Here are a few feedback items after playing what I think is most of the available chapter.
1. Getting into the game is not easy.
The first two hours or so were utterly confusing, as quite a few controls were not where I expected them to be and there were neither tooltips nor a tutorial. IMO the game needs to give more help getting into it. If you're a somewhat experienced gamer you'll learn things eventually, but if you're new, or even just coming from a replay of BG2:EE as I did, and expecting things to be a little more familiar, you'll be lost for a while. The issue here is that it took me more perseverance to get to the point where I was comfortable with playing the game than in most games I've played in the last few years, including both the Pillars of Eternity and the Pathfinder games. Notably, this *excludes* combat which I found unexpectedly intuitive and easy to get into, but affects things like movement, viewing your character's stats, inventory, trading, camera control and a few other things.
2. Inventory/looting and trading/bartering issues
2a. I have to say I miss the inventory design of the Pathfinder games, where general loot and its weight was automatically shared among the party. BG3's design seems to be a step backward. Inventory is, IMO, always the area that needs concessions to playability at the expense of realism most, because it can be such a hassle without them.
2b. Related to this is a particular annoying aspect of trading/Bartering: the prices are calculated using the stats of the active character, so prices change as you change characters while in the trading interface. This means that if you want to get the best prices, you need to give everything to the character with the highest charisma. Which, if it is - as is likely - a physically weak character like a sorcerer, results in several tedious rounds of moving stuff between characters. Meanwhile, the item preview which shows whether you have proficiency to use an item, is always based on the character who addressed the trader first, which means that if you want to see this for a different character, you need to abort trading and speak to the trader with the character in question. IMO, it should be the other way round. You should always be able to trade using the CHA of the character who addressed the trader, while item preview should be based on the currently selected character in the interface.
2c. The "highlight containers" key should highlight *all* containers and interactive elements, not just a subset. It's far too easy to miss interesting loot because it was located in an unassuming standard crate that blends into the background.
3. Movement
3a. You should be able to move your viewpoint further up or down from your character's position than is possible now. Once your viewpoint is "up there", you can usually make it stay there if you want, but the zoom out function is often insufficient of getting it "up there". There should some a function "move viewpoint up". Or maybe there is and I have overlooked it.
3b. There are some issues with stealth and group movement. The controls "group stealth" and "toggle group movement" don't always result in the desired state of things. Notably, sometimes characters are selectively effected without being ungrouped. Sometimes characters appear to become ungrouped for reasons I have been unable to determine.
3c. I've had one issue with a character walking off a wooden walkway and falling to his death with no apparent reason. No trap, no enemy, no failed perception check. He just walked off and fell.
3d. It is odd that you can fast-travel to your main camp out of every location. Regular long rests create an in-location camp, as it should be, but you can always go to your main camp instead. Which means you will not be able to return to your previous location by just leaving the camp, and this also pulls you out of the world since this should not be possible. If this makes it into the published game, IMO the difference should be explained to the player at some point.
4. Companions
4a. I've read Karlach is a companion, but after I helped her out and and invited her in, she just went away. Did I overlook something?
4b. Sometimes, if you defer talking to a companion too long, you will get conversations about things that have already been resolved.
All right, so much for now. I hope this is useful in some way. All in all, I'm enjoying this chapter and hope BG3 will be a smashing success. The issues I have are almost all mechanical. In terms of story, characters, presentation of the world, I very much like what I see and I'm looking forward to the full release.
