I can understand why fantasy settings are pretty stale, not just in games but in a variety of other media as well. Fantasy can be complex, and using old, familiar tropes (elves are haughty and love nature, dwarves are stubborn and love gold, humans are the world’s jack-of-all-trades) lowers the barrier to entry, which is really important when you want something to be easily marketable to as large an audience as possible. People know what to expect from familiar fantasy tropes, which means they can focus on plot and gameplay rather than going “so what’s that character supposed to be?”
But it’s boring. I love it when a fantasy setting isn’t afraid to trust the intelligence and curiosity of its audience and do something weird.
Anime if anything seems to be doing worse at this. Nearly every fantasy or fantasy adjacent anime goes for a knock-off D&D MMO style and it feels so tired. They don't want their audience to need to make the smallest effort to understand the world and the role of the characters in it.
That’s so disappointing. I haven’t really kept up with anime in recent years, but what I loved about the anime I watched when I was much, much younger was how different it was compared to the western media I was familiar with.
I think the difference is that a lot more English speakers watch anime as it’s airing in Japan now. Anime used to have to be at least somewhat interesting for someone in the west to even be aware of it, but now we get to see all the shit they’re putting out that never would have made it over here before.
Dr. Stone, Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen – you don’t have to look very hard to find anime that doesn’t look anything like western fantasy
For a long time I’ve argued that there needs to be stronger language differences between physiological addiction and psychological addiction, especially in non-academic discourse. Academic papers usually define their terms pretty well, and often use terms like “habit forming” or “dependency” instead of addiction.
A lot of work has been done to remove the stigma of addiction to shift the blame from the individual to the product, and I have no objections at all to that for physiological addiction. Nicotine, alcohol, opioids, etc.
The problem is that zealots have co-opted that model to try to ban anything they don’t want other people to be able to enjoy. Comic books, television, videogames, marijuana, pornography- all of these have had the word “addiction” attached in news media without solid scientific evidence of physiological addiction. At the same time, you can find case studies of individuals with mental health disorders who get addicted to literally anything… I’m not saying there are not individuals who don’t have problems with these things, but a lot of the effort into stigmatizing and restricting these seems to have ulterior motives. It’s parents who don’t want to teach their children about responsibility and discipline. It’s religious zealots trying to push their worldviews on others. It’s large corporations trying to gain market share by attacking competing industries. In some cases like “sex addiction” it’s used to try to excuse or justify criminal behavior and portray abusers as victims. It’s notable that efforts usually go to just banning and shaming these things rather than helping the alleged “victims”. At the same time, efforts at harm reduction for physiological addiction seems to be constantly undermined.
With all of that being said, there is a separate issue that applies to this case- consumer protection. History has clearly demonstrated that without regulation and enforcement, corporations will engage in all manner of activity to screw over every stakeholder (consumers, vendors, employees, lenders, etc) in order to enrich ownership.
Looking at videogames in particular, there are definitely marketing practices and pricing structures that need to be banned. I just hate this idea that “videogames = bad” when the real issue is corporate greed, and a lot of these issues apply to other industries too.
In counseling, we call those process addictions. Internet gaming, sexual addictions, gambling, shopping etc. are all process addictions. Psychological addiction isn’t precise enough as any chemical addiction could have a strong psychological component as well, and almost always does because addictions create habits of use and habits are difficult to break. Also, for instance, we might have to ditch our drinking buddies when we have alcoholism because being around them triggers our urge to drink psychologically.
Unfortunately Temtem is a terrible game entirely due to Crema’s incompetence.
It’s actually impressive how consistently they make horrible decisions. If I had to summarize their attitude, it’s that you can’t criticize them because “Hey, we’re human, we make mistakes and when you criticize us it hurts our feelings”. And when I say you can’t, I mean it literally. They will suspend or ban you from whatever platform it is for saying anything they perceive as negative.
They take an “us vs them” attitude with their player base which results in the equivalent of Crema stuffing their fingers in their ears saying LALALALALA YOU’RE WRONG WE’RE RIGHT.
It’s a shame, because the foundation of the game, the battle system, is genius and a huge improvement over Pokémon. The game showed real promise for a long time. But Crema has been dropping the ball with every update for years and it’s long since entered its death spiral.
Yup. Played it in early access for a bit and enjoyed it, then I played it on release and hated it. There are so many promises they completely ignored, including an option to make battle animations faster (their response was “it would change the economy if everything was faster”)
They added a battle pass
They made everything you can buy with in-game money outrageously expensive so you buy it from their FOMO rotating cash store
Their definition of “MMO” is making the game so insanely grindy to try to keep players around for hundreds of hours despite obviously not being worth spending that much time in…
And so on and so forth. Crema are so unbelievably greedy and dumb it still hurts that I gave them money.
What parts are you having trouble with? The game has a serious learning curve but once you’ve got a full campaign under your belt it gets way easier. Try doing a run as a paladin or sorcerer (melee or caster) on explorer mode. Those two classes will be good for combat and dialog making your run easier. Also research how to create a proper character. The earliest levels are the hardest to get through since you’re super weak at those levels.
Skyrim is a first person action adventure game with RPG elements. Baldurs gate is a much more traditional fantasy RPG which I a focused on tactics and D&D core rules and character stories where action stakes a back seat. So it sounds more like you enjoy the action and immersion of Skyrim than the “RPG” side of it.
BG3 is really a love letter to the people that liked the original games and wanted more depth to the systems to try to capture the tabletop experience a little more. Since you described it as “clunky” I’m guessing that the slower tactical aspect is what you’re bouncing off of.
It honestly sounds like its just Not your thing. BG3 is about as modern as a game of this Genre can be. Dont force yourself through something you dont enjoy.
There’s a decent chance you might not be missing anything, it’s just not for you. Minecraft and Terraria are beloved titles that people put thousands of hours into, but I never got into them myself.
A turn-based CRPG is a very old-fashioned thing (the C stands for Computer), and it’s a pretty faithful adaption of a TT (tabletop, so pen-and-paper) RPG, which is even older (though the current ruleset for DnD is pretty new). I can definitely understand how Skyrim appeals to you but something like BG3 doesn’t; they’re fundamentally different games, and Skyrim is much faster-paced
Are you playing with a mouse on a PC? Try it with a controller, it completely changes the game. The PS5 movement system is vastly superior to the PC movement with a mouse.
I have never played a Baldurs game, but I’m planning to play this one when I eventually get a PS5… And I thought it would suck with conventional controllers.
I have it on both PC and PS5 and I greatly prefer it on PS5. My computer loads things faster, and it looks better, but the PS5 version is much more immersive and considerably easier to move around. Inventory management is a lot better on PC though.
Does it? I haven’t tried. When I tried to use a PS4 Pro controller in the past it messed it up and I had to reset it to use it with the console again. Can you use PS5 controllers with a Linux PC?
I don’t own a ps5, so I’m not 100% sure on the ps5 sync, but there shouldn’t be any issue for that as Sony put out a firmware update to make it work well with pc at one point. But for me with my ps5 controller, it works and pairs flawlessly, and the touchpad on the controller works as a mouse on the desktop.
Running around the world is better with a controller, but actually interacting with things is easier with a mouse. You can click the left stick to use a cursor for precise targeting.
For me it’s just being old… I love what I played but only had 1 opportunity to sit down and play it. I realized I love and hate the fact that there is sooooo much to do and think about. For me, my time is limited to an hour tops here and there, so sadly, this type of game just frustrates me because I am always looking at a clock, and I hate that. Wish I was a kid again, so I can actually enjoy all the great games coming out in recent years.
Starfield feels the same, I go back to it for an hour or two and I forget what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s fiddly and I don’t know where some of the menus are.
It follows the DAO formula very closely. Though it also improves on it in some ways. And IMO there is at least one thing that DAO does better, which is that the main player character gets some actual character development.
Im happy for this. But between this and the last update with a bunch of mods I have to wonder why – how are dev cycles being approved for these lovely changes? Is there enough money to be made pulling in anyone who hasn’t already bought the game and DLC? Good community PR?
My guess would be that it’s relatively quick for them to do and it allows them to bring the Witcher 3 back into the public eye whilst also getting some good will from the active community. Bet they announce another Witcher game release soon.
They’ve probably been having this conversation for a long time as it’s one major thing that separates it from Skyrim. They both have the longstanding love from the community but Skyrim is alive in a way that Witcher 3 isn’t.
Perhaps it was the switch from RedEngine or new decision makers at CDPR or something that finally brought it about.
Well they ported it to the switch and it’s one of the larger games on the Steam Deck (highly rated, verified, and iirc it was playable not long after the Deck’s release) so they might actually be able to keep extending the life of the game for a while longer and keep making sales.
I’ve actually had it in my library for a while but haven’t gotten into it because my life is too busy for video games right now. But with official mod support… maybe I can find some extra time somewhere lol
This article was either written in parts by AI or the author is in such a hurry they didn’t have the time for even basic proofreading. In the first paragraph of the WoW part, they mention Shadowlands being the latest expansion (along with some hilariously false statements about it “bringing the game back to it’s glory early years” despite it being an absolute flop) only to mention Dragonflight in the very next one, even linking a review from their own site!
There are more errors. Eve Online is 20 years old, not 18. He even lists 2003 as the release year. And Palia has been playable for a couple of months now, so it could have included far more information than that.
Whatever AI they used to write parts of this article must be trained on 2 years old data, where Shadowlands was the most recent expansion and where the 2003 release date of EVE would make it 18 years old, at least that’s my hypothesis. The part about Palia is likely just lazy journalism, where the author didn’t even do a basic search to check if the game actually came out, I mean they didn’t even take the time to correct these incredibly obvious mistakes!
It’s not AI-based. Articles like this are generally repeatedly republished with extremely minimal editing every six months or so to keep them ‘fresh’ for the search engine optimisation.
Epic Games, prompted by a message from the creator of the dating sim Hatoful Boyfriend (in which all the dateable characters are birds), says that they are “looking into” why the creator has not received any royalties for the game in two years.
Headline is misleading because not all the dateable characters are pigeons.
Don’t worry. They’ll turn them into live-service games with repetitive content and immersion-breaking cosmetic micro-transactions. You’ll grind through the same few stealth levels with some barely random enemy permutations marketed as “infinite open world content”. Your coop partner will be someone dressed in red cargo shorts, a purple mohawk wig, and a weapon that has so many random attachments on it you can’t figure out whether it’s a microscope, a dildo, or a sniper rifle.
This comment is true for so many games nowadays it’s getting annoying.
I got WWZ recently for some reason and holy shit.
It had been a while since I had regret buying a game.
Same. At least with Deus Ex I have some hope left. Iirc the studio (Eidos?) was sold by Square Enix and the new owner may have them work on a new Deus Ex.
If you like those kind of games it may also interest you that Dishonored 3 being planned was part of the leaks last week.
I don't think it matters nearly as much as the article makes it sound. Especially since multiclassing is super viable in 5E and BG3 removed all kinds of requirements for multiclassing and even allows you to respec. Meaning even multiclass combos that struggle if played out at level 1 can just be recreated later. And that means you can recreate the toolkit of a Bard fairly easily and focus more on the aspect you actually enjoy.
I think any class with ritual casting is going to feel very rewarding in your first playthrough, assuming you don't forget to utilize it. So you have Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard, and Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight. But even any class with just cantrips are already going to give you a lot you might not be used to from other RPGs.
The only class I wouldn't recommend for the first playthrough might be Paladin. The oath just limits your choices in certain situations. And while you could break your oath and become an "Oathbreaker", I personally don't feel this is the best for the first time playing. I think being able to explore all options available without having to consider your oaths makes for a better first-time-playing experience. But Paladin is on the list for my second round.
Edit: I forgot that BG3 made changes to Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight, they can both also ritual cast. In general, there are a lot of changes made that make the game way more open and allows you things to make it fun.
Does breaking your oath make you an Oathbreaker in BG3? Because that’s not how Oathbreaker works in 5e.
A Paladin who forsakes their oath would just be a fighter. Oathbreakers are specifically Paladins who call upon the forces of evil for their strength rather than the divine. They don’t just break their oath, but twist and pervert it for some dark power.
I haven't played a Paladin yet, so I am not sure how the mechanic is implemented. But the oathbreaker subclass exist in BG3 and you can't choose it on character creation. So there is some way of becoming one.
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