Baldur's Gate 3

I can see why are people criticizing new Baldur's Gate, and some of their reasons are legit. It's not a perfect game. I'm still giving it a maximum score, because of the amount of pure enjoyment I got from the new Sword Coast. It's a great story in a beautiful and responsive world. Combat is fun, characters are interesting and typical Larian humor works well with lighthearted tone of the original Baldur’s Gate. I know that the game becomes buggier over time, and some of the cameos aren’t that great. Also it’s obvious that third act could use some more work. But the overall experience is so great, that I can’t give this one anything less than 5 stars. Word of advice, if you’re just starting, don’t treat Act 1 and 2 as the interlude to Act 3 and Baldur’s Gate. The story is divided pretty evenly between all three parts, and you’ll get disappointed.

On the Bioware side, it has charming companion characters with interesting stories. Some of it can feel a little formulaic or forced, but the characters are so likable and their voice performances / character animations are so good that it all just works. It reminds me of how I felt about my Mass Effect crew way back when. The real magic is that it combines this with systems that are flexible enough to recreate a lot of the fun of in-person D&D. Plans that I can imagine a group having both out of combat (I'll distract the guards by playing my lute, you misty step into the cell to help the prisoners while the others take out the sentries) or in combat (you set them on fire and then I'll Donkey Kong a barrel of gunpowder at them) can actually work and feel right. When I think back on my time playing this game, I think I'll remember it similarly to an actual Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Nothing can replace actually sitting around a table with your friends, but I've never seen anything that came closer.

I would give it 2.5 stars if I could. If it weren't for the bugs, I might give this game 5 stars. It is very well voice acted and all the characters feel meaningful and believable. The story is there until act 3 when they decide to introduce questionable characters and show weird cutscenes that are inconsistent with the rest of the game, such as villains talking in a room you are not in, very un-immersive and cliche IMO. I know BG3 has been in developments for a couple years now in early access, and recently had a "full release" but frankly it is unfinished (noticeable once you get to act 3) and communication from the developers has fallen off a cliff. They have been releasing random "hotfixes" which don't address most of the main issues and there is no communication as to whether they plan on fixing major issues or not. Some very random questionable decisions that no one asked for like Astarion's airbrushed abs for god sakes. At it's core, they made some questionable decisions with the development of the game like implementing DirectX 11 and not 12, lack of Nvidia frame generation, adding AMD FSR but only version 2.1 and not 3.0 etc. making us 4000 RTX owners look like we wasted our money on our cards when we get 40 FPS in the city! Once you get to act 3 there are game-breaking bugs as others have pointed out. SPOILER: I had a bug where I could not talk to Wyll's father because I destroyed the steel watch before confronting Gortash (because the draw-bridge was up) and when I did there was no cutscene and I felt like there should have at least been one. Tried everything from knocking him out to using necromancy with no luck in getting him on my side. Had to go back 8 hours just to fix it! The order I was supposed to do things was super unclear. I cannot believe this game has not gone on sale, even 20% off is something new buyers deserve. Overall avoid for a while until they release the actual final game.

Baldurs Gate 3 is a lot of fun, it doesn't use Infinity Engine so it wont play like the originals but its still a great game if you like D&D. So far I am enjoying the game regardless of the dialog bugs. Worth the price if you like D&D and Baldurs Gate games.

First let me state, I have both D:OS 1 and 2. That being said, I think it is really unfair and short sighted for other commenters to go on about this just being D:OS 3. It is not. Does it have a lot of game play similarities? Yes. But I mean, it is the studio that MADE D:OS so I don't hold that against them. Honestly, I got this game like 5 days ago, and I am already 30+ hours in, on my second play through. I was pretty hesitant to buy the game, because I made the mistake of reading all these reviews, and although I enjoyed D:OS, I wanted a different story, and slightly refined gameplay. This has that. Then you have the D&D 5e purists, that nitpick every little difference. This is a RPG game, not a tabletop. There will be difference. But what I enjoyed was the back story regarding D&D mythos that I easily recognized from my youth. So here it is, the game is beautiful, graphics stunning. The character models are very nice, and great emotional range on NPCs and companions during your cinematics. The quests are cool, the cinematics are beautiful. There are some little things I hope get fine tuned, but overall I am really enjoying it, and chomping at the bit to see more content, and where the companion stories go. There is already a great modding community for this game, so make sure to check that out. The game plays pretty clean, I think in 30+ hours I have had 2 crashes. There IS a couple cinematic bugs for the PC (especially with the dream sequences) but I am sure that will be fixed in patch 4. The only thing that bothers me, is after playing the content in alpha (which admittedly is larger than I expected). I just really....really don't want to wait a year or more for the full game. But so is life. In closing, don't let the "It's D:OS 3, not BG" people, or the "It's not true 5e GRRRR" people in the comments ruin it for you. If you like a good RPG game, this really is worth the investment in my opinion.