博德之门3

I really liked, that they offer a lot of role playing options to go forward besides the typical combat. You may can distract or reason with the enemy or maybe there is a back entrance, or maybe you even switch sides. There is so much stuff in there I really like.

Hard to give a midling review among the acclaim, but despite being a fan of both the Baldur's Gate and the Original Sin series, I found the game good but certainly not a classic. The first flaw of this game is that it's "BG3". The game is DOS3 in everything but name and a few fanservice references, be it the with the style, the writing or the mechanics. Also, the original serie was closed and finished, and neither needed nor provided space for a sequel. It means that the link between BG2 and BG3 are tenuous, filled with retcons, some character assassination thrown in, and often invalidating whatever the player could have actually done. All that means that the game would have been actually better by being straight-up a DOS sequel rather than a BG sequel, which seems to have been decided only for the hype (though it seems it was a decision that did pay off...). When it comes to the game as it stands, the writing is good and witty, though often quite a bit too edgy. Characters are nicely done, but often somewhat forgettable and a bit too edgy. The absurdly excessive backgrounds also didn't help, especially with the massive dissonance of them being low-level - one is the (unwilling) best soldier of one of the nine lords of Hell ; another is the literal, bona fide lovers of a straight-up goddess. It makes for pretty contrived stories and seriously hampers the suspension of disbelief. The game does have excellent maps and takes into account your decisions, and react to many of them, so hat off to Larian for this. It's also massive and very ambitious, and manage to not trip too much itself with it. But as with companions, it doesn't mesh very well with itself, with lots of contents that seems crammed into it without really much reason rather than organically coming together, with a main story that... simply isn't very interesting. On the whole, the game is well-done, but somehow soulless and not very immersive. I expected a blast, I ended up with a "meh".

Just like all of Larian's RPGs, it has an amazing first act that makes you think you're playing the best game of all time, and then it quickly starts falling apart the minute the second act starts. Bugged quests, rushed content, railroading you down one path or another while removing lots of the free choice you were spoiled with in prior acts, romances that don't pay off, side quests that never tie up their loose ends, and long encounter gauntlets that are all but rigged against you. 90 hours in and I'm going to set it aside now and wait for the inevitable 'enhanced edition' where they go back and finish up the other 75% of the game.

Title pretty much describes my thoughts on the game. I'm having quite some fun with the game, but it is so far and apart from Dungeons & Dragons it feels like it's a joke. Gog offers all the true D&D games by Bioware, perhaps the chaps over at Larian should have played those before trying to sell us Divinity 3 for Baldur's Gate. The only difference I see between Divinity 2 and this game is the Forgotten Realms setting, which isn't all that obvious anyway.

The first two Acts are very well done and clearly a lot of time and care went into them. The story is immersive and the gameplay fun. Sadly Act 3 and the ending are an absolute trainwreck with side quests that go nowhere and most of your choices throughout the game end up being moot outside a few buffs/temp npcs in the final fight. There is no real epilogue and the quest endings that you get during gameplay are all the closure that you get.