I am still working my way out of the city. First of all, I am seasoned in both old and new fantasy games. I am old. Not that anyone has to care what I think, but my overall impression of this game is mixed. The so called Baldur's Gate 3 is reminiscent of the series yet isn't. This has already been said many times. The scripting begs very loudly for BG recognition by clumsily introducing old BG characters as if you just ran into them at Comic-Con. There is no iconic DM narrator (although the new narrators are great IMHO), few actual monster encounters, none of the amazing BG2 artistry during lengthy cutscenes, no jittery paperdoll characters, and the story arc, while engaging, seems last-minute and borrowed much of the time. Mechanics-wise the game is solid and only occasionally buggy. All BG games were buggy though. I guess it was only fair to add a few bugs to this one, too. There are evil character options built into the story from beginning to end which I find refreshing. The only problem is that there aren't many good options for say Paladins, which is the strongest class. Most 'good' options are just short of that IMHO. Not are characters are chaotic good / chaotic evil. These devs are clearly not very religious. Luckily for me I'm not either. You can just stun the plebs and pretend that it matters. There are actually many things this game does well though. For one thing, the high character detail and heavy voice acting leads to a very powerful character development tool for the PC companions. Few of them really go far enough into their background stories for a lasting impact (some dialogue is downright boring and time-wasting), but do sometimes manage to elicit emotional scenes on par with cinema. Reminds me of Mass Effect. This is something I hope they continue to develop at Larian. Overall I do recommend the game and I hope they can take the good and leave the bad.
