God damn this game is kicking my arse… I got stuck on a massive fight in Act 2, but managed to totally cheese it. Spoiler: Act 2 plot spoilers The fight with Yurgir. Nothing in the entire area, not even kicking Ketheric Thorm’s undead arse seven ways from Sunday, gave me as much trouble as that fight… I lost count of how many times I tried it… Eventually I managed to pass some difficult skill checks in dialogue and convinced him to kill himself. **** off back to whatever hell you came from, and take that smarmy sack or turds Raphael with you! I’m just into Act 3 and now I’m stuck again on an even harder fight! Spoiler: Act 3/Shadowheart spoilers So after getting in a few fights around the lower city, including one where I accidentally AOE’d some random civvies with a Fear spell while fighting sahaguin(sp?) (and then the city watch jumped in to attack me and left the monsters alone…!), I finally found Shadowheart’s old gaff. I’m romancing Shadowheart (half-elf solidarity!), and in Act 2 I convinced her to turn from Shar and spare Dame Aylin (because who wouldn’t want the hulking great daughter of a goddess hanging around camp? (Although I didn’t know that would happen ahead of time - I just can’t help but be a goody-two-shoes in RPGs!)). But of course now I have to fight the Mother Superior and her minions… I don’t think I’ve ever been in a fight against this many opponents before, and those ****ing dark/void clouds are absolutely crippling me. I’m tempted to re-spec my character into a monstrously tanky fighter, just so I can have more heavy-hitters in this one single fight. I’m really enjoying this game, I don’t think I’ve ever played something with so much narrative and so many options to explore. I’ve played nearly 50hrs and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. But I have absolutely no qualms in switching to Easy for the really double hard b******d fights, or save-scumming the balls out of this game. I tend to let a lot of the failed skill checks in dialogue slide, but I have re-loaded so many seemingly unwinnable fights…
Comments on that first spoiler Spoiler I hate that guy. I've managed to talk him into killing himself, and having all his minions kill each other, I've managed to get him out of his stupid deal, and I've killed him - Every single one is a pain in the ass, and I'm sure I'm barely scratching the surface of that interaction too..
I like that my 50w laptop 3050 can run this at 1080p reasonably well. First play on tactician mode as I am a BG1 and 2 vet: wipe, wipe, wipe, wipe... My main is a lightening sorcerer. Rerolled some companions into more helpful builds too. I haven't tried online co-op, I have the GOG version, I imagine it is cross platform?
Larian have said that cross platform play “is coming”: https://www.techradar.com/gaming/co...arian-studios-director-of-publishing-confirms. You can already share saves between PC and PS5 and similar functionality for PC and Xbox is also coming, but there’s no indication of timescales for cross-platform multiplayer that I’ve seen. I have the Steam version, and from what I’ve seen of the multiplayer menu it seems heavily integrated into the Steam services, so I don’t know if Steam and GOG users on the PC can party up.
Feh! I am completing a doctoral portfolio (12,000 words to go) before writing 3 more chapters of a 26,000 word thesis, alongside my full time job, and I insist on allowing myself 30 minutes AM and PM for some 5th edition D&D. They've really kept the spirit of the first two. Although, I only fully played the enhanced editions and the first act of the original BG1. No time? No excuse!
I have written 33,957 words over the last 19 13 [working] days... for a single client. Not counting headlines, subheads, captions, metadata, nor imagery. I have just finished another book, which was sent to the printers earlier this week. Owing to scheduling clashes, I had to do the school run and feed the kids during peak productivity hours the past two days in a row. I started my research at 0700 yesterday morning and shut the office down at 2130 last night, and finally sat down with a Cup Noodle to turn my brain off and watch something on the Magic Lantern. Today will be more of the same, with the added bonus of having to fight a PolarFire SoC Video Kit to write up a hands-on piece on using the FPGA fabric to accelerate on-device machine learning for computer vision. I, at least, find time for a few rounds of Lexica on my phone, so I've not given up gaming completely.
Luxury! When we were young, we used to have to lick road wit' tongue and our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt... and we were lucky! [/montypython] Seriously though, I wish I wrote that prodigiously! Props to you. Although I am a psychologist by trade, not a writer!
A couple of times I’ve been tempted to try my hand at freelance writing work. Every time I’ve had this whim, all it’s taken to slap that idea firmly out of my head is the merest hint from Gareth about his workload. Nah, I’ll stick to my cushy 0730-1600 gig, thanks
It is extremely rare for me to put so many hours into a game so soon after purchasing it. I bought it at the very end of September and it's been pretty much all I've played since then. Yeah, yeah, I know, "those are rookie numbers", etc. But ~113 hours in just over 3 weeks is unheard of for me. The only other "modern" game that beats it in terms of playing time is Cyberpunk 2077 - I've got 175hrs in that, but I bought it in Feb '21 and I've had at least three playthroughs so far.
