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?

?

Related / internal

Related / external