I'm in France,
I see a price tagged at 71.40 USD / 60€ for an early access, no visible premium bonuses, that's a shameless decision.
not worth the financial effort.
2020 is a dark time for many of us, and thus the news of a Baldur's Gate sequel on the horizon was a desperate glimmer of hope. Having gone hands-on with it, it remains, unfortunately, only a glimmer.
The potential is there. The cast of characters plastered on that banner hint at something intriguing and evocative of the original spirit of Baldur's Gate. The aesthetics are 110% on point, down to the cursor being a gauntlet, the spell icons, all of it. The art department did their homework. As did the lore people. It's a phenomenally beautiful game solidly grounded in the mythos not only of Faerun but of the Baldur's Gate franchise in particular.
All of that can't plaster over the gameplay. Leaving aside the inevitable bugs and hiccups of an EA title, the fact is this is another DOS game. I haven't played DOS. I'm fine with turn-based games on a tabletop. I'm less fine with it here, or at least being forced into the mode where BG1 and 2 gave me the liberty to choose.
Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 succeeded because they opted to simulate the feeling of a tabletop experience, rather than the mechanics. Larian with BG3 seems to be tilting towards simulating the obtuse mechanics at the expense of everything else. Doubtless this will appeal to the same kind of grognards that flog the virtues of a command-line interface while ignoring its failings, those that confuse proficiency with a bad, inefficient, or just plain unpleasant system with high intelligence, rather than limited vision.
I may come around to it, eventually. I initially hated BG2 because of Chateau Irenicus. I tried Morrowind when it came out, disliked it, played through Oblivion and Skyrim, before coming back to Morrowind and falling more deeply in love with it than either of the former. But I think as long as turn-based combat remains mandatory rather than another option, that will be a sticking point for a good long time.
The game has an interesting story, which I will not spoil. Rather, I'd like to talk a little about the issues I've had with the game. Currently, there is no difficulty levels, and seems to be cranked to meat grinder unless you play specific builds. I'm currently trying to get through on Wizard, and getting nuked pretty often. I haven't been able to locate an active Search ability in the game, meaning if you fail a passive search, what ever thing was there, you lost. There currently is not an option to roll stats, and only a very limiting point buy system as if this were some low quality RPG like White Wolf that uses Dot Sheets.
Basically right now, to get anywhere, you're going to have to rely on luck and save scumming, unless you play some meta build. Game has potential though, so if you want the game you might want to wait till it leaves early access and has a more polished experience for you.
Haven't played too much yet, but the quality of everything from the UI, to the cutscenes, to the control of the characters, to everything else is just next level. I can see how other AAA developers felt self conscious when seeing this. Not just any studio can make something with this level of care. This will most likely go down as an historic masterpiece of the RPG genre