Is Controller Support.
I'm big on using a mode of play that doesn't cause the user any discomfort, whether that's UX or physical peripherals, and holy shit, BG3's entirely separate controller UX is excellent. Swaps (a little laggily) between KBM and CON effortlessly, and just, how they've handled all the tasks required of one in the game is just, beautiful. Excellent use of shortcuts, configurable radials, and this AMAZING thing called Active Search.
You hold X/A, and a little AOE expands around you, out to maybe 10ft. All interactible objects in that area are put into a semi-persistent list you can then scroll and interact with. Absolutely INCREDIBLE usability feature, even over KBM, as the game engine is picky about 3D selection with mouse, at times!
Honestly, stunning. Love to see it.
EDIT: THREE things CON mode is missing that sorely hamper it from being a satisfactorily superior replacement for KBM in almost all cases:
No 'group/ungroup all' button,
The ability to easily cut off one member from a group (for stealthing/traps/etc) is there and very nice, but no method to just gather the whole party before venturing forth? In KBM mode, it's just 'G'. Could have been Right Stick Button, or a long-press, or even just a doubletap. Please. It's so useful for quick group control.and a "small" extra to that;
Small UX Desire for both KBM/CON modes: Better controls for changing the order of party members. Since we never got formations from BG1/2 (and they would be *incredible* here - imagine a Dragon Age: Origins-style if-then system for companions... *Lewd sigh*), the party order is all we get for general marching order pre-unexpected-fight. Changing it in KBM is an annoyingly sticky click/drag or context-menu affair; the latter is just tedious, and the former is *too* sticky, and makes interpretations consistently at odds with my intent.CON is even worse, as it uses this remove/add-one-at-a-time method that's just as tedious as the context-menu method in KBM, but can be worse/take longer if the game decides to change the party order on a whim when you add/remove group members. Ugh. Lemme assign them numbers/positions, and more easily move them up/down the marching order, please.
No dedicated inventory screen/no inventory searchbox;
I mean, it's as simple as that; the searchbox means there's no real *need* to sort an inventory if you don't want to - I *do*, but it makes it instant to check my inventories for an item, regardless of container depth, which makes it indispensible in this game. Further, no singular dedicated inventory for a character is annoying; I keep looking for it, b/c my instinct is not to use the party screen inventory, as it can be a bit finnicky about which inventory it considers active, and some other minor issues in KBM. Not the biggest gripe, but I wrote this one second b/c I currently can't remember the third - it takes that long to write a dang post w/ clever shit like these boxes!That's worth a like, IMO - if you got this far and you're enjoying what you're reading, I have likes notifications turned on, and each one warms my heart!
And worst of all: terrible radial menu configuration controls for radial hotbars!
I set up a real nice radial hotbar w/ my main buttons. It's the one I use the most, so I pick the wheel that the interface opens up on every time, which is, for some reason, the left-most wheel of the default unremovable 3. To add more wheels, there's a prompt when focused on either of the outer wheels. If adding a wheel on the left, the wheel is added to the far left of the stack, at the end. If added to the right, however... It appears between the right-most wheel and the center wheel. At the left-most position before the center wheel. What the fuck.
To add insult to injury, once any number of additional wheels are added, the originally-established left-most wheel is no longer the first opened - the game either continues to prioritise the actual left-most wheel if you add wheels to the left side of the radial menu, OR, if you add any to the right side, the game suddenly remembers it's supposed to be opening on the original, unmarked center wheel, only detectable by the fact that it disallows both add and remove wheel options in its context menu. Juicy fuckin' crust, that's sloppy. And it gets worse.
Once configured, there's no way to move a configured wheel left or right among the other wheels. No way to copy a wheel, duplicate it, or affect it in any way. Can't even remove a specific wheel unless it's devoid of buttons! So if you add a new wheel and it pushes your current setup out of wheel-order, well, fuck your muscle memory! EVEN worse still, when attempting to alter a button on a wheel, you have to RS in the direction of the button, and hit the face button to bring up the context menu, then select the top most option, 'Set button', or whatever the exact text is. When the menu appears, it instantly takes input from the RS, and starts wildly scrolling, so you have to stop holding the stick, pause to see if your menu selection moved anyway, move back if need be, then proceed, only to likely have to scroll down 30 tiles to find the one ability you want to add; rinse and repeat ~6-8 times on each 12-button wheel (some angles don't scroll, obvs), for up to... I counted 30 wheels before the UI started to struggle. Where's my quasi-infinite amount of regular hotbars...
Also? Wheels (and bars for that matter) should be lockable in a way that prevents any ability add/removal, whether by me or the game. I swap equipment regularly, sometimes between items/sets; my hotbars get fucked real quick. Not to mention, every time I level up, it fucks with all my prepared spells, and re-adds a bunch of abilities I intentionally removed, whether or not I've got it locked.
Give me a setting to leave abilities where they are, whether I qualify to use them or not at that point in time, and just grey them out. I'd rather get my wheels/bars set up once, for all the equipment I'm using, than constantly having to tweak/retweak them.
Especially when tweaking them re: radial menus is as clunky and unforgiving as it is right now.
Which is a shame, b/c radial menus are what makes many-button games like CRPGs work in handheld. I played Underrail on Steam - a great little isometric post-apoc metro-style RPG, reminiscent of the early Fallouts - and I played it entirely with my Steam Controller, b/c Steam Input allows you to make completely custom radial menus of whatever the hell inputs you want, including pre-set combos, keybinds, combo binds, program launches, and pretty much anything else. They can nest, they can have multiple functions on doubletap/longpress/swipe-and-release, and the trackpad's haptics meant I could feel each button as I passed over it, which aided HUGELY in making them smooth as hell.
And all I did for Underrail was bind like four or so 12 button wheels to 0-9, Shift+0-9, Ctrl+0-9, C+S+0-9, and then I just filled out the game's provided hotbars and keybound them as desired. Given each radial was just a number pad in the shape of a clock, it became second nature to input desired keybinds at, or even better than, keyboard.
BG3 is very close to that, but its current customization controls for radials are hot garbage. Praying for improvements, or better yet, mods.
If you read this far, you're amazing, and you should send me an anonymous ask with a nice image example of your favourite kind of eroticized genitals - I am not asking for yours, to be clear, unless yours are your favourite kind, then, well, go ahead! We're in the deep chost down here, I can be as lewd as I like!
Anyway. That's all. Lol.
So close to being a brilliant example of how a controller could generally be preferable to KBM for games that aren't first/third person romps, and yet, so far.
Mods, everyone. Pray for good mod tools. Pray our deliverance comes at the hands of nerds that can't leave well enough alone because they - like us - know it can be better.