Baldur's Gate 3

Flipping out over this game being in Early Access, is ridiculous. They aren't hiding it, and they aren't going to charge you twice for the game. Not sure why ANY of you think that! Yes the game has some glitches, but that's to be expected when in Beta. With rebuilding the game the way they have, growing pains can be expected, however I feel they've done some damn good work so far.

In short: BG3 is on its way to greatness and will change the way we look at story telling, world building and visual presentation in RPGs! If you have an eye on the game already and don't mind EA, you cannot go wrong with purchasing this game even today. There is already a lot to see and do. It took me 32 hrs to reach the "official" end point and in all that time I only encountered 3 CTDs and no game-breaking bugs. There will be visual glitches and sometimes one of my companions would glitch out and no longer talk to me in camp but for EA the game is in surprisingly good shape. This game is based on DnD 5e, so be prepared to roll a D20. A LOT! And you will fail a lot of these rolls. At first, I found that frustrating and off-putting. But then I noticed that even in failure you do not automatically get an inferior outcome. It's actually a very faithful simulation of playing pen-and-paper and it made those moments when I had to make an impossible roll AND SUCCEEDED incredibly rewarding. Combat is fine with many doable and some proper tough fights where preparation and strategy is king. This game looks beautiful already. I played it on Ultra, and the world is stunning and diverse with a strong emphasis on verticality. NPCs will remember your choices and reference them throughout the game – the good and the bad! The voice acting in this game is incredibly good and the motion capture has remarkable detail already when it comes to gestures and expressions. The music is wonderful as well. The story looks very promising. You can do very good or very evil deeds in this game, and those choices have severe consequences. You can recruit 5 companions and each of them comes with their own agenda, morals and beliefs. They might disapprove of a lot of the things you do, but don't be discouraged - you can still improve relations in time and have them open up to you, even start a romance! All in all, I had a blast playing BG3 and cannot wait to play more!

Incredible graphics aside (which still have decent settings for recent cards), this is a greatly acted action RPG. It's still in development, and has some minor story holes, but it's complex enough that you'll be rewarded for poking around exploring and finding powerful weapons/challenging enemies, as well as twists to the story line. The one thing that you're warned about is that the game's allies are different enough that you won't be able to make them happy, so be warned about that. I have started three different games just to get with different characters/factions, and I can't wait until I can actually beat it.

People seem to think this game isn't Baldur's Gate because it has combat that isn't the outdated real time with pause that hasn't evolved in years that they seem to love so much, this game isn't just DOS 2 because it has amazing combat, if you've been waiting for Baldur's Gate 3 for decades then yeah it probably isn't going to be everything you imagined it to be. From what I've played it seems like this game is going to live up to the Larian quality we expect from them: the combat is well made and has a lot of interesting ways to kill your enemies, the characters are well written and have their own reasons to join you on your quest, from what I've played of the story so far it's pretty good. BUT I do not enjoy the $60 price tage for an early access game but a p[art of my feels Wizards of the Coast is responsible for that and not Larian, one of the developers also said some outdated bullshit about white men, and the way the early access for this game is it feels like we're "beta testing" and they're developing the game as they go along, it doesn't feel like the early access for DOS 2 which was meant for the community to give their feedback on what they have already made so they could change things before the final release so they could release the best version of the game, and then gave us a free definitive edition upgrade with some neat free content, also that game is $40. If you have faith in Larian then go ahead and buy it now, but I recommend waiting for the full realease jsut in case.

I'm gonna keep it as short as possible.. overall it's pretty incredible, writing, what story there is, characters, absolutely outstanding despite the bugs and issues currently present. Gameplay is.. well it's turn-based, it's pretty much the same as D:OS 2, with the big difference being you only have one action point, and there's no way of increasing that, like there was in D:OS 2. Now.. I get that this is based off of some D&D rule-set or w/e, but holy fuck the dice-roll mechanic. Yeah it's probably great when you're playing at a table with a group of friends, messing around or having fun with whatever happens, but in an environment like this? With an epic over-arching plot, and interesting characters that you might grow to love? Hundreds of interactions just in the first act alone? No. Just no. The randomness of a dice roll deciding basically EVERYTHING of import in dialogue and outcomes is a TERRIBLE mechanic for an RPG. I sincerely hope there will be an option to turn off the dice-mechanic and play with stat checks instead, because there was only one thing that prevented me from fully enjoying act 1, and having legitimately zero complaints, and it wasn't the obvious bugs, unfinished cutscenes, non-existant animations, awkward camera angles.. all expected things in an early access state.. no it wasn't any of that, it was the dumb pure RNG mechanic present in every single interaction, it drove me mad. This is a completionists nightmare plain and simple. Please Larian, if it isn't already something you're going to do, I beg you to consider letting people swap the dice-roll mechanic for a stat-check like in D:OS 2 instead, or at least something similar.