Hello, played for 45ish hours iirc (got to the end of the EA while exploring as much as possible) and I would like to leave my feedback:
Before going into actual bullet points addressing specific issues, I want to leave a more general feedback based on the "feel" I got from playing Baldur's Gate 3: It feels like a new Divinity title with DnD spells. The feel of Baldur's Gate is non-existent for me other than being able to play with the spells and abilities I love from DnD.
1. Turn-based vs Real time with pause: Even though I always wanted rtwp, since I loved Divinity OS 2, I was not that opposed to seeing how BG turn based would look. Having tried it, I have to say I really don't like it. While it fits in Divinity, maybe because of the numerous things any given character can do in a turn, or the abilities themselves it was fun, in BG3 it just feels slow and boring. Seeing several goblins in front of my party I immediately get bored as I already know it's not going to be challenging at all, but worse of all it's gonna consume time for such a trivial encounter. The number of encounters is also a lot less when compared to the originals, I imagine because of this, and the action just feels dull. With rtwp you could always hear the battle cries and crit sounds, spell effects going on like you know... actual chaotic battle going on. Here it's missing almost all of that... "Oh, my turn. Walk over there, swing *miss*. oh well, end turn".
2. Party size: 4 is too restrictive. Max party size should be 6. Obviously the originals had 6, but the real issue with it is that it takes away a lot of the fun from the game and is punishing to the player for no reason. More often that not players will want something along the lines of Fighter/Tank + Cleric/Druid + Wizard/Sorcerer + Rogue in their party to cover the *basic* stuff. So... if the player wants to add some flair or diversity to the gameplay, he's punished for it by gimping the party in some way. In Divinity OS 2 this is fine because every single character can do any given task easily and learn whatever spells they want/need, not so much in DnD.
3. Character portraits: These seem completely dead and uninteresting. Just take a look at the original BG portraits or other CRPGs and you'll know what I mean. BG3 just looks like they cropped the head off a naked model and said "f*ck it, good enough".
4. Surfaces: This has been mentioned a lot here and I completely agree. It's also one of the major reasons why the game just feels like divinity instead of BG. It's excessive and annoying. Imo it doesn't need to be completely removed as it makes sense to have some environmental interaction with stuff, but every spell creating surfaces, barrels everywhere, every goblin throwing puddle flasks... ugh
5. Cantrips: Cantrips should not be changed. As mentioned above, these should not create surfaces when used. (Same applies for other spells that are not in EA. Please don't change them.)
6. Containers: The game doesn't need to have hundreds of containers in every single room to feel like it is a real and populated place. I haven't walked into anyone's house to find 7 stacks of barrels and bags and chests in the living room next to the sofa. It's way too cluttered and gets old really fast.
6-1. Empty containers: Why? Why so many empty containers all over the place? It serves no purpose other than making exploring dull.
6-2. Table wear containers: Why? Why so many containers with a spoon? a fork? 2 cups and a plate... Stop it.
6-3. Alt + click on a container should open it, not pick it up.
6-4. Open container should close itself when clicking elsewhere.
7. Companions:
7-1. Companion interaction in dialogs: They should weigh in and/or help in interactions with other NPCs. Being stuck with the first character spotted by the NPC as the one talking is annoying, as often the one going in front is not the party face. Sometimes we can have the party face talking and a particular reference to a religious entity is named and I want Shadowheart (or whatever horrible name it is) help out and can't.
7-1-1. Brain dead companions: Another silly thing to see is if the CHARNAME gets in an argument with the NPC he's talking to and starts fighting (e.g. when you encounter Astarion), the other party members just stand there with void faces doing nothing.
7-2. Companion banter lacks personality: I don't really know how to describe this very well, but any time a companion says something while we are traveling it just feels out of place and generic. I guess the problem here is simply the writing and voice acting (especially the writing). Take interactions in BG2 for instance, when Edwin, Korgan, Minsc start speaking their mind about the current situation or party members or whatever... It's perfection. The one saving grace so far in EA has been Gale. Haven't really explored Wyll due to point 2. but every other companion except Gale I wanted to replace as quickly as possible.
7-3. Companion pathing: It's horrible. Having to micro-manage the paths they take just so they don't kill themselves in surfaces is tedious and dumb. I don't remember this being an issue in Divinity OS 2 however, which seems odd.
7-3-1. Party jumping: Please, if I tell my selected character to jump over a cliff, have the remaining companions follow along. Doing it for every single one is once more tedious and dumb. Obviously if the distance is too much for one of the companions, they would not be able to follow.
8. Unconscious state: If a fight ends with a fallen companion, don't exit turn based mode. Selecting companions and issuing commands is delayed as hell and clunky giving it enough time for people to die because of this. (This would also be a non-issue in rtwp).
9. Wizards learning cleric spells: Pretty sure this is simply a bug, but hey, I'm letting you know.
10. Jumping: I'm not a 5e expert by any means, but from a video game perspective, the jumping bonus action seems silly. Everyone is hoping around like kangaroos... Gonna take an attack of opportunity? *jump* Got a surface in the way? *jump* My char can't reach that far because he's a short legged dwarf who can only walk 2m? *jump* This needs to be changed to either trigger attacks of opportunity, consume movement distance or no longer be a bonus action.
11. Magic Missiles: These aren't supposed to miss. Ever. If there is line of sight, they are supposed to all hit their mark.
12. Concentration: Please make it so I can cancel a concentration effect. If I cast a fog cloud in a room during a fight and want to loot it afterwards I should be able to simply cancel the effect.
13. Movement preview: When planning a turn let us preview how much movement is going to be used when we are just hovering the ground. This is also annoying if I am planning to do a move + jump, many times my character moves a little bit too far and I don't have enough movement distance to jump (I didn't even know this was a thing, maybe I missed somewhere that explains it, but in any way it doesn't seem clear).
14. Targeting portraits: Please let us select the target of a spell by clicking the portrait.
15. Delay in actions/selections: Many times if I want all my team members to hide I need to click on them one by one and press C. Almost every time, after giving the command to the first one, selecting the second one and pressing C just makes the first one leave hiding. I need to wait a sec between actions so that they go through properly to the correct char.
16. Experience for non-violent choices: If the player decides to resolve a conflict peacefully through dialog, he should be awarded experience accordingly. Receiving zero experience from being clever or intelligent just punishes people for not being murder hobos.
17. End of effects: Stuff like Hold Person or Blind for instance, it says that at the end of a turn, the character can roll to end the effect. From what I've seen this seems to happen at the beginning of the turn rather than at the end.
18. Baldur's Gate mentions: It seems like every NPC you meet in the game is going to Baldur's Gate. I know you're milking the title but it is way too excessive. Everyone is going there, has a shop there, is meeting someone there, has been hired and is taking someone there...
19. Keys: Please make a keychain to store all the keys in.
20. Starting equipment: Would be awesome to be able to choose the starting equipment for our charname when creating our character. Also, it makes no sense to me to exit the mind flayer pod at the begging and being armed, we should just pick the stuff off the ground close by or in a corpse.
21. If an NPC is wearing/wielding something, drop it upon death. It makes no sense for e.g. killing an armour wearing, great axe wielding gnoll for him to drop a bone.
22. Companions that are not in the party (i.e. staying in the camp) should not approve/disapprove of anything.
23. Evil is not retarded stupid evil: Simply accepting a quest, regardless of my deeper motivations, should not cause companions to disapprove of the choice. What if I'm only taking on the quest in order to get the magical artifact and then murder the quest giver to keep the artifact and the reward? It's dumb.
24. Give an option for verbose description of items/spells.
25. Lockpicking: Lockpicking something should show a dice roll instead of a divinity progress bar.
26. Create a helpful UI to give the player a sense of progression throughout the class/levels.
27. Failed rolls: Failed perception, investigation, etc. rolls (rolls that imply that your character was able to spot something not originally obvious) should not be displayed.
28. Weapon ranges: This should be fixed as different weapons have different reaches.
29. Successful rolls: On a successfull perception, investigation, etc. rolls (rolls that imply that your character was able to spot something not originally obvious), the thing that was discovered should be highlighted.
30. Creature stats: Examining an NPC should only show stats, weaknesses etc. if a successful (appropriate) roll e.g. Nature is done or if lore was previously discovered in a book or through dialog.
31. Long-rest: The current implementation is horrible. If it was meant for the purpose of companions speaking with you, they can do it during travel or when clicking long-rest. Why make us see a *magical* transition from wherever we are like for instance neck-deep inside the goblin lair completely surrounded by enemies which makes absolutely no sense, is tedious because most of the time you go to camp simply to then click on the bed and then magically get transported back to wherever you were... The system for resting in the originals was perfect... Some places you could rest, others not so much. If you attempted to rest in a potentially dangerous place you had to accept that risk. This made resource management when exploring dungeons something to keep in mind as poor management of these resources could very easily get you killed. In BG3 it's free, exempt of any risk or consequence and can be done anywhere (including the dumbest of places).
32. Replayability: While I am usually very excited in CRPGs to make new playthroughs with different classes and builds, I don't think I can do another playthrough of this. Too many elements of the game are boring and uninteresting, especially regarding actual travel and exploration with the clunky movement, pathing, jumping issues, containers everywhere, etc. along with the time consuming and meaningless trivial combat encounters taking up time and limited party size restricting my options.
33. Make it so pressing space doesn't pick a dialog option.
All in all, I know this is a huge amount of text, but I didn't come here to bash on the game because I hate it. I came here to provide as much feedback as possible because I love both Baldur's Gate and Divinity and believe this can be an awesome game if tuned properly. I want to have immense fun doing my blind playthrough and then spend weeks re-rolling characters because I can't decide if I want to start a new game with a Fighter, or a Warlock, or an awesome chunky Dwarf Cleric. Do I want to be evil? good? am I to try and be eloquent and elusive or bash through the opposition? I want to experience the various combinations of companions and discover their stories and how they interact with each other. I want to have epic battles in creepy dark dungeons against the evilest of foes! Larian... please let this be true.
