Humanoid

Fortunately the patch has fixed it so that you still get martial weapon proficiency by multiclassing into Ranger, previously it was a tradeoff where starting Rogue gives an extra skill proficiency but loses martial weapons. More relevant now too since Sharpshooter has been fixed as to properly apply the hit penalty to off-hand shots. But yeah, as someone who always plays rogues in RPGs (well, for about 20 years, I was a Sorcerer in BG2), 5E is doing its damndest to make me drop that habit. I just despise having to put all my eggs into one big sneak attack basket. The key thing is that in 5E, the default ability to dual-wield only applies to melee weapons. BG3 lets you do it with any one-handed weapon which opens up this possibility. Funny thing is that in 5E you do take a feat (Crossbow Expert) to enable this build, but ironically it's not to dual-wield hand crossbows. Instead the feat allows you to shoot it with one hand, transfer it to the other hand, and shoot it again. Therefore BG3 isn't even simply ignoring a feat requirement, but instead doing its own thing completely.

Yeah, going through the patch notes I see plenty of fixes addressing continuity issues like that.

I think it holds true for both expansions to both NWN games? No personal experience though as the only campaign I played across all six base games and expansions anywhere near to completion was SoZ. For the apostrophe stripping, I see GOG has also stripped it from "Sid Meiers Covert Action" so that's consistent I guess. Steam has the apostrophe for every Sid game intact, I don't see any non-Sid games to see how they handled those however.

Ultima 4, Civilization 4, TMNT 4 (Turtles in Time), Super Mario 4 (World), ...Leisure Suit Larry 4? EDIT: I can accept SimCity 4 I suppose.

Sounds like something for fans to do with mod tools should they ever be released, maybe with AI voice synthesis. What would Larian's influence on an already fully-written game even be? Plus, from a selfish perspective, I kind of want them to get away from D&D. No doubt it's contributed to the commercial success of the game but it's more of a good game in spite of the ruleset, not because of it.

The Blighted Village is definitely the least coherent part of Act 1. They just threw the kitchen sink at it and it ends up feeling like a nonsensical place that no one ever would have lived in.

It's a shame the GamersNexus website is abandoned, would be useful to have their charts and such as static webpages rather than videos. In this regard I find Techspot reviews more generally useful, being literally written versions of Hardware Unboxed reviews. (That said, I'm aware some people end up wasting their time perusing both Techspot and HUB not realising it's the same author)

Ironically this burned me in the latest title, because it is now optimal to promote ASAP.

The "system" involved here being the dialogue system.

I think failing the lobotomy procedure might technically be optimal because it yields the most XP. It turns hostile and you can then kill it for like, 10xp.

Didn't realise Paladins were that popular, I wonder how many of them became Oathbreakers, surely it's the majority of them. Over a third of players siding with the goblins is also a mild surprise to me. That's about it though. I didn't like his intro cutscene, felt a little like they were trying too hard to be cool. Kinda similar with Lae'zel's gratuitous flip when she ambushes you. Astarion's is a bit annoying because there probably should be a third option where you're suspicious of him. Gale's, while a little silly, is charming, and Shadowheart doesn't get one. I haven't actually met Karlach yet, or rather, I haven't since Early Access where she was completely different and non-recruitable. EDIT: Granted the stat is about playing as them, but I'd already met them three years ago in the above contexts so that permanently colours my perception of them. Aren't they always necessary? I don't think you can pick locks without them, because what are you going to use, your fingernails? I guess it makes sense in that context, though having access to makeshift tools makes sense too, like say, a cut-off bit of Red Bull can. Getting Shadowheart a hat ASAP is a good idea because of it, it's a feature.

Shar had Knowledge as well in 3E and 4E, but yeah, no Death domain in BG3 for some reason. Though it might be something ripe for a mod?

Shadowheart suffers a bit with a weird stat allocation that's neither here nor there (13 Str 13 Dex) and the unpopular Trickery domain. But you unlock the ability to respec for a nominal fee very early in the game, as soon as the first couple of hours and at level 2-3. You can therefore change her fairly early on to whatever you like really - whether class or stats - so that alone isn't a big reason to ditch her. I understand that's not the only reason for wanting to restart of course, and they're perfectly valid.

Yeah, I was shocked you couldn't pick the colour of the carpet.

With strict point buy I imagine you'd struggle to get Dex, Int and Wis (and Con) all up to a satisfactory level.

I would like to make him my Guardian.

Trying to copy the character by eye with max settings, ended up looking better but still not great.

If HDDs aren't supported then why: While your CPU will almost certainly work fine as-is, you can likely get your motherboard to support 5000-series CPUs, including the mighty 5800X3D, with a simple BIOS update.

That's how Hercules died no?

Weighing up whether to download the demo at the moment. I have no doubt I'll buy the game in the medium-term future but don't want to commit to a campaign-style game at the moment. I've watched enough of the early game on YouTube now such that spoilers aren't a concern, but I don't like repeating content and the demo apparently contains the starting island (which seems pretty generous).

Either way, at least it isn't an anime dog girl I guess.

So, uh, Might and Magic 6/7/8 support multiplayer now. I see it, but I don't believe it.

Yeah, I'm not saying to go full-time turn-based like XCOM, but more allowing us to manually toggle it, especially since enemies in this game are very fidgety and move around a lot when idle. That can make setting up ambushes annoyingly RTS-like. I welcomed the addition of the toggle in JA2 Strachiatella. I believe the same feature also exists in 1.13 but I have no desire to play 1.13. The most notable XCOM-like element is that the game is now cover-based. But it retains action points and aiming mechanics from JA2, so it's probably fair to say it's roughly halfway.

Heard there's a mod to enable forcing turn-based mode which is good progress, hopefully it becomes an official feature though. The biggest complaints I've heard so far are that and the stealth implementation in general.