Have about 120 hours in this game.. there's so much variety based on choices you make and tons to discover. Combat is a lot of fun and challenging. Graphics are stunning, characters develop nicely as do their personalities. Had 2 crashes in all this time. Does have some Quest bugs and small bugs in the world but overall really smooth so far. Good implementation of D&D 5e and not too DOS like. It's a great game and I am really looking forward to the continuation of the story
As a fan of Baldurs Gate series i gave this one a try.
I was aware that the experience may be different than the Baldurs Gate games I played before, but ... not that much different.
It has ups that works perfectly for immersion (Elves meditating instead of sleeping, believable NPC reactions and understandable wrong choices like mind plays vs mindflayers) and downs, that ruins this immersion (Drow females that does not despises males and submit to their will willinglisly and narrator. Compare these two sentences for example "You wonder if she's discovered your secret", "I wondered if she'd discovered my secret.").
Game have huge potential, but personally i do not believe it will go in good way. Some playable character reactions are ill-considered and woven into the plot by force and against the lore.
I would recommend anyone to wait till full release to because as people already mentioned, this game is bugged as hell. I was reloading game more time than actually playing it is that buggy and crash-y. But I doesn't criticize it as it is early Beta as creators openly wrote.
Bought this in early access over a year ago. Never played an RPG before. Not too familiar with D&D lore. My laptop can't even run it on medium settings. Despite all that, loving the gameplay so far. On my second playthrough now. Full of content and adventure, although I would like a little bit more randomization on a second playthrough. Looking forward to full release soon.
The gameplay does not work like in BG II / Icewind Dale /Planescape Torment but it makes a lot of fun. Who played DOS II will see many similar similarities in Design but character skilling and turn based fighting are lacking the complexity of DOS II. It would be unfair to call it a DOS III in the BG universe.
I played BG III now two times. For me it is the attempt to create the feeling of a pen & paper session on the screen. And that works very well for me. And despite the fights are lacking the complexity of DOS II or X-COM, I enjoy them much more than in BGII, Pillars of Eternity or Planescape. But that is just my personal taste. Beside that: The Game has beautiful graphics, great cinematics and a very good story. And I just like how Larian is still designing every level by hand and not just creating a open world with random content.
I played it with Patch 5 and it worked very well on my PC. Only two things annoyed me:
1) Bug prevented me sometimes to climb down and up ladders in the deeper areas of the crone.
2) The level cap of 4. If I can't collect any more XP, it's just not motivating for me. I hope Larian is increasing the level cap to 5. If they increase the level cap, I might play it again.
