Gave it a shot, it was funner than I thought a DOS game would be, I ended up forgetting about watching Youtube and just ended up playing. The music can drive you nuts with the looping, but I overall enjoyed the sounds and music more than hated. Glad I gave this game a shot.
If you play this game casually, you will have a blast. The goal list for the arcade games however, will send you spiraling into maddness. I tried to complete the goal for Blockchain (150,000 points), thinking maybe I'm just bad at the game, since it made little sense to my tiny mind, turns out no, its just hard. With the online score system I found that I would have to hit top 10 worldwide, to complete that goal... what maddness, I learned this a bit late for one of the games.... For anyone curious I'm one of the top 100 scores for Stack Overflow, I think like 53rd? at the time. I'm listed as Blackwingg, but don't nearly murder yourself like I did, just play and have fun don't worry about the goals, even if the game makes you think they ARE they game, they are not. Play and have fun.
If you have never played the BG series this is a beginner friendly game, I had good fun and its admittedly fairly simple compared to BG2. I do feel that the weapons breaking thing, due to story reasons was annoying, Enhanced Edition confronts this with those fine weapons you can buy a little later, but they didn't include the 2 handed sword in the item list. If you get annoyed by the breaking weapons follow a guide and complete the quest quickly, then your swords will stop breaking, I went blind. I broke MANY 2 handed swords since I tried to do all the side quests before the main quests, an old habit ingrained into me. This caused me great trouble. Other than all that have fun.
It's a big and incredibly difficult game, you can go really, wherever you want to go, but you will get folded like a lawn chair. I tried to do all the quests in the main city first, only to get wrecked by resistances and immunities, you NEED to be prepared at all times in this game, I saw many call this game easy, but even with cheese, this game get rough. To beat the final boss is an accomplishment and you should feel proud, I struggled at cap lvl with a Fighter, had to abuse Wish (you will know). This game has some of the coolest quests and a very interesting story, if you ever run into a couple people shifted into stone near the end of the game, free them from their stoney prison. its the coolest quest in the game. I recommend you play this after the first game or after a small character creation guide atleast with basic Dnd knowledge, else you will suffer greatly. After you get some levels under your belt and a couple weapons for immunities... you will still die but maybe a little less. I recommend if you need some early game damage look up the Flail of Ages, you will encounter it naturally if you want to play blind, but this item helped me alot with my Fighter. If you need to store some items in the game, store them at "Watcher's Keep" this will allow you to transfer items between SoA and ToB (the base game and the expansion) . I made the mistake of not knowing this and losing a lot of items I stored, unless I was willing to lose some save data, since these two campaigns use separate save data. Now go, be free and have fun.
A great game with huge depth, there's not much to say about the beginning, its the best part of the game. The " Chapter 2 " part of the game is cool but I did get stuck on it and need a guide. It took me by surprise that I needed to hoof it to moonrise towers while taking dmg to get a lantern, I just kept thinking I was missing something but no, just hoof it and get a lantern. Chapter 3 was beyond rushed near the end, but it still had its crazy moments, like that one underwater rescue mission, it was legit. I considered complaining about act 2/3 and lowering to 4 stars, but each act is basically its own game, all included in 1. I had beaten both BG1, BG2 Enhanced Editions, I saw that they must of really loved these games because some of the coolest features of BG3 was brought from OG BG, such as the ability to split up party members into separate areas, a cool feature for single player, an amazing feature for multiplayer. I hope this game one day gets an Enhanced Edition by Larian, and I hope it all targets the 3rd Act, this game is a 10/10 even with its flaws due to sheer mass, and all the polish on Act 1, if later this polish get extended to Act 3 this game will be an 11/10. It's one of the best games ever made. My advice to players is to do what you want and enjoy the journey, thats what this game is made for, even if you kick the squirrel or bed the bear. Thats just plain fun. PS: will be playing all the Divinity games next, slowly but surely.
A classic Game, more than enjoyable, but definitely play with a guide for sanities sake. Works fine with Windows 11, beginning to end. no crashing.
