Baldur's Gate 3

This isn't the best CRPG ever made. But it's pretty good. The game is split into three acts, each set in its own game map and related submaps. The first act is excellent. If the game could maintain this quality throughout, it would deserve all the praise it's getting. Unfortunately, the game begins to go downhill starting in the second act, but here it's still quite good. But right after the second act's climax, and running into the third, it's basically a total mess. You are suddenly introduced to a new goal and set loose into the third map which has tons of bugs, is quite overwhelming, unoptimized, and half-baked. Thus, the great force pushing you through the first half of the game suddenly disappears. In addition, the developers include here a large number of progressive social-political statements and themes which were heretofore (largely) absent. However, this may not be an issue for you if you are so inclined. Regardless, this all adds up to a lot of resistance. Luckily, the momentum gained in the first act should be enough to just push the player through to the finish line. Replay-wise, there are a great number of fun and interesting character builds which give it a fair bit of replayability. However, even the great first act grows tedious after a handful of runs through it. It's not world-shattering, but a fun game. I'd recommend picking it up on sale if you like CRPGs

In a nutshell I did not enjoy my time in this game. Maps are upside down from the characters...making it hard to get around. Edge panning only works sporadically so you need to use arrow keys...which is very awkward. I had to remap camera rotation...default had right turning left and left turning right plus...like edge panning...it was awkward to use. Combat seemed to overly favour the enemy NPCs. I realize this is largely personal perspective and...yes...roll of the dice and all that but combat was a very frustrating experience for me and is what led to me returning the game for a refund. I don't expect to faceroll through every fight but when my group is higher level and still struggles in a fight it's just not fun or enjoyable...which is what a game is supposed to be.

Larian games are the only ones I've ever felt a need to grab my phone to pass the time during combat. This hasn't changed. The Goblin camp had me reading articles while waiting to hold the hands of every one of my party members and tell them which way they should point their swords. Makes me long for the action of the classics where the enemies and your companions weren't dumber than Alabama. Where you could just control your own PC for the most part and trust our companions to use their strengths on their own, only pausing the game to issue orders to your companions when you needed to. Or turn on all the autopause stuff and play on that extreme, or any where in between. There was a perfect blend of action and turn based combat because we could control the flow as we pleased. In the late 90s. Pretty certain it's too late for me to try and get a refund, but if there were a way for me to gift ownership I'd give this one away. It doesn't disgust me, just bores me. Which is worse.

This game feels like it's still in early access, it has a lot of the same janky problems Divinity original sin HAD before the enhanced edition fixed it, there's quite literally no reason to go back 15 steps for this game and yet somehow larian has managed to achieve that, encounter design somehow made significantly worse from the early access game, you will literally never feel powerful because of this badly done aspect of the game, every level you gain is just another portion of the map you get to explore as before that encounters are just quicksave/quickload fests of RNG rolls that are severely stacked against you, even min maxed builds that abandon immersion for pragmatism will run into quick saving and quick loading a lot during several portions of the game multiclassing and respeccing are introducing a load of jank that are sadly needed because of the encounter designs being so heavily stacked against the player, you will be respeccing all of your companions into their most optimal counterparts, you will be respeccing your cleric from the useless trickster domain into life because you just really need heals when you're fighting against gnolls who at parity level 4 get 3 attacks when your fighter still only get 1, you will find yourself regularly reloading encounters not because they're THAT difficult but because you will need to know exactly how to shift odds in your favor, and that's the best thing you get, odds, the AI is INCREDIBLY CHEESY, using jumps as a min max'd player would in order to maximize their movement, since AI enemies get RIDICULOUS strength levels (think minotaurs etc) their jump range IS ABSOLUTELY NUTS as a result STRATEGY BECOMES WORTHLESS, your backline is always in range, you cannot bring squishy characters hence you want to multiclass a sorlock into fighter at the start simply to get constitution proficiency, this with the level cap just makes for a pretty unfun experience so far feels like early access even post release

Dont get me wrong the Game is a masterpiece in visuals, freedom, voice acting and content. But for me the problems with writing, characters and way too much content i some cases took away the fun from me. At the start of act 3 i was already bored with the game mechanics (youre doing nearly everytime the same during fights) and the chars. also there was too much zoomer-humor in it.. i dont like that really and annoyed me more and more.