Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Wormerine's 1.0 debriefing

Just wanted to compile notes from my 1.0 playthrough. I will mostly aim for constructive feeback – so things that I think could be realistically improved. As such, for the most part I will shy away from story discussion and narrative critique. I will have some some, but most of it is UI and QoL related.




First of all, congratulations to Larian on launch and the massive success. Playing act1 felt like a major set up in quality from EA. Companion introductions and story progression throughout act1 felt really good. There are also small changed that went a long way to making the game feel better. For example I really liked “mornings” in camp. It’s a small thing, but being still in camp after a long rest reinforced the feeling of is being end and start of a new day. Really, just a cosmetic change from EA, but helped me a lot to buy into the fiction.

I also like elixirs, at least in concept. They remind me of Deadfire’s food system – one can rest as much as they want, but stronger buffs encourage keeping them active for as long as possible. Some of them (like advantage on concentration checks) help me to reduce frustration with some of the homebrew systems. I do think, however, that some of the elixirs are OP – like that one that grants extra full action on a kill – that combined with haste is just a “win” button.

I also appreciated some much needed QoL improvements. Shift/ctrl + click made dealing with inventory so much much easier.

I also remember enjoying ambient sound in act1 a lot – it actually reminded me a lot of BG1&2 – both of which had very evocative soundscapes.




Combat balance also felt better. While I am still not keen on how stealth was implemented, it didn’t bother me in 1.0. It seemed like you did a good job in fixing most of the systems issues. That said, I did struggle to find enjoyable challenge – it felt to me like the game struggles to create fun challenge. Overall, I found the game to be easy (played on medium), but occasionally something over the top would happen. A good example would be encounter I just don’t think BG3 allows for enjoyable long lasting strategies or consequences. It doesn’t really go beyond “how much damage I can take/do in this turn”, and it just ends up being rather simple and dull in the long run.

I am still not a fan of adding AoE effects on what should have been a single target spells – it makes them too situational. There are better spells to do AoE, and they don’t fulfil their function (single character attack), when a companion is nearby. The same applies to arrows which range from OP to situational.

I was also disappointed to see that sources of Speak with Dead and Animal are just as easily accessible as they were in EA. The issue I have with it it that instead of being a unique roleplaying flavour to a playthrough they are just core features available to everyone regardless of their choices. That, unfortunately, makes taking those options feel like a waste. I created a bard and picked Speak with Animal – a spell I got rid of, as I was getting more “Speak with Animal” potions than I needed. I used the learned spell only once or twice, before getting rid of it, and never feeling like I lost anything.

Now I also understand why it is so – past act1 Speak with Dead and Animal become mostly forgotten about, so investing into those options wouldn't be rewarding in the long run anyway. Still, such a waste of potential. Classic RPGs like Bloodlines, Fallout or Arcanum remain so fondly remember, because how every playthrough brings something unique. BG3 however, in spite of a wide selection of systems and content, is in danger of being very samey on each playthrough. That was my impression from my time in EA, and while I did only one run of 1.0 for now, the design philosophy didn’t seem to change. If you make everything available to player regardless of their choices, than you always provide the same thing to the player. I don’t think players would explore Bloodlines sewers as much, if Nosferatu was able to just disguise himself and play like a normal character. To make player's choices feel like choices, there have to be limitations applied.




One thing that really stuck out to me as odd in story, is the concept of passing time. It’s been said before that BG3 structure does make it feel like time isn’t moving forward. As such, I do imagine the story taking place across maybe couple days or maximum weeks. However, some characters seem to jump couple years or even a decde(s) forward in their arcs.

The first time it really struck me was the quest
One more story thing:

Cutscene feedback: I don’t think that’s fixable for BG3 but perhaps something to consider in the future projects – often when something important happens in the cutscene it is tied to a line proceeding it. So if one skips spoken dialogue it is too easy to skip through and important event as well. An example could be I don’t remember running into that issue in other games. Usually such important cutscene seem to be separated from dialogue around it – so skipping a line won’t result in a missing the cutscene.




LVL up/character creation
Character creation UI felt confusing to me. I completely missed visual customisation on my first attempt, and as the game autopicks lvl up choices it is easy to miss that something is to be picked. I think it is fine to have “autopick” option, but it shouldn’t happen by default – especially as one can easily skip past it, not even knowing there was a potential choice to be made. I learned to manually double check every bullet point on the left when levelling up, but I think the game should draw player attention to the choices, not hide it. It is especially criminal with subclasses – the game just picks a subclass for you, and you have to change it, rather than making player pick one. I did level up a companion in subclass I didn’t intend by accident that way, and had to respec.

I also didn’t like that when new memorization spell slots become available for spellcasters, the game automatically shoves spells there – if I wanted Shadowheart to have cure wounds or Gale Witch Bolt I would give it to them. Instead, everytime they lvl up I have to look through their memorised spell and check what spells were automatically added, remove them, and then replace them with stuff I want.

Lack of class progression preview seems like really odd omission. Unless one has class memorised, it is unclear what one actually picks. It is even more true of classes that pick subclasses on later levels – you can’t even preview what choices will be available when you get there. On top of that, it makes it look like certain classes simply have less to it, as the game doesn’t indicate that we will get subclass choice later down the line.

It is especially odd, considering the “detail” button – which instead of containing details of the class/subclass, displays very basic info that is already displayed on the screen on the right hand side. Please, create a class progression info sheet, and put it under “details” – as it serves no practical purpose at the moment.
Feats are a bit of visual mess. I wish they were organised better. For example, if I want to see feats with +1 to certain attribute I have to scan and memorize them one by one. If they were grouped together, making informed decisions would be much easier. They also don’t indicate when I already have certain benefits from those feats – for example feats with armor proficiency still get offered to characters with that proficiency, but there is no indication that all they will get is +1 to attribute. Combined with lack of character information on the level up screen that lead to a lot of quitting the re-entering the lvlup sequence to be able to make a decision.
Have global setting for reactions – “always ask”. At the start of the game, it is frustrating to have to set up every character and every reaction manually. It is especially true with bard when his inspiration options become available only when used. Even as far as act2 I would find myself wondering why my inspiration disappeared, only to realised I didn’t set it up yet on a character.





Please, add an option so the game stops shoving skills into the hotbar. I still fundamentally believe that designing your UI around a hotbar is a rotten idea – it’s a side convenience feature for quick access to commonly used skills, not a base for the whole interface – but what makes this UI especially annoying is it’s high resistance to being organised.

Even if I spend time tidying my hotbar, the game will mess it up every chance it gets. Switch weapons – weapons skills get shoved back into the hotbar, or moved around. Switch to torch and back – the same. Lvl up or change spells – those get autoshoved into the hotbar as well. The worst offenders I found were druid – shapeshift into an animal and back, and all the spells that I took time to remove from the hotbar are shoved back in, with no rhyme or reason. That alone made me kick Jaheira off my team for good.

I also wish they were more drop down menus – a menu with tadpole powers, a menu with skills coming from our items. Having to organise and manage even just those through the hotbar became a mess.

Continuing with the theme of fundamentally flawed systems – chain system. Is it really impossible for characters to not get shuffled around so often? I want 1)PC, 2)Karlach, 3)Shadowheart, 4)Gale. The amount of times I sent wrong person to do something, because the game shuffled the chain order was really frustrating. There is of course, the case of characters refusing to follow (oddly enough Karlach, with longest jump often required manual control to follow my PC through jumpable gaps) running into hazards, standing on discovered traps etc. I can’t see those getting fixed, aside from implementing actual party controls. But surely, something can be done about the order of the character portraits?

Stepping into traps is still a real problem. First of all, I wish characters would stop moving when a trap is discovered. Detect range tends to be so short, that they end up stepping into the trap, before the skill check roll animation ends. Even if I react quick enough, the only way to stop is to click in the other direction – which makes my character turn back on the trap and all the chained companions walk past him, to line up behind him and STEP ON THE TRAP.




I briefly tried gamepad in act3 as moving with it seemed better suited for the city than M&K. I can’t imagine using it – it’s radial hotbar design seems to suffer from the same tedium as M&K, but without relief of drop down menus. I spent MINUTES trying to get one character’s radial menus in order and didn’t even got close to getting there. And I imagine things will be messed up just the same, as they do in M&K hotbar.

Why, oh why not have it automated? Radial menu for common skills, radial menu for cantrips, radial meny for lvl1, 2, ... spells, radial menu for tadpole skills. And you can have a hotbar radial menu, that you can easily access.
Or my ideal would be one central radial menu, that than leads into radial submenus, with hotbar baked into it for quick access – like this ugly mockup:



In the spell memorization UI when you hover over a spell it shows big red X to indicate that if you click on it, it will be dememorized. It is somewhat unintuitive, as to assign said spell to hotbar one needs to click and move it over.

Trading menu – why was sell wares removed from barter menu? I still don’t understand why the two trading screens. Aside from sell to wares I can almost do everything I need and better through the barter system. One exception is splitting stacks, that for some reason don’t seem to work on the barter screen.

Warning message, when I am about to cast a spell with concentration and replace my current spells. So many times did I cast haste only to cancel it a turn or two later.

Disguise spells is an incoherent mess – between the variety of races, sexes and bodytypes trying to find a specific one is a nightmare.

Camp management – from stash being just a normal chest, to how removing and adding companions is handled, to inability to access inventory of companions not in our current party. I don’t like any of it. Please, please, allow us to access everyone’s inventory if at camp, and add a UI when exiting camp where we can select our party (see PoE1&2, Pathfinders, Dragon Ages etc).

Rest UI – doesn’t seem to recognise stacks. It was not uncommon for it to try to feed my party on 80 points worth of potatoes. If UI could recognise and autosplit stacks that would be great. Even so, the UI seemed greatly inefficient in aiming for 40 – sometimes adding additional items for no practical reason.