My post backlog has piled up as I've been pulled in various other directions - a deck project, web 1.1, video games. To get my writing momentum going, I'm starting with a lightweight gamespost about vanquishing the Remnant II and BG3 final bosses.

Gameplay spoilers, no plot spoilers.


Since last time, me and J finished off the Beatific Palace and worked through the loot-filled miniboss-onslaught of Root Earth. At last we arrived at Annihilation.


He wrecked us. Again and again. It had taken us a dozen attempts to beat the archvillain of the first Remnant, but here we couldn't even reliably get to his second phase. The internet offered some suggestions (namely the phase two audio cues) but confirmed our experience with the huge leap in difficulty.

The dog handler archetype includes an homage to Dead to Rights.

We went back to camp to see if there were any worthwhile consumables. I took the opportunity to research an item that had been in our inventory and found that it could be traded for a new archetype (class). And then I found that we had leveled sufficiently to be able to equip that second archetype. Needless to say, we hadn't wandered up into the rickety tower by the derelict ship to see the hermit vendor since, I guess, the intro tutorial.


Returning to Annihilation, we got him in our first go. I'm not sure if the second archetype provided stat bonuses or if the dog companions just drew a lot of aggro. Frustration: overcome. Annihilation: overcome. Importance of reading: reinforced.

Campaign p/reroll

Since Remnant was borderline-unplayable for J on the Steamdeck, a few months ago he switched to PS5 after we had put a few hours into a campaign. Switching platforms meant rolling a new character and so we kicked off a new campaign. With the second campaign now done, we switched back to the first one and the experience has been, happily, seamless. Our characters and equipment carried over just fine and the difficulty curve adjusted to our higher-level characters.

Remnant 2 seems built for replay value; while some of the campaign has been the same we've also seen new bosses, new areas, and new equipment. And then I looked briefly at a wiki that listed all of the unlockable archetypes. Wow. I'm not sure how archetype playstyle will impact replay on its own, but it definitely adds variety to subsequent runs.

A few more shots

I accidentally nuked my gallery except for this screencap.

The BG3 endgame sequence is pretty good; not too long, not too short, and it provides time to use those awesome spells and items that you've saved up. The final boss is challenging but doable in one or two attempts (I assume this is fairly universal given the level cap).

A brief rewind to Mass Effect 3: ME3 had a "build your allies" mechanic that allowed decisions and quest outcomes from throughout the series impact the final stand against the Reapers. It wasn't great. Allies were basically represented as a point score that served as a threshold for finishing the game and a gate for the 'better' endings. And despite promising to not require online play, the original release of the game required ally points from online play to unlock the 'best' ending.

BG3 has a similar alliancebuilding mechanic but executes the business end of it lot better: allies return as summonable NPCs for the final battles. Alas, only the main character can summon them, so precious actions are required to deploy the Mintharas and Dame Aylins. But it's considerably more tactical and personal than BiowarEA's galaxy strength point system.

Denouement

I was unimpressed by the post-climax cinematics. First, the narrator basically repeats "You saved Baldur's Gate, you heroic hero!" an awkward number of times with slightly different phrasings. (My Larian-apologist headcannon is that some WotC PM skipped to the end of the script and demanded that the player be fluffed as much as possible.) If being congratulated by a video game isn't sufficiently destructive to the fourth wall, well, some of these scenes show how atrocious the game's graphics look when not showing the default tactical view or the conversation view. (Update).

Reunion

BG3 emphasizes character development and relationship building so I was happy to see that the game didn't end with a montage of cheering and dismembered tentacles. There is a final reunion back at the original Act I overworld campsite where the player can catch up with their surviving squadmates. It amounts to a handful of dialogues that differ based on the outcome of each squadmate's personal quest - not great, not terrible.

New Game=

Larian doesn't do New Game+. It's somewhat disappointing, you'd think they could at least let you pass cosmetics to the next playthrough since the low-tier gear is so ugly. Regardless, like with the Divinity games I found myself wanting to do another run 'the right way'; a playthrough where I have familiarity with the game mechanics and what builds/items/abilities are good or largely useless.

"What's good/useless?", you might ask, "Isn't BG3 perfectly balanced?" Imho, lol no. While it might be possible to minmax anything to be good, elite enemy resistance and saving throws make a lot of magic and abilities pretty worthless.


Oh yeah, and there are a ton of things I didn't do in my first playthrough for reasons ranging from "it was a binary choice" to "I ran into a well-documented bug" to "old-fashioned player negligence". Some examples:

• I managed to not recruit Gale. Somehow I missed his arm sticking out of a portal next to the crash site.
• Minthara didn't make it out of the goblin camp.
• I chose the overland route rather than the Underdark.
• I didn't take the wormpill and later found out that the abilities are actually worthwhile.
• I blew up the Steelwatch Foundary kind of early and was thereby locked out of the underwater realm.
• I didn't let Astarion ascend, but assuming it's not pure evil maybe I'll let him become a turbovampire.
• Before the final sequence there is a choice between two allies, this time I'll side with the other one this time.

BG3 offers quite a few different character classes and subclasses, so even squadmates can be built differently on a new playthrough. My first character was a ranger that would summon ADS and then do some sniping. This worked especially well with large fields of brambles in front of her enemies but the summons were kind of mediocre (to their credit they drew a lot of aggro in the final battle).

For this playthrough it seemed reasonable to switch it up and go with close quarters proficiency. Lae'zel was a total badass in Act III; super tanky, three attacks, could shove people over them mountains. My other objective was to aim for a charisma build in order to pass all of the persuasion/intimidation checks.

I'll be back.

Charisma is used by sorcerors, warlocks, and paladins, so to do a charismatic tank I needed to go pally. That's fine, pacing the use of limited spell slots is not my favorite part of the game. Paladins are half-casters, so while the charismaxxing is useful for various checks, it's still somewhat wasted on his preference to smack enemies with metal rods of various shapes. Happily, cantrips are available through feats, use charisma, and give str-builds a ranged attack option (bows all use dexterity).

After a little reading I found that strong defense can be accomplished in one of two ways:

• Dexterity + light armor. Dexterity provides a big bonus to Armor Class (dodge ability and damage mitigation) as long as you don't limit it with medium or heavy armor.
• Heavy armor. Throws dexterity to the wind and simply uses the armor stats for Armor Class.

I briefly looked into doing something weird like a dextrous tank with a shield and a dagger that might focus less on damage and more on debuffs and DOTs. Alas, as far as I'm aware, inflicting status effects like bleeding requires consumables or situational weapon use, daggers don't passively cause bleeding. It's for the best though, my ranger was dexterous so my paladin might as well be strong.

But since shields give an Armor Class bonus and often can be used to knock down attackers, they fit the build.


For character race I went with a blue dragon(born) because heavy armor benefits greatly from shock resistance. Also dragons are cooler than like dwarves and half-orcs and whatever. A little wiki-reading indicated that the lack of darkvision can be remedied with Volo's eye surgery (and that heterochromia can be avoided by simply choosing Blue 3 irises on character creation.


Playthrough two commences.

Fuck Big Smoke.

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