Ended up not mattering for me since I let Gale nuke the thing into oblivion. My pally ended up with Wyll there at the end, the one companion I never used throughout the game. I actually laughed when Astarion started flaking, I always regretted not staking him that first night in camp, but Karlach broke my heart. There needs to be a way of achieving a positive ending for such a great character.
Act 2 Final (heavy spoilerz)
I finished the game at Act 2 via Gale’s magic orb nuke. Kills your entire party. Kills all three chosen evil foozles (surprise bitches!). Kills The Absolute / elder brain. Kills the dream visitor? Job done. I was kinda disappointed though the explosion wasn’t strong enough to take out the tower topside. I was expecting a huge explosion that never came. I guess then all the harpers, flaming fists, and Jaheria would also be killed. Also they should have showed what happened to the army enslaved by the now vaporized elder brain. Otherwise it was just okay. Mr. E seems pleased. The End.
Except I first entered and completed all of the illithid colony and forgot to take Gale, so right when I got to the boss door I reloaded and did the whole map again, the exact same way, with Gale. I then realized only after this you can navigate the tunnels, bypassing all side room fights, straight to the elevator down to the boss door.
Also ran into a nasty 100% soft lock trying to talk to the severed head device near the necrofools. So I ended up repeating that large pile of undead fight a total of four times because I forgot to save.
GG. I’ll give Baldur’s Gate 3 a solid 7 out of 10.
C grade eh? Your a tough professor. I’m easily at an A-, and only the - because of some bugs.
Of course I heavily weighted towards the writing (I love Larian humour), voice acting (that narrator!), character cinematics, combat/problem solving (sooo many options), reactivity and general interactivity.
-1 for the inventory/UIUX/party management
-1 for the camera/puzzles/hidden-object-games
I usually waive the bugs as the reason as long as it isn’t too crazy. Three soft locks, a couple crashes to desktop, no broken quests but some things didn’t work.
I seriously considered stopping at the same spot and am soooo glad I kept going. Act 3 has my favorite set pieces and voice acting in the game.
Taking a break before starting act 3 was a good call though. Turn based combat can grind you down over time, and it’s a long game.
Out of curiosity, how do you rate Pathfinder Wrath? That campaign management, and the requirement for toybox… that one is a C for me.
Act 2 does actually feels like the end-game. So I’ll give it credit for that, even though a ton of questions go unanswered. Like I think they could have made it more satisfying, but I understand why they didn’t. More broadly though I’m firmly in the Act 2 > Act 1 camp. Act 1 is bigger but had more annoying encounters / outcomes for my character. Plus you’re low level. The combat in low level 5e as adapted here just wasn’t very good. Reaching level 5 was the game changer. Act 2 has the sweet spot level range for good D&D combat. It also had the stakes, the shift, the foozle, and the dungeon. No dragons though.
Naturally, Wrath of the Righteous gets a 7 out of 10.
Although I don’t think toybox is required even though I used it. It’s that buff mod BUBBLES that is the true star of the show. I don’t think I could ever play that game without it.
My biggest complaint, after playing through this quite a bit, is that there really isn’t a “good” play through. There are so many of the choices you are shoehorned into that I just really didn’t want to do. For me, I wish there was a path where you could fight against what is the main story, right from the get go.
I generally like playing “the good guys” in games like this, and I can’t seem to really find that route. Maybe I missed some choices but, eh.
Shadowheart quest ending spoilers: It’s really, really funny that you learn her real name, and it’s just “Jen”.
I definitely played ‘good’ or had what I felt were ‘good’ outcomes, even if the choice was grey. Might be perception.
I find myself making a lot of what feel like “harm reduction” choices, so kudos for realism I guess?
I completed the game and absolutely loved it.
After a handful of tries, I wimped out and notched down difficulty for the final battle. I knew the strat: Don’t fight just run! But my mindflayer (Orpheus) kept getting stunned.
Man, Lae’zel at level 12 with a haste spell was laying waste to dudes (and brains) down the stretch.
I’m a bit puzzled at the Emperor’s heel turn if you choose to free Orpheus. Orpheus was totally reasonable and onboard, but the Emperor split and went full baddie once you chose to go against him. Dude clearly had his own agenda the whole time.
Gale also planned on making a move for the crown at the end, in a dialogue just before the final battle, but then nothing came of it. No dialogue options on that front. Of course, Gale is the one part member who we left on the other side of the portal as we bashed the brain in, as he was under a grovel spells’ influence, crawling on the battlefield.
Going to confront Raphael in the House of Hope is worth it for the epic music/song they play during the final battle.
I’m playing a “good” paladin.
I have a plan for Act 3. Kill all the bad guys. What has happened so far: (lower city)
- Rejected Gortash’s offer, will kill him later. Shape changing killer monster women must be the first to go. Definitely.
- Rejected Raphael’s offer, will try and steal the hammer later, and probably kill him later.
- Broke Wyll’s devil contract, will try to rescue his father later. Can’t seem to kill devil women so she will hang out and maybe even help take down the brain.
- Gale promised he will hand the crown over to Mystra since he’s sucking weave now straight from the tit.
- Agreed to help the Githyanki rebel faction free Orpheus. Reason is The Emperor is just a middle man, and a mindflayer, who totally wanted me to become a mindflayer, but I’ve always rejected it, and has that voice I am very familiar with…
- Agreed to help the deep gnomes with the robot factory but want to make contact first. Got the bomb.
- Currently trying to catch a serial killer
Also I will try and stop reading posts in this thread, to avoid an incident. There’s been some slips.
Early Lower City:
I don’t mind that the game is a little janky when doing things out of order. In this case I went into the sewers and the entered the Emperor’s old room from the back, then proceeded out the other side going in reverse order of his directions.
But considering I did this by hanging a right turn from the entrance of Lower City, going down the obvious hatch that was begging to be entered, and simply wandering into this stuff out of the intended order as easily as walking through the druid grove, don’t you think they would’ve smoothed out the awkward transitions from doing it backwards?
This is the most obvious situation I’ve noticed so far where it seems like Act 3 could’ve used an extra pass. Not a huge deal.
Well, I absolutely loved almost all of this. Acts 1 and 2 are easily worth the price of admission, and I really enjoyed Act 3 as well, right up until the end.
But I cannot remember a more tedious endgame. I quick-saved and quit the fight through the Upper City three times, picking it up again a day or two later, and I’m still on some humungous staircase, and evidently I’m supposed to trek back down the stairs and kill all the enemy stragglers before I can proceed, at which point, I am given to understand, it actually gets worse. So I am now officially done, after a fashion.
Not for the first time, I set off Gale’s tactical nuke, and this time I’m drawing a line under it. Sorry, citizens of Baldur’s Gate, but at least the rest of the Sword Coast is OK, and that’s good enough for me.
I wish I had it in me to power through, because I am super curious to see the epilogues, but life is just too short.
The ride up until that point, though? Truly impressive.
LMFAO SHADOWHEART!!!1111lolololspoilerslololol
The end of her quest line has you taking down…Viconia. The best babe of the original saga! So it’s like in order to make BG3’s best babe happy, you gotta kill the previous one! Or betray her to Viconia. My co-worker is gonna be pissed when he finds out about this. LOL!
That doesn’t sound correct. Once past the first portion of the battle, you just need to make it to the transition point to the next area and you can move on without having to kill everyone.
Unless I’m mistaken about where you are.
Agreed. If you’re where we think you are, misty step or have someone w strength topple the statue so everyone can use it to scramble up. There’s a door around the corner on the next landing. Once through you can fully heal up. Break out angelic slumber before the actual final battle.
That said, I did have to dial the difficulty down to Explorer to win the final stage without setting off Gale’s nuke.
Thanks—I might have been somewhere different? I don’t remember a statue.
I was standing at the brain stem, which IIRC the game wanted me to climb, but told me I couldn’t use. There was a restoration pod next to it that I couldn’t use, either (“Now is not the time!” or similar). Stuck in turn-based combat, with goblins and inquisitors and an ogre dashing in circles around the courtyard below, and extremely bored. At that point I clicked over to “this experience is irritating and meaningless.”
Reports that the final face-off is an even bigger chore made quitting an easy decision. “Oh, hell no, I’m not doing any of that!” is never a satisfying way to finish a game, but I’m happy enough with what I had :)
Yeah, you can’t run past the courtyard fight.