After having played BG3 EA for 17 hours i thought it was time for me to give my two cents on it's current state.
looking past bugs, glitches and crashes (it is EA after all) the game is solid, but still needs many improvements and changes, the graphics are beautiful, animations are great (when they actually play, i often had npc's mouths not moving when they spoke) and the combat is great, as expected.
First for some praise:
The changes to the Ranger from the PHB version are great! having played a ranger as my main character the class feels solid and on par with the rest, maybe even a but stronger, due to some of the other classes feeling a bit lackluster (more about that later). My only gripe with the ranger is not being able to have a familiar and animal companion active at the same time, at the very least this facts should be given to a player at the start, so you don't end up wasting your level 1 option, considering they are powerful, i had already planned for a beast master, so when i figured out i couldn't use familiar and companion at the same time i regretted not choosing a damage resistance.
I also really like the weapon abilities. It has long been one of very few gripes i have with 5e that the choice of weapon has very little impact on a character other than how much damage they do. So adding a once per rest ability unique to each weapon type is a great choice IMO.
And now for something a bit controversial; i like the bonus action abilities Larian has added to all characters, Jump, Disengage, Hide and Shove. They make combat more interesting, with more things to do, this being a video game and not pnp speeding up combat by giving these options is a great choice. This could maybe even be added on to with a grapple and knock prone ability (not necessarily as a BA), giving more tactical choices to melee characters. But, a really don't like dip, it doesn't feel right. Besides that jump and disengage should be separate abilities (both still BA) to avoid the "bugs bunny" effect, the AI disengages normally, so should the PC's.
Now for some minor stuff a would love to see added or changed.
First it should be mentioned that not all abilities already implemented work as of right now (devil sight for Warlock for instance), and there are several spells and abilities missing, like shield. but as this is EA i am expecting those things to be fixed and added with time. (hopefully the battlemaster will get more options for maneuvers)
Speaking of Devilsight: the Darkness spell and blindness effect should be buffed a bit, not in the numerical effects, but visually and effect vise. several times i used darkness for enemies to deftly move out and attack anyway, and PC's can navigate just fine in darkness and when blinded - this should be changed, NPC's and PC's who are blinded or in darkness should not be aware of anything around them, this could easily be done by doing something similar to how it worked in D:os2, limiting vision and ranges.
Besides that there should be an easier way to change party members rather than having to speak with them individually, for both dismissing and adding, every time you want another companion.
Speaking of companions: partysize should be 6, not 4. many others have said as much. party size of 4 worked great for D:OS2 which was a class-less RPG, but BG3 (and DnD) is all about the classes, so you need a party size of 6 in order to have any meaningful choices when it comes to party composition. (also need more companions, not all companions need be 'origin' characters. - at the very least 1 companion of each class with their own story and personality, plus possibly hirelings)
The game also needs better auto-save. As it is right now it is very inconsistent, sometimes auto saving 3 times in 30 minutes, other times not doing so for 4 hours strait, even after big quests like for instance when you arrive at the beach. There should at the very least be an option to have the game auto save every X amount of minutes.
before i move on to a few larger gripes here's a few quickfire ones that i have seen many others mention: tone down the surface effects, i like them, but it's too much right now, especially with cantrips (and i can't count how many times one of my PC's died to surface effects, which is extremely annoying). Better way to skip dialogue, without accidentally choosing a dialogue option. Limit the use of (most) scrolls to characters who has those spell on their spell-list, with the exception of revivify. Also limit the amount of scrolls you find in the wilds.
And now some of the bigger problems i have:
Due to changes and limits in BG3 two of the six current classes are very lackluster.
Rogue: The rogue has gotten the short end of the stick due to the changes Larian has made to the base 5e ruleset. Since everyone are now able to hide and disengage as a bonus action, the rogue's cunning action is much less useful. As already stated i mostly like those changes, but that does leave the rogue in a bad spot, therefore the rogue should get *something* else at 2nd level besides just a BA dash. The rogue being lackluster is further increased by the absence of expertise. during my playthrough my ranger was just as likely (if not more likely) to succeed in "roguish" skills (stealth, lockpicking, pickpocketing etc.) as Astrarion (can't remember the spelling). Lastly the sneak attack should be a toggle, rather than separate ability, just like great weapon master is, this way it can also apply on attacks of opportunity.
Warlock: This one is very simple; more short rests. As it is now the Warlock is completely outshined by the Wizard and (most likely) any other spellcaster which will be added, the warlock was already not at a great place in the core 5e rules, but the limits to short rest in BG3 only exacerbates these problems further, the warlock has the possibility to really shine in this format, which contrary to PnP allows the player more control over how and when they engage en combat encounters, and how many between rests, than when sitting at a table.
Another two gripes i have is a bit deeper and one of them potentially more problematic than all the others combined.
The first one is about NPC AI. Specifically who they target in combat. Almost universally, enemies will focus fire on the weakest PC, this usually means Gale or Shadowheart in the backline, or the most hurt PC, and worst of all, any downed PC. For some NPC's this makes sense, like NPC's with high intelligence for instance, but beasts should not, they should focus on the biggest and closest threat. Same goes, to a lesser extent, for Goblins. So basically, dump down the AI a bit for most enemies, this will also create more tension when you fight enemies who actually fight smart.
Last one is the biggest problem: lack of RP and boring and/or bad dialogue/writing/conversation. I won't go too much into this, this post is already very long, but i saw a post that wrote most of the same problems i have with this much better than i could. so doing it short, this is the problem: There are way to few dialogue options in most conversations, most conversations are too short, there is very little in terms of RP opportunity in dialogue, most dialogue is boring and uninteresting, etc. This all together quickly made me loose interest in the conversations, and in turn the characters and the story, often ending up going for the violent option. Ended up massacring the entire Goblin Camp even though i knew there was plenty of dialogue and characters to talk to there, but i was not interested, i just wanted to kill them, And while the combat is fun, if this is how it will be through the whole game, I'm not looking forward to it as much as i did just a few days ago.
That concludes this post, i have seen many posts making many of the same points as me, so here's hoping Larian is listening.
I will likely make more posts as updates start being rolled out.
