Really great adaptation of a DnD campaign in video game form. The story is really interesting and can go in quite a number directions. The characters are the highlight of the game, in my opinion. They all feel very "alive" and are extremely fun to interact with.
You can immerse yourself in the world and be serious about the role play or you can do some of the most outrageous things you can thing of for a game.
Lets start off with this. Would I change some things if I was in charge of the game? Yes, of course I would. There are too many humans and elves in the origin characters, I don't like stone off the programming choices they made for paladin oaths, and they could use deeper dialog trees for learning the backgrounds of various npcs.
That being said, this is very much a Baldur's Gate game. If you know the setup and lore of the previous two then there are some subtle hints of connections to those games that will probably be expanded on in the full game.
This is also very much the Forgotten Realms setting. Yes, some characters are acting against what the groups they belong to would normally do, but you're supposed to notice that and wonder why. There's all kinds of references to various lore that only true fans would catch.
The gameplay is great and will be polished for final release. Furthermore, they are actually fulfilling their promises, unlike other releases from the past few years.
Do you want a great crpg that will define that genre for the next decade? Play BG3. If that's not what you're looking for then try something else.
It is literally unplayable in this state. Hotfix 4 is out, and still my UI disappears every time I switch character, in all my save games. This is the 4th gamebreaking bug for me, and I will not throw away ANOTHER progress, this time 20 hours away. I will give it an other go next year when they fixed the game. If you don't fancy starting over very often and losing all your progress because of game breaking bugs, I recommend you stay away from this game.
It is a very enjoyable game but you will spend a lot of time redoing things because of crashes, saves that won't load and scenes that suddenly develop a flaw and don't let you do what needs to be done. I had to delete about 10 hours of saves because the game wouldn't let me leave camp. Very frustrating and it is really too bad because the story is good, the graphics are great and the gameplay is excellent. It's too bad the bugs ruin the experience.
Any compelling gameplay is drowned out by very poor writing.
The characters are cookie cutter, bland, and empty. Zero character building. It’s more of a platform for the developers to talk about how they feel and believe than to write a fantasy story.
Wouldn’t recommend. There are a few mods that help this situation, but just avoid.