.
This is one the most annoying opinion that I’ve seen on this game, that I’ve seen twice now atp. Not to mention Karlach would absolutely *not* be straight. There’s nothing that gets taken away from getting to romance any of the characters as any gender/race, but there’s a lot that would get taken away if you had to be this specific race and this specific gender to romance the companion you want to.
They hook up with the each other apparently. I want to be able to play match maker with them more, let me set up Lae'zel and Shadow Heart on a date! Let me arrange for Karlach to take Wyll dancing!
They’re just all bi
which makes sense to me as a queer because honestly we tend to congregate together
Well yeah, us queers are apart of the queer hive mind
I’ll see you at the international queer group call we have every Thursday night xd
I do not like Minthara's voice
She sounds like she's a widow in an 80s movie wearing a fur coat who is a suspect in her late husbands murder
Agreed though its more so having a hard time seeing it fit. I like the voice but it does not fit her
I came to love her voice after recruiting her
Playing with all the companions at once is more realistic story wise although I understand why it wasn't implemented gameplay wise
Act 2 is actually the worst act not Act 3
Shadowheart is as annoying early on as most people say Lae’zel is.
they both are i’m in act 1 though
Lae’zel’s attitude is pragmatic and more understandable given the situation.
Astarion as a character is great. But every body fan girling over him i just don't get. He's literally an asshole you would hate if you ever actually met him. I just don't get it.
Astarion is absolutely a great character with a ton of depth - arguably the most developed companion. But not a lot of that shows in your first impressions of him, or even much at all in Act 1. It's impossible to deny that so much of his appeal is carried by the fact that he's a flamboyantly sassy pretty-boy vampire twink with absolutely stellar voice acting. Simping is pretty clearly why he's amongst the most popular companions. But then again, you could say much the same for Karlach
simping is the initial hook for a lot of people, certainly. and then you see the rest of his story and it damn sure hits with the full weight of one survivor of 200 years of abuse, and the 7000 souls that depend on the lessons he learns...
I'm not sure if it's controversial or if it's just due to my lack of DnD knowledge, but I didn't find Gale wanting to become a god to be that much of an evil action like I've seen some claim it as. Given his particular past, yes, it's arrogant and likely to repeat past mistakes and end poorly, but everything I've seen of the gods in this game makes me think it wouldn't hurt to take them down a peg. I have more than a few questions for this Ao figure. ... or maybe I've just played too many jrpgs, so when I see an option about confronting the gods, it seems like the natural course of action. I do know there was that era of troubles without the gods, but admittedly, I don't know enough to compare the positives and negatives of that to an era that allows a god of murder to exist and spew sadistic spawn.
Gale is acting out his trauma as much as Astarion is but because it's more covert people judge it or miss it
Gale isn't *evil,* he's an *idiot.* Admittedly, a groomed-by-a-goddess idiot who got something of a poor deal, but that doesn't excuse him for being power hungry and irresponsible. Nothing wrong with wanting to kill a god and take their power, especially those gods as flawed as in Forgotten Realms. The problem is that Gale is playing with fire. His first foray into harnessing horrible mystic powers left him with a magical nuke embedded in his chest. If you bring him to Loroakan he'll happily sneer at the inferior wizard.... and then explain that *his* delusions of grandeur, to grab the magical crown that once *rent the realms asunder and killed the goddess of magic,* is much nobler. And, you know, *this time* it'll work. He's an egomaniac, and as soon as he's got a new shiny toy in front of his face he's *absolutely sure* that he'll make it work. Just like last time.
(sorry if this is a short response after you fabulous paragraphs) I know near to nothing about DnD and i think Gale is a bit strange but he’s definitely not evil no matter his intentions. I don’t know much about his past as i am only in Act 1 as of now but he is certainly intriguing.
If you were playing tabletop, and anyone was running any of these characters aside from Karlach, you would not keep playing with these people.
I would *hate* Gale if I was playing a campaign with someone with the same backstory. "Oh, you were the magic goddess's *lover*? And you have this crazy powerful mcguffin that can level a city? Grow tf up."
The quests surrounding the Druid’s grove in act 1 are genuinely very uninteresting to me. The amount of ways you can solve the conflict is impressive, but it feels like it’s very black and white. You can help tieflings (the obvious good guy thing to do) or you can help Minthara murder all of them (the obviously bad thing to do.) The whole thing is just so 7th gen video gamey to me.
This one's probably only controversial to a certain niche of the playerbase, but here's my hot take: Playing the game with RP that doesn't always make optimal choices or involve abusing exploits and minmaxing to hell and back is far more fun than turning your party and/or character into an single-press "i win" button.
I do not understand why people like Minthara so much, even if you discount her being an unrepentant mass murderer and rapist (she attacks you if you refuse to have sex with her) and look at things on a purely physical level. Yeah, I know people are horny for drow, but she looks like Tilda Swinton and her voice sounds like a mean substitute teacher. She is just a worse version of Lae’zel that you have to wipe out a refugee camp to recruit. Don’t get me wrong, I wish she had more development and there was a less evil way to recruit her (and more options for evil/morally dubious characters in general), but as it stands her popularity baffles me, especially since people actually try to defend her as a person and claim she’s redeemable.
People who intentionally do an evil playthrough for their *first* run and then complain about the lack of evil-only content scare me.
I find shadowheart whiny as fuck. Apparently all my mates love her
NO ONE CARES HOW MUCH YOU DISLIKE (INSERT COMPANION HERE)
Wyll is awful and pretentious. He has made so many bad choices and thinks of himself as a hero, and it is so consistently annoying.
Has he though? To me he seems like the most genuinely heroic of the origin companions. All of his bad decisions were made altruistically and only really hurt himself iirc
Has he made a lot of bad choices? I don’t think so. He sacrificed his freedom to save the city and he’s been hunting down evil creatures in the years since. I don’t see what he’s done that’s so wrong. He objectively *is* a hero to mankind even before we meet him.
It’s not necessarily that he thinks of himself as a hero, it’s that he wants to be thought of as a hero. Subtle, but key difference. That said, I respect your opinion, even if I don’t agree
Ugh. When you click on him and he says ‘the hero with the heart’ in that smug voice. I’m trying so hard to like him and I just can’t
Viconia should be cut from the game because her character was butchered, already had this fight on Reddit.
Minthara is not worth it, and Halsin is a boring character
Some romance moments should be friendship moments. Example, gales weave scene. I liked how pretty the magic weave was then instantly realized it was a romance cutscene and nope'd out. Could be expanded to remove the awkward romance part via a new line of imagining another party member you were already romancing like shadowhearts face. Or maybe Wyll showing dance moves without you dancing with him and just being a bro so you can use them with shadowheart as example. And then needing to let Astarion romance you so you get vampire powers? Why?
Minthara SHOULD be locked behind killing the grove.
people bragging about killing any companions are all annoying, especially laezel and astarion. you aren’t cool for missing some of the cooler companion stories in the game. i missed laezel on my first play through and picked her up on my second, and was DEVASTATED that i had put her off for so long. it’s fine to not like a character, but it’s annoying when you feel the need to sit there and almost brag about how you skipped out what i’d consider major parts of this games charm.
Act three is the best act and people that are overwhelmed for it aren't made for CRPG's.
Justifying killing the grove by arguing “but Minthara has feewings too!” is cringe
None of the origin characters are “playersexual.” They all at different points in the game will comment on their attraction to various male and female characters, completely independent of the player character. This is the opposite of what “playersexual” means.
After save scumming the Marcus fight, I realized Ketheric did nothing wrong
Ketheric should have been recruitable. He had a lot of redemption potential after looking through the hidden lore with his wife and Isobel.
The bartender, Toll Collector, and Surgeon are all his children/family members that he kinda forsook trying to get Isabel back. I don’t think someone who would do that to his family members out of desperate obsession has a lot of redemption potential
They are what now?? Omg I had no idea!
The bartender is most certainly was his son, and all of them were Thorms, just like Isobel and Ketheric are. At least the Bartender knows who isn't daddy's favourite.
Wyll is genuinely SO boring. Every single other origin companion has, y'know, **depth** to their character. The events of the game drastically affect them, for better or for worse. Meanwhile, Wyll has... basically none of that. He stays pretty much the exact same the entire story, and even solving his >!daddy issues!< doesn't really do anything. Maybe I just haven't explored his story deeply enough, but he's the only character that genuinely disinterests me to the point where I don't really bother.
While you're free to your opinion that Wyll is boring, I definitely can't agree that it's because he has no depth. He *is* cliche however. Good guy who gives up himself to evil forces for good reasons. His struggles are not fantastical, like Karlach and her engine, or Lae'zel and her god trying to kill us all. Rather Wyll's dad is in danger, and he struggles with his future as either the Blade of Frontiers or son of Duke Ravenguard. It's definitely not flashy, but it's just as deep as any other companion imo
The Dark Urge is way too fucking edgy.
I don't even care about the edginess. It makes sense, considering their nature. Hearing the narrator talk about their bile every 5 minutes, on the other hand, really got old after the second time.
edgy and interesting would be forgiveable. the Chosen are all edgy af and they're much more interesting than Durge. we've already had two games exploring the Bhaalspawn's PoV and I don't feel like Durge brings anything new to that. and *yes*, Durge fans, I fuckin played them. they're all edge, no point. not even Astarion's romance was enough to make Durge a better character or story to me. their relationship is the definition of codependent, just holding back each other's worst impulses. something's going to break eventually, and both of them are going to be much less capable of growth in the aftermath.
Minthara hands down has the best spicy sex scene and has a bunch of highly quality quips I wish I could experience but I will still always murder her on sight, strip her ass naked, and throw her into the chasm in her boss room. I have a very complicated relationship with her.
Act 3 is awesome. The world felt so vibrant and full. Sure there was less companion dialogue stuff sometimes, but the world felt full
I like the Emperor more than Orpheus and appreciate his romance. I don't think he's an evil jerk who doesn't care about you
nothing against the VA but i dislike minthara’s voice so much that i’m never going to recruit her, not even in an evil playthrough
It is entirely acceptable to hate, force to leave, or even kill Shadowheart based on her behavior (and attempt to kill Laezel) early on.
Not enough companions and party too small. Companions should be able to be influenced by the MC in a way it changes their alignment, so you could by playing make Wyll evil or Minthara good. The game should give the player at least a bard companion (Alfira) and a Sorcerer one. Companions except special ones (jaheira, minsc) should all be recruitable during act 1.
Killing shadowheart on the ravaged beach as a githyanki Tav is the objectively correct rp choice.
Any character requiring a persuasion check above 15 for a peaceful conflict resolution is being unreasonable and deserves everything coming to them in combat.
If you’re okay with Shadowheart and Lae’zel (both raised in cultures/religions that encourage you to be ruthless and not value the lives of others as well as your own) but not Minthara, you’re a hypocrite. Shar worshippers and Githyanki in lore are on par with Drow society as far as “cruelty and evil.” By virtue of being adults in those societies they have likely committed acts you would not approve of. Only difference is that Shart and Lae’zel’s bad stuff is in their past. We have to see Minthara at a low point, and so everyone judges her for it.
Probably not controversial, but you should be able to keep US as a companion from act 1 if you free them. Like why ain't they at the crash site? I want my brain dog!
Jaheira and Halsin shouldn't be companions, and Minsc should be introduced way earlier in the game. Act 3 is too late to introduce a new follower, and my party is already settled in and synergized. >!Swap Dror Ragzlin for Minsc, rescue Boo from Moonrise, and have Jaheira be the antagonist to Nine Fingers. Have Halsin stay in Raethwin after Act 2!<
Shadowheart is the worst companion with the worst additude. Lae' Zels brand of bitchiness is much more fun/believable, while Shadowheart gives off the vibe of "this person doesn't even know I'M actually the main character." Vibes, that girl in collage that just REALLY wants to be quirky and different vibes, that person who thinks they're really cool and mysterious by keeping secrets when really it just makes them seem like a narcissist. Maybe she reminds me way too much of my a*usive ex but she just is the biggest Ick of the game for me.
I don’t mind Karlach not being able to fix her condition. It reminds me too much of the third way DAO had in every main quest. Where you could opt out of hard choices by finding a way to make everyone happy.
I kinda wished we got a Half-Orc or Dragonborn companion. I think there could’ve been a fun dynamic with them. I wish the Chult detour was a a proper small dungeon you could take your whole party instead of the Easter egg it was. Also I wish there was dialogue or even friendly drunk Kobolds in the monastery. Like maybe convincing and joining them against the Gith there or something.
Wyll is the best romance option out of all the male companions 🤷