Baldur's Gate 3 launched earlier this month to player and critical acclaim. However, as players have begun to reach act 3, many are discovering that it's...a touch less polished than the first two acts.
Game’s a buggy as hell mess. MP with my partner has had many, many bugs. Until this patch many spells were straight up wrong in the tool tip. Unacceptable stuff, imho. Reviewers have been way too kind.
Edited to add
Played again tonight. In a fifteen minute span of playing, we had four significant bugs. First my dialogue got bugged and didn’t get the speech choices (my partner did, but I was leading the conversation so that didn’t matter). After a quick load that was fixed. We move to a new zone and suddenly I have a characters outlined permanently. Check settings, it’s set to off. Quick load doesn’t fix it, quit to menu doesn’t fix it. Have to completely restart the game.
Then I listened in on one of my partner’s conversations and when it was done, I was randomly stuck inside a box. Quick load later, we’re going along and after climbing down a ladder my partner is teleported into a box.
Like… Honestly, I don’t believe anyone who says they are playing MP bug free. This shit happens every play session for us.
Also playing with my partner. Spell tooltips have been completely accurate, and we’ve only encountered one issue, which was solved with waiting a minute and the game sorted itself out.
Wyll is completely borked. You can google wyll multiplayer for more details, other people have had the same issue. I don’t want to give too much spoiler away for anyone else reading.
I’d recommend repairing your install in case some of the bugs are caused by corrupt files. I’m doing a multiplayer runthrough with a friend and we’ve encountered minor bugs like a exclamation mark being stuck over Wyll’s head, but nothing gamebreaking.
Yep we did a massive battle yesterday, went to long rest. Got stuck in the camp with us lying down on the floor twitching with our heads in the campfire itself. Couldn’t quit, couldn’t save, couldn’t leave the fucked camp sleep animation. Tried everything.
I didn’t get many bugs with later content, but a big problem with later content is that the player gets immensely stronger but enemies stay about the same. It also becomes way too easy to pass out of combat checks. I doubt this will be fixed any time soon, maybe in the future they will add a new difficulty.
I think it’s sorta okay that the enemies don’t get too much stronger, especially since (at least for casters) a lot of the added power comes in the form of gaining access to stupidly OP spells like Hypnotic Pattern. I don’t think it would be very fun if enemies started using tactics that amounted to “Hahaha, I rolled higher initiative so now you don’t get to play for the next three rounds while I can do whatever I want.”
That’s how my first try at one act 1 boss went. They multiplied with illusions and those cast hold person on each party member and then just killed them all. I didn’t try that boss after until way later
Yeah, I feel like having someone who can cast Magic Missile is almost mandatory for that fight, simply because the illusions have 1 HP, are very spread out, and Magic Missile can target multiple enemies and is guaranteed to hit. It’s perfect for killing almost all of the illusions in a single turn.
“Hahaha, I rolled higher initiative so now you don’t get to play for the next three rounds while I can do whatever I want.”
I had to reload multiple fights because the enemies just killed 3-4 of my partymembers before I had my first turn. Random Initiative is really not something I like in Games.
Even if enemies got a lot stronger you’d still have numbers go up, and less superficially you’d still have significantly more options than a bunch of level 1 characters. I don’t want to feel like Superman when the roleplaying situation is supposed to feel grim and insurmountable. My mood to use caution and diplomacy is really killed when I know I can destroy any encounter. I also just want a fun tactical experience in addition to the roleplaying elements, is that too much to ask?
Currently, the game on tactician, even without abusing resting, consumables, or strong multiclass is too easy in my opinion, and this is coming from someone with no prior DnD experience. I do have a little bit of Pathfinder experience as I got WotR during the Steam Summer Sale.
I just reached the underdark, the only annoyance I’ve had is that I totally misunderstood my fellow party member’s intent with wanting to show me something & I had to reload my last save to avoid a gay romance I had no interest in being.
I ran into this too. I had this RP moment where I was going to convert my character to a wizard based on where the conversation was going. I realised what was going on and pulled my character out of the conversation and went with my original idea, getting Withers to convert my character to a wizard. In my mind, that’s how the story went.
I dunno, maybe I’m just easy, or got lucky with bugs (not that I ran into none, but none were game breaking) the ending wasn’t great but I enjoyed it enough that it didn’t spoil the rest of the game. Now it does feel like there is missing content in the final act, and seems like they probably rushed it out at the end, but I spent 100 enjoyable hours getting there so I can’t complain too much.
However, I really really hope that either via patches or DLCs they include the missing content and the final act gets polished up to the quality of the rest of the game. Again I didn’t think it was bad, just the first two acts were amazing. i will say however one of the best parts of the game is in act 3 as well. Loved the game, almost immediately started a 2nd playthrough, and have plans for a 3rd and 4th.
The differences in playing at launch vs after patch 1 are insane. My first time through the game, I kept thinking things were a little off and just thought it was simply weird writing that assumed too narrow of a range of player actions. Turns out half of the shit I was doing was accounted for, but the scripts or cutscenes weren’t triggering properly.
I had gotten through the entire game pretty early because of my obsessive way of gaming, and tried to bring up all the broken shit a bunch of times and was downvoted and dismissed as contrarian.
I finished the game after about 85 hours and yeah… act 2 and 3 need some polish. I ran into more than one gamebreaking bug.
But overall it was still a really really great experience and taking the complexity of the game into account I think the overall polish of the game at release was quite good.
By at some point saying ‘OK, enough side quests, let’s move on with the story’. I plan to replay this game multiple times, so I do not mind missing some side quests in my first playthrough.
IMO, what is there in Acts 1 and 2 still more than justify BG3’s price tag and glowing reviews. While I wish Act 3 was more polished (and yes, the ending does feel a tad rushed and underwhelming), what is there in Act 3 is still plenty.
I’m hoping for an expansion for an Act 4 to bridge the gap between Act 3 and the ending, maybe set in the Upper City, with better outcomes for our companions. However, with all the branching choices that already exist in the game, simply the feat of having to create one more story might be a nightmare.
They are literally noted in the most recent patch notes. Shield had the wrong duration (until long rest, VERY different to how it actually works), Warding Bond made no mention at all that the caster also takes damage (pretty key detail). Many spells didn’t have listed ranges or areas, I haven’t looked to see if those are all fixed now.
Not OP but I can at least throw a minor pet peeve in that hat - Mage hand only works once per short rest, instead of as an at will as the cantrip should.
For games with a shitton of content, I’m not sure it’s entirely possible. You just can’t have every single combination of stuff checked out after every change
There were 1st level spells that had missing info or flat out wrong info. This is content players are immediately going to interact with.
There’s a major NPC whose story line gets broken beyond repair in multiplayer if you don’t do things just right. This is only a few hours into the game.
Compared to a lot of Triple-A games out there, it is polished.
It’s a pretty big game with a lot of variations. And as i said; It just got it’s first patch and more are coming.
It took Bethesda about 12 years before they got around to fixing the “Games for Windows Live” thing in Fallout 3. Which literally made the game unplayable. That was a problem.
I’m sure they’ll get Wyll fixed for you, if he hasn’t already been in this patch.
But now I’m intrigued… If you don’t think you’re setting the bar high, what games are you comparing BG3 to that were that bug free at launch?
Scope is not an excuse for bugs and I’m tired of people making that argument. If they couldn’t deliver this scope as a polished game, maybe they should have reduced the scope.
Gonna be real with you, this is a terrible take. I’d much rather have games pushing boundaries at the cost of some bugs rather than a bunch of the same old regurgitated elements over and over to be safe.
GTA3 had plenty of bugs, the Purple Nines glitch being particularly infamous. Literally nobody out there is saying “wow, I wish they’d stuck with the top-down style games instead of going 3D because this bug has seriously inconvenienced me.”
It’s pretty damn polished. There’s just a lot of possibilities and they rarely mess up. With biggest Act 3 issue is performance is worse, which is expected when you’re going from wilderness to dense city. It still runs pretty fine on my old PC on ultra. It’s about 25fps, which for top down strategy is fine. I could lower graphics if it were an issue.
I was fortunate enough to not run into any of the quest-breaking bugs. Had no issues doing what I wanted to do. What I did run into a lot was buggy scripting where dialogues assumed I had information I didn’t, so I wouldn’t know what my companions were talking about some of the time.
The bigger problem in my eyes is spells/items/class abilities/feats not working correctly and being outright non-functional in some cases. That’s going to be an enduring problem for replays, and it’s not encouraging to me that very little has been done on this since release.
I do think this game wouldn’t have scored as well as it did if so many publications didn’t rush to press with half a playthrough. In this particular case, I think the game–bugs and all–is still a strong GotY contender, but I really hope there’s a conversation being had in the professional games criticism sphere about how this practice could cause a scandal in the future.
As it is, I’m genuinely surprised the reviewers aren’t coming under fire more than they have for this. I come from an era where publishing a review without completing a game would have been unconscionable.
A couple minor broken ability examples: Mage Hand requires a short rest to recharge, which is fundamentally wrong for a cantrip, and Feather Fall is a bonus action instead of a reaction, making it useless for its primary purpose. These aren’t game-breaking, of course, but annoyances like this add up, and it never feels good to have chosen an ability that turns out not to work as it should.
One of the more problematic issues is stupid pathing logic, especially around known hazards: Party members absolutely love to spot traps, announce them, and then walk right into them. Sometimes it results in someone getting a minor injury. Other times it nearly wipes out the whole party.
mage hand requiring a short rest to resummon might be because you are using the gith racial?
Nope. Wizard and bard cantrips.
Since you mention it, though, I think the Gith’s psionic Mage Hand is a cantrip in 5e. Did it require a rest in some past edition?
Feather fall now is a ritual spell so you can cast it before combat and it will last all of combat. It’s just different from the tabletop game.
I’ll have to try that; thanks. It would still be an annoying extra step and wouldn’t cover surprise situations as the spell is intended, but would at least be more useful than it seemed.
In any case, it’s not just those two examples. The point is that a surprising number of little things like these are broken, either by departing from D&D rules in ways that don’t make sense or by just plain failing to do what their in-game descriptions say.
I have found one example of departing from 5e rules in a way that does make sense, though, so it’s not all bad.
I wouldn’t label things they changed compared to 5e rules as necessarily broken, unless the way they say it’s implemented doesn’t actually match what’s happening.
I picked half elf as race initially because I was used to the +2 +1 +1 spread they get, which isn’t the case in the game, or hypnotic pattern, which only lasts 2 turns instead of 10. Is the game broken? No, it’s just me assuming stuff will be 1 to 1 to the 5e rules. And it goes both ways, took me a bit to realize they don’t follow the spellcasting rules to a t, and you can cast leveled spells with both your action and your bonus action.
For the items, etc. the ones I can remember offhand are:
Boots of Stormy Clamour (applies Reverberation with conditions) - never seen it proc with any of the conditions I’ve tried. Meanwhile, Diadem of Arcane Synergy will (likely incorrectly) proc on damn near anything, even self-buffs.
Jhannyl’s Gloves (auto-cures Poison/Paralyze/Blindness) - hasn’t worked for me once. The +1 to saving throws is active though.
Goad (disadvantage on attacks, from Battle Master subclass) - either doesn’t work or is very inconsistent.
Uncanny Dodge (Rogue) - I think everyone that’s played a Rogue knows this one. It’s got a weird passive effect implementation that auto-disables a lot.
Chromatic Orb - having occasional issues getting Storm Sorcerer’s Heart of the Storm to proc with this. Still pinning this one down, if anyone else has run into it?
Lucky (feat) - doesn’t reroll incoming crits.
Polearm Master (feat) - I have no idea where the bonus action is. Either I’m blind or it’s just missing.
There’s also stuff on the plus side, like Titanstring Bow double dipping with Lightning Charges or, famously, Haste and Haste-like effects (Elixir of Bloodlust) granting second attacks on each additional action for lv. 5+ martial classes. It’s possible Larian just balanced it this way, but I don’t think so. It’s crazy broken.
all possible actions should show up on the K panel, I have dragged the “non-lethal toggle”, the eldritch blast push toggle and all of those the the actual bar to be able to juggle them.
These two don’t show up there unfortunately under normal circumstances. The first Horde Breaker attack shows up there, the follow-up doesn’t until the first has already been executed. The feat one doesn’t even have a similar indicator there. It’s kind of a weird implementation.
The High Harper quest start is bugged if you talk to the shopkeeper with Jaheira instead of your MC. You get the key but cannot get into the basement without making the shop staff hostile. If you go around through the balcony the bottom floor is empty.
Wyll’s dad thinks his son sold his soul to save him even though he chose to free himself from the contract.
Gale thinks I agreed to give Raphael the crown even though I unambiguously turned him down.
Gortash thinks I agreed to help him in his pre-battle speech with Karlach even though I did not.
Gortash has loot on him that is cut content “Ilithid Jar with Larvae”.
Targetting with AOE spells will sometimes just not attempt to hit enemies that are clearly in the circle and highlighted.
Chest of the mundane broke at start of Act three (fixed in first patch)
Returning weapons wont return if thrown while entering combat.
The rescued gnomes in the steel foundry keep getting mad at me for being there and starting the “you’re not allowed to be here” dialog when they spot me, despite being marked as allied with a green circle.
After the Steel Foundry conclusion Wulbren won’t acknowledge the fact that he’s no longer leader, and his model spawns on top of and clips through the leader of the other faction.
Various enemies will randomly take extremely long turns and do nothing.
Allied AI will walk through allied ground effects after combat and become hostile.
Dame Aylen flew to the bottom of the tower during the fight with Loroakkan and didn’t trigger her scene when the fight was over.
The conversation with Isobel after Loroakkan fight took place in the tower despite being initiated in the camp.
That’s a short list off the top of my head but there’s been plenty more.
The main example cited in the article comes from recruiting Minthara instead of killing her. It looks like Act 3 didn’t really take that option into account.
Other problems include questlines that can’t be completed.
Finished the campaign duo with a buddy. Didn’t experience any particularly bad bugs. Had a couple times where shit didn’t load right for me but closing and reopening would fix so eh.
Kind of felt like a couple plots didn’t flow right going into act 3 but nothing that bad. Act 3 did feel overall a little rushed and unfinished but was still damn good. Some act 3 highlights: House of hope, underwater part, final boss battle (if you don’t count the gauntlet, that part sucked huge balls)
I just finished Act 1 and am a completionist who literally inspects every chunk of map, reads every book, finishes every quest-log item before moving to next map area. I can safely say that Act 1 has been amazing for me.
I did encounter one inventory bug. Prior to patch one, I was using the Chest of the Mundane as a poor man’s Bag of Holding due to the weight reduction. At one point I took 600kg of items out of the chest to sell them to a vendor, and my inventory bugged. After screwing around with my buggy inventory for an hour (having fun earning infinite money from a vendor, for example), I reloaded from the save prior to taking the stuff from the chest and removed it in smaller chunks and everything was fine. Patch 1 killed the weight reduction in the chest, so it is unlikely others will find this fun bug.
Side note: my Lawful Good Gold Dwarf Cleric of Moradin has been a blast. I first talk my way into any circumstances, because one shouldn’t pass judgement without all the information. But after judging them as evil, wiping out the goblin, duergar, and zentarim camps has been super satisfying. The completionist in me worries about plot implications of these judgements down the line, and what I get locked out of, but so far it’s been great.
The interesting thing about DnD morality for clerics and paladins is that when someone asks “Who made you the judge of what is good?” your character can honestly say “God.”
I’m in act three right now, and the most noticeable issue I’ve run into has been characters mistakenly referring to choices I supposedly made. Really takes you out of it when that is such a focus of the game.
I also have Minthara in my party, and I can confirm that she’s broken as hell. You give up quite a lot to recruit her, and it’s not worth it at all. Don’t do it.
I had a laugh when everyone had !'s and I go talk to them and they are all commenting on the death of Shadowhart, but every single time, you can see Shadowhart just vibing in the background because I prevented Lae’zel from killing her.
This is an act 1 scene that you probably missed because you warped to act 2 without enough long rests done to play them all. It’s… been a while since the game released and it’s written in a thread where they are commenting Minthara recruitment, which is arguably way more spoilery than this.
I replayed act 1 three different times going about 10 hours into each one. I’ve never encountered laz trying to kill shadowheart. I know what the scene is as I’ve seen it in passing on the internet. But I’ve never had it… dafuq?
Possibly tied to how deep into interactions with them you’ve had. If you keep them together in the party and not just at the camp, they argue a lot. Though with the bugs, it could have simply not been triggering. After patch 1, there are so many scenes I never saw my first 2 times through despite doing pretty much the same exact things in the same exact order until the goblin camp.
Yeah, I had one of those happen that ended up spoiling something really big, along with really confusing the ever-loving daylights when it happened, because I had absolutely no idea what Gale was talking about, because he was referencing a quest I hadn’t actually started yet.
I’m going to put my currently playthrough on hold until patch 2. I don’t mind waiting a bit.
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Game’s a buggy as hell mess. MP with my partner has had many, many bugs. Until this patch many spells were straight up wrong in the tool tip. Unacceptable stuff, imho. Reviewers have been way too kind.
Edited to add
Played again tonight. In a fifteen minute span of playing, we had four significant bugs. First my dialogue got bugged and didn’t get the speech choices (my partner did, but I was leading the conversation so that didn’t matter). After a quick load that was fixed. We move to a new zone and suddenly I have a characters outlined permanently. Check settings, it’s set to off. Quick load doesn’t fix it, quit to menu doesn’t fix it. Have to completely restart the game.
Then I listened in on one of my partner’s conversations and when it was done, I was randomly stuck inside a box. Quick load later, we’re going along and after climbing down a ladder my partner is teleported into a box.
Like… Honestly, I don’t believe anyone who says they are playing MP bug free. This shit happens every play session for us.
Also playing with my partner. Spell tooltips have been completely accurate, and we’ve only encountered one issue, which was solved with waiting a minute and the game sorted itself out.
I mean I’m glad for you but the tool tips thing is just objective. You can even see the ones they fixed and updated in the patch notes.
As for other bugs, hope you continue being lucky. We’re completely locked out of s major character’s storyline because of a bug.
Just out of curiosity, which character?
And what is the bug that caused the lock out?
Wyll is completely borked. You can google wyll multiplayer for more details, other people have had the same issue. I don’t want to give too much spoiler away for anyone else reading.
I’d recommend repairing your install in case some of the bugs are caused by corrupt files. I’m doing a multiplayer runthrough with a friend and we’ve encountered minor bugs like a exclamation mark being stuck over Wyll’s head, but nothing gamebreaking.
Have you been able to progress Wyll’s storyline? Because that sounds like the “he’s broken” bug.
Yep we did a massive battle yesterday, went to long rest. Got stuck in the camp with us lying down on the floor twitching with our heads in the campfire itself. Couldn’t quit, couldn’t save, couldn’t leave the fucked camp sleep animation. Tried everything.
Had to reload and redo. Fucking bullshit.
Edit: photo I took. See. What the fuck are they doing. https://i.postimg.cc/bYxvsZvj/IMG20230828203550.jpg
I didn’t get many bugs with later content, but a big problem with later content is that the player gets immensely stronger but enemies stay about the same. It also becomes way too easy to pass out of combat checks. I doubt this will be fixed any time soon, maybe in the future they will add a new difficulty.
I think it’s sorta okay that the enemies don’t get too much stronger, especially since (at least for casters) a lot of the added power comes in the form of gaining access to stupidly OP spells like Hypnotic Pattern. I don’t think it would be very fun if enemies started using tactics that amounted to “Hahaha, I rolled higher initiative so now you don’t get to play for the next three rounds while I can do whatever I want.”
That’s how my first try at one act 1 boss went. They multiplied with illusions and those cast hold person on each party member and then just killed them all. I didn’t try that boss after until way later
Yeah, I feel like having someone who can cast Magic Missile is almost mandatory for that fight, simply because the illusions have 1 HP, are very spread out, and Magic Missile can target multiple enemies and is guaranteed to hit. It’s perfect for killing almost all of the illusions in a single turn.
I had to reload multiple fights because the enemies just killed 3-4 of my partymembers before I had my first turn. Random Initiative is really not something I like in Games.
I think it’s part of the RPG appeal to see your character get stronger.
If you scale the enemies too much, and ennemies are still as hard to beat, you don’t feel that power levelling.
Even if enemies got a lot stronger you’d still have numbers go up, and less superficially you’d still have significantly more options than a bunch of level 1 characters. I don’t want to feel like Superman when the roleplaying situation is supposed to feel grim and insurmountable. My mood to use caution and diplomacy is really killed when I know I can destroy any encounter. I also just want a fun tactical experience in addition to the roleplaying elements, is that too much to ask?
Currently, the game on tactician, even without abusing resting, consumables, or strong multiclass is too easy in my opinion, and this is coming from someone with no prior DnD experience. I do have a little bit of Pathfinder experience as I got WotR during the Steam Summer Sale.
I just reached the underdark, the only annoyance I’ve had is that I totally misunderstood my fellow party member’s intent with wanting to show me something & I had to reload my last save to avoid a gay romance I had no interest in being.
The dick pic experience!
I ran into this too. I had this RP moment where I was going to convert my character to a wizard based on where the conversation was going. I realised what was going on and pulled my character out of the conversation and went with my original idea, getting Withers to convert my character to a wizard. In my mind, that’s how the story went.
Ah the “Wait, Angel’s a guy?” Problem from Cyberpunk
LMFAOOOOO it was fucking gale wasn’t it.
right
I dunno, maybe I’m just easy, or got lucky with bugs (not that I ran into none, but none were game breaking) the ending wasn’t great but I enjoyed it enough that it didn’t spoil the rest of the game. Now it does feel like there is missing content in the final act, and seems like they probably rushed it out at the end, but I spent 100 enjoyable hours getting there so I can’t complain too much.
However, I really really hope that either via patches or DLCs they include the missing content and the final act gets polished up to the quality of the rest of the game. Again I didn’t think it was bad, just the first two acts were amazing. i will say however one of the best parts of the game is in act 3 as well. Loved the game, almost immediately started a 2nd playthrough, and have plans for a 3rd and 4th.
Can’t forget that people who don’t experience big bugs are far less likely to tall about it than people that do
Great point- “I Finished Baldur’s Gate 3 and Didn’t Experience Any Bugs” is a nothingburger of a post.
It’s not luck. You probably went with Halsin over Minthara. :)
I would count “choosing the non buggy path without knowing about the bug” as luck.
The differences in playing at launch vs after patch 1 are insane. My first time through the game, I kept thinking things were a little off and just thought it was simply weird writing that assumed too narrow of a range of player actions. Turns out half of the shit I was doing was accounted for, but the scripts or cutscenes weren’t triggering properly.
I had gotten through the entire game pretty early because of my obsessive way of gaming, and tried to bring up all the broken shit a bunch of times and was downvoted and dismissed as contrarian.
I finished the game after about 85 hours and yeah… act 2 and 3 need some polish. I ran into more than one gamebreaking bug. But overall it was still a really really great experience and taking the complexity of the game into account I think the overall polish of the game at release was quite good.
How did you beat it that fast? I’m 70ish hours in and only starting to get close to done with act 1 maybe.
By at some point saying ‘OK, enough side quests, let’s move on with the story’. I plan to replay this game multiple times, so I do not mind missing some side quests in my first playthrough.
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IMO, what is there in Acts 1 and 2 still more than justify BG3’s price tag and glowing reviews. While I wish Act 3 was more polished (and yes, the ending does feel a tad rushed and underwhelming), what is there in Act 3 is still plenty.
I’m hoping for an expansion for an Act 4 to bridge the gap between Act 3 and the ending, maybe set in the Upper City, with better outcomes for our companions. However, with all the branching choices that already exist in the game, simply the feat of having to create one more story might be a nightmare.
The game has only just gotten it’s first patch and they wrote in the notes what other things could be expected in Patch 2.
It’ll be polished off before you know it. Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion there’s plans for a DLC. More content is likely to come.
Here’s an idea, how about it gets polished before release.
It’s very polished considering the complexity and scope of the game.
Agree to disagree mate. When level 1 content that players are immediately going to interact with is broken, I don’t call that polished.
What are you referring to?
Many spells have/had missing text or flat out worked wrong.
Examples? I haven’t seen that a single time
They are literally noted in the most recent patch notes. Shield had the wrong duration (until long rest, VERY different to how it actually works), Warding Bond made no mention at all that the caster also takes damage (pretty key detail). Many spells didn’t have listed ranges or areas, I haven’t looked to see if those are all fixed now.
Not OP but I can at least throw a minor pet peeve in that hat - Mage hand only works once per short rest, instead of as an at will as the cantrip should.
Didn’t they push up release so they would come out before Starfield?
For games with a shitton of content, I’m not sure it’s entirely possible. You just can’t have every single combination of stuff checked out after every change
There were 1st level spells that had missing info or flat out wrong info. This is content players are immediately going to interact with.
There’s a major NPC whose story line gets broken beyond repair in multiplayer if you don’t do things just right. This is only a few hours into the game.
I don’t think I’m setting a very high bar here.
Compared to a lot of Triple-A games out there, it is polished.
It’s a pretty big game with a lot of variations. And as i said; It just got it’s first patch and more are coming.
It took Bethesda about 12 years before they got around to fixing the “Games for Windows Live” thing in Fallout 3. Which literally made the game unplayable. That was a problem.
I’m sure they’ll get Wyll fixed for you, if he hasn’t already been in this patch.
But now I’m intrigued… If you don’t think you’re setting the bar high, what games are you comparing BG3 to that were that bug free at launch?
Scope is not an excuse for bugs and I’m tired of people making that argument. If they couldn’t deliver this scope as a polished game, maybe they should have reduced the scope.
Gonna be real with you, this is a terrible take. I’d much rather have games pushing boundaries at the cost of some bugs rather than a bunch of the same old regurgitated elements over and over to be safe.
GTA3 had plenty of bugs, the Purple Nines glitch being particularly infamous. Literally nobody out there is saying “wow, I wish they’d stuck with the top-down style games instead of going 3D because this bug has seriously inconvenienced me.”
What boundary is BG3 pushing, exactly?
We wouldn’t have any games with the stardards you’re suggesting. I think you’d be hard pressed to live up to them yourself, if I’m being honest.
No product is without it’s faults and flaws.
I’m sorry you happend to be one of the people that got that bug.
If it’s as big a deal for you as it sound like, I’d recommend getting a refund. It’s as simple as that.
This is the most ridiculous and hyperbolic thing I’ve read all week.
I would rather have bigger scope but less polish
It’s pretty damn polished. There’s just a lot of possibilities and they rarely mess up. With biggest Act 3 issue is performance is worse, which is expected when you’re going from wilderness to dense city. It still runs pretty fine on my old PC on ultra. It’s about 25fps, which for top down strategy is fine. I could lower graphics if it were an issue.
We have different opinions on what polished means.
This is pretty par for a Larian Studios game. The first act receives all the polish while each act afterwards gets less and less polish.
It should be no surprise that there wasn’t any feedback for acts 2 and 3 considering only Act 1 was ever available to play in EA.
I’m in Act 3, about mid way through, and definitely Act 1 shines above the other 2, but Act 3 so far is more enjoyable than 2.
I was fortunate enough to not run into any of the quest-breaking bugs. Had no issues doing what I wanted to do. What I did run into a lot was buggy scripting where dialogues assumed I had information I didn’t, so I wouldn’t know what my companions were talking about some of the time.
The bigger problem in my eyes is spells/items/class abilities/feats not working correctly and being outright non-functional in some cases. That’s going to be an enduring problem for replays, and it’s not encouraging to me that very little has been done on this since release.
I do think this game wouldn’t have scored as well as it did if so many publications didn’t rush to press with half a playthrough. In this particular case, I think the game–bugs and all–is still a strong GotY contender, but I really hope there’s a conversation being had in the professional games criticism sphere about how this practice could cause a scandal in the future.
As it is, I’m genuinely surprised the reviewers aren’t coming under fire more than they have for this. I come from an era where publishing a review without completing a game would have been unconscionable.
Do you have an example? Haven’t noticed that yet in 110h of playing.
A couple minor broken ability examples: Mage Hand requires a short rest to recharge, which is fundamentally wrong for a cantrip, and Feather Fall is a bonus action instead of a reaction, making it useless for its primary purpose. These aren’t game-breaking, of course, but annoyances like this add up, and it never feels good to have chosen an ability that turns out not to work as it should.
One of the more problematic issues is stupid pathing logic, especially around known hazards: Party members absolutely love to spot traps, announce them, and then walk right into them. Sometimes it results in someone getting a minor injury. Other times it nearly wipes out the whole party.
I suggest saving often.
mage hand requiring a short rest to resummon might be because you are using the gith racial?
Feather fall now is a ritual spell so you can cast it before combat and it will last all of combat. It’s just different from the tabletop game.
Nope. Wizard and bard cantrips.
Since you mention it, though, I think the Gith’s psionic Mage Hand is a cantrip in 5e. Did it require a rest in some past edition?
I’ll have to try that; thanks. It would still be an annoying extra step and wouldn’t cover surprise situations as the spell is intended, but would at least be more useful than it seemed.
In any case, it’s not just those two examples. The point is that a surprising number of little things like these are broken, either by departing from D&D rules in ways that don’t make sense or by just plain failing to do what their in-game descriptions say.
I have found one example of departing from 5e rules in a way that does make sense, though, so it’s not all bad.
I wouldn’t label things they changed compared to 5e rules as necessarily broken, unless the way they say it’s implemented doesn’t actually match what’s happening.
I picked half elf as race initially because I was used to the +2 +1 +1 spread they get, which isn’t the case in the game, or hypnotic pattern, which only lasts 2 turns instead of 10. Is the game broken? No, it’s just me assuming stuff will be 1 to 1 to the 5e rules. And it goes both ways, took me a bit to realize they don’t follow the spellcasting rules to a t, and you can cast leveled spells with both your action and your bonus action.
The key words were in ways that don’t make sense. If you read my whole comment, you’ll see we agree that not all the departures are inappropriate.
I have mage hand on Astarion and it’s still once per short rest.
Feather fall has caused me problems (and at least one TPK) I have had it drop off with no combat log line.
For the items, etc. the ones I can remember offhand are:
There’s also stuff on the plus side, like Titanstring Bow double dipping with Lightning Charges or, famously, Haste and Haste-like effects (Elixir of Bloodlust) granting second attacks on each additional action for lv. 5+ martial classes. It’s possible Larian just balanced it this way, but I don’t think so. It’s crazy broken.
The pole arm button is on the far right of the bottom bar gui thing, to the right of items.
Okay, I’m seeing it now. It’s sort of like Ranger’s Horde Breaker. It only appears after an attack and it disappears after the turn.
all possible actions should show up on the K panel, I have dragged the “non-lethal toggle”, the eldritch blast push toggle and all of those the the actual bar to be able to juggle them.
These two don’t show up there unfortunately under normal circumstances. The first Horde Breaker attack shows up there, the follow-up doesn’t until the first has already been executed. The feat one doesn’t even have a similar indicator there. It’s kind of a weird implementation.
Here’s a few:
spoiler
That’s a short list off the top of my head but there’s been plenty more.
Damn it, I am sorry, I meant to quote this specific part :D Yeah some of the stuff you mentioned also happened to me.
The main example cited in the article comes from recruiting Minthara instead of killing her. It looks like Act 3 didn’t really take that option into account.
Other problems include questlines that can’t be completed.
Just to post my own experience…
Finished the campaign duo with a buddy. Didn’t experience any particularly bad bugs. Had a couple times where shit didn’t load right for me but closing and reopening would fix so eh.
Kind of felt like a couple plots didn’t flow right going into act 3 but nothing that bad. Act 3 did feel overall a little rushed and unfinished but was still damn good. Some act 3 highlights: House of hope, underwater part, final boss battle (if you don’t count the gauntlet, that part sucked huge balls)
But noone ever finishes an RPG, right?
Well, not if your sidequests are bugged, no. ;)
Sadly I’ve started to experience the same. I hope the devs address these issues quickly.
I just finished Act 1 and am a completionist who literally inspects every chunk of map, reads every book, finishes every quest-log item before moving to next map area. I can safely say that Act 1 has been amazing for me.
I did encounter one inventory bug. Prior to patch one, I was using the Chest of the Mundane as a poor man’s Bag of Holding due to the weight reduction. At one point I took 600kg of items out of the chest to sell them to a vendor, and my inventory bugged. After screwing around with my buggy inventory for an hour (having fun earning infinite money from a vendor, for example), I reloaded from the save prior to taking the stuff from the chest and removed it in smaller chunks and everything was fine. Patch 1 killed the weight reduction in the chest, so it is unlikely others will find this fun bug.
Side note: my Lawful Good Gold Dwarf Cleric of Moradin has been a blast. I first talk my way into any circumstances, because one shouldn’t pass judgement without all the information. But after judging them as evil, wiping out the goblin, duergar, and zentarim camps has been super satisfying. The completionist in me worries about plot implications of these judgements down the line, and what I get locked out of, but so far it’s been great.
The interesting thing about DnD morality for clerics and paladins is that when someone asks “Who made you the judge of what is good?” your character can honestly say “God.”
I’m in act three right now, and the most noticeable issue I’ve run into has been characters mistakenly referring to choices I supposedly made. Really takes you out of it when that is such a focus of the game.
I also have Minthara in my party, and I can confirm that she’s broken as hell. You give up quite a lot to recruit her, and it’s not worth it at all. Don’t do it.
I had a laugh when everyone had !'s and I go talk to them and they are all commenting on the death of Shadowhart, but every single time, you can see Shadowhart just vibing in the background because I prevented Lae’zel from killing her.
Spoilers! Come on
Dude! Could we not post spoilers please??
This is an act 1 scene that you probably missed because you warped to act 2 without enough long rests done to play them all. It’s… been a while since the game released and it’s written in a thread where they are commenting Minthara recruitment, which is arguably way more spoilery than this.
Nah, I had just forgotten the scene, but I’ve seen it. I just thought it was something bigger that would come up later on.
It happens like an hour into the beginning of the game and the spoiler tags don’t work. Jeez.
I replayed act 1 three different times going about 10 hours into each one. I’ve never encountered laz trying to kill shadowheart. I know what the scene is as I’ve seen it in passing on the internet. But I’ve never had it… dafuq?
Possibly tied to how deep into interactions with them you’ve had. If you keep them together in the party and not just at the camp, they argue a lot. Though with the bugs, it could have simply not been triggering. After patch 1, there are so many scenes I never saw my first 2 times through despite doing pretty much the same exact things in the same exact order until the goblin camp.
Spoiler tags work on Sync. I don’t know what you’re using, but they work for some of us.
Aaah right, I know which one you mean. Sorry! Thought it was something big that would happen down the line.
Yeah, I had one of those happen that ended up spoiling something really big, along with really confusing the ever-loving daylights when it happened, because I had absolutely no idea what Gale was talking about, because he was referencing a quest I hadn’t actually started yet.
I’m going to put my currently playthrough on hold until patch 2. I don’t mind waiting a bit.