Baldur's Gate 3

I still have my collectors edition of Baldur's Gate 2 and I love the series. I didn't like this mind flayer/octopus theme and started to play almost 1,5y after the premiere, when the game was given to me as my early Xmas present. And after few hours I have found myself having so much fun trying to figure out how to win a difficult fight, what else I can do or how to make party member like me etc. Soon after I discovered mods and realise that they can fix some minor annoyances with UI, camera or spell balance making the game even better. Yes, BG 1 and 2 story was more dramatic and elaborated. But BG3 storytelling is about how you want to play your story. You have so much possibilities. Your companions seem less like great heroes and more like real people and you become very fast involved in their story, learn to know and love them. Soundtrack is so beautiful. Every trivial conversations is fully voiced and has realistic body language reactions. There is so much love and work being put into this game and it shows. I have to go now. I have some squirrels to talk to ;)

It has been 22 years... 22 years since Baldur's Gate came into this world and wowed us all - now, we have Larian Studios doing what Bioware did so many years ago - telling compelling stories in wonderous setting and still have the grim-dark feel about it that I loved from the original. I'm happy they have gone away from Real Time combat and instead implemented the way the gameplay is supposed to be - turn-based! Not a huge fan of the 5e rules, I much more like Pathfinder, but this is what we get - and I can live with it! The graphics are mindblowing, enviroments as well as characters. Still early access, so there are things that are wonky, and doesn't work as intended, but as of now it is very much playable and very enjoyable!

2.5 hours played. No crashes. Some random texture pops. Runs flawlessly. Fast load screens. Technically speaking, it's as good as I can expect for EA. Little things will get ironed out. The companions need a little more life to them. There's not enough banter (only one so far) or interaction from them during dialogue. Like, they don't even chime in when I'm recruiting a new party member. This is my biggest worry right now. I'll update if this improves. Combat is D&D goodness. Might end up being the best implementation of our favorite tabletop system out there. The verticality in the game really has the opportunity to take combat to new heights. A darker palette and heavier undertones to the music will go a long way to transitioning the D:OS feel to BG. It's entirely "fixable".

I paid for this back in 2020 pretty much as soon as I could, played a couple hours and found several aspects unpleasant, but figure I'd just wait until the full release came. Now with more than 40 hours in the "finished" game, I am mostly disappointed. From graphical glitches to weird progression bugs, this game feels remarkably unfinished after nearly three years since it was launched publically. Even aside from that, Larian's weird fixation on massive combat encounters, where you end up waiting minutes at a time between actions while waiting for the NPCs to take their turns and then struggle to parse who's friendly and who's hostile in the clutter. Squad management is needlessly cumbersome, the inventory system is a trainwreck, there's not a "puzzle" I've come across yet that wasn't more infuriating than satisfying, and the maps feel incoherent and needlessly difficult to navigate. Visual design is fine, and story is okay so far, but this is well beneath what I was expecting from Larian.

Writing and characters in act I were stellar. Act II ditched most of what made act I fun and was about as fun as treking through Modor. Entered act III, quickly reached max level and then hit a wall. Pretty much every other encounter would be "Deadly" in dnd terms and combat takes longer and longer. On the way to the final confrontation you have tons of enemies and can call upon allies. It takes so long that I just can't. Might slog through it for some kind of ending but gods damn