I am also disappointed that there are no special bonuses for those not using tadpoles. There are consequences, if you start using them actively in act 3, the appearance of the hero changes, but if you do not use them AT ALL the whole game, there is no special bonus
The consequence you talk about have nothing to do with using your tadpole. Your appearance will only change if you use the Astral tadpole. It's a one off choice that has nothing to do with how you approached the whole tadpole situation prior to that.
Fair bit of hyperbole going on here, as expected.
Some of it could maybe be improved, but it’s nothing like the Mass Effect 3 debacle.
There were some quirks, but I enjoyed act 3.
Can you explain how it is any different from the Mass Effect 3 ending situation? If you're being honest to yourself, it's exactly like it. ME3 was trashed for its ending because unlike ME2, your decisions didn't affect the ultimate conclusion of the story which was instead boiled down to an extremely rudimentary choice between control, destroy (sounds familiar?) and synthesis. This was controversial because ME2's ending had a lot of variance based on your approach to companions which also tied into the morality system of that game and people expected ME3 to live up to that standard if not to surpass it. Arguably, ME3's ending was still better than what we got in BG3 because your Alliance military strength (which was a sort of score that was calculated based on your choices and side quest completion) could affect the ending. No such mechanic exists for BG3. It's more or less a simple binary choice.
