Coming from Pathfinder WOTR I think the story is underwhelming, equipment progression is bad (e.g. best longsword found in act 1 with blue rarity, only one purple an not a single legendary exist), certain seemingly important choices have no real consequences, the resting mechanics are annoying. Playing WOTR with auto-buff mod is the much better choice for me. While BG3 gets worse with every act, WOTR becomes better.
It feels a bit like Elden Ring, although not that hard and with a lot of randomness. Seirously, you will spent as about much time reloading/"godsbaning" in front of chests or trtying out the sequence of identifying (purifying) gear to get what you want and need as actually playing the game. Endgame gear even has random enchantments and the pawns (your "AI" companions) are pretty dumb. Climbing monsters and mixing classes (vocations) is great though. The story is okay, but that seems to be some Japanese Souls-like cryptic thing going on here, which i personally do not fancy. Being able to confront strong enemies from the beginning is something I do.
I played this on hard as balanced was a joke. However, after you reach tower level 50, the enemies spams you with stacks that are always 1 level above your own. Even having all your units and 2 healers on lvl 15 does not help here, my human units were always fighting the undead circle mages on Goldfields but at some point you cannot go anywhere because otherwise they will destroy your tower. This is usually when they throw a Tier 4 unit at you with 1-2 more stack numbers and mainly tier 3 units. Until then I managed to not lose a single unit, but suddenly it became impossible. This game lacks so many things... unit abilities are acquired randomly, they are completely unbalanced (t3 paladins or griffons are no match for a t3 haunted armor, aome units can use mind control on other units), units dont even change their appearance when they level up (at least at max level there should be some sort of distinction) and AI just gets infinite free units to smash at you on hard difficulty. Spells are mostly useless in fights (you cannot use them in the fights, just on the world map). Tower upgrading is just for getting money/mana/research points, you have to find good units to buy on the world map. I regret buying this game in a sale. An absolute failure to me as a fan of HoMM.
When I started this game, it felt like the old days in Gothic 2: A nobody who has to make his way up. You lack of any armor, weapon or skills. You have to learn how to fight (literally by practicing but also by training with Bernard). This felt so good in the early beginning. But then lockpicking happened. I stole a whole armor set in Talmberg (which is the prologue) - and if I remember correctly, I could keep it afterwards. This was actually emphasized as part of the story line. That was quite demotivating. However, even if you finish the quest in another way (without stealing), the moment you arrive in the next town the same thing happens again. I found one of the best swords in a chest and the first plate armor on some bandits still very early in the game. There is no correctly-paced, motivating progress for me, since armor can be looted from corpses and sold. This way you will earn a lot of money very fast and just buy high tier equipment. Usually you can wear that equipment early on, as you increase your stats enough during training or participating the weekly tournament (one of the greatest things in this game!). And this is the biggest flaw. Stealing and looting corpses ruined the game for me, as it allows Henry to become much too strong much too fast, killing the experience of the journey from a blacksmith's son to a knight. You even get a horse for free. And the best saddle as a quest reward. I think you know what I mean by now. The other big flaw is the fact that the game throws groups of enemies at you. As I really enjoyed duels especially during the tournament, fighting more enemies at once is just not working with that combat/locking system - not to mention that all the practice in duels is worthless in such encounters. The perfect block / counter-attack system seems great at first, but makes combos quite useless in my opinion as enemies interrupt you most of the time. Those are the reasons why I stopped playing. And the hunger system.
