Baldur's Gate 3

To preface, while I do not own Baldur's Gate 3 on GOG, I do own it on Steam and have logged 120+ hours into the Early Access/In-Development state of the game. I have also played similar amounts of time in other titles that are oft compared to Baldur's Gate 3: Pillars of Eternity, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and Baldur's Gate I & II. I have also played a smattering of Larian's previous titles, namely D:OS 1 & 2 but not nearly to the same extent as the others. Before I go further, allow me to reiterate the following: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME IF YOU ARE EVEN THE LEAST BIT HESITANT. Larian has stated several times in the past that they don't want people to buy the game just because it is in Early Access, but only if they want to help give feedback to the dev team prior to launch. They prefer that you wait for the game to be complete if you are not interested in seeing the game as it is now. Caveat emptor, friends. Now, to the game itself-- Pros: + Wonderful graphics and varied environments + Stellar voice acting + Good sound design and music + Challenging combat + Rewarding exploration + Intriguing story premise + A wealth of choices and free will to play as you wish (within the bounds of the game/story) + A faithful adherance to the Forgotten Realms setting (and plentiful references the prior installments, should you find them) + Largely adherant to 5th Edition to D&D + Can pick up and play without having played prior games. Cons: - The autosave functionality isn't as frequent as it could be, leading to one retracing steps if you aren't mindful of saving/quicksaving. - Bugs are not terribly frequent, but can interrupt the flow of play. - Not all classes, rules, and races have been implemented yet. - Character customizer lacks ability to chose body types. Beyond all said here, this may not be right for you depending on your tastes. If you prefer BG I & II, WotR, and other games like them, you may not enjoy this. Or you may be pleased if you enjoy 5th Ed. D&D.

Almost 20 years ago now a game called The Elder Scrolls III: Oblivion" came out and changed the action RPG genre forever. It solidified the Western style RPG as a console friendly genre, and simplified their mechanics and writing enough for much more mainstream and casual players to enjoy. It is not a bad game at all, it's perfectly fine, but I kinda hated it for what it did to the genre. Baldur's Gate 3 is that game for the CRPG genre, or tactical RPG. Whatever you want to call them. If Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous's mechanics are an algebra problem then BG3's are "1 + 1 = 2." If Pillars of Eternity's writing is Stephen King then BG3's is 50 Shades of Grey. Which is fine! The game is fine! I've put almost 200 hours into it because I want to finish it and it's as long as a winter in Antarctica. The problem isn't the game being bad, the problem is it is being praised as the best thing since sliced bread (as Oblivion was) and it will change the genre forever. I can't help but be worried what that will mean.

The biggest problem for this game is that it claims a state as successor to Baldur's Gate 2. Therefore, it has deliberately woken some expectations to garner interest, which is fine. But you have to deliver on them and sadly this game does not do that. The idea of origin characters per se is not a bad one, but making them also companions is not a good idea. It essentially fills up the rooster of characters with a bunch of main characters. You are essentially punished and mocked for trying to play as "your" character instead of being rewarded for it. How much influence you will have on the character of "their" characters is not known. The background info and traits felt at most cosmetic, but were closer to be non-existent in the game. Essentially it is DOS 3. From the restriction of being allowed only one summon to the inventory, it feels like a little bit of paint was blasted over and then you got the BG3 mechanics and UI. I will add the brutal feeling of discrepancy between what the mechanics shows and what the story tries to tell me. I am a low level character but somehow nothing is out of my range. My level shows me as a mook, but the story tells me I am strong. The story tries to give me a sense of urgency, but I can and do essentially rest after every encounter. Such instances are major immersion breaker. It feels like the developers tried to put in as much Forgotten Realms lore as possible. For BG3 it overall feels in many parts like a brainstorming session out of control. Instead of considering if something makes sense, it feels like the only question asked was, is this cool? If the answer was yes, they put it in. Lastly we have the choices and consequences. As example to illustrate my point there is one big decision and it is majorly skewed in one direction. Instead of it being on a similar level to the decision in BG2 between the Shadow Thieves and the Vampires. One side feels more like an afterthought. It completely lacks polishing and incentive.

The bad reviews on here boil down to two categories: -People who wanted Larian to basically remake BG2 -People who wanted Larian to make another dingy dungeon crawler replete with angst and gravelly vocal tones like what they used to make back in my day (ie, BG2, but in a less specific way). This is GoG. Anything made after 2010 with more than 3 stars is a brilliant game. The game is great, some performance issues due to early access, but solid combat, excellent sound and visual design (hitting something really feels like hitting it), and there is a whole lot of playing around with using the environment (particularly the high ground), ranged combat, and stealth that can be done here that gives it an edge over a traditional isometric RPG. It's made in a similar engine to Divinity OS2, but everything practical works very differently due to it using the D&D 5e ruleset. I am not the biggest fan of the 5e ruleset in general (I prefer 3.5e in D&D), but the rendition is faithful and the turn-based combat gives it a more tactical feel than a traditional RTwP isometric, which lend themselves towards spamming and frequent pausing. The characters are interesting enough in their own rights, but the Early Access doesn't really give them too much room to breathe. There are very few 'stock' characters, particularly your companions, who feel as if they have their own motivations and priorities, and the only thing tying them together is the whole tadpole-in-the-head issue (and your leadership). There is a lot of world reactivity to your actions and you get far more options in problem solving quests, above and beyond what was present in BG2. The setting and plot are more similar to the original BG than BG2, so sorry to the 'dark and dingy' fans. There is no fixed alignment, so you aren't locked into acting a particular way towards NPCs, which adds RP potential. Feel free to be a gnome-hater. In particular, you can be a LOT more capital-E Evil than most RPGs would permit.

Game is an unbalanced mess. The beginning, as usual, will be the most ironed out section of the game. Essentially Act 1 was such a blast playing through, however, the game past that point completely nose dives. The story feels like it doesn't exist. Either you are running around exploring or you are entering into combat which, by the way, the implementation just does not work for this sort of game. I ran into so many encounters where I had to load a previous save or keep loading a save to get myself out of fighting. It just became too tiresome. Kinda lame that failing a speech check more often than not will most liklely turn into a fight with you being punished for it. Furthermore, I am unsure what the idea behind throwing 10 enemies against your 4 party members is, but it got old. It got old really fast. Initially, the camping mechanic seemed pretty cool, until you get to Act 2. Having to long rest after every fight literally throws the tadpole threat out the window. I thought we were slowly transforming to monsters and had to find a cure quickly? I also had to drop the difficulty down to the easiest setting to try to get the game to feel more immersive and even that setting isn't even balanced. Having to rest to recharge your spells and abilities is such a terrible design decision for this game. I can't get over the amount of romance that exists in this game which is a shame because Shadowheart and Wyll are well written characters, both with engaging and interesting quests. But all that is undermined by lust and sexual degeneracy. At one point, my camp just felt like an orgy-in-waitng. I can determine one party members entire fate depending if I'd like to engage a sexual relationship with them or not. Overall, I was looking forward to being immersed by the story and decisions of each character. What I bought was frustrating game design and woke nonsense. By the way, a certain character has the Star of Remphan carved into his face which I thought was hilarious.