The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

ffxii! my favorite! have you gotten to the gambit system yet?

 

I have! I'm familiar with something very similar from the Dragon Age games. I had no idea this game had it first, and I'm weirdly pleased that it did! I'm also kind of lolwtf at people in the reviews I read before I bought it calling it 'mmoish' -- but among big fans of Dragon Age: Origins the same system is considered something properly tactical requiring real thinking like a proper RPG, unlike these newfangled (supposedly) mmoish games like DAI...

NERDS.

I haven't gotten to dig into it much because I just got to being left to rot in the depths of Nalbina, but I'm looking forward to playing around with it. So far it feels more fluid and reactive than DAO's AI system.

I'm stressing over the license system - it's interesting, and I get how it works, but oh god how do I choose what if I do it wrong. D: I made Vaan a Shikari because it seemed like a natural choice, but I don't know if it was actually a good one. First playthroughs are always kind of a disaster for me though, so I shouldn't worry too much, right? :D;

 

NOT LOOKING SO GOOD, EH, BASCH? MAYBE YOU SHOULDN'T KILL TEENAGED BOYS. >:[

Of course by jRPG rules he's apparently a perfectly adequate team member even though he's been beaten and starved for two years. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (lol god he has the most HP out of EVERYONE...)

 

A... twin brother?? I guess that was what's-his-face at the very start, but they don't... look that much the same... did he have a wig ready or something????

:|

 

I absolutely love the gambit system and will fight anyone over how awesome it is bc HOLY CRAP I CAN MICROMANAGE W/O PAUSING THE ACTION EVERY TWO SECONDS TO ISSUE COMMANDS

Basch is. so sad. and ridiculous. absolutely fucking ridiculous. I mean, things get more ridiculous bc this is final fantasy's answer to star wars but. yes.

also I love how extra all of the fashion choices throughout the game are. like, desert country apparently means abs out it's tanning time?? shit lets get cancer. jungle village means armored lingerie?? fuck it why not (tho I will accept the high heels for viera as a legit choice if they're digitigrade)

and also the pants are tailored to give the men wider/more feminine hips which is pretty awesome

 

The plot is... pretty disjointed. It feels like a fair few bits of it never got out of the outline stage, so there's stuff that's fleshed out, you move on to a transitional sequence (like coming back to Rabanastre after having escaped the prison), you get a few scant details as where to go next BUT WAIT they're actually the entire plot point!

At least so far everything has followed logically, so even when the story gets a bit skeletal at least all the bones match up.

 

ksdjflksjfljlfj Balthier

"Don't worry, nobody knows men like Fran does."
Fran: *gives him a look that says clear as day that she's going to put fire ants in his bed*

 

Larsa is a tiny precious child, but no matter how mature and well spoken he is I do not at all have any of the same faith in Vayne that he does. Your brother is kinda creepy, kid.

 

ANYWAY despite my grumpy tone I am genuinely enjoying the heck out of this game. I mean I must be, I played it the entire evening XD Looking forward to having enough gambit slots and gambits to really make the team a well-oiled machine, or at least a really efficient murderball.

 

Larsa is great

and yes, that's a good point to get to in the game, bc suddenly you just have to point and then MAYHEM

 

Seeing Massless again was a bust - By the time J and I got to Amos Rex the line was already down the block and around the corner, only half an hour after it opened, and it’s so windy the windchill is brutal to walk in, much less stand around in for god knows how long.

Trying again later isn’t an option - The weather isn’t going to get any better this week and the exhibition’s last day is the 6th.

So much for doing something special. January never fails to disappoint!

 

We made the best of it, at least - we went and saw the new Helsinki city library, which is in this huge, beautifully weird building, we checked out the game & comics shop, and then went out to lunch. It was nice to go out and do something together for once - for quite a while we've mostly stayed home, both due to money and the emotional weight of a dying parent.

January weather can go right back to the hell it came from, though. The wind was so bad it nearly knocked a skinny teenager over in front of me, and a couple of times I had trouble staying upright.

 

One of my life's little joys: coffee made from a fresh bag of the stuff. Mmm.

I needed a fresh bag of coffee so I got a little bag of dark roast Italian coffee, and for once the flowery marketing description was accurate - it described the coffee as 'intense and velvety' and that's exactly what I got.

 

So it turns out it's a good thing J and I didn't try to tough it out in line to get into Massless - he just got a message from a friend who waited in line for an hour and twenty minutes and still didn't get in. She had to give up because her feet were numb from the cold.

They really need to come up with a better system for exhibitions where they have to limit the number of visitors at one time, making people wait outside in the winter for so long is dangerous.

 

I looked up a guide for ffxii briefly last night to find out if I could actually explore all of the Lhusa mines already or not. First thing I saw was a recommendation (for the same version of the game I have, mind you, so same difficulty) that I grind up to level 14 before going.

I went in at lv 9 and dinged lv 10 while in there and didn't really have any trouble. I'm not that good at games, but... seriously?? I guess if I wanted to be able to faceroll the place I would have needed to be 14...

 

It's kind of blink and you'll miss it, but when the Marquis (fake?) betrays us and Basch is like "Ok well time to (pretend to?) try to kill you" I love Balthier's "Oh COME ON" gesture as the guards run in. He was already looking very done with everything but in that one gesture I could see that now he is absolutely and completely 1000% DONE with this pack of fools. No wonder he always sounds so tired. XD

edit: man idk if it is my general inability to concentrate or what but the whole scene with the Marquis was REALLY confusing until Basch is all like "Oh yeah we're in league with him" once Ashe is rescued.

 

now that I've gotten a better look at it, major ಠ_ಠ at Ashe's outfit. If those were shorts it'd be scandalous, but it's much, much worse being a skirt.

 

I ended up grinding up to 14 anyway (after the Leviathan) because... I bought too many gambits and ran completely out of money buying stuff from the moogle on the ship :''')

 

Penelo: I'm tougher than I look!
Penelo: *has the highest HP in the party because I gave her monk and took as many HP plus licenses as I could get my hands on*

Fuck the meta, my ladies are going to be STRONK.

 

I really need to stress to the cafeteria people at the rehabilitation center that something simply being gluten free doesn't make it safe for me, it must be completely wheat, oat, and soy free as well. Today's lunch only had the options of tuna pasta and fancied up oatmeal porridge, so I was up shit creek without a paddle. If I miss meals I get extremely lightheaded and vaguely disassociative*, so I had the porridge since I'm slightly less allergic to oats... but still allergic! My lips and mouth hurt the rest of the day and well into the evening, even though I rinsed my mouth and brushed my teeth after, and I've still got the hayfever-y congestion.

If they can't really accommodate totally wheat/oat/soy free, okay, but I need to know that. As it was I didn't even know what was going to be served because they haven't posted a weekly menu for a couple of weeks, so I couldn't really plan ahead.

(It's a good thing I don't cry easily anymore, because being confronted with being hungry and finding out there was nothing there I could eat safely gave me such a kick of helpless despair that if I'd been pre-T I would have started sobbing. Food insecurity issues are forever, I guess. :/)

* I should probably see a doctor about this, huh.