Tainted Grail has fixed literally every problem I ever complained about with the ElderScrolls games; the most prominent of which (imo) has always been the grossly unrealistic combat. TG feels light years ahead of both TES and Souls-likes in terms of the stark realism. Anyone who has done armored combat even in reenactment battles, will know how brutal the endurance problem is. This type of fighting is an exercise in resource management; if you can't control heat and exhaustion you die, its that simple. Something 'like' this is being reflected in this game in terms of endurance and stamina, and I very much appreciate it. Things like this help a dark fantasy to be appropriately fatalistic without resorting to simple punishment. The realism of your human limitations is a natural difficulty, and more grim than any number of over-amped bosses. That is just one part of the game - there are so many other aspects to the design of TG that are well thought out. Another is the huge range of freedom you're given in terms of character types and play styles - but unlike other titles in this genre, you're not simply a master-of-everything by default, where your sense of class identity disappears. Choosing a direction like close melee or ranged means you will still have to make an investment into what you want to be good at. I will play this game for years, and really hope that Questline/Awakend Realms does well enough to support continued development on DLCs. You guys blew this out of the park.
I played this game very early, from its first beta (hasn't changed much in 3 years). There are no serious technical issues, its early access, but it has always been playable. The biggest problem with Baldur's Gate 3 is that the over-design of the world, and the astronomical amount of hyper focus on the Feature Characters (formerly known as NPCs) and the layers upon layers of story and background. An RPG of this tradition are meant for the player to create a story of their own, not be drowned by the Game Master's personality. But that is what happens. Baldur's Gate 3 is less like a D&D game, and more like the personal carnal fantasy of the Larian design staff. They have personally invested so much into these characters that you literally feel like an accessory to their adventures, and your own path is just a theme park ride that they provide to you. This is what happens when a Dungeon Master personally projects too much of their own ideas and personality, beliefs, etc into the game world. That is a form of manipulation, and its offensive to players. A DM who wants to project something should just write a book, not run a campaign. This is the Prime Mechanic (Larian is projecting their personalities, beliefs, and ideas into your creative space). So you cannot find a Faerun that has a population that you have come to know over the decades since its creation. Instead you will find a Faerun that is beset with woke politics, gender dysphoria, and over-sexualized characters and situations. Maybe that appeals to 2-5% of the current (2020's culture) population, but certainly not all, or even half. When you infect a timeless genre with modern, contemporary issues, you date-stamp that game in a way that will make it incredibly unappealing to most players in the present, and all players in the future. This game is going to age terribly, as most woke disasters do.
This game mentions 'female protagonist'. That was an understatement, considering that 80% of all characters of any significance whatsoever are female. I can understand that equal representation is important to some people, but the casting and writing for this game broke immersion after a couple of hours on account of the fact that there are no such populations to even compare it to. Seriously, there are no male characters in this world who have a voice and role that is anything other than a merchant, a failure, or a disposable minion. It it weren't so horrendously weighted by this caricature of gender imbalance, this would be a tremendously enjoyable game. In terms of the D&D RPG experience, I think Pathfinder does a much better job that D&D mainly because of what it hasn't removed - alignments, which are the glue that holds that universe together. Without alignments, you really descend into something that is basically a renaissance faire, where people are just wearing costumes and looking for their next spicy evening with someone. Alignment is the basis for the many divergent (Mythic) paths you can take in this story, and allows you to enjoy some very different playthroughs depending on the type of character you're willing to play. That is a huge value. Character detail is just phenomenal. The amount of classes and related abilities is just amazing; many games of this style do not go to the lengths of facilitating things like mounted characters, or facilitating the dark alignments with classes that should be there (cultists, etc). Gameplay feels very streamlined, and some or all of the steps in the process can be accelerated to levels that surpass the usual turn based mechanic. Its great to see the active mod community, and know there are customizations available if you want them. Overall, I am certain I would give this game a 5 if the writing had been less extreme on the gender slant. But sadly, it isn't, and that does the rest of the game an injustice.
