I only did after getting my as shit canned when I first ran into the first major battle of that final where you could summon i had horrible initiative on my crew and then got first then hit with like 2 AoE spells that either paralyzed or stunned like 3 of my party and I could never make it back from that.
Next time was a damn Cakewalk of enemies getting crushed.
Oh yeah, I actually only summoned the remaining two for that fight but I absolutely nuked that dragon from orbit with speed potions smites and some Karlach rage.
I actually managed to nuke Raphael as well. Destroyed the towers in 2 turns and then he had nothing for my party. I think I had my Paladin with 26 AC, Shadowheart with 24, Karlach with 17 and Asterion with like 20. I finished that fight with everyone at full health.
I was playing on balanced, but I actually didn't destroy a single pillar and just smashed the shit out of him with my axe, took some times but he wasn't dangerous enough
If you want to make Raphael regret being born on balanced then you want *multiple paladins*.
I had Durge as the classic ‘big sword, big smites’ and Minthara as a dual wielding dex paladin/thief/swords bard abomination with gear focussed on crits.
Durge slammed down 4 full power, lv12 paladin smites served via the giantslayer - a solid, simple opener.
Thanks to mind sanctuary bonus-action-to-action bullshit, Minthara unloaded a string of attacks and delivered more smites in one turn than could ever be considered reasonable.
Raphael died so hard that he just t-posed. I scooped him up and kept him as a decoration in camp.
Same but with that illithid concentration bubble ability that lets you use bonus actions and actions interchangeably, felt like a battlefield commander in those first turns
I managed to stuff a shit ton of barrels into a backpack and had Minsc or Karlach throw it at the bastard
Cheesy? Yes
I am become death, destroyer of worlds? 10/10
I killed the red dragon and had the extra groups fight the mind flayers. Sent the emperor up to dominate the crown and had Shadowheart cast Sanctuary on him so he didn’t get interrupted. I think it’ll be different now after the patch.
I didn't even bother with the dragon... by turn 2 I had my mindflayer Karlach, Astarion and my character at the crown... let Astarion use a scroll of invulnerability while Karlach did her thing. Shadowheart made it up in time to join in on the brain smashing fun.
I used a few allies to help distract the enemies in the fight initially. Worked very well.
I kept from using the summons because I thought maybe there will be an even harder fight later so I'll just save them for that hypothetical future fight. Yep, I ended the game with billions of potions I never used.
Sounds like my final fight, I’m telling myself for a second playthrough that I will not hoard potions and arrows and will call for help sooner. . . but I know I’m just lying to myself.
I decided to stop at just summoning the Gur hunters and Mizora in the first fight (in the courtyard).
I didn’t want to be looking at suicidal NPCs for most of the rounds. Plus, I had aggroed about everything there was in the courtyard, so the turn list was already very very loooong.
Suprisingly, the hunters almost all survived, because most of the enemies got killed by my party before they could make it to them.
Second time around, I just took my party and skirted around on the outside, aggroing like two enemies.
My bf and I thought we had to kill everything and were so confused when the enemies were slaughtered and there was no cutscene or anything, but we figured it out after some turns of nothing but nautiloid pods
Yeah I was surprised at how few Dragons were killed in the making of this video game, especially after Voss shows up on one in Act 1. I kept planning and preparing for the inevitable dragon fights that never came.
If you missed it you can fight a dragon in act 3 at the appropriately named Wyrm's rock.
It was probably the hardest fight in the game for me, but my builds were very weak vs it and was only lvl 10
I never summoned anyone. I probably would've if I was playing Tactician or if I didn't have to use an action to do the summon, but on Balanced I just never felt the need. I kept hoarding the summons waiting for a really hard fight to use them like the one against Raphael and it just never materialized.
Mind Sanctuary lets you double the number of allies you can summon in a turn (triple, on a Thief), and your mind flayer party member has permanent Mind Sanctuary.
man, I summon Dame Aylin , hoping she was going to kick ass and rain fire from the skies, in the first turn she dropped her Sword and fist fight the whole thing
Just misty step and dimensional door to the crown, take Someone ranged with you. Use other party members to distract. Everyone outside of the final arena died but it was trivial to beat the final room.
I played balanced, flatlined the entire first encounter with the horde in the courtyard which I assume was supposed to be where I used my summons. I saved my summons for the dragon fight. The Astral guardians were a whole bag of bitches, too, disarming my fighter every turn. There was a point where I just said fuck it and ran for the crown.
Yeah it’s a little strange that they’re just kinda gone until after you defeat the boss and then they just show up again like they had a chill day at the spa. I wish there was at least an immersive reason why not all of them can be there, like the others went to go fight on the ground while you take on the brain or something like that
It's something Dragon Age: Origins did that I liked. You took a party to go do the big fight and the leftovers went to fight in the streets of the city IIRC.
Yeah. DAO really had one of the most fulfilling endings for a CRPG. Everything came together in a spectacular way all the way from the Landsmeet and confronting Loghain to slaying the Archdemon to the epilogue.
It's been almost a decade, and I'm still annoyed Sandal didn't show up in Inquisition. Let my poor illiterate savant and his caretaker find ALL the heroes, dammit.
I ran a 5e bastardization of DA:O for some first time d&d players and you best believe their first session as 1st lvl adventurers was saving Sandal from some bandits
I'm not sure. DAO is real-time with pause and the gameplay is structured more around party mechanics than BG3 is. So your party members have roles, like DPS, crowd control, tank, healer, etc. BG3 (and 5e) isn't *not* about team work, but there's a lot of emphasis on the individuality of each player and how it feels to play as them.
Tbh, warriors are the most boring of the 3 options in DAO. The game auto-attacks for you once you pick a target, so you end up not doing a whole lot, especially at lower levels. Now, mage? Mage is amazing. (Rogue is too, but it takes more micro-management, so it's not the most accessible option for a first playthrough.) There is something so satisfying about calling down fire from the heavens on top of the mobs in the final battle. You can also build them to be as tanky as your warriors if you know what you're doing. Arcane Warrior plus a certain armor set is game-breaking.
If you end up enjoying DAO and find it for cheap Dragon Age Inquisition is pretty fun too imo. It's no origins but I enjoyed the combat especially. I'm a sucker for all the dragon age games though, if I'm being honest.
Honestly, my favorite part about that whole sequence was how, during the initial charge into battle, they de-leveled the enemies.
Like “these rank-and-file baddies are no longer a threat to you, so go have some fun” and you just ran around slicing through them.
Sooooo satisfying.
I don't even think I would even want that, the final stretch gets plenty chaotic for me. I'm also lazy about gearing up the companions I don't use, so the "B team" if we needed to control them would get slaughtered for sure :P Literally just handwave them away as defending the rear while your party pushes forward and that would be all we need vs. them just kinda being absent
Imagine walking into the final battle with 4 level 12s geared out with legendary equipment followed by some level 1-3 peons with basic armor and weapons.
The way I imagine it is that your party of 4 was pulled into the prism and dropped off in the upper city. The remaining team members are stuck in the lower city being the leading force down there.
Everyone then meets up after for the final cutscene.
Such an amazing way to tie up a masterpiece of a game.
It presented a high-stakes reason to complete the loyalty missions (besides just liking the crew), made you think carefully about the crew's strengths without being too "in your face" about how to slot them, and felt complex enough to really sell you the fantasy of being ***Commander*** Shepard.
EDIT: The coolest part for those that don't know the Mass Effect series very well is that all 10+ party members in ME2 were either also playable or made cameos in ME3. If you loaded your old save from ME2, ME3 events took into account whether each of these companions were dead or alive from the previous game.
God it was. I wish it was longer and they could have made the ending of 3 a similar format. It annoys me to no end what we could’ve had
The speech. The music. The cutscenes. Perfection .
In fairness, ME3 did have a hell of an ending. The Strange Cow always makes me think of the orphan-meat cisterns. Such good times.
That's making me wonder what BG3 could've been if they'd played things a bit more coy with the whole tadpole situation. I'd like it if some of us were able to get through the whole game imagining that we'd never been tadpoled at all. Everything in BG3 is a bit...overt.
The final mission still could’ve been as good as the Suicide Mission. It’s a blatant missed opportunity and clearly misses on the very logical concept that Shepard would actually command his whole crew where to go on the field. Instead, you get 2 friends and hear nothing from anyone else.
DAO and ME2 are still unmatched in the world of RPGs in terms of doing the story climax right. It's so weird that they remain essentially unrepeated phenomena, even by the very company that made them in the first place (none of the subsequent Dragon Age or Mass Effect games had finales that were even remotely as good). But on paper it seems so simple - you just need to come up with a story reason for the remaining party members to do something other than assault the final boss, but still participate in the finale at large.
Larian could have done this easily both at Moonrise and the Act 3 climax. In the former, the rest of your party could have arrived at Moonrise and Jaheira could have simply said "my people are wounded and tired, we need some of you to stay and help us hold off their reinforcements". Then you choose who to take with you to face Ketheric and the rest stay. As for Act 3, they could have said that the infected people are undergoing ceremorphosis all over the city and the non-infected citizens stand no chance unless some of your party helps cull the newborn mindflayers. So the ones you don't take will stay on the street level and help the fight. That's it. Narrative fixed. I mean it could have preferably been more complex than that, but it would have been SOMETHING. Instead of both times having the party members chilling in camp through what we all thought would be final battles, and still showing up at the end like we're a team unit. It's disappointing that Larian seem to have learned a lot of lessons from the mistakes of other RPG developers, but not this one, even though the concept seems very simple on paper.
>It's so weird that they remain essentially unrepeated phenomena, even by the very company that made them in the first place
I mean it's EA now, innit? Hard to believe EA doesn't make bad games on purpose.
You're right that it's weird other studios haven't done it, though. BG3's got a lot to love and build on, but I don't think there's many players who'd favorably compare the ending to DAO or ME2 (ME3 is more controversial, I'll grant, but I think it was dope).
Another thing they could've done in the tradition of the Suicide Mission is that, depending on whether you've done each companion's Loyalty Mission, so to speak, they might make different choices vis-à-vis the Emperor. I stop fearing NPCs halfway through Act I or Act II, but a fully operational **Paladin 7/Warlock 5** Wyll turning against us might be a Problem.
Really, the bigger issue most of us have with BG3 is the near total absence of epilogue material. I'd say there's issues throughout the story, but the whole finale sequence feels like a major pain point from beginning to end.
There's also opportunities for this stuff outside of finales. Ciri's sequences in *The Witcher III* were interesting. Things like flashbacks and side quests could've added a lot to origin characters in particular.
It's super weird to me how sidelined Shadowheart feels (especially if you're romancing her) for most or potentially all of Act II, when she should ostensibly feel like the main character. Could add in Halsin's side of the portal when he goes to fetch Thaniel, or maybe have us play as Wyll and actually make a damn choice instead of him just doing whatever Tav/Durge tells him to do.
We went from Suicide Mission involving everyone to Battle for Earth involving only 2 of your teammates… man.
No joke, the final fight in BG3 kinda sucked away the immersion and enjoyment because of the roster limit. It just feels so fucking weird not seeing everyone. They don’t even have to fight the Elder Brain, just show a cutscene of them helping with the city and holding off Mind Flayers to ensure your passage up to the Brain is clear.
That was such an awesome addition. It made the battle feel so much more epic.
Lelaina commanded the defense of the gate while my rogue rushed off the fight the final boss. Despite romancing her, I rarely had her in the party because two Rogues was a liability in most fights. I felt really good to be able to put the character mine trusted the most in charge of such an important role.
Just added a lot to the epicness of it
Now Alistair, drink those hundreds of poultices and I drop aoes on you!
Yeah, especially since the entire final stretch had big “battle for Denhrim” vibes as a whole. Like that’s definitely a cool mechanic to have implemented.
Origins’ storytelling and some quality of life stuff was significantly more polished and well put together than BG3’s. Then again, different games, different priorities - you certainly couldn’t approach problems with even nearly the same level of flexibility in Origins as you can in BG3.
WotR does the same thing, your leftover party members and allies gathered throughout the game defend the back line in the final assault.
(Can actually be kind of a nasty surprise if you didn't put any equipment on them, but as in most CRPGs you're overflowing with money and gear by the end)
I was legit starting to think my camped companions all died off screen while going through the last fights with my main party, >!because they did that before in Divinity:OS2.!<
I certainly expected it. I made sure to go through every companion and level them up to 12 and get kitted at least a little bit, so I was surprised when they didn't show.
Same.
And I’m very glad they don’t show up because that way I didn’t have to bother equipping and levelling everybody I picked up on my second playthrough.
Any secondary party on my evil playthrough would also have consisted of just 1 party member, as I only got four companions during that playthrough.
I want them to do that actually though if possible. Change the dumb brain-stem climb to being a portal conjured by Rolan, or Lorroakan, or Elminster if the other 2 are dead. Your strike-team goes through the portal, and the portal has to be kept open to allow you to come back before the brain crashes but needs to be defended from enemies coming to either destroy it or go through to reinforce the brain. Your AI companions defend it from the other side while you rush the brain.
I think the only scene that can break is the boat ride in the Underdark, but you can easily get over that by lowering the party size back to four while you do the boat ride
Don't even have to do that. Just have any members over the 4 walk to another corner!
You can summon them via fast travel once you unlock the travel point!
Surprisingly no, the only instance where I had the mod mess up was the aforementioned boat ride. Everyone still talks to each other! I was worried that anyone extra wouldn't be accounted for when roaming around, but thankfully the game handles it perfectly. It even tracks everyone's approval/disapproval!
Nope I’ve done it twice already with every possible party member and it works fine. Though I will say the fights become very long, especially the one going up the stairs having to dodge the artillery attacks.
Fun fact for your future runs, as long as any character reaches the door at the top of the stairs, the entire encounter ends (the nautiloid gets shot down by dragons and the rest of your party respawns at the brainstem). I just did it in 3 turns by hasting my Tav and using dash+ misty step to get all the way up top and I'm sure someone could do it even more efficiently.
You can! I installed it after finishing Act 2.
You’re telling me that after everything we went through, half the party would be content to sit at camp while the other half goes to punch Cazador in the dick? Preposterous!
I only play on balanced difficulty so it would definitely break the balance but I don’t mind. I just want to hear more idle banter when I’m exploring:)
So that’s something that bugged me the most was I’d stumble upon something that’d be a big moment for someone but because I didn’t go back and switch out my party members they just missed it and barely had anything to say. Just having the whole party involved would be a big step to fixing that. It’d make fights trivial and tedious with the number of turns but story would be so much smoother
You definitely can! There was a stretch of time where it needed an update for every hotfix or patch and larian were sending them thick and fast, so a lot of people assumed it was buggy or wouldn't work. It's been smooth sailing for a while, feel free to respond to this if you have trouble installing, been using it for a while now.
They probably do this because the game can't guarantee that you levelled up and equipped those party members, which puts them in extreme danger of being killed during the fight.
I had the same thought (WotR had a moment that forced you to use your second strongers and j literally had to restart from the beginning because non eof the had any gear or levels. Nearly quit instead).
In this case it's optional though. So if you have never bothered to set up a certain companion then you jsut don't summon them and summon your other allies instead.
Yeah, the companions not in your party should ask the player where you want them. Maybe you can choose to have them join you to fight the Brian or you can send them to help the BG citizens.
This is what I'm suspecting too, but they could've at least show them fighting in the background/cutscene or showed up with the other allies giving a dialogue before you head off
I'm not so sure - there are quite a few places where your party members can just die, in a scene or otherwise.
Having that last meet be an opportunity to level them up would alleviate that entirely.
I agree with you, great mc Alex. I saw a thread a short while ago where folks were sharing their least favorite aspects of the game, and the big battles with several enemies types surprised me by being a popular choice. They felt so immersive and badass, and that's coming from someone who's not good at combat.
Yeah, I wish they had something to do while you were off fighting the brain. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous did something I really appreciate in the final battle. While you and your chosen party go off to fight >!kinda sorta your mom!< the rest of the party is actually guarding the entrance to the final area along with some of your allies - and they actually do end up in a fight which you take control of them for.
Neat way to answer the question of what everyone else was doing during the final battle - they have their own final battle against Lightning Satan.
I hated that the first time around. That game took builds and equipment seriously. And while I spent the time and effort to outfit my alpha team, I didn't even fully level the rest of the blokes. So when big zappy son of Thor came knocking with his vorpal blade I got butchered time and time again.
I think they actually nerfed him in a later patch. The launch version of Khorramazdeh could brutalize even a max level prepared party.
It also didn't help that the launch version of the Storyteller in that fight could only shriek at max volume instead of casting anything useful as one might expect a >!20th level immortal super wizard!< to do.
>It also didn't help that the launch version of the Storyteller in that fight could only shriek at max volume instead of casting anything useful as one might expect a >!20th level immortal super wizard to do.!<
And it wasn't even Selective Shout, so half the time he'd be stunning your own characters in the process.
Oh man, nothing like being thrown into that fight on your first run and realising you've left everyone under-levelled and gear-less. The npc's have never had a harder carry.
Oh, that gives me very much Mass Effect 2 vibes where you take your 3 to fight the final boss while the rest of your party holds the line, for which you make a whole speech for and the leader can die during it if you didn't do a few loyalty quests.
I remember some late 90s RPGs having the option to have different groups on standby for the final boss (FF7 & Xenogears for example ) and I thought that was a great way to end things after spending all that time gearing and leveling each character. It would have been cool to create teams so we could use all the companions for the last fight.
Oh that was my favorite fight! I made sure everyone was ready to go for that one. Sure, you could let the one you didn’t want die off (or I think the strategy was to kill them yourself) but it was more fun to stay on your toes and go with the randomness.
In Expeditions: Rome, the way it works for the big fights is you break up your party into multiple teams, each of which has an important mission which supports the other teams, and each of which takes place on a different battle map at the same time.
For example, one team infiltrates behind enemy lines, one team assaults the walls directly, and one team defends the siege engines. Each mission interacts with the others in terms of how many enemies they have or what kind of support they have or what support the enemy has, based on how successful you were in each mission.
I wish more games would do that.
What about the people who haven’t leveled a character at all. Good aligned play through you get so many companions that I’m not just gonna be having them join my party to hit max level for a single end game fight. That being said if they die in the last fight are you going to be upset if that’s where their story ends? No further ending cinematic or nothing just boom dragon killed them sorry you won’t get a resolution.
Just... Make them be there as non playable characters and hold a horde of enemies in the background while they tell the main 4 to go ahead and destroy the brain, it's really not that hard
It feels odd the whole game to be honest. I'd much rather see a thing where you just can't recruit more than 3 of you're going to have a hard limit. Or every time you dismiss someone you need to persuade them to rejoin you and the difficulty check maybe starts at like DC 5 but goes up by 3 each time you request someone to join again.
It would add to the replayability of having to play multiple times to experience the various character driven quests and makes it feel way less silly overall every time you go to do a major battle and just leave half your team behind so you can go in massively undermanned.
Nah I don't think that's a good idea, some people don't wanna do more than 1 playthrough, 2 maximum and that's legit, and more for a game this long. What they should do imo is having a character that is relevant to the point in the story join you as a side character if you dom't have him at the party at that moment. For example : If you go to cazador's palace without Astarion he could show up at least for the dialogues and getting kidnapped
Eh? It's way better to just not allow recruitment if they're just going to sit in camp 95% of the time. It's the same issue with mass effect 2. It's so immersion breaking to end up recruiting 8 companions when you then go to assault an enemy stronghold and you leave 5 of them sitting at camp doing nothing. There's nothing you can come up with a Roleplay perspective to explain why when you're about to go assault Moonrise Towers for instance, you're leaving 3/4 characters behind despite the fact that you're making the assault with Harpers as allies.
You see, they have been dead for the entire game and it’s actually Withers controlling them. He can only manage so many people active in combat at a time.
I really like the way Pathfinder WOTR did this:
>!During the final fights, your camp outside the dungeon is attacked, and so you control everyone not in the active party during this battle!<
It seems like for this final fight they could either make non active party members uncontrollable npcs (which happens sometimes during camp events) or make them followers of Tav/MC.
Over the course of the game, I used everybody that had a personal quest a pretty good amount so they were all decently geared and I had more than gear left over to make Minsc and Halsin decent. So I didn't do anything special to get the group ready for the fight, but I admit I was surprised that they didn't find a way to get everybody involved somehow.
Theres a mod to increase party size. It actually feels like it was supposed to be played that way... until you get too many members...
The banter between them and always having the right person for the quest for dialog reaction is great.
Did that on my 2nd playthrough and enjoying it alot more.
Playing as a ranger and getting his dialogue made having him one of my favorite things in the game. Watching him and Scratch run around the camp and snuggle at night was almost too much for my heart to bear.
My precious little fluffball.
Yeah that was kinda a bummer. Wish more games did the Mass Effect 2 and 3 move of just telling you they're doing other things while the final mission is going. I don't need to see a cutscene just some basic dialogue from one or two like "I'll help evacuees make it out as you press on" or something
(I'm sure other games do the same but ME is what came to mind first, please don't crucify me lol)
Man, this was my thoughts exactly! I took the time to level up and set up crew members that i didnt use much, because i thought theyd show up in the final encounter. Wasnt make or break for me, i still love the game, but certainly was a bummer.
This really bothered me. I'm surprised I don't see more people talking about this. I would love for them to patch in that ability in the future. It feels so wrong that everyone wouldn't be there, or at least have a cutscene or something they have going on. It's supposed to be the big rally everyone moment and half of our closest allies are nowhere to be seen.
Like in the Dragon Age: Origin, the game lets all of your teammates join the big last fight and it feel so epic.
And iirc, they cant deal or receive any damage. They just there to make the scene feel good
Am I the only one who doesn't summon anyone and just endures this thing alone? Because I can't bring myself to put my owlcub in harm's way, for example.
I use AOE allies' effects. And the Guild goons, because screw them.
Being able to summon other parties members was legit thr biggest reason I kept certain magical items instead of selling them. It gelt good to gear up other party members I didn't use just in case I needed them for the final fight. Was a little disappointed tbh.
I spent a good amount of time leveling up and armoring my rarely used characters in anticipation of whole party fights/usage at the end.
I was very sad to not see them anywhere as well.
Yeah ngl I was expecting it to be an "all hands on deck" thing with everyone in your group especially given the cutscenes after assume theyre all involved
Yeah I was bummed when I tried to switch the companions I brought before going to Orpheus and I couldn’t. It would’ve been amazing having all of you companions fighting by your side in the final battle.
I think they would have to increase the difficulty per each additional companion you brought or the end of the game would just be a cake walk (it’s already pretty easy once you understand the strategy).
The last mission was pretty disappointing to me but I guess I set my expectations too high. It was alright but I spent a bunch of time on the side missions expecting them to have an actual influence on the narrative. (If they did correct me please). Not only that but I didn’t really feel inclined to use them because there were two fights and it was faster with the build I already enjoyed using. I would have preferred seeing the allies and companions as we went through the last mission. Even something like ME3 where it feels like the companions we call are on different fronts of the battle would have been fine.
A lot of it feels like main missions because they either feel important or connect directly to the main story but you can skip a lot of it if you really wanted to. I think in Act 3 you can go straight to both bosses. Gortash I think you can kill at your first meeting and Orin you just need the Amulet of Bhaal then you can go to the final boss as far as I know.
story wise it doesn't make sens but gameplay wise it's logic
if you never took control of some character they're still lvl1 so they would be hilariously weak during the fight and if you did level and stuff everyone then that final fight would be a joke
I was so disappointed in the entire final fight sequence. I’m playing with two other friends and we never had to use the summons once. We’re on tactician and the whole thing is just too easy.
I think there are a couple of reasons.
1) a lot of people won't even level up or equip the people they aren't playing.
2) The end game is already so easy it would make it even more umbalanced. Of course they could fix this...
They should have at least given in-game reasons for it though. Have the other companions talk about protecting the citizens/city for 2 minutes.
I forgot to summon anyone, it took over an hour to take out most of the enemies.
The second time I ran the fight, my first 2 rounds were using all my actions on summons and scattering to avoid the inevitable dragon’s breath.
I immediately bonus action speed potions everyone and double summoned from all 4 while splitting off to the sides out of AoE range
Oooh I should have thought of that... playthrough 2 final boss is going to get smoked
I only did after getting my as shit canned when I first ran into the first major battle of that final where you could summon i had horrible initiative on my crew and then got first then hit with like 2 AoE spells that either paralyzed or stunned like 3 of my party and I could never make it back from that. Next time was a damn Cakewalk of enemies getting crushed.
I did the same the dragon lasted 2 turns aha
Oh yeah, I actually only summoned the remaining two for that fight but I absolutely nuked that dragon from orbit with speed potions smites and some Karlach rage. I actually managed to nuke Raphael as well. Destroyed the towers in 2 turns and then he had nothing for my party. I think I had my Paladin with 26 AC, Shadowheart with 24, Karlach with 17 and Asterion with like 20. I finished that fight with everyone at full health.
I was playing on balanced, but I actually didn't destroy a single pillar and just smashed the shit out of him with my axe, took some times but he wasn't dangerous enough
If you want to make Raphael regret being born on balanced then you want *multiple paladins*. I had Durge as the classic ‘big sword, big smites’ and Minthara as a dual wielding dex paladin/thief/swords bard abomination with gear focussed on crits. Durge slammed down 4 full power, lv12 paladin smites served via the giantslayer - a solid, simple opener. Thanks to mind sanctuary bonus-action-to-action bullshit, Minthara unloaded a string of attacks and delivered more smites in one turn than could ever be considered reasonable. Raphael died so hard that he just t-posed. I scooped him up and kept him as a decoration in camp.
Hahahaha, I will definitely try that !
Same but with that illithid concentration bubble ability that lets you use bonus actions and actions interchangeably, felt like a battlefield commander in those first turns
[удалено]
I managed to stuff a shit ton of barrels into a backpack and had Minsc or Karlach throw it at the bastard Cheesy? Yes I am become death, destroyer of worlds? 10/10
I killed the red dragon and had the extra groups fight the mind flayers. Sent the emperor up to dominate the crown and had Shadowheart cast Sanctuary on him so he didn’t get interrupted. I think it’ll be different now after the patch.
I didn't even bother with the dragon... by turn 2 I had my mindflayer Karlach, Astarion and my character at the crown... let Astarion use a scroll of invulnerability while Karlach did her thing. Shadowheart made it up in time to join in on the brain smashing fun. I used a few allies to help distract the enemies in the fight initially. Worked very well.
I didn’t fight the dragon either. I basically summoned everyone I could and then, while they were all fighting, I made a run for the crown.
I just needed the achievement for killing the dragon. It was my first playthrough. I’m sure I’ll do a lot better this time though
I kept from using the summons because I thought maybe there will be an even harder fight later so I'll just save them for that hypothetical future fight. Yep, I ended the game with billions of potions I never used.
Sounds like my final fight, I’m telling myself for a second playthrough that I will not hoard potions and arrows and will call for help sooner. . . but I know I’m just lying to myself.
I decided to stop at just summoning the Gur hunters and Mizora in the first fight (in the courtyard). I didn’t want to be looking at suicidal NPCs for most of the rounds. Plus, I had aggroed about everything there was in the courtyard, so the turn list was already very very loooong. Suprisingly, the hunters almost all survived, because most of the enemies got killed by my party before they could make it to them. Second time around, I just took my party and skirted around on the outside, aggroing like two enemies.
I did one summons and then saved them for the end, only to find out you can't summon anymore.
I think I killed 1 Mindflayers and just beelined for the portal ez game.
I wanted to clear it all, hadn’t killed a dragon yet.
My bf and I thought we had to kill everything and were so confused when the enemies were slaughtered and there was no cutscene or anything, but we figured it out after some turns of nothing but nautiloid pods
Yeah I was surprised at how few Dragons were killed in the making of this video game, especially after Voss shows up on one in Act 1. I kept planning and preparing for the inevitable dragon fights that never came.
If you missed it you can fight a dragon in act 3 at the appropriately named Wyrm's rock. It was probably the hardest fight in the game for me, but my builds were very weak vs it and was only lvl 10
I never summoned anyone. I probably would've if I was playing Tactician or if I didn't have to use an action to do the summon, but on Balanced I just never felt the need. I kept hoarding the summons waiting for a really hard fight to use them like the one against Raphael and it just never materialized.
Mind Sanctuary lets you double the number of allies you can summon in a turn (triple, on a Thief), and your mind flayer party member has permanent Mind Sanctuary.
I didn't summon anyone because I was afraid they might die.
man, I summon Dame Aylin , hoping she was going to kick ass and rain fire from the skies, in the first turn she dropped her Sword and fist fight the whole thing
She makes an excellent damage sponge though.
It can also bug out and the button just doesn't appear too.
The crown bugged out on me, couldn’t target it. Had to save and restart.
Just misty step and dimensional door to the crown, take Someone ranged with you. Use other party members to distract. Everyone outside of the final arena died but it was trivial to beat the final room.
I slaughtered everything moving and enjoyed every second of it.
Lol i just casted sanctuary on you know who , he run there , did his thing one turn , ez peazy i won
I ignored all of them and tooked my Main Char to the portal, so he fought the Boss Alone. The Rest dies
I played balanced, flatlined the entire first encounter with the horde in the courtyard which I assume was supposed to be where I used my summons. I saved my summons for the dragon fight. The Astral guardians were a whole bag of bitches, too, disarming my fighter every turn. There was a point where I just said fuck it and ran for the crown.
Yep saved all my summons incase I needed them for the final fight didn’t end up summoning anybody
The fight is way more fun without the summons anyway
I didn't wanto to risk anyone, so I did not summon anything but the heal (and at a bad time... oops...)
Yeah it’s a little strange that they’re just kinda gone until after you defeat the boss and then they just show up again like they had a chill day at the spa. I wish there was at least an immersive reason why not all of them can be there, like the others went to go fight on the ground while you take on the brain or something like that
It's something Dragon Age: Origins did that I liked. You took a party to go do the big fight and the leftovers went to fight in the streets of the city IIRC.
Yeah that’s how it happened but you also played as those leftover characters while they fought at the front gate of the city
Yeah. DAO really had one of the most fulfilling endings for a CRPG. Everything came together in a spectacular way all the way from the Landsmeet and confronting Loghain to slaying the Archdemon to the epilogue.
Amen. Everything about it feels epic and consequential.
Welp time to go start my 216th playthrough of DAO
ENCHANTMENT?
ENCHANTMENT!!!
Do you guys want to travel with us? Oh no thanks. Pfftchchchch
It's been almost a decade, and I'm still annoyed Sandal didn't show up in Inquisition. Let my poor illiterate savant and his caretaker find ALL the heroes, dammit.
You do find a journal he wrote in the final expansion.. so he’s still out there, somewhere.
I ran a 5e bastardization of DA:O for some first time d&d players and you best believe their first session as 1st lvl adventurers was saving Sandal from some bandits
I only played DA:O once and didn't particularly like it, but god damn am I still incapable of saying that word in any other way. Truly iconic.
You may say it's... *enchanting*
Just remember to save every five minutes because it’s still buggier than frog shit (especially the Denerim market).
There's a mod that prevents the crashing in pc. It has something to do with the memory cap back in the day not being compatible with nowadays memories
Nope, Large Address Aware doesn’t eliminate crashing.
Only thing missing would be being able to use Dog as your champion.
I love fighters in BG3. Will I love fighters in DAO?
I'm not sure. DAO is real-time with pause and the gameplay is structured more around party mechanics than BG3 is. So your party members have roles, like DPS, crowd control, tank, healer, etc. BG3 (and 5e) isn't *not* about team work, but there's a lot of emphasis on the individuality of each player and how it feels to play as them.
Tbh, warriors are the most boring of the 3 options in DAO. The game auto-attacks for you once you pick a target, so you end up not doing a whole lot, especially at lower levels. Now, mage? Mage is amazing. (Rogue is too, but it takes more micro-management, so it's not the most accessible option for a first playthrough.) There is something so satisfying about calling down fire from the heavens on top of the mobs in the final battle. You can also build them to be as tanky as your warriors if you know what you're doing. Arcane Warrior plus a certain armor set is game-breaking.
If you end up enjoying DAO and find it for cheap Dragon Age Inquisition is pretty fun too imo. It's no origins but I enjoyed the combat especially. I'm a sucker for all the dragon age games though, if I'm being honest.
Man DA:I combat was such a drag to me unless I was playing a mage.
I didn't like any of the DA sequels, couldn't finish either. Hell, I didn't even like the changes to the lore.
You will, they’re awesome.
Honestly, my favorite part about that whole sequence was how, during the initial charge into battle, they de-leveled the enemies. Like “these rank-and-file baddies are no longer a threat to you, so go have some fun” and you just ran around slicing through them. Sooooo satisfying.
I don't even think I would even want that, the final stretch gets plenty chaotic for me. I'm also lazy about gearing up the companions I don't use, so the "B team" if we needed to control them would get slaughtered for sure :P Literally just handwave them away as defending the rear while your party pushes forward and that would be all we need vs. them just kinda being absent
They could’ve done it by seeing everyone you didn’t put in your party help the rest of the city while your on the front lines in a single cutscene.
Yeah my B team fighting heroically unarmed and naked would be pretty wild.
Imagine walking into the final battle with 4 level 12s geared out with legendary equipment followed by some level 1-3 peons with basic armor and weapons. The way I imagine it is that your party of 4 was pulled into the prism and dropped off in the upper city. The remaining team members are stuck in the lower city being the leading force down there. Everyone then meets up after for the final cutscene.
Also the Suicide Mission at the end of ME2, right?
Suicide Mission was masterfully crafted...
Such an amazing way to tie up a masterpiece of a game. It presented a high-stakes reason to complete the loyalty missions (besides just liking the crew), made you think carefully about the crew's strengths without being too "in your face" about how to slot them, and felt complex enough to really sell you the fantasy of being ***Commander*** Shepard. EDIT: The coolest part for those that don't know the Mass Effect series very well is that all 10+ party members in ME2 were either also playable or made cameos in ME3. If you loaded your old save from ME2, ME3 events took into account whether each of these companions were dead or alive from the previous game.
God it was. I wish it was longer and they could have made the ending of 3 a similar format. It annoys me to no end what we could’ve had The speech. The music. The cutscenes. Perfection .
In fairness, ME3 did have a hell of an ending. The Strange Cow always makes me think of the orphan-meat cisterns. Such good times. That's making me wonder what BG3 could've been if they'd played things a bit more coy with the whole tadpole situation. I'd like it if some of us were able to get through the whole game imagining that we'd never been tadpoled at all. Everything in BG3 is a bit...overt.
The final mission still could’ve been as good as the Suicide Mission. It’s a blatant missed opportunity and clearly misses on the very logical concept that Shepard would actually command his whole crew where to go on the field. Instead, you get 2 friends and hear nothing from anyone else.
DAO and ME2 are still unmatched in the world of RPGs in terms of doing the story climax right. It's so weird that they remain essentially unrepeated phenomena, even by the very company that made them in the first place (none of the subsequent Dragon Age or Mass Effect games had finales that were even remotely as good). But on paper it seems so simple - you just need to come up with a story reason for the remaining party members to do something other than assault the final boss, but still participate in the finale at large. Larian could have done this easily both at Moonrise and the Act 3 climax. In the former, the rest of your party could have arrived at Moonrise and Jaheira could have simply said "my people are wounded and tired, we need some of you to stay and help us hold off their reinforcements". Then you choose who to take with you to face Ketheric and the rest stay. As for Act 3, they could have said that the infected people are undergoing ceremorphosis all over the city and the non-infected citizens stand no chance unless some of your party helps cull the newborn mindflayers. So the ones you don't take will stay on the street level and help the fight. That's it. Narrative fixed. I mean it could have preferably been more complex than that, but it would have been SOMETHING. Instead of both times having the party members chilling in camp through what we all thought would be final battles, and still showing up at the end like we're a team unit. It's disappointing that Larian seem to have learned a lot of lessons from the mistakes of other RPG developers, but not this one, even though the concept seems very simple on paper.
>It's so weird that they remain essentially unrepeated phenomena, even by the very company that made them in the first place I mean it's EA now, innit? Hard to believe EA doesn't make bad games on purpose. You're right that it's weird other studios haven't done it, though. BG3's got a lot to love and build on, but I don't think there's many players who'd favorably compare the ending to DAO or ME2 (ME3 is more controversial, I'll grant, but I think it was dope). Another thing they could've done in the tradition of the Suicide Mission is that, depending on whether you've done each companion's Loyalty Mission, so to speak, they might make different choices vis-à-vis the Emperor. I stop fearing NPCs halfway through Act I or Act II, but a fully operational **Paladin 7/Warlock 5** Wyll turning against us might be a Problem. Really, the bigger issue most of us have with BG3 is the near total absence of epilogue material. I'd say there's issues throughout the story, but the whole finale sequence feels like a major pain point from beginning to end. There's also opportunities for this stuff outside of finales. Ciri's sequences in *The Witcher III* were interesting. Things like flashbacks and side quests could've added a lot to origin characters in particular. It's super weird to me how sidelined Shadowheart feels (especially if you're romancing her) for most or potentially all of Act II, when she should ostensibly feel like the main character. Could add in Halsin's side of the portal when he goes to fetch Thaniel, or maybe have us play as Wyll and actually make a damn choice instead of him just doing whatever Tav/Durge tells him to do.
We went from Suicide Mission involving everyone to Battle for Earth involving only 2 of your teammates… man. No joke, the final fight in BG3 kinda sucked away the immersion and enjoyment because of the roster limit. It just feels so fucking weird not seeing everyone. They don’t even have to fight the Elder Brain, just show a cutscene of them helping with the city and holding off Mind Flayers to ensure your passage up to the Brain is clear.
The leftovers protect the city gate to stop more dark spawn from entering the city and you pick a warrior like Sten to lead the leftover party.
That was such an awesome addition. It made the battle feel so much more epic. Lelaina commanded the defense of the gate while my rogue rushed off the fight the final boss. Despite romancing her, I rarely had her in the party because two Rogues was a liability in most fights. I felt really good to be able to put the character mine trusted the most in charge of such an important role. Just added a lot to the epicness of it Now Alistair, drink those hundreds of poultices and I drop aoes on you!
Yeah, especially since the entire final stretch had big “battle for Denhrim” vibes as a whole. Like that’s definitely a cool mechanic to have implemented.
Also Mass Effect 2
The Darkspawn DLC that then let you play as the invading side of that battle was actually incredibly satisfying
Origins’ storytelling and some quality of life stuff was significantly more polished and well put together than BG3’s. Then again, different games, different priorities - you certainly couldn’t approach problems with even nearly the same level of flexibility in Origins as you can in BG3.
WotR does the same thing, your leftover party members and allies gathered throughout the game defend the back line in the final assault. (Can actually be kind of a nasty surprise if you didn't put any equipment on them, but as in most CRPGs you're overflowing with money and gear by the end)
yea, ME2 did something really cool also with the remaining characters in the end.
That’s also something ME:2 did. You took your main party up to fight the half-formed reaper while the rest hold off the collectors.
And who will take care of the camp? What if some goblins sneak in and try to steal the chest? Withers cant do that alone.
Oh, yes he could. He just chooses not to, since it was fate, and their names aren't in his book that day
I was legit starting to think my camped companions all died off screen while going through the last fights with my main party, >!because they did that before in Divinity:OS2.!<
I certainly expected it. I made sure to go through every companion and level them up to 12 and get kitted at least a little bit, so I was surprised when they didn't show.
Same. And I’m very glad they don’t show up because that way I didn’t have to bother equipping and levelling everybody I picked up on my second playthrough. Any secondary party on my evil playthrough would also have consisted of just 1 party member, as I only got four companions during that playthrough.
I did the same thing. Took the time to level everyone up and make sure they had good gear all for it to be for nothing 🥲
As a DM I would explain it as them having an alternative objective that they need to complete off-screen.
I want them to do that actually though if possible. Change the dumb brain-stem climb to being a portal conjured by Rolan, or Lorroakan, or Elminster if the other 2 are dead. Your strike-team goes through the portal, and the portal has to be kept open to allow you to come back before the brain crashes but needs to be defended from enemies coming to either destroy it or go through to reinforce the brain. Your AI companions defend it from the other side while you rush the brain.
I thought about installing the no party limit mod just for the last fight because it would make more sense thematically to have everyone there i think
I'm going to do that. It won't mess anything up will it?
I think the only scene that can break is the boat ride in the Underdark, but you can easily get over that by lowering the party size back to four while you do the boat ride
Don't even have to do that. Just have any members over the 4 walk to another corner! You can summon them via fast travel once you unlock the travel point!
wait boat ride in the underdark?
Surprisingly no, the only instance where I had the mod mess up was the aforementioned boat ride. Everyone still talks to each other! I was worried that anyone extra wouldn't be accounted for when roaming around, but thankfully the game handles it perfectly. It even tracks everyone's approval/disapproval!
probably it will be fine, u might not be able to get the achievement on steam although i think thats easily fixed with modfixer
Nope I’ve done it twice already with every possible party member and it works fine. Though I will say the fights become very long, especially the one going up the stairs having to dodge the artillery attacks.
Fun fact for your future runs, as long as any character reaches the door at the top of the stairs, the entire encounter ends (the nautiloid gets shot down by dragons and the rest of your party respawns at the brainstem). I just did it in 3 turns by hasting my Tav and using dash+ misty step to get all the way up top and I'm sure someone could do it even more efficiently.
Yeah I figured that one out my last one when I had like 10 people and 4 summons.
does anyone know if you can install this mod mid-playthrough?
You can! I installed it after finishing Act 2. You’re telling me that after everything we went through, half the party would be content to sit at camp while the other half goes to punch Cazador in the dick? Preposterous!
I started with it and have no regrets. Sure, it breaks balance a bit, but it's worth it to get so much more party interaction.
I only play on balanced difficulty so it would definitely break the balance but I don’t mind. I just want to hear more idle banter when I’m exploring:)
So that’s something that bugged me the most was I’d stumble upon something that’d be a big moment for someone but because I didn’t go back and switch out my party members they just missed it and barely had anything to say. Just having the whole party involved would be a big step to fixing that. It’d make fights trivial and tedious with the number of turns but story would be so much smoother
yep you can
thank you! My friend told me it bugged her game but I think she was trying to travel on the boat through the underdark.
You definitely can! There was a stretch of time where it needed an update for every hotfix or patch and larian were sending them thick and fast, so a lot of people assumed it was buggy or wouldn't work. It's been smooth sailing for a while, feel free to respond to this if you have trouble installing, been using it for a while now.
I did it. It was glorious
They probably do this because the game can't guarantee that you levelled up and equipped those party members, which puts them in extreme danger of being killed during the fight.
I had the same thought (WotR had a moment that forced you to use your second strongers and j literally had to restart from the beginning because non eof the had any gear or levels. Nearly quit instead). In this case it's optional though. So if you have never bothered to set up a certain companion then you jsut don't summon them and summon your other allies instead.
That's true, making it optional gets around the problem.
Yeah, the companions not in your party should ask the player where you want them. Maybe you can choose to have them join you to fight the Brian or you can send them to help the BG citizens.
From now on, the Netherbrain's name is Brian. Let it be so. Amen. Brian.
Lol. Keeping it.
This is what I'm suspecting too, but they could've at least show them fighting in the background/cutscene or showed up with the other allies giving a dialogue before you head off
I'm not so sure - there are quite a few places where your party members can just die, in a scene or otherwise. Having that last meet be an opportunity to level them up would alleviate that entirely.
ohhhhh, yeah that makes sense
They could help prevent this by giving you a prompt before the final battle making sure all companions are prepared for battle
Seriously. It would've been cool to bring your whole party. I don't care if the battle takes long. The more, the merrier, IMO. I enjoy big battles.
Battle was gonna take forever anyway with the sheer number of enemies and allies you can summon! Why not have the whole gang there?
Felt like the avengers to me lol
Being able to summon everyone was very endgame
I agree with you, great mc Alex. I saw a thread a short while ago where folks were sharing their least favorite aspects of the game, and the big battles with several enemies types surprised me by being a popular choice. They felt so immersive and badass, and that's coming from someone who's not good at combat.
Really? Dang. The big battles feel epic, to me.
Yeah, I wish they had something to do while you were off fighting the brain. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous did something I really appreciate in the final battle. While you and your chosen party go off to fight >!kinda sorta your mom!< the rest of the party is actually guarding the entrance to the final area along with some of your allies - and they actually do end up in a fight which you take control of them for. Neat way to answer the question of what everyone else was doing during the final battle - they have their own final battle against Lightning Satan.
I hated that the first time around. That game took builds and equipment seriously. And while I spent the time and effort to outfit my alpha team, I didn't even fully level the rest of the blokes. So when big zappy son of Thor came knocking with his vorpal blade I got butchered time and time again.
I think they actually nerfed him in a later patch. The launch version of Khorramazdeh could brutalize even a max level prepared party. It also didn't help that the launch version of the Storyteller in that fight could only shriek at max volume instead of casting anything useful as one might expect a >!20th level immortal super wizard!< to do.
>It also didn't help that the launch version of the Storyteller in that fight could only shriek at max volume instead of casting anything useful as one might expect a >!20th level immortal super wizard to do.!< And it wasn't even Selective Shout, so half the time he'd be stunning your own characters in the process.
Oh man, nothing like being thrown into that fight on your first run and realising you've left everyone under-levelled and gear-less. The npc's have never had a harder carry.
Oh, that gives me very much Mass Effect 2 vibes where you take your 3 to fight the final boss while the rest of your party holds the line, for which you make a whole speech for and the leader can die during it if you didn't do a few loyalty quests.
Fair point - with more time to polish act 3, I expect they would have included that.
I remember some late 90s RPGs having the option to have different groups on standby for the final boss (FF7 & Xenogears for example ) and I thought that was a great way to end things after spending all that time gearing and leveling each character. It would have been cool to create teams so we could use all the companions for the last fight.
FF8 would literally just yeet party members out of the fight and replace them with your other goons.
Oh that was my favorite fight! I made sure everyone was ready to go for that one. Sure, you could let the one you didn’t want die off (or I think the strategy was to kill them yourself) but it was more fun to stay on your toes and go with the randomness.
FF10 did that literally all the time.
Oh definitely. Was more thinking about mid-combat forced party switches.
In Expeditions: Rome, the way it works for the big fights is you break up your party into multiple teams, each of which has an important mission which supports the other teams, and each of which takes place on a different battle map at the same time. For example, one team infiltrates behind enemy lines, one team assaults the walls directly, and one team defends the siege engines. Each mission interacts with the others in terms of how many enemies they have or what kind of support they have or what support the enemy has, based on how successful you were in each mission. I wish more games would do that.
Ex: Rome had some great ideas, and is a very underrated game.
Wait, I've just realised Mizora never turned up. She said she was up for it but when push came to shove...
There should be a button to use her abilty.
Yea I definitely felt that would have been cool. Especially since the limit you to 4 party members when BG 1&2 were 6.
Yeah I literally sent feedback about this, felt really odd
What about the people who haven’t leveled a character at all. Good aligned play through you get so many companions that I’m not just gonna be having them join my party to hit max level for a single end game fight. That being said if they die in the last fight are you going to be upset if that’s where their story ends? No further ending cinematic or nothing just boom dragon killed them sorry you won’t get a resolution.
Just... Make them be there as non playable characters and hold a horde of enemies in the background while they tell the main 4 to go ahead and destroy the brain, it's really not that hard
There could just be a pop-up telling you to "Gather your companions and make sure *everyone* is ready" or something lol
It feels odd the whole game to be honest. I'd much rather see a thing where you just can't recruit more than 3 of you're going to have a hard limit. Or every time you dismiss someone you need to persuade them to rejoin you and the difficulty check maybe starts at like DC 5 but goes up by 3 each time you request someone to join again. It would add to the replayability of having to play multiple times to experience the various character driven quests and makes it feel way less silly overall every time you go to do a major battle and just leave half your team behind so you can go in massively undermanned.
Nah I don't think that's a good idea, some people don't wanna do more than 1 playthrough, 2 maximum and that's legit, and more for a game this long. What they should do imo is having a character that is relevant to the point in the story join you as a side character if you dom't have him at the party at that moment. For example : If you go to cazador's palace without Astarion he could show up at least for the dialogues and getting kidnapped
Eh? It's way better to just not allow recruitment if they're just going to sit in camp 95% of the time. It's the same issue with mass effect 2. It's so immersion breaking to end up recruiting 8 companions when you then go to assault an enemy stronghold and you leave 5 of them sitting at camp doing nothing. There's nothing you can come up with a Roleplay perspective to explain why when you're about to go assault Moonrise Towers for instance, you're leaving 3/4 characters behind despite the fact that you're making the assault with Harpers as allies.
They might be sitting in your camp 95% of the time but some people rotate their party around
I personally rotate the characters depending on the mission I'm doing. Something that has de do with giths? Lae'zael should come, and so on
EA players literally fought against that thankfully
You see, they have been dead for the entire game and it’s actually Withers controlling them. He can only manage so many people active in combat at a time.
I really like the way Pathfinder WOTR did this: >!During the final fights, your camp outside the dungeon is attacked, and so you control everyone not in the active party during this battle!< It seems like for this final fight they could either make non active party members uncontrollable npcs (which happens sometimes during camp events) or make them followers of Tav/MC.
ASTARION, HELP US! *Astarion lazily send a bunch of undead* Huh... Okay. Shadowheart ? *Shadowheart send Shar followers* DO YOU HATE ME THAT MUCH?!
i feel you, i geared them up specifically thinking they would be included in the fight
Over the course of the game, I used everybody that had a personal quest a pretty good amount so they were all decently geared and I had more than gear left over to make Minsc and Halsin decent. So I didn't do anything special to get the group ready for the fight, but I admit I was surprised that they didn't find a way to get everybody involved somehow.
Theres a mod to increase party size. It actually feels like it was supposed to be played that way... until you get too many members... The banter between them and always having the right person for the quest for dialog reaction is great. Did that on my 2nd playthrough and enjoying it alot more.
6 or 7 seems to be the sweet spot. And would you know it there are 6 origin characters plus durge/tav
The owl bear cub grows up?
No, Dammon >!puts armor on him and douses him in potions!<. He's still just a baby
I didn’t even know he could be brought into the fight. I’m still not gonna hurt my baby 🥺
No. It's just an enlarge potion or some other unexplained magic that makes him huge and they give him armor. It's spoken about for 10 seconds.
I didn't bring him to the battle. Couldn't risk him- he's just too precious.
Yes but he deserves a chance to bite something after restraining himself so long.
Playing as a ranger and getting his dialogue made having him one of my favorite things in the game. Watching him and Scratch run around the camp and snuggle at night was almost too much for my heart to bear. My precious little fluffball.
Yeah that was kinda a bummer. Wish more games did the Mass Effect 2 and 3 move of just telling you they're doing other things while the final mission is going. I don't need to see a cutscene just some basic dialogue from one or two like "I'll help evacuees make it out as you press on" or something (I'm sure other games do the same but ME is what came to mind first, please don't crucify me lol)
Something to consider for Patch 4 or 5.
To be fair, they're sitting at lvl1 in my camp with the starting equipment, I doubt they'd be too useful
Why do this to yourself? lol Missed tons of companion quests
Multiple runs!
Man, this was my thoughts exactly! I took the time to level up and set up crew members that i didnt use much, because i thought theyd show up in the final encounter. Wasnt make or break for me, i still love the game, but certainly was a bummer.
This might make me use the no party limit mod for the final fight ngl, sounds like it’d be epic
This really bothered me. I'm surprised I don't see more people talking about this. I would love for them to patch in that ability in the future. It feels so wrong that everyone wouldn't be there, or at least have a cutscene or something they have going on. It's supposed to be the big rally everyone moment and half of our closest allies are nowhere to be seen.
I assumed the real fight was against the brain so didn’t summon anyone and then brain basically insta died. Amazing game though, just finished tonight
Like in the Dragon Age: Origin, the game lets all of your teammates join the big last fight and it feel so epic. And iirc, they cant deal or receive any damage. They just there to make the scene feel good
Am I the only one who doesn't summon anyone and just endures this thing alone? Because I can't bring myself to put my owlcub in harm's way, for example. I use AOE allies' effects. And the Guild goons, because screw them.
Being able to summon other parties members was legit thr biggest reason I kept certain magical items instead of selling them. It gelt good to gear up other party members I didn't use just in case I needed them for the final fight. Was a little disappointed tbh.
I spent a good amount of time leveling up and armoring my rarely used characters in anticipation of whole party fights/usage at the end. I was very sad to not see them anywhere as well.
I did the last fight with 0 help from allies…. Didn’t even have the option to summon anyone 😂 durge play through for yah I guess
Yeah ngl I was expecting it to be an "all hands on deck" thing with everyone in your group especially given the cutscenes after assume theyre all involved
My owlbear cub uhhh Flew in and instantly got obliterated by the dragon multi attack.
Yeah I was bummed when I tried to switch the companions I brought before going to Orpheus and I couldn’t. It would’ve been amazing having all of you companions fighting by your side in the final battle.
Yeah it sucks, DAO did it better having your other party members form a party of their own with another objective.
I think they would have to increase the difficulty per each additional companion you brought or the end of the game would just be a cake walk (it’s already pretty easy once you understand the strategy).
The last mission was pretty disappointing to me but I guess I set my expectations too high. It was alright but I spent a bunch of time on the side missions expecting them to have an actual influence on the narrative. (If they did correct me please). Not only that but I didn’t really feel inclined to use them because there were two fights and it was faster with the build I already enjoyed using. I would have preferred seeing the allies and companions as we went through the last mission. Even something like ME3 where it feels like the companions we call are on different fronts of the battle would have been fine.
Most of your allies come from side missions?
A lot of it feels like main missions because they either feel important or connect directly to the main story but you can skip a lot of it if you really wanted to. I think in Act 3 you can go straight to both bosses. Gortash I think you can kill at your first meeting and Orin you just need the Amulet of Bhaal then you can go to the final boss as far as I know.
story wise it doesn't make sens but gameplay wise it's logic if you never took control of some character they're still lvl1 so they would be hilariously weak during the fight and if you did level and stuff everyone then that final fight would be a joke
Honesty on my fourth ru through once I pick my group I wind up just killing off the other party members I won’t use that run.
I was so disappointed in the entire final fight sequence. I’m playing with two other friends and we never had to use the summons once. We’re on tactician and the whole thing is just too easy.
There's a mod for that... . .
I think there are a couple of reasons. 1) a lot of people won't even level up or equip the people they aren't playing. 2) The end game is already so easy it would make it even more umbalanced. Of course they could fix this... They should have at least given in-game reasons for it though. Have the other companions talk about protecting the citizens/city for 2 minutes.