[Question] Which companions are the most fun to play with?

[( * )]

Hello,

Now that the playerbase had a bit of time to try the different companions, I'd like to ask :
Which ones did you enjoy most during the whole story?
(Spoiler wise, I'm beginning a new playthrough and never reached act 2.)

I'm talking about personnality, funny moments, embarrassing situations and link to the main story.
Which character really made a difference for you?
Which one made the whole experience more enjoyable and why?
Which one would have created a hole in your soul, if he had stayed in camp?

Being at the end of Act 1 (please use spoilers if you need to) I personnaly quite enjoy Astarion.
His comebacks are quite funny and unpredictable.
For example when Karlach joins :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32ZB5_WG-d0
I'm also sure his story will unveil, so I'm waiting for it.

I thought Lae'Zel would be more fun...but for now she's very one-dimensionnal and predictable.
I really wonder if I'll take her on my new playthrough.
I'm beginning to find her boring, after the novelty of her strong personnality has passed.

The opposite for me is Shadowheart, who evolves during Act 1 and opens up.
She changes, she learns, while remaining an enigma waiting to be solved.
I want to know more about her.

I didn't try the other ones.
What are your thoughts?

Thanks a lot in advance for your comments. :)

[The Former]

Shadowheart is just the best. I like Gale's semi-dry (damp, I guess?) sense of humor, too, and Wyll's a great "straight man" to some of the more bombastic companions like Karlach. They all have their charm to be honest, so it's really down to taste!

[Grumpy]

So we're not talking about specifics parts of the companions? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ limitations where's my free speech...

[Elizabeth]

I'd say Shadowheart, Lae'zel, Astarion, and Wyll are all up there. Each of them has an interesting story that's revealed as they progress through the game, with some major choices that can fundamentally alter who they are. Didn't recruit Gale or Minthara my first playthrough, so don't know how they go, but the others felt a lot more flat.

[( * )]

Thanks for your answers.
If anybody wants to add more, feel free. :)

[Silyon]

This is crazy subjective, you're gonna get a lot of wildly varying opinions. I expect arguments by some of the more bullheaded people on the forums.

Personally, I LOVE taking Karlach along now that she has more voicelines enabled. Seems like she's one of the ones with the most, up there with Shadowheart and Astarion. She's loud, generally upbeat and faintly sassy, and gets along with just about everyone else in the party. She also has a number of "Fun" reactions to your frequent encounters with various devils.

Gale is such a drama-queen and occasionally a smart-ass, has some decent one-liners here and there, but alternates wildly between optimistic and pessimistic. I get whiplash if I keep him in the party too much.

Wyll pairs wonderfully with Karlach, because their values line up so neatly and Wyll's troubles with his Patron mirror Karlach's history with Zariel. He's perhaps a bit too eager to jump into action half-♥♥♥♥♥♥ and tends to pressure you to do so as well, and that can bite you both in the rear if you don't know when to put your foot down.

Astarion is a sassy wild-child and a much-needed breath of realism compared to the "goody two-shoes" nature most of the others stick hard to. He's hard to predict because he hides behind his playful and flirty front, but once you dig a little deeper in you start to find out how much he depends on you. Provided you didn't stake him, of course.

Lae'zel is underdeveloped, which is odd to say since she takes such a prominent role among the companions. She's a Zealot firmly convinced her queen can do no wrong, and the fastest way to push her buttons is to force her to challenge those beliefs. Rigid, duty-bound, keeps to herself when not on active duty. If not for Shadowheart's goading, she'd probably never open her mouth at all.

Halsin is even more underdeveloped than Lae'zel, if you can believe it. The man's entire story plays out while you're working on recruiting him, and there's very little else to dive into beyond that. He has virtually no comments or quips of any substance and essentially becomes a yes-man to your MC.

Jaheria and Minsc are a package deal, fail to get one and you can't have the other. I've not played the original BG's yet to see how faithfully they're portrayed, but I can say Jaheria has the air of a sassy and faintly cynical grandmother, while Minsc is a hilarious and sometimes aggravating idiot. Both are characterized wonderfully, it's just the question of if they're faithful to their original selves that's the question.

[Elizabeth]

Yeah, Jaheira and Minsc are pretty true to how they were before, with some allowance for the time that's passed. They just don't have enough screen time here to have much development within the game, and by the time they show up you have to have a solid party composition already, so there's no real incentive to slot either of them in. I'd disagree about Lae'zel though... if you drag her around and carefully poke at the cracks in her beliefs you can coax out a fair bit of development from her. She's just socially introverted, which kinda makes sense for someone whose whole life has been focused on survival and war.

[( * )]

Thanks for your answers.
If someone else wants to add something, feel free to do so. :)

[BigJ]

Shovel

Not even a contest lol

[( * )]

Thanks for your answsers.
Last bump before launching my next playthrough, feel free to add your own experience. :)

[BeautifulFlowerField]

nothing really, all of the companion dialogue is mostly in act 1- once you get past that they stop really interacting with the environment or reacting to what is going on and only have stuff to say about their own quests.

[lawjax]

Volunteering my estimations and observations, I enjoyed the synergy of Astarion, Lae'zel, Minthara, and Shadowheart, though Lae'zel was often left in camp as Shadowheart seemed more essential to the story than her - I probably will not give Shadowheart half so much priority in any future playthrough, as one is quite enough to explore her character. Collectively, the aforementioned can agree upon many of the more ruthless, pragmatic, and sometimes even cruel decisions that you make, which suited me just fine as the ends did in fact justify the means. Minthara has some amusing Act 3 interactions, especially if you have chosen to romance her - I encountered no issues with any of her dialogues, contrary to some of the conflicting reports I've seen.

Now I've tried to utilize some of the other companions, honest to goodness I have, but I found none of them attractive for their characteristics. Wyll appears to be holier-than-thou, resting well upon the laurels of his own hypocrisy, and I have the measure of his own story when I say that. If he were not such a stick in the mud, or more aware of his own deficiencies, I would have enjoyed him more. Karlach is abrasive and feels distinctly out of place to me - there are qualities to her characterization that I inherently dislike and I do not find her own questline remarkable or necessary to the proceedings at large. The same could easily be said about my own aforementioned preferences, of course - to each his own. Halsin, the 3rd part of the trade-off for the drow, is totally unremarkable and frankly boring travelling company by comparison to anyone else.

Gale holds no allure for me and is also a very negotiable party member, never feeling necessary, though he does at least come with some rather notable implications to prioritize him as a fixture of your camp. To me he seems a more eloquent and only marginally more modest version of Astarion, with none of Astarion's best vices. He is the most mild-mannered of the do-gooders' half of the available companions. I do not dislike him, but I do not like him either and have never had a moment of interaction with him when I thought his writing to be comparable to Shadowheart or Lae'zel, who very obviously are both the bread and butter among travelling company in terms of reactions, relevancy, and commentary.

Jaheira and Minsc are late-game additions and, due to their own lack of development time, I could not recommend taking either of them over any of the other characters until you've thoroughly explored the origin and Act 2 characters for all their worth. That said they are both good company and worth taking along throughout the finale when and if you please.

[AsianGirlLover]

Shadowheart and Lae’zel play very well off each other, but if you’d have to pick one, Lae’zel is best girl due to her amazing character growth and self-reflection as she travels with you.

[( * )]

Thanks for advising me to try Karlach.
It's been quite fun for now.

Her first impression was quite bad for me, I thought she was the "I swear every sentence 'cause I'm the cool kid" character.
But there's much more to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ5x5gHg3P0
Noice :)