Baldur's Gate 3

As many people pointed out- this game is very different from previous BGs. I don't really want to touch this topic as it doesn't mean it's a bad game on its own (although it certainly is disappointing to get another Divinity expecting BG) but it's been a year since the game was released in Early Access and it still has many bugs and gameplay problems with little new content released (and no proper release date). It still crashes fairly often, there are many oddities in dialogues (like not acknowledging certain things) and you still can get attacked for no apparent reason and without warning (entering hidden passage in certain hideout for example- there are no doors there so you can simply wander in and get instantly attacked). Party management is a chore- only single character may be given orders, rest follows... And apparently the bug has already eaten some parts of their brains as they often get stuck and you'll only notice that they're couple hundred meters away after combat starts. Traps? They'll happily run into them and there's no auto-pause (or any pause at all actually) on spotting a trap- in this particular regard game is faithful to its predecessor and there are many of those. Yes, they try to avoid them but clearly aren't doing it well. It might be a good game eventually but for the moment it's not worth it- bugs are plenty and development speed underwhelming.

The gameplay, graphics, and sheer creativity of this game is wonderful. It's a blast to play and I grew very fond of my party. This said, the game has one serious issue; its not finished. As of right now you're limited to level 5 and act 1 of the game. This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that every update forces you to restart. I've seen the same cutscene 4 times now. I know how every decision will pan out. Iunderstand the mentality of prerelease games and how it helps developers raise funds and smooth out gameplay, however this has been early access for far too long. A complete game would be an absolute gem, however as of now it's just frustrating to create a character, level up, and complete quests, only to come back the next day and all your progress is gone.

Great story Great characters Beautiful crisp graphics Awesome combat system An overwhelmingly terrific experience Multiple ways of fighting, and completing quests, to an insane degree. This game should be played at a good pace, because its so grand scale in its complexity and design. The world and its characters, and the effect you can have, you will have to do multiple playthroughs in order to fully experience this game, that is its beauty, that your journey is your journey, if you and your friends only played this game once, you would all likely have had very different experiences of events that transpired. I have a love hate relationship with this type of combat system, i am very new to it but i actually kinda love it, there is always something to learn whenever i fail and die, i always manage to find a better way to deal with a fight and you can combat enemies in such vastly diverse ways, from complex spell combinations stacking onto each other delivering hellfire on your enemy to ... throwing the enemy into the depths of a chasm, combat is awesome in this game.

I'm 48 and have been a game since Commadore 64 in the 80s. Had every console thru the years imaginable- Atari, Collecovision, Intellevision, Sega, Sega Saturn, all the Nintendos/Playstations/Xboxes , and currently have a RTX 4090/13700k PC. This is the most fun I've had playing a video game in years. The gameplay is faitful as can be with DnD5e. The story and dialogue's writing and voice acting is incredible. Every day I play 8-12 hours like a fiegn. The Graphics are incredible- from the HDR to the 4k textures to the physics (omg especially water physics) , to the polish and optimization (180-220 fps in 4k all Ultra/High settings and HDR on). The on-the-fly switching to controller for exploring and back to M/KB for menus/battles (both are fabulous stand-alone too) is genius and useful. I love everything about this game and it's my 2nd 10/10 in the past decade plus. A TRUE MASTERPIECE! Must buy- if you miss out on this game as a gamer that's just a tragedy and you have critically failed your Intelligence check

I'm sure Larian will patch the game up and make it worth a damn in a year or two, but they should have done that before launching the game in the first place. As it stands, the game is bugged beyond belief and extremely unpolished. The first act is well done, as that was what was in Early Access, and the second act is also pretty badass with a few caveats (especially for Evil player characters, but I'll get to that), but act 3 is a hard wall. It's just bad, I don't really know how else to say it. Flow is interrupted entirely, many quests callback to things that didn't happen or happened different, entire major quests are broken to the point of being unfinishable. These are required MAIN quests. It's embarrassing to release in this state and even knowing Larian has a good reputation for fixing things I can't really forgive that. It is my understanding that they polished the mainline "good guy" route the most, knowing that most players choose those options, and it really shows. I have done as much as I can across several playthroughs, and discussed with friends, and evil just gets shafted. You lose out on tons of companions, entire areas become optional, major story beats make no sense or are hamfisted, it's just a joke. This compounds with numerous bugs that only strike for evil protagonists, it's just annoying and insulting in a game that claims to be about choice. The ONE single character you get for going evil (who you can get as a neutral character as well) was bugged on release to the point where nearly all of her post-recruitment content was just non-existent. That feels like something REALLY OBVIOUS that QA should have caught. But Larian decided to outsource QA to Early Access players, I guess. Once they fix everything I am sure this game will be pretty good but I just don't know how I'm supposed to feel about a company that releases something like this and expects money up front before they fix it. My mistake for buying in early, so I guess I won't again.