For me everything looked rather awful. Yes the environmental artwork was awfull, such as the rocks and trees and buildings. Games like Solasta, Realms Beyond, and P:WotR which are far from AAA and have a fraction of this game's budget look so much better. But ultimately none of these things matter that much because the main problem is the combat, which was horrendous and gawdawful. As much as I found D:OS combat to be awful, this game's combat may actually be even worse than D:OS. It was painful just to watch someone else play through combat, I can't imagine having even the tiniest bit of fun playing through this game's combat myself.
I understand that you dont like combat. I myself prefer rtwp as well but calling the visuals of BG 3 awful is a little bit too much. And saying that Solasta has better art and visuals is even worse. I dont have anything against Solasta, but it is far from BG 3's visuals and, by just looking at it,you can tell that, as you said, it has fraction of BG 3's budget. BG 3 looks absolutely incredible. Its probably one of the most pretty crpg ever. But graphics are not important. Main thing in this franchise is story and characters and also choises and consequences and in these regards BG 3 is really something special. At least it seems that way from gameplay demos. There are tons of little choises and even from these small demos you can tell that there are a lot of consequences ))) Cinematic dialoges and the number and diversity of dialoge choises are absolutely incredible. Characters seem interesting and the story looks very promising. The only thing I wish for is more potential companions, at least 10.
You misunderstand what I was trying to say about the visuals. What I was saying is that relative to the budgets of the games, the small budget games are doing a better job of producing something worth the money being spent. Or put another way, given how much bigger BG3's budget is compared to those other games, I would expect the quality to be way better than what it is at present.
But anyway, the main point of my comment was the combat. And yes, for me, there was nothing there that redeems the combat. It was awful. But as you say, the story and the characters are what matter the most, though at present I find all the companions very boring and very dislikeable with the sole exception of the gith fighter. So if:
1) The story and characters of the game end up being awesome (not there yet), and
2) The vast majority of the hours spent in-game are outside of combat, and
3) There are reasonably accessible (meaning the check DCs are not ridiculous) options available for avoiding combat, and
4) Avoiding combat does not result in you getting cheated in terms of XPs and loot relative to engaging in combat, and
5) The difficulty can be freely lowered to something like 'Story Mode' whenever you go into combat,
Then I can see myself being ok with the game. I still won't accept paying full price for the game, but would be willing to try it when it goes on minimum 50% off sale.
