Baldur's Gate 3

As fan of Baldur's Gate saga this game hurts me. I was afraid that Larian would not understand its essence and unfortunately that has been the case. This has literally nothing to do with the original saga except for the names they use to name places, races and spells. However, if you are fan of Divinity saga, you may enjoy this game.

To start with, what's up with time played on GOG? Shows I've played for 15 minutes (meanwhile 10h in game...) Anyway, let's start with positives: - So many pop-ups (of good kind). Game constantly checks for stuff. Did your character recognize events, pictures, body language of people you're talking with and so on. It's borderline insane how much of those you're see (or won't, depending on RNG) - Voice acting - Impressive. Amazing. Brilliant. Perfect. (minus points for narration, which just doesn't fit the tone) - Choices - I could drone on and on about this one, but let's just say "WHAT THE HELL!" and leave it at that Now for few negatives: - To quote good old Starship Troopers: BUUUUUGS, BUUUUUUUUGS! I've got the game on hold until a fix comes out for one of the companion quests. Can't talk to NPC, can't progress. Waiting time. - Combat - Way, way, waaaay too slow when there are a lot of characters present. If you've played Wrath of The Righteous and remember inn defense mission, where each turn took 2 minutes of NPC actions, that happens too frequently here. - It's not Baldurs gate. Sorry, but it's just not. It has none of the tone of BG game. It feels and plays identical to Divinity: Original Sin 1/2. You can put this one to positives and add one more star if you don't mind it. Also a negative, but in separate category: - Horny companions - What in the everloving hell? Why is everyone so hell bent on having sex with main character? Why are all of the dialogue options either: A: Sure, let's have fun under the sheets right now! B: OOoooh, kinky, I love it. C: Back off, you freak of nature, I never want to see your face again, you degenerate. How about some friendly options Larian? You know, human interaction? No? Just me? Fine, whatever, be like that, but it's a serious negative in my book. Good game, but I'll be honest, I'm disappointed. Kinda just left me wanting to reinstall Pathfinder.

At first I was quite baffled by the price of the game - 60$ for early access? However having played the game I actually understood - the game is as polished from a technical standpoint as it can be, sure you may run into a few mouths not opening at the correct time, but we have seen a lot worse from 'fully-released' titles. get it!

If you're thinking of archiving the game via GOG's offline installers (i.e. the one reason to buy specifically from GOG), you're going to have a rough time. Larian has released a couple totally broken offline patch installers that demand 1TB+ (yes terabytes) of space to work. Except they still don't work, even when the game and patch are on a drive with enough space. They've also created dead end upgrade paths because they never released patches to join the branches they created. Basically, plan on not being able to rely on offline patches, and instead expect to be downloading 100+ GB full installers if archival is your goal. Larian is well aware of the issue, and is either incapable of or uninterested in providing consistently working offline patches.

Please note that I am not giving this game a low score due to bugs or technical issues due to it being in early access. I believe the majority of those problems will be fixed. This game is not for Baldur's Gate fans. As expected, the title is pure marketing and a cash grab. This is Divinity OS 3 with a completely mangled DnD 5e ruleset (way too many liberties were taken deviating from the core rules) that breaks gameplay. Exploring the game is a tedious chore. Way too much meaningless clutter in the world, a camera view that reveals everything even if not in party sight (for example you can see 5 guys waiting to ambush you behind closed doors) and most combat encounters which should be exciting and action packed are a yawn fest due to the choice of having this be a turn based game which does not fit with the way the turns are done. You just play your turn and go watch a show while you wait for the AI to finish doing their stuff (which takes quite a while). Hoping for nice combat encounters as you would expect from a DnD game? Forget that, you'll just see turn after turn of goblins throwing grenades, magic and elemental arrows at you. The whole theme of the game is wrong. The narrator sounds like a porn star whispering in your ear instead of an actual story teller. The setting is too bright and jolly. The companions lack personality and most of them are just a bag of cringy and exaggerated reactions. The whole everyone in your party wants to bang you be it male or female and only known you for a little while is also present here which is dumb. Banter is non existent except for a few generic interactions. All in all, if you're interested in Baldur's Gate 3... just save your money and pretend this game never existed. If you're a fan of Divinity OS 2 and don't mind a sequel which uses a system that makes the experience worse than DOS2 but is still the same feel, then you may like this Divinity OS 3.