does the game involve a whole lot of reading?

[erratic_gamer]

........

[𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖉𝖞™]

I'm not here to read,I'm here to lead..

[Ellie]

Every piece of dialogue is voice-acted, but there's a decent bit of reading your own dialogue options, I suppose.

[Overread]

Yes.

Even though the dialogue is narrated, there's a lot of lore books, comments, ability descriptions and so forth that will require reading. Plus reading your replies before responding to conversations and events.

This is very much a game with reading

[erratic_gamer]

Originally posted by Overread:

Yes.

Even though the dialogue is narrated, there's a lot of lore books, comments, ability descriptions and so forth that will require reading. Plus reading your replies before responding to conversations and events.

This is very much a game with reading

ty@all

would i have to read a lot to learn how to play this. this is probably the first game of this genre i would play.

[Overread]

I mean I don't consider it a "whole lot" but I've been playing these games for years so a lot of the interface and setup is pretty similar.

But there are loads of guides on youtube you can watch for games these days if you get stuck

[erratic_gamer]

okay ty

[yaerav]

Not sure if you have to read a lot per say to learn the basics of this game. Although there is a ton of stuff onlne that you COULD read. Optimizing the stats, the classes, and the equipment of characters can be done to crazy extends, and it's up to you whether you want to discover tactics by yourself or would prefer to read up on them first.

(Btw, in general, the most elementary tactics are: taking the high ground really helps in BG3, and splashing enemies with water makes subsequent attacks with lightning and with cold very efective.)

[Ellie]

Originally posted by Mandar:

would i have to read a lot to learn how to play this.

No. Play a melee class like fighter or berserker, so you're not flooded with abilities, and once you understand the concept of action, bonus action, movement points (which is fairly easy to pick up) everything else builds up over time.

But, I highly recommend playing on easy / story mode at first, so mistakes you make mechanically aren't punished as harshly.

[erratic_gamer]

Ty

[DargonBlak]

Originally posted by Mandar:

ty@all

would i have to read a lot to learn how to play this. this is probably the first game of this genre i would play.

the game feels very "unexplained" when you first start - experience with the genre is almost necessary. the controls are at least half standard but most gameplay things are not explained very well (imo) - so there may initially be a feeling of being lost

almost every encounter involves "talk", but you can skip some of it - other bits may be needed to answer future questions, so some level of attention helps, but an on-line walkthrough can help fill in any gaps caused by lack of understanding or just skipping through stuff too quickly

the most laborious part of dialogues, imo, is the unskippable companion whining and complaining and special companion quests - a complete distraction from the main quest and the player's focus, thus a waste of time, imo (i just want companion robots) - but these "companion needs" blathering is unfortunately an integral part of these games.

encounter discussions aren't terribly annoying, and some are rather comical with unexpected outcomes - i just needed to lean back and slow down a bit...

... and it's usually worth paying attention to the side dialogues because...

Side Questing is Necessary for the character / group experience and leveling

Otherwise , you cannot get to the level needed to succeed in certain fights even in Act 1

So, the game holds us hostage, requiring us to listen to companion blathering, and requires us to work on many, many SIde Quests just to be able to survive primary quest encounters, completely ignoring the initial Urgency laid out in the first few minutes of the game.

Terrible design, imo, but at least it's new.

[Ellie]

Originally posted by DargonBlak:

So, the game holds us hostage, requiring us to listen to companion blathering

You're the kind of person who thinks Elden Ring is an RPG, right? Just taking a wild guess here.

[M8RN]

wow

[Brian_the_Brute]

YES.

There are 100s of books in the game and you need to read them to gain clues, there are a few to gain powers or alchemy recipes, even one used as a key to progress in the game. At least half of the books are added as fluff that don't mean a thing. It is up to you to figure out what bits are hints and what are trash, or at least just items to sell to a vendor.

The devs obviously are bookworms and even describe how each of the books smell.

This is not even getting into the dialogues which are a lot of text to read through when trying to figure out which choices you want to pick as your responses. The Gale and Elminster forced dialogues are the worst and you have to go through pages of text (or randomly pick things as they don't really change anything here) to survive that ordeal.

[hermit0wl]

If reading is an issue for you, then yes, there's a lot.

[Aelirenn]

The main char never speaks so you have to read everything your char will say.