Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback A random comprehensive feedback post (will have spoilers)

Hi! I just finished my first playthrough of EA, and I have some feedback here. I'm going to mostly keep it in the "constructive criticism" realm (i.e. things I'd like to see fixed/addressed rather than praise), but I do have to go out of my way to say that the game is wholly satisfying to me as a long-time fan of TFR games, and really does seem to elevate the formulas set down by Icewind Dale, Baldur's Gate, and Neverwinter Nights quite well. I'm thoroughly intrigued by the story, and the, frankly, absurde dose of romance it has is very satisfying to me. That said, here's the thoughts I had while playing it.

Fights are too hard: some of this could come down to party balance on my end, poor strategizing, two dimensional thinking, or other weaknesses on my part. That said, the combat at times veers past challenging (a la Icewind Dale) and straight into "haha prepare to die in one turn, idiot." Obviously there are some situations where this should be the case (if my party wanted to take on a mindflayer at level 1, or a lich or something, yeah, we deserve to die), but there are a few very difficult to avoid combat scenarios that I only really won through luck, and possibly cheese. The specifics that stand out to me are:

• The Githyanki Fight
• Minotaur Fight
• Possibly the Goblin Camp if I hadn't cheesed it (see below)

The minotaur one was particularly rough for me, and I only ended up beating it because one of the minotaurs used its incredibly OP jump skill and ended up one-shotting his friend (lol). That said, I'm not sure if this is an instance of these engagements needing to be nerfed, or just getting access to levels past 4 (at this point in my playthrough I def had enough exp for level 5, quite possibly enough for level 6). But the absolutely astonishingly huge number of actions enemies get when they already almost match you with other stats is extremely tough. Again, I'm not sure if this is just a level thing, but this was my experience, generally.

Fights are too easy: I know this seems to contradict the point above, but this one I do believe is a mechanical issue that needs adjustment. The Goblin Camp fight, in particular, was one that...I still kinda can't believe I won. And the only reason I did is because I massively cheesed AI pathfinding. Goblins and Kobolds generally lack physical strength, but they make up for it with numbers and tactics whish is why it's a bit bizarre to me that Goblins could see me on higher levels in their own camp and be like "yeah I have no idea how to get there." Cheesing pathfinding was particularly easy in the Goblin Camp; I spent a ton of time in the rafters and on second/third floors and enemies just stood there and let me kill them. I really feel like Goblin AI should know where all the ladders and stairs are in their domicile. Maybe something like a "homefield advantage" that makes mobs aware of everything within a radius they can use to move with, or even hardcoding certain encounters so they know what they're doing would probably go a long way to making the game a bit more balanced in this regard. That said, I was ultimately glad that the pathfinding was terrible, because I was forced into a 25v4(ish) engagement due to the next issue.

World consequences need some tweaking: the goblin camp is probably the most egregious example I can think of, but even if you manage to kill the Goblin Leader (already forgot his name, sorry) without alerting the entire fortress immediately, you still aggro everything in the camp, even if no alarm was raised. This makes helping Halsin incredibly difficult to do if you want to avoid taking on a literal army of Goblins (which are much stronger than I've really experienced in other TFR games, which is a very welcome change.) A redditor somewhere in a post I can't find put it well when they said that the current state of the Goblin Camp essentially invalidates your decision to not take Halsin with you, because no matter what you do, you end up aggroing the entire camp, so not having a giant murderbear on your side really makes that area a slog (I think it took me several hours to get out). Either dialogue options that let you isolate the warlord in the same way you can isolate the Priestess, or some way of being able to do a fight inside the fortress without the entire exterior being magically aware of it would be really nice. Or both. This is a D&D game after all.

The rest of my criticisms are mostly things that are likely due to it being a game that's still in development, such as load times, bugs and glitches, etc, things that are ultimately too small to note here. I'm sure my observations aren't even that unique, but I do hope tossing my insight onto the pile is helpful in some way.

EDIT: oh my how can I forget my biggest one! Please let me sort my inventory by weight, please, and maybe just an overall sort button that removes all the holes in it wouldn't go amis. More of a QOL thing but it'd be nice.

Hi !
It's a very interesting feedback which is in line with what some of us have been saying on this forum for months.

The game is poorly balanced and it can be really hard and very easy at the same time, depending what cheesy mechanic you use.
Some players can also do it with a single character pretty easily because Larian's homebrew are completely broken.

The more you forget about DnD and the more you embrace Larian's style, the more you are rewarded and the easier the fights become... to the point where they become ridiculously easy if you use all the basic cheeses (or ridiculously challenging if you don't at all).

Larian's mechanics need to be more in line with DnD and the creatures need to be rebalanced around balanced rules and mechanics.
This is the only way to give players good tactical turn-based combat and allow them to be as creative as they are allowed to be when following PHB rules.

First off this is great feedback, not only in tone but in content and honesty.

The hardest fight is admittedly the Githyanki fight. You are right, its brutal. They are level 5, and can murder you on the action economy. Even for experienced players it can be rough. You've got to really use the environment, speed potions, all the buffs, summoned creatures and anything else to win that.

Minotaur's have some surprising weaknesses. Both them and the Bullet are susceptible to the spell Also make sure you never turn your back to them (free advantage).

Keep in mind, these fights are optional. But, you probably want to kill them because why not?


There are some other options when dealing with the Goblin camp outside the Shattered Sanctum - look around. You may find a way to weaken many of them at once.

If you decide to take out the leadership inside the Shattered Sanctum you may find another way to escape the Shattered Sanctum, a few ways possibly.


Last you can sort inventory by weight - hit "I" to pull up all inventories and top center right there is the sort inventory button. You can sort by value, weight, type, and latest.

Well minotaurs are pretty easily done by pushing them off the cliff. No extra magic needed. Like in many other fights foes’ strength is being cancelled by cheese opportunities placed everywhere. Minotaurs fight was a bit disappointing cause it ended in two rounds despite they instakilled *surprise* rogue and wizard.

I wouldn't really make it a problem of fights being "too hard" or "too easy" in general, but it's worth stressing that they often seem to swing in one of these two directions precisely because of "all the wrong reasons".

For one, sticking to the rules once again would help a bit: Minotaurs shouldn't have the Hulk jump nor the smashing landing. Minotaurs are supposed to be physically powerful in melee combat and to have a CHARGE move as their signature special attack.
In the same way Spectators shouldn't have multiple attacks per turn, phase spiders are not supposed to spit aoe poison damage but attack only in melee, imps shouldn't be vulnerable to fire (and if the excuse is how that's a problem in the early game where a player may have his firebolt cantrip and little else- which is honestly bullshit given how many ways to deal with that fight there are- then the devs should have picked more fitting low level enemies that are NOT supposed to have high fire resistance) and so on.

Conversely, on the "cheesing" side of things... Well, it shouldn't be so trivial to pull up these tricks.
Throwing enemies shouldn't be so simple (especially full sized humanoids); pushing a giant minotaur should have extremely low chances to succeed (especially if not done by a very strong character); carrying and exploiting barrels, canisters and other big explosives shouldn't be so effortless; surrounding enemies with this stuff shouldn't be ignored either, etc.

It wouldn't really hurt if more in general Larian could start designing their encounters with a notion along the lines of "Yeah, let's try to make this look like an actual battle out of a tabletop session" rather than wacky parade of exploits and weird custom-made creatures.

I got exceptionally lucky on this fight as well, but they demolished me my first several tries. I think the thing that sucks about this particular fight is that it really feels like it's unwinnable (on the current patch with level caps etc) on your first go at it. If you walk up at level four and just have a conversation, you're very likely to get absolutely demolished by people who can take way more actions than your entire team. I only won because I knew ahead of time what the engagement was and prepped by splitting my party up. That said, it was still fun, I just have no idea how much will be easier with further patches or whatnot. Also, thanks for the tip on goblin camp. I still think isolating the warlord should be possible in some way, but it's good to know that there are other options there. I must not have explored thorougly enough. Oh and thanks for the inventory sort thing! I had no idea you could sort by weight.