A delightful but maddening tension.
I’ve decided that accepting failures and missed opportunities will just add to the replayability
200 quick saves before I finished my first play through.
I fully embrace save scumming with this game, and to save often was the first of two pieces of advice I gave a friend who can’t play until the PS5 version comes out.
Hitting the menu button on the controller and then triangle (or Y) will quicksave. I do it a lot too and play with controller.
I’m coming into Act 3 now, and there definitely have been a few story junctures where a failed check would have had severe consequences, or it would have caused me to miss out on some nice loot.
I’m also not a fan of a 1 being a critical failure. I think if you have the bonuses, they should always be counted. Maybe scale them down to compensate for the adjustment. Maybe even use a different die. But don’t negate them entirely, unless maybe the character who’s rolling truly has no relevant proficiency.
It made me miss the RPG systems where if you have like 50 points in Speech or Intelligence, you just automatically pass a dialog check. It lets people be consistently rewarded for investing points in a specialization.
Still a fantastic game with an epic fantasy vibe that I haven’t felt since Dragon Age Origins. It’s a small gripe.
I love the idea of critical failure as well as critical success. I kind of wish both were a bit more impactful.
Crit fail should have some interesting outcomes beyond auto fail and crit success should have something interest as well.
I think it would be fun
While I was playing Act 2 I kept having to take breaks every hour or so because the crippling decision paralysis was making me too stressed to continue.
I didn’t even get to jump into an evil playthrough after finishing the game the first time because apparently I made just the right set of choices that I got an early ass ending and missed the last 1/4 of the game! 😩
Now I am meticulously just exploring and not talking to any NPCs until I know where I can and can’t explore without pushing story stuff. I’ve already managed to save a group of people I thought was beyond saving by not doing things or talking to important characters you are directed to talk to. (Looking at you, Isobel). I don’t know if it’s really a good thing. Like, it’s new to me; you don’t usually see inaction being a valid choice outside of QuickTime event focused games, and that is cool; but at the same time, it seems massively broken when the ONLY way to not lose a ton of characters is by not doing what the game is directing you to do, and that thing is a simple “talk to this character before you leave.”
