The first chapter is overall worthy all praise this game has gotten. I was immediately hooked, and enjoyed the second real D&D game (as it is turn-based, ToEE was the first) immensely for many, many hours. The writing is good, the characters are mostly good/believable, the music is fantastic sometimes. A clear 5-star. The only thing I don't like is the models for some demi-human races. With chapter 2 the quality dropped noticeably in my opinion - even the music dropped in quality. But the game was still good - that is, until I came to a certain point in the story, where (in part extremely) bad writing combined with real-world politics really was a huge turn-off. The game dropped to 3/5 in my book, and there it stays. For if the end of chapter 2 was at times painful to watch, chapter 3 goes completely bananas when it comes to political correctness, cringe-worthy dialogs, and very shallow characters. I mean, the 2 arch-villains are almost caricatures - one looks like glam-rocker from a very bad band, and the the other sounds like a cackling madwoman who is everything but intimidating. The entire dramaturgy falls into into shambles, one might say. What saves the 3 stars is the endgame/-battle, which was quite entertaining. Baldur's Gate 3 is definitely worth playing, but expect quite a lot "facepalm" moments from the end of chapter 2 and onward. I hope to see mods fixing the aspects of the game which needs fixing, now that the toolkit is available (I hope it will be so here on GOG?).
