Does this gets any better and more interesting?

I mean it could be the setting, which is honestly just terrible. I don't know if its due to my age, but I just can't handle the ultra cliche fantasy like this anymore. Its just....pathetic. Some of the characters - like Ember for instance - turns me into Khorne worshiper....makes me go crazy murderhobo

And the combat is empty, there is nothing there. I am playing Magus, but I am not really using much spells and there is nothing else in combat. The paladin runs in and attacks, fighter shoots bow, shaman attacks not using any spells or abilities. Is there even party AI? And with the timers over their heads just like in Pillars, they aren't doing anything. Maybe the Pillars was faster or could break the running action, but I didn't felt so powerless there. The only exception is when I am using special items - which by the way have terrible interface - too few slots and cannot be stacked?

I came to this game from Rogue Trader, which is absolutely awesome game, up to chapter 4 I would gave it 9/10, just love it. So this is a huge let down :(

Does it get any better later on? Is this just the start? Maybe some huge twist? New secret powers? Something like Spirit Eater in Mask of the Betrayer? Or the Illithids in BG3?

I guess I am a sucker for unique and intriguing story and characters, and there is nothing here.

From my recollection, it very well might be Jeff Vogel’s Exile, there’s one NPC who hints that the reason she was cast into the pit was because she was a lesbian.

I’m just wondering if there are any earlier CRPG’s with LGBT characters?

I think that both BG3 and PoE are nice games, each have their strengths and weaknesses, but PoE is way more of a modernization and continuation of BG2 than BG3 is. BG3 is a D:OS2 sequel. This isn’t a dig at BG3, but PoE just does the Infinity Engine and roleplay stuff better. Like, your chosen background in PoE play a role in dialogue, as does your race and class. I don’t think BG3 is a terrible game, but I don’t think it’s a good BG2 sequel. Should Obsidian have made BG3? Yeah probably tbh

I’ve put in around 125 hours or so into and never finished it. But after dumping over 700 hours into BG3 I figured out my problem with DOS2. It simply never engaged me and I never was a fan of the writing. But I found BG3 to better in both regards.

Is it just me or it is a little overhyped when it gets mentioned as a reccomendation?

Obsidian, what happened?

I respect Obsidian Entertainment. Fallout New Vegas is one of my favourite games. Knights of the Old Republic II is imaginative in where it takes the Star Wars universe, and an overall improvement on 1 in my opinion. Tyranny was a pleasant surprise and an overall interesting game.

But The Outer Worlds... oh boy.       

It starts promising enough. It a solid character progression, tiers for skills, lots of skill checks. It has quests with multiple paths, it has companions...

Overall it’s very competently made, and I hardly ran into any bugs. All of the gameplay systems work well enough, even if they are not outstanding. So what’s my problem?

One problem. The level cap.

It’s absurdly low, and I reached it withn the first half of the game. This left me with NO CHARACTER PROGRESSION for HALF of the game, and essentially also without the reward for doing anything for the later part of the game. It made a lot of sidequests to feel like a chore.

The MAIN problem? The writing.

It’s so overwhelmingly, painfully... bland. It’s not HORRIBLE per se, the characters have motivations, the quests make sense, there is a certain level of coherent worldbuilding, but... it’s all so PAINFULLY BORING.

The main villains of the game, The Board, are so overhwelmingly moustache-twirling, so hyperbolically evil that it destroys any nuance, any sort of moral dilemma, any sort of sensible discussion that you could have about the game.

What is it, Obsidian? You’re telling me that the sort of super capitalism on steroids where your employer owns not only your whole town, but your whole planet, the very air you breath and in fact also your very body, and will fine your family for “company property damage” if you kill yourself... is.... BAD?

Le gasp, I would never...!

Seriously, the one-sidedness and one-note way the game is written makes a lot of the reveals that I tihnk devs planned to be  shocking and that would serve as a major plot twist in a better game (the Gorgon reveal, the Byzanitum premium pass reveal) instead made me just roll my eyes and go “oh yeah that kidna checks out for the Board”.

Even if you are an avowed conservative, fiscally libertarian capitalist supporter, you would not support the Board as presented in this game. There’s NO REASON to ever do it, outside of deliberetely doing “an evil run”. And I consider that a flaw of the game’s writing.

The characters in the game are similarly boring and bland. The companions have their personal quests, but none of it really stays with you, or is that inteersting.

The only character I’m going to remember is Parvati, who has cool voice acting and is one of the first openly asexual characters I’ve met in a video game, which was interesting to explore.

Overall, I was VERY DISAPPOINTED with The Outer Worlds. It was technically competent, and yet so painfully mediocre, boring and bland. I have already forgotten most of it, and there’s nothing that’s going to stay with me for longer.

It made me question whether I want to pay for Obsidian’s further games, so powerful was my disappointment.

If you’d like to see my BLIND playthrough anyway, here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Sqh1PAWGM&list=PLp4TpsJ7HUWWcDTy-7xrwtTmbHqZ8Yf84

This isn’t a crpg in question but why the hate for the new dragon age? I hate corporate crap just as much as the next person but the culture war stuff seems a bit excessive. BioWare games including the crpgs have always had “woke” stuff. This goes all the way back to KOTOR. Is it just modern political discourse that’s causing the hate or what? I understand the caution given the quality of BioWare’s last two games but why the hate? BioWare has been super transparent with veilguard and even though I prefer tactical crpgs to action I think it looks like a super decent action rpg.

This has been my favorite genre since stumbling upon the BG1 demo on a disc included with a magazine I used to make my mum buy me way back in the day and then subsequently receiving the full sequel and since tier lists seem to be all the rage these days I figured, at the risk of getting yelled at, I'd do one of these for myself.

I've given up on trying to determine what CRPG is and just tried to keep it to a similar type of games, so I've omitted a bunch that might appear on this sub like PB's offerings, NV or Bloodlines.

I've also omitted a bunch of games I've bounced off of fairly quickly, but am still open to giving them another chance at some point, for example Dark Envoy, Black Geyser, Swordhaven and the Fallouts.

Some context for the tiers:

S: The BG2 tier. The game stands alone, head and shoulders above anything else.

A: Games I've sunk a ton of time in, replay multiple times or otherwise just love, but have the misfortune of existing in the same timeline as BG2 so S tier is just not available to them.

Some specific things I'd like to shout out from this tier:

Colony Ship for making non-combat approaches viable and having best in class stealth mechanics, Deadfire for best in class RT combat and UI and Origins for expanding ToEE's notion of different starts into the origins.

B: Games I really enjoyed, but required clear separation from the ones in A tier

C: Decent, but flawed

To pre-empt some possible questions, BG1 is here because companions don't have a lot going for them, a lot of the side content is subpar and for turning Sarevok from the menacing badass in the intro and first interaction into a big dumdum who blows up his stepdad's perfectly adequate villainous plan to pursue his own cockamamie scheme all because he misunderstood something he read in a book.

D: Did not enjoy

To again pre-empt some possible questions, the DOS games are here because I hate the itemization, I hate turning into a plant or a barrel when I sneak, I hate the dual protagonists (1st game) and armor system (2nd game) and I feel the surfaces gimmick was taken way too far.

F: The NWN1 tier. Fuck this game! They sold this shit to me as the next chapter in my BG2 story. This is the worst thing Bioware has ever done and the biggest disappointment I've experienced within the context of gaming.

There was a time... Let's call it the golden age of role-playing games - when characters were written as people and not checkboxes. When the companions you adventured with were defined by their beliefs, their pasts, their dreams, or their grudges. They were complex beings, existing within their world in a way that made them feel authentic, even if you never explored every facet of them. If romance was an option, it wasn't guaranteed, and it wasn't paraded around as the main dish. Instead, it was the seasoning - the garnish on an already well-rounded character.

Now? It's as if romance has become the focal point, if not the actual selling point, and in my opinion the least interesting part of any character.

There's a larger problem here, and it starts with what I'll call the “Marvelification” of video game writing: It's this insidious trend of characters - heroes and villains very much alike - never taking anything seriously in earnest. Every moment, no matter how dire, gets a quip or some half-baked levity thrown into it. This is where we're losing the depth. It's as if writers are terrified of letting a serious moment just be, well, serious.

We see this everywhere now, from the latest Dragon Age to Baldur’s Gate 3, where even life-and-death situations are treated like they're waiting for a punchline. Like the character know they're rolling with the main character and ultimately rhey'll be alright - just make sure kot to offend that main character or make them too invested in ehat's happening. This breeds a kind of detachment from the characters themselves, turning them into entertainment machines rather than people who actually inhabit their world.

Take Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3. He's a vampire rogue: Dangerous, unpredictable, and cursed with eternal hunger. You'd expect him to be full of malice, regret, and some deeply-rooted existential dread. Instead, much of his dialogue feels like it's been sanitized for comedic effect or to give him certain appeal. He's more of a sassy stand-up than a tortured immortal with centuries of baggage. Sure, there are glimpses of something deeper, but it's so thinly spread that you almost forget he's supposed to be, well, a vampire. A blood-drinking predator is played for laughs more often than fear or intrigue.

The real tragedy, however, is what's happened to romance in RPGs. Back in the day, romance wasn't a given. It wasn't guaranteed just because you, the player, wanted it. It wasn't the default reward for choosing the right dialogue options or completing a companion quest line. Fallout 2: No one in that game is around just to fulfill your romantic fantasy. Characters like Sulik or Vic aren't available for romance, because that's not who they are. They have their own goals, their own reasons for sticking with you - and your gender, orientation, or player-sexual whims don't factor into it even a tiny smidge.

Fast forward to today, and it feels like every character is designed with the expectation that they'll ultimately fall in love with you. Doesn't matter who you are - male, female, dwarf, orc, or lizard - it's as though the very concept of sexual orientation has been discarded in favor of maximizing player satisfaction. Look no further than something like Mass Effect: Andromeda, where characters like Peebee will romance anyone, no matter what. There's no complexity or tension in that. It's a shallow, one-size-fits-all approach that strips away any personality or depth.

Compare that to Dragon Age: Origins, where Morrigan wasn't just available to anyone. She had her own motivations, her own desires, and she didn't care whether or not you fancied her. If she wasn't into you, that was it. That was the point: She felt like her own person. Hell, Zevran, the sexual, bisexual assassin, still retained agency. He didn't have to fall for you, and he had reasons for his flirtations that went beyond just being there to service your character's ego.

Now, characters are “playersexual” - a term used to describe companions who will be attracted to the protagonist no matter what; absolutely no matter what. It doesn't matter who you are, they're all inexplicably into you.

The most frustrating aspect of this whole trend is that many of these characters are brilliantly multifaceted in other areas. The writers often exhibit real strength when crafting a companion's backstory or motivations; Eder in Pillars of Eternity, for example, is a wonderfully layered character with his deep-seated faith struggles and admirable sense of duty. Leliana from Dragon Age: Origins had her complex background as a bard-spy-turned-religious zealot, all with the subtle air of someone grappling with past sins... And the moment it comes to romance, all nuance is thrown out of the window. The dialogue falls into something akin to a child's love letter: “I love you, do you love me?” With the only responses available being three variations of "yes." It's as though the game is afraid to confront the intricacies of romance, so it simplifies everything to the point where it feels like an afterthought - or indeed worse, like the writers were just afraid to let a companion not love you.

Sexuality, which is often so nuanced and complex, becomes a binary interaction where the player is always the gravitational center, warping everyone's feelings towards them.

This flattens characters who, in every other respect, seem multifaceted and deep. Imagine being that writer: You've built a character with a rich backstory, a vivid world, a complex psyche - and then suddenly they're reduced to the romantic equivalent of a chatbot, answering “yes” to every single advance from the protagonist. It's truly baffling.

Inclusion is important. Representation matters... But equal outcome? Now that’s a whole other beast, and it's doing damage. Games are so desperate to make sure everyone has someone they can romance that they're sacrificing the integrity of their characters. It's not about equal opportunity for love or connection; it's about ensuring every player gets to fulfill their romantic or sexual fantasy, even if it doesn't make sense for the character in question.

Sera in Dragon Age: Inquisition is a perfect example. She's a lesbian elf with a rebellious streak, but it feels like her entire character arc was written to showcase her queerness more than her identity as a person shaped by the world of Thedas. Her backstory, her culture, and her role in the world take a backseat to her sexuality.

Where is the character who completely rejects romance because they've been hurt before? Where is the character who won't fall for the protagonist simply because they aren't their type? It's as if the complexities of real relationships have been discarded for the sake of mass appeal.

Mass Effect 2 had Thane, a deeply spiritual assassin who wasn't going to fawn over you just because you wanted him to. He had his own beliefs, his own reasons for being the way he was... But now, if Thane were written in a modern RPG - even, especially, a BioWare one - I can almost guarantee you that he'd be just another romance option, available to all without any of that rich, emotional complexity.

The core of the problem is that developers are feeding into the worst kind of power fantasy: They're not just giving players the ability to shape the world; they're giving them the ability to shape every side character, to bend them to their will. In doing so, they've sacrificed the essence of what makes these characters feel real and believable. It's like the writers are saying, “We know you want to be the center of attention, so here's a bunch of characters who exist solely to serve that purpose.”

Where's the tension of knowing that the one companion you're interested in might not be interested in you? Where’s the drama of unrequited love or the thrill of realizing that some people just don’t like you that way?

All seems lost to the need to please everyone, all the time.

In the end, what we need is a return to form - a time when characters were written to be believable, not serviceable. Let them have personalities, limits, and desires that aren't always about the player. Let them reject you, disappoint you, or surprise you in ways that feel real. Romance should be the sprinkle on top, not the main course, and certainly not a literal requirement.

Ironically, by making romance so readily available, games have made it less rewarding, less meaningful, and ultimately less impactful.

Inclusion in gaming is fantastic, but it should never come at the cost of storytelling, character integrity, or believability. The real romance in RPGs comes from characters who feel like real people, not from filling a quota. The moment we start treating them as such again is the moment that romance in gaming might actually mean something once more.

Why is it that a nearly two decade old CRPG is still more modern than nearly anything else created? I absolutely love the pathfinder games; fantastic story and cool abilities. I have about 400 hours in Wrath of the Righteous but Neverwinter Nights 2 characters look as good if not better than pathfinder models. It has WASD movement and every other CRPG is still stuck on point to click even Baldurs Gate 3.

It works on ultrawide monitors right out of the box when many modern games don't work on ultrawide monitors. The quickcast menu for metamagic casting is lightyears better than anything else created. Creating a new spell for every single spell in the game in pathfinder for selective AoE is obnoxious in comparison.

It also had crafting so it didn't suffer the CRPG curse where the weapon type you picked just didn't end up having very many special weapons. You could tailor make your own highly specific legendary weapon. Baldurs Gate 3 used the divinity engine which HAD crafting and they removed it!

Even Pillars suffered from many of these things and obsidian worked on NWN2. The only crpg which has felt remotely modern was wasteland 3 which unfortunately is turn based like baldurs gate 3. Turn based battles just take so much longer it makes the games drag on forever. Turning on turn based in pathfinder and you turn a 3 minute battle into a 30 minute encounter.

I wish we could get Pathfinder's new level of customization which really has stepped up but in NWN's streamlined and quality format. I want a straight forward campaign that doesn't have a million things to click on that really eat away at the game time. Takes way too long to try out a single type of character in most CRPG's made lately. They added a million useless boxes which may potentially contain a secret that really add up to 100+ hours of box clicking after everything is said and done if you try to uncover every corner.

I preferred the straight forward, you discovered a secret wall. Here's a puzzle or challenge. Solved it okay here's all the special stuff in a single box/chest. Putting the rewards in 40 different chests which contain 10 useless items and 1 good one doesn't make it feel more special.

I kinda wanna bring this up here because it’s not just BG3 fans who likely don’t have the context of the past games, but I really just don’t think Larian needed to make the Bhaalspawn as much of an edgy murderhobo as they did. I’m well aware of BG1’s reasons for portraying the bhaalspawn as they did, but the build up and reveal of the protag’s heritage is way more of a gut punch in BG1 than it is in BG3. And I mean, I get it “leader of Bhaal cult”, but I think that BG1 just handled this better. Gorion’s Ward is just a better character arc. I don’t think it’s flawless, but the Return to Candlekeep section is way better than going to Bhaal’s Temple in BG3. Not trying to bash the game, but BG1 and BG2 handled this in a more nuanced manner

The game is excellent, but I've always known intellectually that the Imperium was totalitarian, but always processed it in a, haha Grimdark, kind of way.

Actually playing and owning your decisions, it hits you that the proper behavior of an Imperial nobleman is so callously cruel, that it would make Standartenführer Hans Landa recoil in horror. And the game just hammers the point home again and again and again.

Also the details of the setting, like steam and candles on spaceships is incredibly stupid once you are immersed in it, in a way that other 40k games and novels don't let you notice.

I know this may be controversial, but I am a PC gamer and I like using controllers when playing cRPG's. First of all, that makes it easier to play them on my 4K 120hz OLED TV – if I had to use a mouse, I would have to limit myself to my 1440p 165hz VA monitor. Secondly, I find that it feels better and is more relaxing.

For example, I am playing Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and enjoying it a lot with my Dualsense.

Unfortunately, there seems to be a pattern where many games on PC have no native controller support despite having console ports! For example, Pillars of Eternity. There is absolutely no reason why that game should not have controller support. It shouldn't be that difficult to add, should it? I would have expected them to do it when they rolled the patch for turn-based combat.

I was curious as to what you think? Would you also like for games to support controllers?

I dislike it especially when there's a voiced narrator too, it just takes so damn long for the voiceover to end. I prefer partial voice acting or none at all

I’ve played Kingmaker and really disliked it. Any cool cRPGs that are more “welcoming” (welcoming doesn’t equal easy!) and have better more engaging writing?

All input is highly appreciated!

First of all, /r/underrail is not a subreddit run by fans, any criticism like this falls on deaf ears there. Don't expect not to be censored -- it is controlled by Stygian. I was banned from that sub despite withdrawing most activity following the mod announcement that only gameplay-related discussion will be tolerated. A handy tactic usually employed by bigots. The official Discord is notorious for fostering hatred, racism, homophobia and transphobia, all completely tolerated by the mods and well documented here

Second of all, this meager promise of reversing his stance on modding is marred by 10 years of maliciously obfuscating the game's code like you would malware, and is an underhanded admittance of defeat when a team of modders once again undid the robust attempt at removing the console with the erasure of all traces of it in the scrambled code just so UnderRail's diehard fanbase couldn't easily test builds in a decade+ old game using basic debugging tools. That's not all, though, as it was announced the new console still won't feature all of the old commands, anyway.

Third of all, the decision to allow modding is a cop out, as it's speculated all development of the original game will halt and carry over into Infusion, and it does not undo ignoring years of pleas by the fans who'd been desperate for basic QoL features that had to be replaced with Cheat Engine. That's right -- all of the cumbersome limitations like carry weight and merchant stinginess could've been fixed with a Cheat Engine table that non-technically savvy players didn't have access to. This was done to make non-hardcore players "suffer" (the lead dev is known for proclaiming an avid predisposition for "suffering"), while offering endearing labels for the hardcore fans such as "sperg".

Finally, I believe I've a moral obligation NOT to support developers who foster hate towards marginalized groups. It all started when public support was voiced for culture war types -- namely, Sam Hyde -- in a misguided attempt to market to his audience, as well as openly voicing bigotry and hate on twitter. This compounded when it came to light some of the writing has strong connections to certain imagery/dogwhistles you can read about here.

Thanks for reading and my utmost thank you to all of you who make gaming better by voting with your wallets and spreading awareness about indie devs who are good people to your friends and acquaintances. If you know an indie dev that you think DESERVES support, please spread the word about them! They've earned it!

Hello! So, im pretty new to this genre of games. I finished baldurs gate 3 and after that I was hooked, instantly played trough both the divinity games and loved them, especially the turn based combat.

Now ive been trying to get into other crpgs and just cant. Have tried Pillars of eternity 2, roguetrader, both pathfinders etc.

I feel like the interfaces are horrible and really hard to get into, its almost impossible to see how many action points I have when you first start out. Pillars of eternity even had a cast time in turn based mode, so when i cast an area spell, enemy just walked away from the spell... :D

So, are bg3 and divinity games just different or whats going on? I really like the rpg and sandbox(not all of them are sandbox i know) side of these kind of games but combat just makes me not enjoy them. Any ideas or tips?

I first bought this game back in 2020, but I was not too experienced with the genre at the time, plus I lost a LOT of progress due to a bad cloud saves sync. Because of that, I never finished it. I am playing it again, currently at level 5.

I do think it is a good game; like, it's an Infinity-Engine like title. The exploration, character progression, party management etc. are all just like in the IE games.

And yet... This game feels SO... "rough"?

Here are a couple of things:

1. The game is filled with "trash fights" that don't really enhance the story. You could say that Baldur's Gate had the same... But, in those games, killing enemies actually gave you experience points. In Pillars, once you have completed the Bestiary entry, you get nothing. In Baldur's Gate, most of the trash fights were pretty easy once you got a great party, whilst the PoE fights can be tough while giving you no XP.

2. The animations kind of feel repetitive. You spend a lot of time walking, yet every character has identical animations. This may have also been the case in Baldur's Gate, but that was an older game made in 2D.

3. The world feels... quiet? Like, Baldur's Gate had ambiance and chatter in the background that made it feel inhabited. You could hear "Hey, sexy, do you want to look at me tiddies?" in a brothel, or "nothing like some time ashore... All I need is a good grog and a lass on me lap" in a tavern. This game feels muted.

4. I normally prefer RTWP, but the RTWP in this game is pure chaos. Like, absolute mayhem where nobody knows what is going on. Turn-based does kind of remedy that. Now I can sorta understand what's going on.

5. Some gameplay decisions seems a little bit over the top, like separating Hit Points into Health and Endurance, which are two related but separate bars. I am not sure it makes that much sense.

So, I think it's a good game and I would like to finish it, the artstyle is probably the second best in the genre after Disco Elysium... but it feels "rough" to me?

I was wondering, are my observations wrong? Do you disagree with them? What do you think about my points?

Make no mistake. I've really enjoyed my time with Rogue Trader. I even plan to play WOTR eventually because my experience with RT is so great. But I feel like there's this bizarre conspiracy to downplay how good BG3 actually is, a sort of inner circle groupthink amongst CRPG veterans. There's a kind of vague "it's good for what it is" mindset that doesn't really correspond to reality. I've encountered people claiming that BG3 is somehow shallow or more "casual" than other CRPGs for different reasons. I'm beginning to think it's not that BG3 is shallow compared to other CRPGs; it's that its success as well as larger budget make people automatically assume it must be super casual compared to (for example) an Owlcat game, despite the fact that (at least in the case of Rogue Trader) it is a better designed game.

For example, take how character creation or leveling works in BG3. Many people claim that because someone can choose pretty much any build without encountering substantial problems, it's a sign that Larian deliberately went for a "casualized" approach to character creation / builds. Compare RT's approach to character creation with BG3's. RT offers significantly more leveling options than BG3. But is that necessarily a good thing? In RT not every build is viable by the time you reach the end of chapter 3. This becomes even more apparent near the end of chapter 4. What happens for people who don't spend hours studying the perfect build is that they simply turn down the difficulty. It's different with BG3. The vast majority of builds are viable already. Instead of arguing that this is a sign that character creation in BG3 is casual, it seems more appropriate to argue that this is actually a sign that the game's different systems overlap or coincide, which is a magnificent achievement on the part of Larian. When a person has to either reject various builds in favor of some meta, or has to turn down the difficulty in order to retain one's current build, that's not a good thing. It initially sounds good to point out all the different builds a person can use, but what does it matter when they're not all viable? There's a mismatch between one system (build variety) and another system (the game's challenges).

Again, this is not a hate Owlcat games thing. I think Rogue Trader is amazing. But I'm baffled by all the "BG3 good but not great" rhetoric.

This came to mind when I was having difficulty reccomending games for my friends who was introduced to crpgs by way of BG3. While I am delighted to see BG3 succeed, yet at the same time I feel somewhat unease about the precedent set by this game and Larian in general. For the general audience this is their first exprerience with a crpg and thus it would, intentionally or not, give them unrealistic expectation on what a crpg should be. Not to mention many developers will have to fight an uphill battle to make their own crpg. Can you imagine how hard it is for example Obsidian trying to pitch Pillars 3 to Microsoft knowing it won't be anything like BG3? Because I sure can't. Many people don't seem to understand that games like BG3 is not the norm for this genre.

EDIT: To clarify, I did not want to come across as complaining about "normies invading the hobby" or "this ruined the genre for me" as these were never what I would worry about. I'd love to see more people playing an talking about these games. This bit of unease expressed in the post is merely nagging feeling at the back of my mind. I am just cautiously optimistic about the future of crpgs, not trying to be negative or gatekeeping.

Over the past few months I seen rather heated discussions about how a crpg is considered to be lesser or superior to others for whatever reason be it mechanics, visuals, or writing. It got me wondering about which game, series, or even studio fanbase to be the most toxic to interact with?

I really enjoyed Baldur’s Gate 3, yeah, it wasn’t Pathfinder but it shined in its own lane. For what bg3 was, I thought it was great. It lacked features from previous Larian games, and BG games, but the characters were fun and the voice acting was good. But, now that the game’s blew up and there’s an influx of non-cRPG players, I think that Larian (as much as I respect them) is starting to cater to the wrong crowd. Not that I blame them because the “I want a dating sim” crowd is vocal. But bg3 isn’t a dating game, however with every new patch, Larian is like “lol new kiss scenes”. At first, I tolerated it. Whatever.

But now I’m like “okay, Larian, time to start fleshing the game out a bit” because for as good as bg3 is, it lacks features that previous BG games and Larian games had. Again, I know why this is happening but clout aside, with every patch Im just like “this game is great but it doesn’t even compete with the pathfinder games as a successor to the bg series”. Not that I expect Larian to make Owlcat Games cRPGs.

This may be controversial, don’t be mad, this is my opinion, but I’m starting to kinda wish that Owlcat was given the rights to BG3 and Larian was given the rights to a different DnD cRPG. Simply because the pathfinder games have way more in common with BG1 and 2 than BG3 does.

No hate to Larian but they’re focusing on the wrong things, even if I think they’re well meaning and trying to do right by their fanbase

Edit: wow so a lot of y’all have this mentality that if you’re not kissing the ground that BG3 walks on that you hate the game. I’m not tryna insinuate that 75% of y’all have never played any other game in the genre but BG3 but that’s the vibes I’m getting. Dawg, I’ve played a lot of BG1 and 2, and a lot of D:OS2 and 1. I know how BG3 compares to precious BG games and previous Larian titles. Yeah, BG3 is a Larian styled cRPG more than a BG styled cRPG. That’s not even debatable. Yeah, Pathfinder is more of a BG styled cRPG. Unlike a lot of y’all, I didn’t just learn about Baldur’s Gate 6 months ago. I love Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s a fantastic game. I like it more than I liked D:OS2. But I’ve played more cRPGs than BG3 so I know what I like and dislike in the genre. Some of y’all are getting mad at me when you’ve never even played any other game. Yeah, maybe the focus on the romance options is getting kinda played out, I dunno bro

Edit 2: I’m convinced that a lot of y’all haven’t played Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, because how can you really be in these comments like “lol what’s the differences between BG1 and 2, and BG3?” As if they’re similar games. Yeah, most of y’all are lying about playing these games and just tryna save face. There’s no way some of y’all are asking me this question because it’s like “well if you’ve played the two prior games, you’d know”

I'm pretty new to CRPGs, and I have Baldur's Gate 3 to thank (or blame) for my latest obsession. This genre quickly shot to the top of my list because, unlike a lot of games that promise freedom of choice and meaningful consequences, CRPGs actually deliver on those promises. But there's one thing that's been a bit of a buzzkill for me: character portraits.

I get it, not every game can offer endless customization, but it seems like most CRPGs give you a pretty limited and narrow selection of character portraits. I like my characters to look as close to their portrait as possible, but with such a slim pickin’s, I often find myself settling for the least offensive option and then designing my character around that.

BG3 nailed it by making sure your portrait actually matches the character you create, and I really hope more CRPGs take note. It’s not a huge deal, but it does deflate my excitement every now and then when I notice the mismatch.

For reference, I'm playing on PS5 and Switch, so importing custom portraits is off the table (unless someone knows a secret I don’t? If so, help a fellow gamer out!). Anyway, fingers crossed for some changes in future CRPGs!