So i waited a bit before giving this game a go. Im an old school pc gamer who remembers playing baldurs gate when it first came out, so i was a bit worried about larian handling this game. I liked divinity original sin for its tactics and i loved baldurs gate for its story. I was concerned about how well they would mix.

After about 50hrs invested into this game..here is some things i loved and some things that bugged me.

First, the bad

The first that bugged me...im sure we can all agree....is the damned camera. My characters have died more out of combat then in combat, because of the dang camera getting stuck, and not being able to get it reoriented, then the help action or spell selected fast enough.

Which ties into the next issue. The ui. What a freaking mess. It needs simplified.

The jump and shove mechanics. Hate it. Not the concept, but its implementation. In dnd, (and real life for that matter) you cant jump farther then you can walk. And its also tied to acrobatics skill (which larian didnt implement). And it seems the enemies get freaking super powers on this one. Minotaurs jumping 50ft straight up, landing for aoe, then charging, and melee attacking afterwards? They cant do this in dnd and even then their charge is a limited distance in a straight line only.
Solution to this issue:. Tie your shove and jumb ability to an athletics check plus strength bonus and dex bonus. That way you have to be deeply invested for this to work well.

This ties into something that is not necessarily a problem, but just something id like to see. The help action. Since we seem to be redoing how skills work, why not tie the effectiveness of stabilizing a downed companion to your medicine skill? As in they are revived with more hp if you have high medicine skill. Just a thought.

Wizards shouldn't be able to learn cantrips from scrolls. Not sure if this is a bug, but i makes wizards more powerful then they should be.

Rogues are missing expertise and some other goodies that make them...well...rogues. right now rangers seem to be able to be better rogues then rogues.

Last peeve..the companions

This is mostly preference but...i hate most of them.

shadowheart, i try to like her, but her writing is all over the place so her character breaks down and just ends up being annoying.

Asterion: hate him. I kill him first chance i get if i bother to get him at all.

Laizel:. Really... really wanted to like this character. But her writing is pretty one dimensional. Atleast my experience with her so far.

Gale: awesome character. His story is intresting, and his character comes off one way, but then grows. Well written.

Wyll: really like this character. Warlock done right. Good job larian

Encounters:. Encounters are pretty well done early on, but later they break down terribly. Constantly getting pitted against overwhelming groups of enemies that can multi attack, when you at best can get maybe 5 attacks from your party? It forces you to cheese to win. Its not impossible, but its definitely not dnd. Cant wait to see these better balanced later. (Fuck those minotaurs lol)

Resting: because of how you are managing resting, you are trivializing classes that benifit from being good to go after short rest. Warlock and circle of the land druid come to mind. There needs to be some risk when traveling back to camp and resting. This will force you to manage resources better and aid you in balancing encounters.

Initiative:. Maybe im dumb, but im having a heck of a time figuring out what is going on. I keep getting having characters getting skipped for turns. Ive had encounters where i have surprised the enemy. I get my attacks in. Then the enemy attacks, then only one of my characters goes, then enemies all attack again. Then the same character gets to go again. Then i realize that multiple characters can go on the same turn, but they are not auto switching when the first character is done. Took me awile to catch on to this. I understand this hybridization of party turns, and initiative rolls speeds combat up, but it is crazy confusing to keep track off. We either need to optimize this better, or pick one or the other. Im really not sure how to fix this one.

Ok, now that im done bitching, the good

Larian, the story is awesome. Doing a great job with main story and even minor npc character development. Well done! Id say overall, your character development is standing up better then original baldur's gate game's. Thats high praise from me, since when you announced this game, i was 100% certain that this would be the part you guys failed at.

Graphics and optimization...damn good job. Looks great. Butter smooth on my end even at 4k with a gtx 1080

Love the changes to ranger. Really makes this class shine.

Love the addition of druid. Looking forward to other classes (paladin, and artificer are high on my list)

Despite the earlier complaints...i do love that out of the box thinking is possible in this game and rewarded..you just need to balance it better.

Even though im pretty serious dnd player, and baldur's gate fan...im totally cool with larian tweeking the rules to better implement dnd ruleset into a crpg setting. I also understand that this is an early access title. So despite my complaints, i still think that larian is doing a great job. 5e is super complex to implement in this manner, and im looking forward to seeing it balance out.


These are just my thoughts and opinions. Looking forward to see what others have to say about the game