I spent several hours this morning just sort of messing around:

• figuring out the best way to push a Goblin off a cliff without getting murdered by hundreds of his friends (somehow, it involved an etheral kitten. I was surprised too.)
• figuring out the best way to avoid traps without spending a disarm kit (it looked a lot like hopscotch; I hope Astarion had fun.)
• trying to figure out a way to kill some sleeping ogres without then getting murdered by those same hundreds of friends (I never cracked this one; the ogres remain blissfully asleep an unharmed).

Didn't make much progress with the plot, but a good time was had by all. Especially Astarion, that dexterous jumpy boy.

I spent several hours this morning completely failing to make any real headway with the plot. I did manage to clear out a low level room and make something of a safe space for myself; but then I was tasked with taking out four bosses and I just have no idea where to even start.

Everything I've tried has ended up with a a very large encounter that I just have no chance against.

I can't even casually set things up for success because cut scenes keep triggering which eventually leads to a messy death.

The game is full of opportunity and wonder, but it pulls no punches.

As noted, I am taking the slow path through BG3. I am still in the starting area and only really learning the ropes.

[MILD SPOILERS BELOW]

Today, I discovered a cave just chock full of spiders. You don't necessarily realize the full number of spiders until you make one mad. Then you find out about all of the other spiders that are just kind of hanging around.

Also, they're magic spiders and are able to ignore things like "distance". Pretty fierce creatures, honestly.

By save scumming like it's going out of style, I tried multiple strategies to deal with the spiders. The best strategy I I found involved using a Flaming Sphere to destroy a whole bunch of spider eggs...only to discover that there were even more spider eggs that the spiders had decided not to bother waking up in any of my previous encounters.

I eventually gave up and decided that this battle was just beyond me. It was a bummer because the spiders were guarding an item I needed for a quest.

So I left down a new path and found that I could have Astarion creep around a corner while the spider was distracted, cast Fog Cloud on top of the thing I needed so the spider watching it couldn't see anything, and fumble around until he picked up the item.

Having mostly played games where the only path forward is "Kill the things. Get the loot.", it was amazing. Combining all the different ways I was able to try to defeat the spiders in combat and culminating in the non-combat sneaky-sneaky strategy for success was really special.

I know I am late to the party, but I have finally had a transcendent Baldur's Gate 3 moment of my very own. And I know that this is the sort of thing other people have been talking about for weeks and there's no real surprise here. But this one was my own and it felt wonderful.

This is such an incredible game.

Saturday is for gaming. Which is why it was so disappointing that this game kept crashing on my gaming PC every few minutes.

I don't really blame the game. There's long been some sort of instability with my system. But it's too sporadic for me to diagnose.

As far as I know, I bought high-end components so I would expect it to work as well as could be expected; but it just isn't so.

I'd say "I'll be more careful next time" but I honestly don't know that I can be more careful. I was already really careful the last time!

I had originally planned to build a new computer this year but decided to get a Razer laptop instead. And so I've moved my Baldur's Gate playing to that laptop. It was rock solid today, so that's something. I eventually stopped noticing the smaller screen*.

Anyway, sorting out how to actually make it run took longer than expected today so I really only got to spend around two and a half hours with it today. That's...er...not a good pace. I am still very much in the intro area (I now have an angry druid and some goblins to deal with).

That said, it's still a fantastic game. I wonder how far I'll actually be able to get into it.

I have very little experience with the style of games that I tend to think of as "crunchy CRPGs". I played a few hours of Neverwinter Nights back in college and then slightly more hours of Pillars of Eternity more recently. I also enjoyed the opening bits of Pathfinder: Kingmaker up until they stuck a timer on the screen.

So definitely under 15 hours total†.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to play BG3 but I couldn't escape hearing about it so I decided to jump in.

I'm not very far into the game yet; but even so, it is obviously quite good and really special.

It is, however, also extremely tiring. There's so much to keep track of and so many options to choose from that it requires quite a bit of mental effort to really do anything at all. Couple that with the way that every single button click can lead to horrific consequences (or just a straight up TPK) (including combat, traps, dialog options, or just standing in the wrong place at the wrong time) and every click is stressful.

So every moment of playing this game is simultaneously using up mental energy and replacing it with stress. Somehow, this is actually still fun.

But it's also a sometimes-food. I think I might have 1-2 hours a week available in my psychic inventory for this game. Which essentially means that I will never ever finish it.

I'm hoping to make it past Act 1, I guess.

† I am not counting anything that Bioware did starting with Knights of the Old Republic; with KOTOR, they started filing the mechanical game systems down to be far more straightforward as the juiced the cinematic narrative side of their games. It was a tradeoff that worked really well for me, but clearly leads to different kinds of games.