Baldur's Gate 3

Just like all of Larian's RPGs, it has an amazing first act that makes you think you're playing the best game of all time, and then it quickly starts falling apart the minute the second act starts. Bugged quests, rushed content, railroading you down one path or another while removing lots of the free choice you were spoiled with in prior acts, romances that don't pay off, side quests that never tie up their loose ends, and long encounter gauntlets that are all but rigged against you. 90 hours in and I'm going to set it aside now and wait for the inevitable 'enhanced edition' where they go back and finish up the other 75% of the game.

Title pretty much describes my thoughts on the game. I'm having quite some fun with the game, but it is so far and apart from Dungeons & Dragons it feels like it's a joke. Gog offers all the true D&D games by Bioware, perhaps the chaps over at Larian should have played those before trying to sell us Divinity 3 for Baldur's Gate. The only difference I see between Divinity 2 and this game is the Forgotten Realms setting, which isn't all that obvious anyway.

The first two Acts are very well done and clearly a lot of time and care went into them. The story is immersive and the gameplay fun. Sadly Act 3 and the ending are an absolute trainwreck with side quests that go nowhere and most of your choices throughout the game end up being moot outside a few buffs/temp npcs in the final fight. There is no real epilogue and the quest endings that you get during gameplay are all the closure that you get.

There's really just no excuse for how poorly conceived this game is in so many areas. I'm very unhappy with my purchase as so much of what's going on here is just catastrophically bad. First of all, bugs. There will be bugs. The gameplay experience is _very_ rough because of visual bugs and poor pre-loading. Patch 1 proudly proclaims that it fixes 1000 bugs. That means the game launched with far more than that. This is a Bethesda-tier launch experience, which is horribly ironic since Starfield is a remarkably stable game and boasts only a few very niche bugs. Second, characters. The "Origin" characters, who are the clowns you're going to be made to suffer with for the vast majority of the adventure if you don't know better, are suffering from "tragic" backstories, and by "tragic" I mean they're each kind of an idiot. There are one or two who are decently written and not infuriating to deal with (you get 1 guess who), but mostly they all want you to feel sorry for them suffering the consequences of their own decisions. One thing that all the characters do seem to have in common, though, is that they are all really eager to get in your pants. While I don't have anything in particular against the existence of orgies or bisexual polycules, I'm really not here to play some kind of harem simulation game. Besides, the writing and animations for this game are heinously bad, with all the worst consequences of 3D model interaction like air hugs, ear sniffing, and bizarre facial expressions. If you can't even match Tidus hugging Yuna in FFX when that game was released (checks notes) 22 years ago, don't bother. You're wasting your time. Beyond that, core gameplay? Eliminating the grid does wonders for D&D 5e, and Larian's signature environmental interactions add great depth to an otherwise kinda shallow system. The main story, however, is blatantly unfinished and obscenely short. Maybe if Larian spent less time writing Twilight fanfic this game would have released finished.

I have nostalgia for BG1 and BG2 from when they originally released, but also did a playthrough of both games, plus Throne of Bhaal, in the past month. After finishing a playthrough of BG3, how does it compare? I will say at the outset that BG3 is a fairly good and meaty game, and is worth checking out if just to see what a AAA-budgeted CRPG can be. Full VA is great. My own playthrough was approx. 120 hours, and there is reactivity I want to explore further on future playthroughs. BG3 feels like a game in the same genre, but not much like a BG game. There are a handful of references to the earlier games, but the presentation feels nothing like BG1 and 2. While the default tone of the original games is "dark", the tone of BG3 is "whimsical". Two caveats: in Act 3 (of 3) of the game, without spoilers I will say the story started to feel like it belonged in the same universe. There is also an "origin" at character creation that will probably be a stronger tie that I have not experienced yet. The writing is mixed. Companions feel more fleshed out, but there are fewer of them and, without spoilers, the thrust of most of their stories felt very samey. For big-picture story, it feels like they wanted to make a blockbuster movie, complete with sometimes eye-rolling dialogue. Of the three, I'd probably rate BG2's story as best, though BG3 felt less railroaded. Gameplay-wise, it is very different. Turn-Based instead of RTwP, party of 4 instead of 6, 3D environments with elevation, even the classic party member green circles are white! For some these are welcome changes or unimportant differences; otherwise, the Pillars of Eternity or Pathfinder CRPGs are better spiritual successors. User experience is something I would say the original games actually did better at the time of this review. Changing party composition is a pain, inventory management is a pain, even the camera controls and maps are awkward in some environments, largely thanks to the environments being 3D.