Having played through it now I can't disagree entirely, though DOS2 was also not really much of a multi replay affair to me. I did do it twice but the runs were quite similar, just with a different party. But yeah, BG3; it offers you the two paths at the first act right... I found myself doing both, because why on earth would I pass on valuable loot, XP and quest lines? There's a few more of those things - there being a 'get it all' solution to be found and then all the little changes in dialogue that you can enter into don't quite matter so much anymore. But damn, there are a lot of choices in the game. You can definitely get a lot out of multiple playthroughs. The second play I completed the game; the first I progressed up to act 3. There was so much I did differently - and so many hidden stuff I discovered that I was totally oblivious of the first time.
Its funny seeing all the complaints about the rolls. They didn't bother me. I do also play pen and paper D&D, so maybe that swings things into the favor of rolling D20s. I liked it. Its easy to nudge those rolls into your favor, but yeah, you have to stop and think about it for a second. But about halfway through the game, its really becoming simple to win everything.. provided you build the right party. Another thing is also, that you really don't have to win all the rolls. Losing them and just yolo'ing it can be fun.
My brother and I were playing a few hours last night.....the rolls were pissing us (me more so than my brother) off from the get go and through our whole time playing.
Warrior's turn in combat:
- First attack: 95% chance to hit = miss.
- Second attack: 95% chance to hit = critical miss
- Use Action Surge
- Third attack: 95% change to hit = miss
- Fourth attack: 95% chance to hit = critical miss
Ranger's turn in combat:
- First attack: 90% chance to hit = miss
- Second attack: 90% chance to hit = HIT, 9 + 2 damage (11 total)
Bad guy's turn:
- Uses Disarming attack on my fighter (who has 20 STR and +1 to STR saving throws) - successful! Now I'm disarmed
- Attempts to shove my warrior - successful, now he's put me out of my range for Attack of Opportunity
- Runs to my brother's character and slaps him around.
- rinse and repeat the above over and over again
This happened consistently throughout every fight encounter. I missed so many times that my brother would run out of uses of his counter spells because I couldn't take down anyone, especially the casters. I'd get one or two hits between my guys - whereas I'd usually drop one or two bad guys my turn. Sadly though, for about 2.5 hours the same shit just kept happening over and over again. And to top it all off, these were bad guys that were 2-3 levels under us because we're just going through the mountain pass area for Lae'zel's side of the story with the Githyankies
(apparently the point in the shadow land we were at she wouldn't progress with us in the story and leave the group if we didn't go back to find her people). We were getting our ass handed to us by way under leveled bad guys that we were struggling to survive most of the fights. It was awful. The only real saving grace was Astarion (brother's character) could get in with a sneak attack and just rock the bad guys. His cloak he wore would turn him invisible if he killed a target and then he'd position himself to kill another target on his next turn. He basically won most of the fights with his rogue and warlock.....I was nothing more than glorified pin cushions.
We had to do full rests after every encounter so my brother could get his spell slots back for his high level spells.
Then we get into the conversations.
Roll Choice in conversation: Successful roll requires 30 (dafuq? 30?) - that won't be happening without a natural 20
Next roll choice in a conversation: Successful roll requires an 11 (have a bonus of 7 so I need a roll of 4 or better to be successful)
- First attempt: roll a 1 (Critical failure!)
- Use an inspiration point, second attempt: roll a 1 (Critical failure!)
- Use an inspiration point, third attempt: roll a 3 (with all bonuses only adds up to 10, Failure!)
We venture through a bit, earn back a couple of inspiration points as we slowly grind our way through.
Now my brother wants to try his luck in conversation: his character needs a 14 for success and his class allows for using the better of two rolls (with 4 bonus to add on, so he needs a roll of 10 to be successful)
- First attempt: rolls a 4 and a 6, failure
- Use an inspiration point, second attempt: rolls a 6 and a 7, failure
- Use an inspiration point, third attempt: rolls a 2 and 4, failure
- Use our last inspiration point, fourth attempt: rolls an 8 and a 6, failure
That was our whole night. The roll system gets very tiresome. Usually there is a balance in the game where you have a small run of bad rolls, but you eventually see a small run of great rolls and everything else falls in between so things stay balanced. But not last night. Every fight I was constantly whiffing when having a very high success rate to hit unless we could somehow manage to knock the bad guys prone and I wouldn't miss, it was awful and not fun.
The only upside to all the critical failures and low rolls we were getting was in the conversations, a couple of times something humorous would happen in the outcome. That wasn't enough to be the saving grace for our play time last night, though. After about 2.5 hours we got so fed up with it we stopped playing early and went on to a different game. We'll play again at a later time, but we had enough of it for a while.
