I played but did not get very far into Divinity: Original Sin, mostly because I tried twice to play them co-op, and coordinating adults' schedules is hard. I love how systemic those games are, but the presentation is limited to what you'd expect from an old-school CRPG. Shortly before release, I saw that this game retains all of that creativity while upping the presentation to the level of something like a Mass Effect, which makes it much more appealing. I hear that Ralph of SkillUp had exactly the same reaction to BG3. So, deep systems + finally catching up in production value and presentation.
Michael Bell from Bellular Studios just did a video about it if you want something to listen to. It is pretty much all of it that was said here. How Baldur's Gate 3 Humbled AAA
Because of scheduling conflicts, I wasn’t able to continue my coop playthrough with a friend until today, so I started a solo campaign, and put in about 40 hours last week.
Because I’ve only seen people falling over themselves, talking about how this game is the second coming of Christ, here a few relatively minor issues I have with it.
The camera is terrible. There’s constantly something in the way and the game isn’t smart enough to know that I don’t really want to move to the stalactite thirty meters above me, just because it was in my way in the middle of the screen. Cramped spaces are probably the worst, walls everywhere, and you have to do constant 180s with the camera to see every corner.
I usually don’t mind inventory management, but I hate it in this game. I’m definitely to blame as well, since I just pick up everything, but it’s always such a pain to organize through everything. The sorting options aren’t that good, and sometimes stuff feels completely random. Also, (unless I’m missing something) why can’t you access the inventory of your companions, that aren’t in your party?
Why is the pathing still ass in this game, it’s the third one Larian made in this style. My characters just love walking into traps (that I’ve discovered) or shit on the ground. It’s just really fun to micromanage four characters, just so they can get safely through a few mines or don’t take a 50 cm shortcut through a patch of fire. I think Divinity had at least an option to pause the game, when you found a trap, so you might have a chance to change the course, but this is missing in this game.
Lastly, I wish your companions were more involved, when you have a conversation with someone. I could be deciding the fate of the world with my choices, but Astarion is just T-posing behind me (not literally, but you get what I mean). At least an occasional line when the “X character approves / disapproves” notification pops up would be nice.
I still have a great time and enjoy the game, but some of these things have existed since the D:OS games, so it’s a shame they still aren’t improved.
I definitely agree about your companions chiming in on conversations. Maybe I've just been spoiled by games like Mass Effect and the like, but the lack of input seems like an obvious problem to me.
Even BG2 had more interjections from your party members than BG3 I think, and I get that it was mostly text but still, that was 23 years ago. In BG3 someone sometimes adds a comment at the beginning or end of a conversation, but it seems like they rarely if ever butt in in the middle.
The whole “X Approves/Y Disapproves” definitely feels a little telling, not showing and I wish they would comment on what’s going on instead, even if it was only recycling a handful of general comments from a pool.
Playing through BG2 now, the interjections are rare and don't really budge the flow of the conversation in any direction. It's a very small amount of color to inform you of their personalities.
Oh it was definitely rare that an interjection would actually change the outcome of the dialogues, but that color and flavor you mentioned does a lot to make characters feel more alive. Same goes for the way party members just randomly start conversations when walking around in BG2.
Worth noting I always play with the Gibberlings Fixpack installed. IIRC the vanilla game is really sensitive about party members having to be physically close to the talking NPC to interject into dialogues.
My buddies and I have been on Battlebit a whole lot. It is the first fps I have played since Halo Reach and BFBC2 that has really grabbed my interest. It is just so good. The proximity and squad speak has been so good it has actually led to me making friends via an online game, which I haven't done simce I was in middle school playing Halo 3
My buddies and I have been on Battlebit a whole lot. It is the first fps I have played since Halo Reach and BFBC2 that has really grabbed my interest. It is just so good. The proximity and squad speak has been so good it has actually led to me making friends via an online game, which I haven't done simce I was in middle school playing Halo 3
I had a deck for a while and have sold it in favor of the ROG Ally. It requires a lot of work to get its software out of your way but after tearing all of thw asus crap out, including the trash services who's only purpose is to put their broken ass software back on against the end users' wishes I've got a matching software experience on it.
I just could not give up the vrr screen, it makes the Ally beat out the deck for my uses and none of the $1200+ devices really come close either.
I recently picked up a Steam Deck and I can also vouch for it; the device is far more than the sum of its parts and is clearly something Valve was only able to pull off after a decade plus of various software/hardware integration experiments.
SteamOS is the star of the show, and it is both fluid and easy to use while also putting more customization and flexibility at your fingertips than any other game interface I’ve seen. The integration of custom operating system, custom game wrapper tech, and their standardized hardware has produced a device that offers the power and flexibility of PC gaming with a user experience that is getting closer and closer to the “never think about it” ease of use that consoles provide.
It’s not the most powerful; it’s really a 720/800P gaming machine, but games look great at that resolution and you can run a lot of games at comfortably playable frame rates.
I had some doubts after I bought mine when I saw the ROG Ally come out alongside hundreds of “OMG THE STEAM DECK KILLER HAS ARRIVED” videos; but it didn’t take long until I saw a lot of those same content creators return their Ally and come back to the steam deck because although the hardware is slightly more powerful, the user experience end is so much worse than it just wasn’t worth it. Not to mention some serious QC issues with it.
I’ve been a PC gamer for a long time; I think I’ve been active on Steam for 18 years now. The Steam Deck is the best PC Gaming experience I’ve ever had. The hardware is great, the controls (and mapping ability of those controls) are great, the interface is great…everything is just top notch about it. Do I wish it was more powerful? Well that’d be great, and one day it will be. But everything about the experience is so good, I don’t mind some of the drawbacks. It’s encouraged me to get into my backlog of games and genuinely enjoy exploring them again. The Steam Deck just makes it so seamless and easy to play your games.
In fact, I’m getting close to time to build a new PC, and the Steam Deck has really changed my thoughts on it. Seeing how far Proton and SteamOS have come…I just really want Valve to take another shot at the Steam Box. A lot of its shortcomings aren’t issues now, and add in some good Steam Deck integration and have it target 1440P/4K Upscaling, you could create an affordable box that taps into a successful and growing ecosystem. I’d buy one in an instant and just not bother with a new PC build in the years ahead.
That’s how much I genuinely believe that the Steam Deck/SteamOS experience is that good these days!
I feel like windows would seriously hamper the experience, it’s terrible on small screens and when you don’t have a normal mouse and keyboard to use. It also has a ton of overhead that’s going to eat into the more limited CPU and GPU.
I’m also pretty sure you can just dual boot windows on the steam deck if you want to have windows available.
Steam Deck punches way above its weight. But it does so much thanks to its lower resolution. Though in the format 720p isn’t bad at all. It’s what the switch uses as well.
Skip all the Chinese alternatives, they require far more tweaking / researching than you’re fit for (judged solely by this post).
Really I’d break it down to games and game types you want to play. If you want say Genshin Impact then it’s a lot easier to go with the ROG Ally. There are other Asian games that also don’t play nice with Linux. Multiplayer titles also tend to be finicky with Linux. The ROG Ally is also strong enough to dock to a 1080p screen for titles like Valorant or CSGO. If that is appealing.
If you’re playing mainly older games then the deck is the obvious choice, it’s a beast when it comes to emulation and has much better battery life in that setting than the ROG Ally. It’s also arguably more plug-and-play especially if you play mostly steam games.
Running Windows on the Deck isn’t very good, it kills the decks battery advantage and the lower performance becomes more obvious. Same running Linux on the ROG is also missing out on what it’s actually good at and Linux won’t improve the battery life much.
Like others have said. It’s because steam deck runs steam os that makes it better than the rest. It’s a catered os for the device. It was after I jumped in I realised how robust it is. Every game in integrated works on Linux no issue I even took windows off my desktop pc. Best reason is also community. Steam deck has plenty of online support whereas the other ones are a bit more saturated
Screen is not the best, but everything else is superior. SteamOS is much better than Windows, IMO. Though I don’t play multiplayer games and I’ve read some anticheats don’t run on Linux. The only multiplayer game I play from time to time is Fall Guys and it works. Emulators are actually where Linux shines and especially Steam Deck - there’s an app called EmuDeck that sets up all the emulators you could think of and makes it work really easily. For Epic and GOG games I use Heroic Games Launcher and it works well, I played Spider-Man and Fall Guys from Epic and most of my library is on GOG.
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Aktywne