To be fair, soccer is a terrible RPG.

Smashing chests in BG3 has no negative effects.

In BG3 it is a balance mechanic. Heavy objects tend to be completely OP and are used to cheese combat. encumberance limits this and even allows building your character specifically for this playstyle.

In Bethesda games encumberance is in part there to protect players from themselves. If every object can be picked up (and that is a design principle in those games) and every object has a Value, then the optimal strategy is always to grab every single object you can find and then sell everything at once. If that does not sound like fun to you that is because it is not, but still i know multiple people who play those games this way even with encumberance in place. Players will always find a way to ruin their own fun, the only hing you can do is to put systems in place that disincentivise these behaviors.

In BG3 encumberance is absolutely needed to balance the game. Heavy Objects are still the best way to cheese combat and that is with you being limited in how many you can carry. Building a Character in a way to work around this is absolutely possible and a valid choice for a character build. It is definitely not a meaningless aspect of your character.

“Hahaha, I rolled higher initiative so now you don’t get to play for the next three rounds while I can do whatever I want.”

I had to reload multiple fights because the enemies just killed 3-4 of my partymembers before I had my first turn. Random Initiative is really not something I like in Games.

If the opt for adding a GM mode and level editor they may just have the ultimate digital tabletop for D&D. Not only would it instantly be better than every other implementation I tried, the basegame additionally also managed to improve upon the D&D ruleset by adding Weapon skills for martial classes. They would not even need to add more content. There are already mods that add the missing spells, feats and subclasses.

I think I know exactly which dialogue bug you are referring to. Happened to me as well, although after I turned down the deal. The second part might just be Gale being Gale

I know the feeling. It is the first time I have spent more than 30€ on a game and not regretted it.

The first game in ages where it actually feels like the company/ developers actually put in effort and released a complete product

Ironically the only people who say this about BG3 have not reached the third act yet. Still my favourite game in years, but the later stages of the game really could have done with more playtesting. there are bugged quests, disappearing characters, people ignoring story events in dialogue, missing cutscenes and multiple outcomes for storylines happening at the same time.

If you are here for branching stories with a lot of player choice you basically have to start with Origins. The save transfers up to the third game and it has a lot of callbacks that could have played out differently if you picked different things in the first two games. It’s basically the only redeeming quality of DA:Inquisition for me.

Do you think it is worth starting the series for someone who did not really enjoy the Games due to the writing and thought the first season of the show was a mess?