BG3 is in an odd spot for me and the PFH hasn't changed it.

It's definitely a passion project, of tremendous size, with a lot of options. It does a great job of giving people an opportunity to create a character they want to create. Far more subclasses than I expected, they didn't cut the races, a lot of customization options for the characters... They have fantastic voice actors. I also think even though the style isn't a 100% what I prefer their character art team has done a amazing job. As someone working with CGI hair I utterly impressed with their animal fur and I think their have done a great work on the hair as well. In general the individual assets the game is composed of look great. There has been an incredible amount of work on making sexuality feel inclusive, which is great as it looks that a large part of the audience cares for that (me personally I've reached the point were I hate Bioware for what they have done to RPG's with their romances XD I feel like too much time and effort is these days wasted on this topic, its no longer a nice gimick/bonus, but a big thing players scream and complain about that actually add little to nothing to the games themselves).



Now there is the other part... the game for me suffers tremendously in lacking a cohisive art/style direction. Serious topics are completely overshadowed by goofyness. I'm not saying comedy and tragedy can't be portrait together, actually they need to to create the emotional flow that really impacts us, but this game simply fails. Looking at the Dark Urges presentation for example - tearing apart Gael's hand has nothing tragic about it, its a meme pushed over the edge by Shadowheart's cheap 'you were supposed to lend a hand and not take one'. This is all over the game. There is a lack of sense for dramaturgy. And don't tell me its like at your table - you ain't paying an Oscar winning actor to voice your villian as well as an amazing cast of other actors to give those characters life and gravitas. If it was designed as a comedy than well yes, it could work as well, but nothing about the story screams 'Pixar's lighthearted Baldur's Gate'.

The big issues from EA are all still present as well. UI and especially party controls are questionable at best. The sneak exploit is still in the game as well as many other balancing issues Larian created. Do I have an issue with homebrew? Not necessarily as it can help fixing issues the core 5e rules have. Is your subclass sub par? Maybe a little push will help it balance out - that's not a problem. What Larian did though showed a serious lack of understanding of how the core of the game was balanced. Instead of cutting away dead leafs, they took the axe to the trunk and everything across the board was affected. PFH showed not really much that makes me hope our issues from the EA have been adressed, so my hopes for the gameplay are very low - if the core is rotten, I don't trust the additionally attached classes will improve the experience.

Characters... I'm sorry, but the origin characters feel like the main focus and once again the 'Tavs' are an after thought. The cast will have its fans and to be fair its down to personal taste, but I could neither stand them nor my interactions with them so far in EA. I don't know what to think of the Dark Urge. Personally its just more of the same and tried Larian story telling. You have your choice a pick of dark secrets... which honestly, I don't know how much they actually offer to replayability because the secret my change, your class my change, but its pretty much always just a different flavor of evil past you can share. Also to me they failed in early access as companions - their background secrets were pretty much in your face. You don't know the details, but which character's dark secret wasn't obvious in the first 1-2 chats with them? So yeah... I don't know. I'm not too excited about having Minsc the ranger, Jaheira the druid and Haslin the druid as party - I like the characters, but it sounds like I will end up with hirelings if none of the origin companions surprises me. I most likely will start a playthrough with a Dark Urge main and a second self created Tav to see the different stories unfold (maybe even more custom characters).


To sum it up - BG3 sounds on paper excellent. Endless possibilities, endless options in game, endless reactions from the world,... the images also look astonishing, the voice acting is great,... but once the parts come together to me the whole is less the than the sum of its parts. At least so far. Maybe playing the whole game unchained from the limitations from EA it will have a different empahsis and overshadow the weaker points - but the final PFH has done very little to convince me of that rather repeated the same issues I saw before.