Baldur's Gate 3

After finally getting to play this I am severely let down. This is not Baldur's gate.. it's like they just stripped away everything good. There is simply too much wrong with this that I can not even begin to explain. So I will just vent my disappointment on here and not recommend this game to anyone who has had the pleasure of experiencing the previous games.

This may be irrelevant but just a small mention for all potential buyers that all game cut-scenes have a huge watermark on screen screaming "EARLY ACCESS" while you're just trying to enjoy the cut-scene. Its not even small like in other games, its actually huge. Yeah, I know its early access - anyone who downloaded the game knows its early access. Anyhow, definitely not a deal breaker just something to keep in mind if you're like me and things like this really bother you to the point you want to talk about it in a review. Hope this helps someone!

I bought this in Steam, and got my money back. This is not Baldur's Gate. This is Pathfinder set in the Spelljammer universe. The battle system is Pathfinder. The graphics are still the same as BGI and BGII; that is to say I still cannot always see where my people can and cannot walk. However, the Baldur's Gate battle system is fluid. The die is roll in the background; your speed is accounted for; your number-of-attacks per-round are accounted for. Spells can be interrupted, because they take a certain amount of time to cast. In this imposter game, die are rolled in the background, and you are assigned a spot in the flow of battle. Sometimes, when you try to attack, that is to say move and attack, it will say you cannot. BUT, if you move, then attack, you can. That means poor game mechanics. Your spells will not be interrupted, because they are cast during your turn, not fluidly as part of the larger battle. There is entirely too many cut-scenes, making this more a movie in which you get to do stuff, rather than a game with period interesting scenes. The screen-scroll is off by default, so you are forced to fumble around in the options to find where to activate that. This crap with pulling the scene around is just that: crap. It hinders fluid game mechanics. In short, this is over-priced, poorly conceptualized, poorly planned, and poorly developed. They think that they are going to get 260€ for their digital content release, trying to emotionally blackmail avid players of the BG series into paying 60€ for something that is not true to the Baldur's Gate series. Bill this as part of the Pathfinder series, because that is what you have developed. You've taken a great game series and screwed it up for a whole new generation, who are unfamiliar with the original Baldur's Gate I and Baldur's Gate II games. Some of us are veteran players of those original games, and don't appreciate what you have done.

First of all a lot of games are bestsellers because of their names or the names of the developers. This means today really nothing. Second is that gaming is a freetime fun - or should be. I don´t want to be touched with climate change, gender, diversity or things like that in my freetime, no matter what I personally think or feel about ist. I know why they all are doing this, it has something to do with finance and credits. This is not MY problem, there are good solutions, some of the best games were funded by players. No need to do that! Third: If a game is so expensive I really don´t understand why there is only ONE speech. Don´t tell me there was not enough money to pay for this, and this may be not important for building games, but roleplay means you want to be part of a story. If I have to silence the sound of voice because I always hear english and read another language - what makes it impossible to really folow the story - there is a distance to it. Even Baldur´s Gate 1 - in the year 1998!!! - had translated voices. Twentyfive years later this seems to be impossible for THIS money??? No, I just don´t believe that, sorry. And last: The developers made a lot of players to testers for nothing, more than three years. What did THEY get all the time? I could read about beginnig the game over and over again, becaus after every update the saves were gone. I don´t want THIS game as gift.

Nothing like dropping a steaming pile of TOS, Privacy Policy and EULA to agree to right in the opening of the game. Fun fact, making more than one backup of the game files violates the EULA! Hope you don't ever back up your computer, as you can only ever keep one copy unless you delete BG3 from the backup. This is part of the 'in-game experience' and as such is valid for review.