Baldur's Gate 3

The story and the system reminded me of old school RPGs, its telling is very modern. Its a long game too so you are getting a lot for your money. The game lacks a manual, i recommend clicking on everything to learn how it works. Pros: - Very good story with depth - Good combat system - Fun Companions - Outstanding voice acting - Devs keep fixing it - Good graphics - Runs well on older PCs and the Steam Deck Cons: - tutorial is not enough to learn everything - THERE IS NO MANUAL

So many positive reviews and so much gushing over this game, I really don't get it. It has good graphics and voice acting, and that's about all the positives I can say. If you liked the original, real BG games, well this is absolutely nothing to do those. It could be any DnD adventure, it's completely unrelated to the Bhaalspawn that all the prior BG games were all about. They threw in a few minor references to the old events and a couple companion characters from the original series and that's the only tie-in. It's not even real-time combat like the originals. It's their Divinity games with the BG name unabashedly slapped on. I found the story and your character's predicament boring. I couldn't care less about infiltrating evil goblin camps that think I'm on their side, which is what you do for a huge part of the game. I did the quests there, then slaughtered them all. The companions have back stories that make no sense for low level characters. The camera and character movement are possibly the worst in any major game I've played. I had to install two mods to make it bearable. And the turn based combat is not exciting in the least. So combat, world setting, and story are misses here. What else is wrong? It's dials the woke up to 11. All the companions, including same sex companions, presumptuously hit on you even when you made no dialog choices to solicit it, and it'll happen even if you're already romancing someone else. And the game often gives you a cringe scene when you reject them. Then there are the gnomes. How do they survive as a species when they are all gay? In fact, most of the couples you meet in the game are gay. For your companions, all the front line warriors are female and the physically weak spell casters are the men. The feminists at Larian don't care about realism or balance. While the game had a few decent moments, overall it was just a boring slog to get through. I will never have any desire to play it again.

clunky controls and POV can cause massive frustration

I am still working my way out of the city. First of all, I am seasoned in both old and new fantasy games. I am old. Not that anyone has to care what I think, but my overall impression of this game is mixed. The so called Baldur's Gate 3 is reminiscent of the series yet isn't. This has already been said many times. The scripting begs very loudly for BG recognition by clumsily introducing old BG characters as if you just ran into them at Comic-Con. There is no iconic DM narrator (although the new narrators are great IMHO), few actual monster encounters, none of the amazing BG2 artistry during lengthy cutscenes, no jittery paperdoll characters, and the story arc, while engaging, seems last-minute and borrowed much of the time. Mechanics-wise the game is solid and only occasionally buggy. All BG games were buggy though. I guess it was only fair to add a few bugs to this one, too. There are evil character options built into the story from beginning to end which I find refreshing. The only problem is that there aren't many good options for say Paladins, which is the strongest class. Most 'good' options are just short of that IMHO. Not are characters are chaotic good / chaotic evil. These devs are clearly not very religious. Luckily for me I'm not either. You can just stun the plebs and pretend that it matters. There are actually many things this game does well though. For one thing, the high character detail and heavy voice acting leads to a very powerful character development tool for the PC companions. Few of them really go far enough into their background stories for a lasting impact (some dialogue is downright boring and time-wasting), but do sometimes manage to elicit emotional scenes on par with cinema. Reminds me of Mass Effect. This is something I hope they continue to develop at Larian. Overall I do recommend the game and I hope they can take the good and leave the bad.

Do not buy if you want: 1. A complete game now, including fully fleshed out narratives and cutscenes. 2. A game that religiously follows the formula of the original Bauldur's Gate narritive or mechanics. 3. A game that religiously follows the mechanics of D&D 5e. Improvements since I started playing: 1. Improved narratives and cutscenes. 2. Introduction of new classes. 3. Interesting solutions to handle not having a sentient Dungeon Master at a table top version. what the game currently does well: 1. Provides an intersting, if not at times over the top high fantasy adventure. 2. Provides oppourtunities for player agency better then any game I've played previously. 3. Provides challenging combat. 4. Provides content updates every 3 months or so, meaning if they maintain this trajectory the game will have all phb calsses & subclasses in ~ 1 year (Barbarian, Bard, Monk, Paladin still to be released). What the game currently does poorly: 1. Bugs; frequent Include camera getting stuck on terrain (fixed by clicking on your player profile). Not being able to see your inventory aside from uncommon/magic items. Infrequent: Random Game Crashes. 2. Can break quests if you do certain actions out of order, including making it so NPCs cannot talk to you. 3. a few sections of the narrative are very poorly explained and can cause confusion. Overall: I have invested ~150 hours into the game all in Co-Op so maybe I am more willing to forgive things that others are not. I generally say for a game to be worth my time it has to give me at least as many hours as I have paid into it. I paid $80/CAD and have gotten 150 enjoyable hours, so at least for me it is totally worth it.