Baldur's Gate 3

I liked this game a lot. Played through it twice - once as the 'good' guy, once as the 'bad'. Tried it a 3rd time before I got bored and quit. Almost everything here is great: Graphics, sound, interface, gameplay, story. The experience is quite linear, though, so there's no much pulling you back once you've finished. As far as being a BG game... well, it is in the sense that it's D&D, and there's a lot of depth in your party. That's forced on you, because you get to make at most one character and the rest of your party is pre-gen NPCs. Which is a blessing and a curse, because if you like their quirky personalities it's great, and if you can't bloody stand them, well, sucks to be you I guess. Personal preference, but I'd rather be able to make my whole party rather than have NPCs forced on me. The game is capped at level 12, which you'll probably hit when you're only about 2/3 of the way through the game. That's a downer, because a lot of the incentive to explore side quests and just generally do stuff evaporates when there's no more XP reward to be had. My chief complaint is that the game feels very constrained. This is Forgotten Realms, a planet-spanning campaign of sprawling lore. Yet BG3 takes place entirely on a stretch of road leading to Baldur's Gate and a small section of that city. It makes an epic game feel incredibly small. I'd rather they included an overland map and allowed you to explore a larger number of smaller area maps, as opposed to cramming everything into just a handful of large area maps. Sometimes the tiny game area impacts the story's believability, such as when goblins can't find the druid hideout, which is actually just a couple of minutes walk away. But, overall I think this game is worth playing. I'm hoping it spawns some other 5e D&D games that leverage the engine without being sequels, like BG did with Icewind Dale. My current fantasy is that they remake the Pool of Radiance series using the BG3 engine. That would be really cool.

This has got to be the game of the decade for me already (2020s), it's simply breathtakingingly engaging and fun. I've yet to finish the campaign after 87 hours of gameplay on and off since August 2023 with a friend - and I'm actually thinking of doing it again solo after we finish it. I want to play again with other characters, classes and make different choices during the story and while roaming the world. I don't really play a whole lot of games anymore, but this game has got me hooked. There's SO MUCH in this game, of everything! Gorgiously detailed places, engaging quests with many choices to make, fun/funny/scary/lovable characters, great dialogue and character animation (for this much content), items in troves, etc. I feel like I've been playing for several seasons of a tv series, but I still want more. It's epic. I've barely played the original Baldur's Gate games, so I can't really compared BG3 to them - but I've played through Divinity Original Sin 2 once, which was superb. This feels like an even better Divinity game, only bigger, better and truly set in the realm of Dungeons & Dragons, rather than being a bit dnd-like sometimes. Larien Studios are on fire - hellfire, perhaps? Let's hope their flames keep burning for a long time, I want to see them continue making great games. There aren't many studios I know of in this money-grabbing day and age which could produce such a fine gem of a game of this scale and quality.

i like it

I have to start with the fact that I have never played a Baldurs Gate game so far, so I can't tell if BG3 is a "real" Baldurs Gate game or not. But let's talk some more about the game. The story is interesting (I won't spoil anything) and the optics are good and remind of D:OS2. The desicion to make dialoge scenes more cinematic is someting I really love because I miss these close up scenes in most of the RPG games. Now you can build a connection with your companions through verbal and non verbal communication. And Larian did with both a very good job so far. From a technical stand point I had mostly a pretty smooth game so far. Sure, there are bugs (mostly graphic bugs) and there are some locations were I had to face crashes and freezes (I recognized that that mostly happened if I engaged in fights with a lot of enemies). I would recommend to be generous with the use of the f5 key (Quicksave) because... just trust me on this one ;). What rubs me the wrong way so far is that the custom character does not say much at all. That works while walking across the map and listening to the rest of your group bickering and talking but when it comes dialoge scenes or even more so special scenes (like romance scenes) that does not work for me at all. The reason for that is that your char does not more than standing there silent while starring at his/her companion with a creepy grin. I don't know of there are plans for changing that in the future but I sure hope so. Another thing is that I would wish for more detail options in the character creator. Larian should go big on the customization options, because now you see your character nearly all the time from up close. But I am sure that there will be more in the future. You get a very good EA experience with BD3 so far. Sure, not everything is gold yet but what is shown at the moment is more than promising. The Early Access foreshadows a great game in the making.

Can add much to what others have to say, but I'll do it just to make the point clear to Larian that this is a bussiness model we hate And if by doing this it lowers the score of the game and hurts your sales, it will make a finer point so you and any other company think twice before pulling another BG3 scam