Divinity Original Sin 2 if you don’t know the acronym.
My biggest problem with DOS2 is that it each battle felt a little too punishing and always ended up needed cheesing. I never got off the first island. At level 5 I thought I was soft locked out of progressing because my build choices couldn’t get through a battle. Every fight felt like the whole kitchen sink is thrown at me and I don’t have the tools necessary to survive any of it. As hard as I tried to like the game I ended up giving up on it.
My biggest blocks were Radeka and Gareth. Radeka I cheese off to the side but ended up getting chewed apart by the zombies and spit to death by the beetles. Trying to save Gareth is just futile as it’s too many men who can whittle me down to one party member in a matter of a few turns while I struggle to do anything. Don’t even get me started on the ambush battle that just wipes the floor with me by turn 4. I even went back to Fort Joy and finished off some battles that I left there. I really felt like I needed to kill every last NPC on the island to gain any progression in that game though. The sad part is, I like a challenge. But try after try after try after try after try of the same battle over and over again made the game go from a challenge to it’s just cheap. So I gave up.
Is the combat on that same level in BG3?
I thknk DOS2 was an interesting difficulty, it was very punishing the first time but in subsequent playthroughs it became easier. It was interesting to come up with ways to do an encounter or even cheese it. My first playthrough I gave up, I simply couldn’t do an encounter and a ran out of money for potions/revive scrolls. The second playthrough the encounters a breeze.
I haven’t played much if bg3, mostly because my power went out right after the nautiloid. I did playthe early access though and my biggest issue was the hit rates. It felt like every fight I did I had a 30-50% hit rate. Missing an 80% chance to hit was really annoying for melee users. At least I can pretend for ranged. But the hit rate thing is a long standing dnd rule, it’s just one that I find personally annoying to deal with no matter what format it’s in.
I kind of wish I had the two action thing like dos:2. Having a main action and a bonus action I feel isn’t quiiite enough in a video game format. Again I know its from dnd but I think that rule works better on pen and paper than in a game like this. I wouldn’t mind if health was doubled as a result. Again: this is just my opinion. I just feel like turns are too short in a video game format.
I do kind of miss the silly things you can do and the cheese. In dos2 every object in the game was something you could potentially use. In bg3 I have a harder time thinking that way. Silly things like teleporting an annoying mob off a cliff, or making a wall of stools was really fun and it was interesting to think of ways you could make a fight different. But there are fewer of these tools in bg3. I’m sure with the more I familiarize myself and see other people doing sillier things, I’ll learn of ways to do similar things. It was one of the things that made DOS2 special and memorable. There was no other game you could do stuff like that with. But i can see a DM IRL cringing at seeing their party collecting every single stool in the prison to make a wall so they can cheese Dalis.
I think I agree with you here. I’ll add the caveat that I refrained from playing the Early Access at all, and have only played 6ish hours of BG3 at this point.
Divinity combat felt more puzzle-like, and while it could get ridiculous (everyone teleporting all over the field constantly with all the movement abilities) it also felt like it offered endless possibilities and even though some encounters were hard, it felt like there was always some interaction you could find as a solution if you just dug hard enough.
I also think BG3 is hamstrung a little by following 5e rules. I am personally not a fan of this edition (for multiple reasons), but we’ll see if Larian has adjusted the rules enough to make the game interesting.
The addition of weapon based attack abilities has at least added some nuance, but I feel I have a lot fewer options, combos and interactions available to me than in D:OS2 (thus far).