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I hit 400 hours of BG3 this afternoon. The game continues to be excellent.
I continue to love how well it simulates IRL D&D. Case in point: the 3+ hours I spent fighting Raphael in the House of Hope yesterday. No save scumming was involved; I did the entire battle in my first(!) try, and it took 3+ hours to do. What a freaking fun battle. So much space for tactics. So much fun.
I'm quickly depleting the number of unfinished major and minor quests in my journal: currently, I have about four of each left. And omg I am already mourning the end of this game. I love it so much, and I don't know what's going to occupy my imagination once I've finished it.
In part to postpone the inevitable, I've already started a replay from one of my earliest saves (approximately 2 hours into my initial playthrough). I say "in part" because, even though I've played four hundred hours, I missed so. Much. Content. And that's due to a combination of bad game design and the plot.
To wit: the game begins with the player character being infected with a parasite that will painfully transform them into an illithid within a week of infection.
Obviously, I wanted to do everything I could to find a cure before that quest timer ran out. The NPCs were equally—and on one occasion, murderously—adamant that the player character find a cure before time ran out.
So when I realized that unlike BG 1&2, there was no day/night mechanic, and that while my characters might bellyache about being tired every now and then, nor was there any exhaustion mechanic, I smirked, said "Thanks for the nifty oversight, game devs!" and kept on trucking. Meaning, I only long rested, grudgingly, when my spell slots, short rests, healing potions, and hit points were completely depleted, making me useless in battle. And because I'm good with 5e mechanics and BG3 follows them pretty closely, that rarely happened. Plus, the more companions I recruited, the more spell slots and hit points I had at my disposal.
I think I rested only 12 times in the first 250 hours of play.
Of course, what I didn't realize (and oh, how I wish I'd realized) is that most of the cut scenes only trigger during long rests. The super plot critical ones will of course happen, but the vast majority expire if too much time elapses following the in-play trigger. I missed on out getting-to-know-you banter. I missed out on companions commenting on, snarking at, joking with, and fighting each other. I missed out on a good 2/3rds of the romance. I spent a lot of time wondering why the game was offering all these weird non sequitur dialogue options in the cut scenes I did trigger, never realizing they were references to things that happened in all the cut scenes I'd missed.
It has been great fun to go back and fill in all those blanks, although oh, I wish I could have experienced them all on my first playthrough when I didn't know where everything was going to end up.
Non BG3 Items of Suckage:
これで以上です。
I hit 400 hours of BG3 this afternoon. The game continues to be excellent.
I continue to love how well it simulates IRL D&D. Case in point: the 3+ hours I spent fighting Raphael in the House of Hope yesterday. No save scumming was involved; I did the entire battle in my first(!) try, and it took 3+ hours to do. What a freaking fun battle. So much space for tactics. So much fun.
I'm quickly depleting the number of unfinished major and minor quests in my journal: currently, I have about four of each left. And omg I am already mourning the end of this game. I love it so much, and I don't know what's going to occupy my imagination once I've finished it.
In part to postpone the inevitable, I've already started a replay from one of my earliest saves (approximately 2 hours into my initial playthrough). I say "in part" because, even though I've played four hundred hours, I missed so. Much. Content. And that's due to a combination of bad game design and the plot.
To wit: the game begins with the player character being infected with a parasite that will painfully transform them into an illithid within a week of infection.
Obviously, I wanted to do everything I could to find a cure before that quest timer ran out. The NPCs were equally—and on one occasion, murderously—adamant that the player character find a cure before time ran out.
So when I realized that unlike BG 1&2, there was no day/night mechanic, and that while my characters might bellyache about being tired every now and then, nor was there any exhaustion mechanic, I smirked, said "Thanks for the nifty oversight, game devs!" and kept on trucking. Meaning, I only long rested, grudgingly, when my spell slots, short rests, healing potions, and hit points were completely depleted, making me useless in battle. And because I'm good with 5e mechanics and BG3 follows them pretty closely, that rarely happened. Plus, the more companions I recruited, the more spell slots and hit points I had at my disposal.
I think I rested only 12 times in the first 250 hours of play.
Of course, what I didn't realize (and oh, how I wish I'd realized) is that most of the cut scenes only trigger during long rests. The super plot critical ones will of course happen, but the vast majority expire if too much time elapses following the in-play trigger. I missed on out getting-to-know-you banter. I missed out on companions commenting on, snarking at, joking with, and fighting each other. I missed out on a good 2/3rds of the romance. I spent a lot of time wondering why the game was offering all these weird non sequitur dialogue options in the cut scenes I did trigger, never realizing they were references to things that happened in all the cut scenes I'd missed.
It has been great fun to go back and fill in all those blanks, although oh, I wish I could have experienced them all on my first playthrough when I didn't know where everything was going to end up.
Non BG3 Items of Suckage:
- Richard Simmons passing sucks.
- Dr. Ruth passing sucks.
- Assassination attempts suck.
- The Sandman issue "Calliope" has always creeped me the fuck out but finding out it was actually autobiographical/aspirational sucks.
- People continuing to stick their heads in the sand when it comes to how rape and abuse victims actually respond to rape and abuse suck.
- Women famed for their feminism and/or astute observation of human nature protecting their rapist husbands through silence and complicity suck.
これで以上です。
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