As fan of Baldur's Gate saga this game hurts me. I was afraid that Larian would not understand its essence and unfortunately that has been the case. This has literally nothing to do with the original saga except for the names they use to name places, races and spells. However, if you are fan of Divinity saga, you may enjoy this game.
To start with, what's up with time played on GOG? Shows I've played for 15 minutes (meanwhile 10h in game...)
Anyway, let's start with positives:
- So many pop-ups (of good kind). Game constantly checks for stuff. Did your character recognize events, pictures, body language of people you're talking with and so on. It's borderline insane how much of those you're see (or won't, depending on RNG)
- Voice acting - Impressive. Amazing. Brilliant. Perfect. (minus points for narration, which just doesn't fit the tone)
- Choices - I could drone on and on about this one, but let's just say "WHAT THE HELL!" and leave it at that
Now for few negatives:
- To quote good old Starship Troopers: BUUUUUGS, BUUUUUUUUGS!
I've got the game on hold until a fix comes out for one of the companion quests. Can't talk to NPC, can't progress. Waiting time.
- Combat - Way, way, waaaay too slow when there are a lot of characters present. If you've played Wrath of The Righteous and remember inn defense mission, where each turn took 2 minutes of NPC actions, that happens too frequently here.
- It's not Baldurs gate. Sorry, but it's just not. It has none of the tone of BG game. It feels and plays identical to Divinity: Original Sin 1/2.
You can put this one to positives and add one more star if you don't mind it.
Also a negative, but in separate category:
- Horny companions - What in the everloving hell? Why is everyone so hell bent on having sex with main character? Why are all of the dialogue options either:
A: Sure, let's have fun under the sheets right now!
B: OOoooh, kinky, I love it.
C: Back off, you freak of nature, I never want to see your face again, you degenerate.
How about some friendly options Larian? You know, human interaction? No? Just me? Fine, whatever, be like that, but it's a serious negative in my book.
Good game, but I'll be honest, I'm disappointed. Kinda just left me wanting to reinstall Pathfinder.
At first I was quite baffled by the price of the game - 60$ for early access?
However having played the game I actually understood - the game is as polished from a technical standpoint as it can be, sure you may run into a few mouths not opening at the correct time, but we have seen a lot worse from 'fully-released' titles.
get it!
If you're thinking of archiving the game via GOG's offline installers (i.e. the one reason to buy specifically from GOG), you're going to have a rough time.
Larian has released a couple totally broken offline patch installers that demand 1TB+ (yes terabytes) of space to work. Except they still don't work, even when the game and patch are on a drive with enough space.
They've also created dead end upgrade paths because they never released patches to join the branches they created. Basically, plan on not being able to rely on offline patches, and instead expect to be downloading 100+ GB full installers if archival is your goal. Larian is well aware of the issue, and is either incapable of or uninterested in providing consistently working offline patches.
