#like another player doesn't really understand spell slots at level 10

[theolsuspendisbelief]

I love love love that we're in an age of welcoming and inclusivity when it comes to TTRPG games, as a weird loud nerd girl who could not find a goddamn table in her small mid-west hometown. Seriously.

But the current discourse, for D&D at least, seems to be having a really reactionary hate-on against people who like to play with a more strict rules-as-written style, dismissing such folk as gate-keepy.

I've got the Covid, so I'm honestly not sure what I'm trying to say here exactly, but as a "rules make games more fun" sort of nerd: Hey friends, there's tables for all of us, let's not harsh on other people's play styles.

[arainaizevran]

here's my Gamer Review (no story spoilers)

the combat sucks and is sometimes unbalanced even in the beginners difficulty. FUCK mirror image all my homies hate mirror image. and the way some bosses have ridiculously high AC just to make it difficult when really all it does is make the fight tedious

another thing: the spell book system is so unintuitive, it took me until act 5 to finally look up how to prepare nenio's spells and understand how spell slots work 😭 (or i may just be stupid)

i love the camping mechanic and evening banter

i love that you can take 5 companions with you <3 they're varied in such a way that i can rotate the companions in the party with one or two mainstays. and it's not a total headache to swap companions in the party *cough* bg3 *cough*

SHARED INVENTORY MY BELOVED

there aren't any good legendary bow weapons if im gonna be honest. not much good legendary rapier weapons too. you get so much loot but most of them aren't even really good

the level/dungeon design teeters between fun and confusing

the puzzles require you to use your brain which is great, but i fear I've been spoiled by bg3 with how it gives you different ways to solve a puzzle. so i may or may not have been playing with a walkthrough

i love that some companion quest endings hinge on many actions the player says or does throughout the game and not just the One Decision you make in their final quest. this way it feels more like your actions have consequences. the downside of this is that if you don't get the ending you want for a character it can be frustrating since the decision that affected it is way back in act 2 or 3 lol

speaking of decisions, there were many points in the game where i really had trouble deciding what to do or say. that's a good thing for me (even tho id just open a walkthrough and see if the choice i want to make doesn't have dire consequences LMFAO)

act 4 is actually pretty good. im glad it's a short one and while it's super jarring to transition to this location with the slightly weird game mechanics, i got used to it pretty fast and finished the act in like. 10 hours lol. there's so many good companion quest in this act too, which counteracts the awful location. at the same time the amount of quests doesn't feel overwhelming at all?

crusade management is fun but some aspects of it is unintuitive, like the whole outpost->bastion->fortress upgrade thing. also if your general has scorching ray and fireball and firestorm it makes the crusade fights really easy which is kinda funny

the final battle is... okay. i had it on a custom very easy difficulty so the fights were VERY quick. but i like that all the people you helped in the game showed up instead of you having to call them one by one each turn lmfao

AND i like that the companions you left outside the threshold also gets to join the battle by defending the entrance. something like this happens in dao where the party has to split and it's nice bc all the companions get to be a part of the final battle yayyy

there are certain things you could miss out if you don't do That One Errand Quest, but doing it is so cool. you get to find out about the real motivation of the antagonist

why does nocticula look like that when all the other demon lords have really cool and huge model designs (i get that noct is a succubus demon lord but c'mon man)

also im sad I have to choose between lann and wenduag :( i was happy to know i could also recruit wendu but she bugged out for me and her bloody corpse was right next to lann in drezen. rip

i also love how much the companions/NPC just straight up lie to the player character 😭 i got fooled so many times bc there's no wayyy im gonna get betrayed and lied to again right? right?

the player character becoming the appointed commander doesn't at all feel... railroaded? like yes you're pretty much forced into the role but it didn't make me feel the same way as inquisition did (might be because there's an actual prologue in wotr)

part of that ^ might also be because of the mythic paths which really help you carve out the character you want

all in all, it was fun, i enjoyed it very much!

i stayed up till 2 last night and finished wotr... amazing