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I'm 3+ years from playing this game and am experiencing hype backslash already.

Puttering away at work, going to have to wrap up shortly to head into the hospital to find out the latest on my father's scans and what the potential palliative chemo options are now. Might take a full flex afternoon off. Also, just had a post delivery. Got sent the anniversary tee by Obsidian because they picked my question. Nice.

5 years ago today Valve released Proton, their compatibility layer based on WINE for running Windows games on Linux, forever changing the gaming landscape for weirdos like me that run the operating system with the penguin mascot.

Each companion has 1-2 quests in each act + long rest scenes. Though, some have more than others. Structurally, it felt similar to D:OS2 - introduction => development* => conclusion (branching). The approach is technically correct in terms of pacing, narrative, and interactivity, but it never felt good or engaging for me in any Larian game (that is to say, the issue is not with the structure). In the D&D game in particular, it might be because of the bugs with the closure/camp scenes - the companions cannot wait for 5 minutes and have to schedule their dialogue at a separate Long Rest, which might be hours after their quest. It was especially ridiculous with having Wyll and Karlach together in the camp within clear lines of sight before their scene triggered. *in the D&D game some branching for a certain companion is available at that point. Judging by the rumours about cut or altered content and the previous Enhanced/Definitive/Developer's Cut Editions, this is a very reasonable prediction.

Yes, there is the party, in which companions verbally state if you gained enough reputation to get a cuddle. Believe it or not, but this is better that it was in EA. Unfortunately, problems don’t stop after that. Companions don’t take no for an answer and romance with Gale and Wyll still seemed to progress, even though I said no to them during the party. I think Laez might have too, but surprisingly enough she was delicate about it another that it didn’t bother. Both Wyll and Gale though got what seemed like a start of a romantic encounter where my PC was getting all starry eyed, until I said no, and got sad puppy eyes from both blokes. I suspect the issue is that in spite of what Larian claimed there isn’t much non-romance content (not that here is much romance content to begin with). Karlach and Astarion were the only companions that didn’t hit on my PC during the party, and frankly they have been barely preset in act2 - even though Karlach is a permanent member of my party. I will be honest, maybe in different playthroughs companions will show drastically different sides, but so far after act1 they feel very underwhelming - I don’t feel the presence of amount of work that supportively went into it. It would be fine if we got a lot of them, but companion cast seems very underwhelming to me so far - both in the size and narrative depth/consistency of the ensamble. I also have a feeling that decision to not kill off companions haven’t been done early, and the way characters behave when they didn’t witness something feels very off at times.

Danes and the Dutch are about to commit some flying machines to Ukraine, so hopefully they will have to do less murder in their justified defense against russian rapists, marauders and habitual bombers of civilians. Also speaking of bombers -- here's one (though homicide, not suicide) going down in flames. Supposed to be Ту-22М3, blown up by a drone yesterday, not yet confirmed by Mordor, but still beautiful sight so I gotta share:

I didn't have a Druid for that fight so I had to lure the spider queen into a room to beat up on her. Hard encounter but pretty good. I'm going to respec my Bard or forget some spells because it turns out I picked a lot of concentration options and you can only have one going at a time. No WotR 7 page buff routines in this game.

Patch 1.1.0 released today. What makes this patch notable is that it includes the first batch of modding tools.

This drove me insane in both Original Sin games, so much so, that I actually gave up on BG3 as soon as I saw it had exactly the same combat. for a game that is touted as having "the best turn-based combat" it feels extremely sloppy and imprecise. not sure what the problem with making combat have a grid was, for example.

You should retrain Wyll into a Bard. It will be even more satisfying when you kill him. Don't be naughty. It's "built for function rather than fun".

Yep. And know why? Because that's all true.

The PvP looks hectic. If they have a halfway decent spectator mode this could have a shot to make it as an eSport.

After few day of break, I went for more Deep Sky Derelicts. The game has due to it's nature strange difficulty spikes. Sometimes after a lot of easy-peasy encounters, you get obliterated in few rounds in the next one. Especially when you encounter Soulmorphs. I got first two station defense encounters, and the second one was really problematic to win. Definitely needed more than 5 attempts to win it. Still having fun, still feeling sometimes repetition. I have unlocked 3rd tier of derelicts and spent 22 hours with it so far.

I always dislike when goblins in the BV surrender. I think it comes down to it being usually the first area after the grove, and after a lenghty period of time of talking, I am itching for some fight.

Blighted Village was a little disappointing. I tried to fight some goblins and they surrender. Fine, I'll accept that. But then Karlach fails a check and kills their leader anyway. Ok, it's a battle again, right? Wrong, they just stand there and let me take their weapons and kill them. The ogres? I failed a stealth check and started a dialogue that ended up preventing a battle. I'd have reloaded, but it turns out there was a great benefit this time. The spiders? Didn't stand a chance against Moonbeam. As for the ettercap, it somehow hit an AC 20 Karlach, but was killed by Gale's raven familiar. RNGesus at his best. The only time a character was in danger was when I opened the barn and interrupted some people that got really angry about it. This was the one battle I wouldn't have minded avoiding. As Shadowheart put it: "Let's just put this behind us. Far behind us."

As one of the soldiers on the frontline said: The effectiveness of minefields, fortifications, anti-tank trenches, and similar engineering obstacles becomes significant only when they are adequately manned and remain under fire control.

I liked the way they did Romance in DA:I, you can clearly see the Romance options marked with a heart and if you dont pursue it you dont experience it And I really tried to Romance Josephine but I failed

https://euroweeklynews.com/2023/08/20/top-russian-space-scientist-rushed-to-hospital-after-moscows-moon-mission-crash-disaster/ Independent - Russian scientist who worked on Putin's failed moon mission rushed to hospital"

@Gfted1Fake news.

gonna admit we always thought the cheese curd hype from wisconsin folks were more imagination than real. tested our theory by making poutine for acquaintances from midwest/wisconsin. showed 'em the packaging from the sooper expensive cheese curds we got shipped from wisconsin-- two varieties. served our guests two kinda poutine, but one option were not cheese curds but rather a Gromnir house substitute involving provolone and mozzarella. when we asked our guests/guinea pigs which slight melty and covered with gravy "cheese curds" were better/more authentic, three outta four preferred our knockoff mozzarella and provolone substitute, and nobody recognized the mozz + porvolone as fraudulent. we didn't spoil the meal by informing our guests they had been used to test a pet theory. everybody left satisfied, especial Gromnir. HA! Good Fun! ps guests also preferred restaurant quality deep fried frozen fries as 'posed to made-from-scratch fries... though am admitting we did not have access to kennebec potatoes which is the variety o' tater am believing makes the best french fries. we didn't do any sorta switcheroo on the fries. not doing deceptive with fries were intentional sleight o' hand on our part as our guests were focused more on looking to determine which fries were genuine so they overlooked the possibility we had done something sneaky with the cheese.

Wizard/Psion (Cipher subclass that regenerates focus on time like a Chanter generates his phrases) sounds like a combination that could be fun for you. However, it is not great for melee combat but is focused on casting. But it's extremely versatile and useful in general and for me was a lot of fun to play. Wizard's defense buffs make it easier to not get hit (stops the focus gain briefly) and later the best defense buff of the Cipher (Borrowed Instincts) even stacks with most of the wizard's self buffs (see Mirrored Images, Arcane Veil etc.). Vanilla Wizard/Psion works well. Another good Hierophant variant could be Bloodmage/Soulblade - because the Soulblade's attack "Soul Annihilation" works very well with Citzal's Spirit Lance (a wizard-only summoned pike that does AoE damage naturally). Great mix of defense, melee and casting. Also works as vanilla Wizard/Soulblade. --- Trickster/Soulblade in general is a good combo, you cannot really fail with it. Good defense with fantastic offensive capability.

Ah - doing it the other way round. Very good.

Started Stray Gods. It is semi-interactive musical, though I would not call it "Roleplaying". The VA is actually good, the lyrics vary from "There is no inertia in the ocean" to decent. The graphics and visual style consist of mostly 2D images with light animations, but it is expressive and readable. The main personality trait seems to be locked in the first song, which was not obvious and is not convenient. The game uses auto-saving into a single slot (3 slots in total).

My hatred for bards has expanded well beyond the simple confines of gameplay at this point: I despise the general concept of a bard and the type of character that plays them in of itself. When I clicked on the class during character creation and saw my character play the ridiculous animation in their foppish clothing, it instantly rekindled my forgotten loathing. It surely doesn't help that every time you run into one in these games, they're the absolute most annoying people that you naturally want to shove off the nearest cliff. Well, a little more than "want" in my case, considering I actually do it. There should be some kind of satisfying crunch sound for if someone dies from fall damage: what better music indeed than the succulent symphony of a bard's spine imploding into dust?

I would say it is a fair representation of being an artist - they should balance it as it is balanced in real life - underpay bards for everything. “Well, I would pay you with this artefact if you were a worrier, but why won’t you do this quest for me for an exposure? No? Well, you clearly aren’t passionate enough about your job”. I do think bard is good to the point of being boring. I haven’t lost many checks and those that I did and cared about, could easily reroll using inspiration. I am out of inspiration - I burned all of it to convince

ad&d bards were idiotic with the triple class nonsense. 2e bards were suck. we actual liked d20 bards, but only if we had a dm who made skill checks meaningful. 4e skalds made decent leaders, but almost nobody liked 4e, so... 5e bards? the most obvious criticism we got o' d&d 5e bards is that they is too good at too many different things. parental marital status aside, am observing just how stacked is 5e bards. as charisma characters with skill bonus abilities which makes 'em a good choice as a face character, bards is an excellent choice for a single-player crpg such as bg3. bards are also full casters who are able to cherry pick the best spells from other classes. with one level o' life cleric, bards is elite healers if you wanna go that route and regardless they may provide a party a few o' the best buffs available in 5e. no, bards ain't as good as fighters in weapon combat, but they is solid and may be built better than solid if you need to be an elite weapon-haver. the bard class has many pros and few cons. am not planning on playing bg3 anytime soon, but if/when we do decide to give bg3 a chance, our likely first character will be a valor bard. sure, a halfling valor bard dual-wielding hand crossbows is ridiculous, but ridiculous is a selling point from our pov. we will note how the luck quality o' halflings is serious underappreciated. sure, hobbits don't fit the power fantasy image many players is trying to create with their bg3 avatar, but from a numbers pov, halfling luck is win. make intelligence a dump stat and choose drums. name animal. if it makes you feel better, chances are we go dark urge which in a sense is bastard territory given the requisite dubious parentage. HA! Good Fun!

I completed King Arthur Wargame after 100 hours and it was an excellent RTS\ RPG experience I was pleasantly surprised I did complete it because I read several comments on Steam about it being too hard or the mechanics being unbalanced. Overall I played the game with the following approach I played on beginner I chose Rightful, Old Faith and I aligned with the Seelie I used my knights and there spells effectively and I included Lancelot, Green Knight and Merlin in my group I learnt how the economy mechanics work because that makes a huge difference to stability and revenue generation in your provinces which is critical for having a well resourced army But once you understand the combat mechanics its really makes sense and the game is incredibly fun. It gets a solid 70/100 on the globally respected " BruceVC game rating system " I enjoyed it so much I started playing KA2 yesterday, its different in some ways and I will do an update later once I have completed more of the narrative

Well, my murderhobo (aptly called Murderhobo) drow bard is working his way through the first part of the game, lying, cheating, intimidating and being generally obnoxious. Stepped on a squirrel, killed a wounded bird, a lame woman and caused a venomous viper to bite a child. All with that stupid grin on the face the game does. I didn't bite Gale's hand off though. Companions are useful. Lae'zel loves me, but Shadowheart can't stand me. Some cleric of Shar she is. Pfeh. Not going to lie, kind of looking forward to the acts you guys keep complaining about. Being smaller in scope and having less to do and less to explore is certainly not going to hurt my enjoyment of the game. Far from it.

coca cola's lawyers will be contacting obsidian, DOOM and shady 'bout copyright infringement. HA! Good Fun!

I got the urge to play Daiblo 1. So I bought it on gog.com It's a nice nestolgia kick. The voiced lines are still seared into my mind from when i was like 12. However im playing it alone, so no one is trying to kill you, or trick you into giving them items to dupe and then just leaving. so it's missing that memory. I probably won't get too far. But it was cheap and has given me a couple hours of enjoyment.

the reason we posts as Gromnir is 'cause we were disappointed with interplay's bg2 forum. particular noobs, but anybody who had the temerity to suggest bg1 and the bioware developers were less than perfect, were treated like heretics or witches whose existence needed to be purged. so we posted Gromnir-style which annoyed the Defenders of the Faith even more than our observations 'bout bg1. worse, the biowarians were not only amused by the Gromnir schtick, but they got what we were doing and appeared to approve which annoyed the bg1 faithful even more. we will observe outrage and groupthink take hold and calcify much quicker nowadays and the scope o' the problem feels larger with "innovations" such as social media magnifying the pestiferous qualities o' gamer anger. regardless, is same issues but perhaps the scope is different. HA! Good Fun!

Elden Ring. Finally killed Malenia. Lord of Blood's Exultation (the power-up on bleed talisman), Morgott's Curved Sword, and the mimic tear ash were the most important aspects of it. Somehow, the mimic and I were able to stagger the boss relatively reliably. The final battle was very impressive in terms of visual and audio design, though the boss' moveset in the second phase was rather annoying - I spent most of the time chasing the boss. Overall, I did not dislike Elden Ring as I did Sekiro or Mortal Shell, but it was less enjoyable than Dark Souls (1, 2, SotFS, 3, Remaster) due to the open world structure and the speed of the game combined with the controls. Though, the visual and audio design are excellent.

I guess you could say: the Outer Worlds DLC is not the best choice. They are Spacer's Choice!

If I saved using hotfix4 yesterday, that solves my question whenever I should buy Shadow Gambit, or not

As it should be. What's the genius behind this idea, Norwegian? Well if he's so generous, he can always offer Svalbard to russia instead.

Also, and this is a matter of taste, I find "fully 3D" to just completely suck in games like this. I mean, Deadfire looks gorgeous but NWN and NWN2 are just poor. Yes, I know they're old, but 3D graphics get extremely repetitive in a hurry, and after that there's nothing to them at all. Also, the 3D viewpoint completely destroys the sense of controlling a group of charcaters, for me.

Your problem is you just played Jagged Alliance 3. I knew this was going to happen. We are ruined for games because nothing can match JA3.

I'm also playing as a , I mean, Dark Urge. I'm curious and often do pick the psycho option then reload and pick the good guy option. All the rolls are getting annoying to the point where I feel like I'm just playing the dice. Meh, f5 and f8 to victory.

bought the game and restarted the mindflayer mission 7 times. It's an ADHD thing i have that only affects crpgs. i haven't really started until i have restarted 20 times. i wonder if a mage/monk is viable.

From watching some streamers play the final version I gotta ask: Did Larian have the decency to include a gameplay option to dispense with the d20 roll animations for the skill/attribute checks that happen every 5ft? I enjoyed DOS 1 and 2 well enough, so surely they have the decency to recognise that most of us have yet to achieve immortality and thus have respect for our time.

It's just weird to start a story with something that feels like a climax. I had a similar problem with pathfinder WOTR. Dragon people vs demons within the first 5 minutes, then you slow things right down... I dunno, feels like bad story telling.

I absolutely hate the flying squid ship vs demons intro. Ease me into the story, take me to dinner before you f me basically. I'm taking notes this time, because I need to be able to explain with words why I don't like larian games. Still super early on tho

No one knows, and no one cares (left it on the default). He hasn't get laid since his times at the Bard college many moons ago, and probably won't get laid on this adventure either. I don't know, I found it greatly disturbing to scroll through my cartoon's halfing selection of genitalias. In cyberpunk it didn't exactly felt great, but at least felt somewhat appropriate to the setting. Here it is just weird. edit. Actually, in the backstory I made up, there is a rich dwarf woman that has been his patron over the years - that's more or less what I thought of when was creating his guardian and the form it could take. But I don't know how appropriate it will be with what the guardinan will be on the game, nor what was the exact nature or relation ship between Andreas and the nobledwarfwoman. For now I am thinking of it as a more pragmatic one, from Andreas side at least. Tim Cain's approved reviewed posted a nice, non-spoiler review for BG3

What do you mean? Cyberpunk 2077 is almost ready to come out of early access!