I closed out my second playthrough of BG3 wherein I wanted to beat Tactician difficulty, perfect my character builds, and try some of the other narrative paths. Gameplay and plot spoilers throughout, I will occasionally refer back to my first playthrough. I last left things having killed most of the Baldurian oligarchy. Except that I let Viconia go and missed out on her sweet, sweet shield. Regret.

I choose you

You get one squad for the final series of battles. I wish they'd worked out a way to let the player choose a few teams to rotate through for different stretch, e.g. Squad A attacks [place] from the west and Squad B attacks it from the east and the main character bounced between them. With death and desertion it wouldn't be straightforward but it beats leaving most of your allies in camp. In any event, I rolled with:

• Minthara. I put the most thought into her build and, as it turns out, she kicked ass throughout Act III. As indicated in the screencap above, I was able to swap the Hill Giant club out for a sparky lance thanks to the Hill Giant gloves I indefinitely borrowed from Raphael.
• Astarion. One of the issues with having large gaps between play sessions is being struck with the vague recollection of saying "looks like I'm going to have to roll with Astarion against the brain" and not remembering why. Regardless, his crit build was very effective at dealing damage.
• Gale. I kinda wanted to see his shortcut ending but when the time came I just killed the brain the old fashioned way.

It's a trap

I speedran/sneaked the boat-to-autofail leg of the endgame. There wasn't any loot worth getting and my characters had been max level for a while.

Kaiden or Ashley

The Githyanki are basically Klingons with zero charisma, so choosing the Emp over Prince Orpheus in PT1 was a no-brainer (so to speak). In the interest of seeing alternate plot paths, I chose the prince this time, taking solace in the fact that my persuade+intimidate build would likely mean I could convince him to mindflayify himself. The fact that he more or less volunteered to become the thing he hated for the greater good made me feel a bit guilty - to the extent that one can feel guilty for being overly prejudicial toward the personality of a video game NPC.

The gauntlet

Oftentimes the best part of a video game directly precedes the final boss. It's the point where your build and equipment are the most dialed in, the plot is the most developed, and you can use items almost willy-nilly. Sometimes being maxed out makes this sequence too easy, though it becomes an opportunity to pat yourself on the back for working so hard in the early game. At it's best, this final gauntlet is challenging but allows they player to demonstrate the strengths of the build/play style they've developed.

The Halo games did this quite well, as did Fire Emblem. The best single example I can give is Where Angels Fear to Tread from Borderlands 2.


The BG3 tower charge starts off well. The plot narrows itself down to "kill the boss". You meet the allies you've gained throughout the game and have a final chance to buy gear.


The final pre-boss combat area is a sprawling castle courtyard filled with low- and medium-tier enemies. Despite a 'war horn' mechanic, it's unfortunatly quite easy/dull.

After passing through the door at the end of the courtyard, you climb some stairs to the boss arena while mindflayers spawn every round and a Githyanki airship lobs explodey stuff at you. In PT1 I went up the left staircase, this time - you guessed it - the right. My squad was sufficiently powerful to not be bothered by the mindflayer spawns, the only trouble was finding gaps between the mortars, though I don't know for certain they'd have done that much damage.

Dragonslayer

The first phase of the final boss battle is a round arena with a portal to capture on the other side. The arena is conspicuously occupied by a mind-controlled dragon and, in this plot branch, the Emperor. I didn't kill the dragon last time so became a personal goal for PT2. He - and the rest of the arena - didn't give me too much trouble for three reasons:

1. Ally summons. Quick recap: the (non-squad) friends you make throughout the game become summonable allies during the final battle. I didn't use them too much the first time through because it cost a valuable main character action - I think, either the game was patched to allow squadmates to do the summon action or pebcak. With Minthara, Astarion, and Gale able to summon allies, I soon had damage-dealing, aggro-drawing NPCs all over the betentacled cranium.
2. Speed potions. They give you an extra action every round, if it's taken in bottle form (vs spell) it does make you lose a turn when it wears off. I didn't use these much in PT1, though being shy about using them was somewhat validated in this playthrough when Gale needed to take a breather on a disappearing platform (Dimensional Door to the rescue).
3. I don't now what roll he needed, but Gale landed a first-try Hold Monster (stun and all incoming hits are crits) on the dragon. This took the dragon's damage off the board and also meant my summoned allies were considerably more lethal.

Anyway, the ability to fully leverage ally-summoning (and, by extension, my choices throughout the game) made the first phase considerably more gratifying. After dispatching the dragon and the Emperor, it was something of a cakewalk to the portal.

The motherbrain

It's been six months, but I remembered that the netherbrain second phase had a disappearing platform mechanic. I momentarily forgot that the chosen platforms were highlighted by a glowing orb. And so Prince Orpheus fell to his death, despite having the illithid ability to hover. Losing the only person that could defeat the netherbrain (in a cinematic) wasn't an immediate game over, so I suspected he'd be glitched back into existence after landing the final combat blow. Worst case, I didn't care for him that much anyway and maybe I'd see an uncommon ending subsequence.

Somehow, the Prince returned.

Denouement

Me	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.

I pebcak'd my images in PT1 but now I have an example:


They did fix the scene where I just stared at an ox cart for a long time.


Karlach's gamelong struggle with a terminal condition is one of the game's better plot arcs, especially her dialogue over the corpse of Gortash. The denouement starts with Karlach's death scene, unless the player convinced her to go illithid. It's an okay scene that's undercut by the fact that it's jammed into the parade of final cinematics. It's also undercut by...


"Wait, hold on, you can just return to the hells with Wyll." That could have been suggested before Karlach's final goodbye but I'll take the win-win: Karlach lives and Wyll goes somewhere else.


Minthara's character progression progresses from 'evil and mind-controlled' to 'evil but on the side of good'. If Lae'zel can be convinced to give up zealotry and live for herself, I'd expect Minthara might be amenable to adopting a mentality of tactful evil. After all, she personally slayed numerous Baldurians because they took the evil thing too far. Oh well, her scheming and sociopathy is charming in dialogue.

Reunion

I said previously that ascended Astarion is lame - he becomes the ultimate vampire but doesn't get a single stat increase. I admit I was unaware that ascending means he gets a really dope jacket in the reunion scene. Disclaimer: he may have had this in PT1 and I just don't remember.


The reunion scene pleasant, Withers brings it home with a toast and then wags his finger at some paintings on a wall.

Scratch, you scamp.

The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?

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I don't have any fireplace pictures but I assure you we've had a few evenings by the xmas tree and fire.

The chilly weather has meant cozying up inside... of whatever.

Weekends and sick days inside have featured jammies, snacks, and art of all mediums:

We even did some low-voltage electronics thanks to Rob.

And for Cooley's birthday we obliterated some hot pot.

After some time away, I'm finishing up my tactician-difficulty lizard paladin run on BG3. As mentioned previously, the last few hours of the game are about hopping between archvillains, in any order.

1. Gortash

The Gortash battle wasn't too challenging this time around, though I had one false start when I tried to get a sneaky hit on him. Last time through I baited him outside, away from his turrets. This battle was far more straightforward: off-tanks smashing snooty conspirators.

2. Viconia

The House of Grief battle has swarms of ads and jerks that cast Bone Chill nonstop. I reverted to my PT1 strat and progressively fell back down the entry path, casting overlapping Hunger of Hadar and Spike Growth. I kept my concentration characters out of harm's way and used my tanks to light up the enemies that trickled through.


In PT1 I let Shart kill her parents (per their desires), this time she saved them against their will. Meh.

3. Cazador

I was going to talk to Cazador, but with some pleasant Dancing Lights to set the mood. Turns out, the light (which vampires are not fond of, who knew?) aggroed him immediately so I just rolled with it, not sure if the discussion sequence was necessary to ascend Astarion after combat. Cazador never even trapped Astarion, which - from my brief reading - was supposed to happen regardless of the conversation. I guess I read too briefly:

BG3 Wiki

Daylight can also be used to trigger the fight with Cazador and skip the cutscene completely, allowing you to start the fight with Astarion already free.

... boring conversation anyway.


On PT1 I sheltered in the nook underneath the entrance and caught the melee characters in brambles. With this unexpected start of combat, I set up on the stairs and bottlenecked everyone there - everyone except the jumping werewolves. But with Cazador's ads stuck behind my tank, we wailed on the elder vampire when he dove straight into the thick of things.


As suggested earlier, this run is largely about 'the road not taken' so I did the semi-evil thing and ascended Astarion. That, of course, meant paying 10k in indulgences to the oath police. As a gigavampire, Astarion has (drumroll) one additional bite skill. Seems oversold.

4. Ansur

Ansur took a couple of tries. His AoE attacks and reactions are no joke and he kept killing Gale in the first round, before the wizard could get up his invulnerability dome. Sanctuary is a super-useful ability that I barely employed in PT1 and could have helped with this predicament. Alas, only my main carried Sanctuary and he needed to escape his post-converation proximity to the dragon. What's more, I quickly realized that the elementals needed to be dealt with right away because they did an unreasonable amount of damage to my squishier units.


Eventually I got the elementals killed and a globe up and was able to either range him from this refuge or melee him and tank the reaction damage. Triggering Ansur's reaction strike with a summon was helpful for a few turns. Dragonslaying arrows were surprisingly useless; this one was all about having several Globe charges. Notably, the Globe had to be in the center of the map otherwise Ansur would simply hang out beyond ranged range.

5. Orin

For the Orin fight, it was nice to have killed Gortash beforehand so I could convince Orin to leave her captive alone. Who says there's no honor among assassins? On the minus side, I quickly found that demon-Orin could, in one turn, jump almost everywhere and multiattack a tank to death.

Other than being super lethal, the Orin mechanic is having Sanctuaried characters that refresh her stacks of Unstoppable (invincible for n hits) every round. Since these minions are in Sanctuary, one has to AoE them (or similar) to interrupt their buffing. I tried Sleet Storm to see if this would stagger the casters. I think it did but, more importantly, the ice knocked Orin prone.

The battle got a little weird after that, Orin ran downstairs and summoned a few skellies from a dead lizard with no clothes, meanwhile the remaining ads attacked my squad. Orin then went up onto the balcony and wandered around before eventually returning so I could kill her with a squad that was on HP fumes.

"I'm not like Orin, am I? Am I???"

6. Raphael

I found Raphael to be fairly challenging in PT1 so I was steeling myself for a tough fight on Tactician. He was easy and I'm not entirely sure why. Things that might have helped:

• I knew about the battle mechanics - buffing pillars and second phase.
• I brought blugeoning equipment for the pillars and Gale packed Artistry of War (it's super effective).
• Everyone drank elixirs of flame resistance before the fight.
• I had Yurgir fighting for me rather than against me.

Raphael didn't really do much in his first phase. I cast Darkness on him (I thought he had darkvision?) and hit him with some mild debuffs. He had a difficult time hitting anything and I eventually cast Hideous Laughter when he finally emerged from the smoke. The ads got close to killing Gale, but Hope was there with the heals. Perhaps I had enough summons out that Raphael wasted his precious few rounds targeting them.


By the time Raphael entered his second phase, he was surrounded by my main, Minthara, Yurgir, a deva, and an elemental.


The Remnant II final boss has either been buffed or is a lot harder one difficulty level up, so Me and J rolled another Remnant campaign to level a bit. I think we're going to try a few more runs at the boss and then jump back in to the Elden Ring DLC.

Danielle's creation.

My buddy Keith tried camping out on top of a building once. He was shooting crows, but the police were too busy tear gassing him to ask what he was doing up there. He screamed for an entire YEAR every single time he opened his eyes! Oh, man. At first it was funny, then it just got sad, but then it got funny again! Oh, man.

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