Disclaimer: I am 64. I started DnD comp games, with POOL of RADIANCE...the original I bought BG 1 and BG2 both, on day of release and still play them to this day.

I also bought BG3 on day of release, and IAW that sites terms; refunded it 90 minutes later.

I have tried to explain WHY I disliked it so much. Let me also add that I disliked Div Orig Sin and never bought DOS 2. Why would you buy the sequel to an original you disliked? SO I had no intent of buying DOS 3, though it seemed to me I did, and then I refunded it.

This review right here, says so very well, what I felt during my time with BG 3. Let me preface his review by stating the obvious...

1st lvl DnD characters, have no business facing Mindflayers...none. THAT, takes a pretty shitty DM.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/10/baldurs-gate-3-early-access-mediocre-rpg-amazing-rendering-engine/

BG3... Yes, he is a very bad GM who begins the scenario by raping the players characters.
It's a sadistic pleasure of a GM.

Or they should not tell it, beggining by the usual "You don't remember who you are".
Then once grown you discover the truth while you are able of revenge or justice.

Maybe that's the function of traumatic memory: to forgett what were not able to defend against, so we are able to continue doing in life instead of being obsessed about this danger and the shame of being helpless.

Edit: And I even forgot the time bomb. Really with a GM and a scenar like these, I tell I forgot something home and quit the table.
Being raped and under constant pressure. Yeay, is it really a game? for who?

I finished Solasta last night and I was a bit disappointed with the overall dialogue in the game. It feels like there is a lot of missing dialogue (character responses also seem to be a bit bipolar, switching between characters that act like the background I gave them, and at other times psychotic knife lickers). If I was to guess, the game was initially aiming to be something as long as Baldur's Gate 2 or more recently Pathfinder Kingmaker (I still have yet to finish this), but it was a bit too ambitious and so many of the questlines that would of helped flesh out the universe had to be cut from the game.

The combat was great though, at least until towards the end as I hit the level-cap quite a bit before the end of the game...in which case I found it annoying where I would get suprised by enemies while navigating the world map between locations (Why can't I suprise enemies instead!), since there wasn't anything to be gained anymore. I easily got the experience to level up to 11 and possibly 12 (the counter stops at 84,999 experience).

The end boss fight wasn't too difficult, though the game tried to inflate the difficulty by having me run through several maps populated with monsters without rest so that by the time I got to the boss my Wizard and Cleric were pretty low on spells.

@sarge33rd:
That link was still interesting, I wasn't a fan of Divinity Original Sin 2 (but I liked the original, though mostly for it's combat and I didn't finish the game). Likely I would see myself savescumming to get the right result on those dialogue rolls, but I kind of do that anyway (Pathfinder Kingmaker is especially Notorious for awarding experience for winning dialogue contests, at one point I nearly gained an entire level of experience by winning a very difficult dialogue check)....still that outcome of murdering all those civilians based on a difficult charisma dice roll would still suck and that illithid brain devouring dialogue was a bit infuriating, where winning a check ended up getting you killed....not a fan of trap choices like that, and the party members just standing around like that just looked silly.

In any case because of my experiences of DOS2 I wasn't particularly excited by the announcement of BG3 (I was highly suspicious about it instead) and this article just confirms that I was right to delay excitement on the game. Having played Baldur's Gate 2 extensively, I'm well aware of how difficult these Mind Flayers are. I haven't played BG3 at all, so I'm wondering if it might be that this is starting the game from the middle point as a demo and they plan on rolling back to a much earlier time to begin the game?

just want to mention that T.A., never intended SOLASTA to be anywhere near as long as BG 2. 40 hours +/- playtime, was their estimation of the final games length. I'm thinking, they probably called it pretty close.

Oh I see, it just seems a bit weird though how the dialogue just seems to break at points as if some additional things needed to be said, but weren't. Perhaps I need to pay a bit better attention....but I'll wait for the next Sorcerors update which should hopefully fix things (hoping the dialogue gets a going over as wel), and will give me another reason to go through the game again to try the new class.

On another note, unfortunately I split my faction reputation between the guy that sells primed equipment/spells and the other that has the tomes and other magical equipment (I wanted to craft a magic longbow), so I missed out on unlocking the attribute increasing tomes and the top tier primed equipment/spells. Ended up with 17k gold at the end of the game, with no faction at max rank and so nothing to spend it on. Looks like you can only raise a single faction to the highest rank, so be careful in your own game who you give those artifacts to!

crafting a +1 bow, is not as combat valuable IMHO, as getting that Girdle of Gt STR for the RGR getting 3+ attacks/rnd with melee weapons!

First playthrough, so I grossly overestimated the number of artifacts that would be granted. Sure I didn't expect to max out ALL of the reputations, I just didn't expect that it would only be possible to max out a single reputation when I focused on two of them (the other being the Arcaneum now that I loaded the game I have the name!).

With that lesson now learned, Antiquarians are the only faction that matter it seems, since you would be silly to overlook that Belt of Fire Giant strength and those Tomes that allow you to go above 20 attribute points.

AND, with the Academic background, you get to jumpstart the Antiquarians

Oh, that is good to know. My Wizard went with the Philosophy background and none of the others had the Academic background so I missed out on that reputation buff.

I believe I talk about it in Ep 1 of the play through. I tried to be fairly thorough in the character creation, w/o giving the idea that "this" or "that" was essential and should always be present. I tend to have a few select background combos that I use, and I believe Ep 1 covers those. (At least, I know I intended for it too. lol)

Between BG 3 and Solasta, I've only played Solasta so far and I'm almost finished with it. Like the writer of the linked article (Jim), I also have played almost every D&D computer game made, including super old games like Nethack which like Solasta were D&D in all but name. Also, like the OP, I didn't like Divinity Original Sin. I bought it. I played it. But I just never got into it. Couldn't tell you why, exactly. Just didn't grok to it.

I love Solasta. It has bugs and stuff because it's an ambitious indie game but otherwise it's just what I wanted in a 5th edition D&D game.

I've only watched let's plays of BG3 and I have to agree with many of Jim's complaints. Baldur's Gate 3 does not feel like a Baldur's Gate game. It's far too dark and far too grim. The NPCs are all a-holes, something that Larian seems completely confused about. It's like they can't understand why you wouldn't want all of your companions hating you all the time. Also, I agree that the game feels really railroaded.

Now, I don't mean railroaded in that the game is linear or that you can't change the outcome of the game very much. Solasta is like that too. Icewind Dale is like that and I LOVE Icewind Dale. What I mean is that the story seems to drag your character along without a pretense of choice. It practically tells you that you have no choice in a lot of this because you have a tadpole eating your brain. It may not feel like a big difference to you, but it does to me.

Some of his complaints, though, make little sense to me. For example, he complains:

"The game's arbitrary dichotomy between movement points and action points frustrated me even more. The third image in the gallery above shows the end of a typical round, with what appear to be almost entirely unspent actions for both characters shown. In reality, those characters both used their one action—usually an attack or spell, sometimes a potion chug or helping up a downed comrade—and now the only thing they can do is move."

This is not a game engine choice, this is literally how 5th Edition D&D rules work. Movement and Actions are separate from one another. So this means Larian got this part right in simulating the 5e rules. What's he advocating for - a system that gives you action points that are spent on movement and attacks is how Divinity OS worked. So first he critisizes it for being too little like D&D and then makes the opposite complaint later on.

I will probably end up buying BG 3 and playing it someday, but not in early access, and not while it costs $60. Solasta is great.

From what I’ve been told, Larian put in the evil NPCs first so players are forced to use them. They believe most players would only test the good path if they also included the good-aligned NPCs during the current stage of testing.

Will be interesting to see what the game will be like when it is out of the testing stage.

I may buy BG 3 again at some point in the future...when it is normally $19.99 or under and I can pick it up on sale for less than $15.

So BG3 is bad because you begin trapped with an Illithid on the run trying to repopulate because thats "bad DMing"?

Then beginning in a cell after being drugged and experimented on for weeks by a high level wizard... that must be good DMing right?

Each of these games has its goods and bads, but talking about bad DMing without even checking from where is the story coming from beforehand or how that will develop at the end, seems more like whining because something you expected didn't happen than true criticism.

I have been DMing D&D (and some other games, but mainly AD&D, D&D 3rd, 4th and 5th) for 25 yearsand played most if not all D&D games from pool to console dark alliance through eye of the beholder and more,completed Solasta, BG1 and 2 and both D:OS, and have to say each one has good and bad things but the tale they tell is not something I would critizice lightly, some may be more immersive than others, and as someone told, may not have been done to be that long to start with, but you cant expect every possible interpretation of characters and NPCs through them to be ideal to everyone, or to like all game systems from each game.

TL;DR: Don't think how a developer want to showcase it's game story, characters and game systems, can be seen as good/bad DMing without being biased by disliking any of them personally.

talk about cherry-picking and strawman....

yes, starting a 1st lvl character as a prisoner in a mind-flayer ship, is horrible DM'ing. Mind-flayers, are not functional encounters for 1st lvl DnD characters. If you honestly DM as you claim you do, then you already know this.

There a nr of factors bout BG 3 which I disdain, MOSTLY because it isnt Baldurs Gate anything. It IS Divinity Original Sin 3, set in Forgtten Realms. Since I was not a fan of DOS, I never bought or tried DOS 2. I would not have bought or tried DOS 3 either, except that it was presented as being something it is not...ie, the 3rd installment in the BG serial.