No. Which isn't to say it's a bad game, necessarily...I fully expect it to be really, really good. But playing EA has evoked certain feelings...as another poster put it 'you can't go home again'. BG III, by Larian's own admission in the newest interview *IS NOT* a sequel to BG I+II. It uses the city, and the events of the first two games sorta 'set the stage' for the setting, but it isn't really a continuation. I don't really get the feeling it wants to be a 'spiritual successor' either. Everything about the game just feels so radically different, I struggle to find a common touchstone in the game to remind me of the old game. It feels like it has more DOS2 DNA than BG if anything.
To be honest, I bounced off of 4e and 5e *hard*. As settings, as rulesystems, just WoTC's general design philosophy, to be honest. BG III reminds me *constantly* that I'm playing a Larian game, that I'm playing a 5e D&D game, and honestly I think it does a very poor job of reconciling the differences between those aspects and what came before.
For a game which basically only exists because of nostalgia and name recognition of a foundational and iconic series that concluded nearly a quarter-century ago, I'm not feeling what was great about the OG saga echoed in BGIII.
There's just too many elements, the setting, the way Larian plays extremely loose with the lore, the jank, design decisions that constantly break immersion (giant rolling dice in the middle of the screen, the 'MMO quest reward' pop-up boxes, etc), The use of spectacle, novelty and gonzo elements of the setting, the whole origins system, the main plot, etc. Even the stuff I love, there's just so much going on that feels so very counter to the original saga, it's basically impossible for me to put them in the same boat.
BG III feels to me like the 'Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance' games for the PS2: I might love them, but they feel like fundamentally different animals.
