Hi all: before I dive in I want to say that although the tone of this post may feel very critical at times, I did mostly enjoy my first time through BGIII. My opinions are relatively mixed on the EA product and neither all one way nor another. Obviously everything I say in this post is infused with my own values as a fan of the genre and are in no way meant to be absolute statements. I know opinions here can tend toward that so I figured this is a good disclaimer with which to start off. I'll also try to avoid as many spoilers as possible, though I assume most of us have played through a lot of the content already.
That being said, probably my biggest concern with EA so far is what I would term a "weak" sense of progression, or put another way: the relatively meandering nature of the first Act. This was one of my primary concerns given how closely BGIII hews to the DOS formula and the projected low level cap (10) for the full game. To expand on this: due to the relatively long amount of time you can spend in the first Act (upwards of 30 hours if you're really exploring every nook and cranny), there's a greater need to make the player feel like they are being propelled forward, be it through progression of items/gear, character (level/skill), or story. My current problem with the EA is that it simply... doesn't.
In terms of item/gear progression, the feeling of uncovering truly unique and powerful items isn't really there. That's understandable, given that Act 1 seems to mostly encompass levels 1-4, and most level 4 characters aren't decked out in rare and epic loot. But as Act 1 can take almost as long as a single playthrough of an older CRPG (say, Icewind Dale), it's hard to maintain interest in discovering loot that is mostly just +1 or at best carries a modest damage/attribute bonus. This is especially problematic when most of the items themselves are not very visually interesting or varied. For me, it's a problem if a modern "AAA" RPG allows for gear variety/customization on par with games released 10-20 years ago.There are exceptions to this, for sure, and I'm of the mind that this can (and will) change as EA progresses because loot tables and designs are not 100% finalized. But it is worrisome to play nearly 30 hours in a RPG where I'm spending most of my time looking at my own party and feel like, visually, they are stagnant. Especially so as it harkens back to a problem I had playing DOS2, where it felt that the visual style of gear often felt very same-y and generic as you progressed.
So from there you have either character building or story to really hook the player. The problem here being that as far as fantasy stories go, the first Act of BGIII is pretty paint-by-numbers. "Catastrophe forces an unwilling band of adventurers to work together" is bog standard for the genre. Some games can make up for this with an interesting twist, really deep companion stories, or side quests, but once again BGIII doesn't really make any real waves. Here, the hag side quest stood out as one of the few relative bright spots. If anything, my biggest surprise stemmed from just how many people with "deadly secrets/troubling pasts" you can apparently jam into one party. Which highlights a common problem with a lot of fantasy writing: if the stakes are always high, they never actually are. If every obstacle faced is epic/life-changing in nature, none is. The drama just isn't very human or nuanced. Surprisingly (considering how I've seen many a negative reaction to her), Lae'zel mostly seems unburdened by this trope which is refreshing to say the least. Not to say that the story is bad, it's definitely solid. It's also very linear. Which would not be a problem if it felt like the game really hit it out of the park anywhere else. It's also hurt by the fact that, despite the "urgency" of the tadpole dilemma, the pacing of the main story itself can often feel erratic. This is especially noticeable if you are looking to comb over the content as much as you can before you move on to the next Act. Some genres do linear, "standard" stories well (FPSes), but they also have the benefit of having plot beats come at a relatively quick and regular pace. At some times it feels like events in BGIII are moving quickly (prologue), at others it feels like they've slowed to molasses (Druid's Grove and general exploration). Maintaining interest in the story under these conditions becomes hard if you don't have other carrots to entice the player down the narrative path. Again, this is a problem I experienced in DOS2 at times.
You'll notice I didn't mention companion romances here, and that's more personal preference: I don't think romance is something games do particularly well and, at this point in my life, I'd rather watch a show/movie for romance than play a game for it. Of course, that's an obvious bias that could pretty significantly alter how you view the strength of the story, particularly in terms of the companions.
Of course, gear and story aren't the only ways to make players feel like they're moving at pace along the game's narrative. There are examples from within the genre (or its close relatives) where gear progression can be absolutely godawful but it still works - see Mass Effect. Others, a mostly generic fantasy plot that otherwise works because of the game's other elements (Pathfinder: Kingmaker). This brings me to level or character progression. Unfortunately, 4 levels isn't a lot to really make a character your own or your party feel like its really "leveling up" (excuse the pun) given the nature of DnD. You're typically not making huge character-building decisions in the first few levels. And that's totally fine - I fell in love with this genre through classics like Icewind Dale, Arcanum, BG2, and so on so I know how that goes. But 4 levels in 20-30 hours is just too thin. If we extrapolate and say a full (not rushed) playthrough of BGIII takes upwards of 100 hours, that's not very much progression in what is a huge time commitment. Ultimately, this makes the game feel "grind-y" in a way that is reminiscent of old MMOs. Given the slow and sometimes erratic progression of the rest of the game, that's a significant problem.
All of that critique to ultimately say: Progression, in general, feels off in BGIII. It's a solid game and I'm still excited to see what 1.0 looks like, but I have to wonder if this is a case of trying to do "too much" and as a result overall depth has suffered. Feel free to tell me how I got this wrong, though. I'm interested in seeing others' thoughts.
