Having played BG1/2 when I was a wee lad, I was excited when BG3 came out. After playing through it several times, I gotta say that while acts 1 and 2 were pretty good - act 3's flaws made the rest of the game feel inadequate. Major Spoilers coming in.
My major complaints:
- Emperor ending is just bad writing. It makes 0 sense thematically that he would just "ope, guess I'm team mind-flayer now too, cause reasons".
- The fact that there is no alternative to the mindflayer plotline. You spend an entire 100 hours fighting against them, only to be shoehorned into "you're either with us, or Orpheus is."
- Karlach ending being what it was on launch. Like come on. That's a major plot hole. We spend all of this time fixing her engine, only for you guys to let it blow up with no alternative? I know you've fixed it now, but seriously, make that make sense to release that, like that.
- Companion endings are super lack-luster. You have spent all of this time with these people, saving the world, battling evil and half of them are just like "Welp. Later dude!" and just dip.
- Minthara as a companion genuinely feels like you guys are messing with me. To get her as a companion, you have to lock yourself out of so much content that it's not even funny. If you go an evil run, by the time you get to her, she's no longer evil. Like what is the point of that? She goes from a super Dom to a Beta Cuck almost immediately.
- There is no evil path in this game, only evil flavored water.
- Act 3 performance is atrocious.
- Gortash is a limp noodle of a villian, and could honestly be removed from the game entirely and it wouldn't really make a difference. He's supposed to be this young suave charismatic villian, but instead we got Steven Seagal. Someone who thinks super highly of themself but at the end of the day, is kind of just bad at what they do. Plus dude looks like he's pushing 45 with his Final Fantasy XIV outfit. Legit looks like you guys ripped graphics from XIV. Also, it's hilarious that his entire plotline happens inside of a single room of a prison. Like the watchers are all around the city, but with the exception of two encounters, you can pretty much ignore them entirely and it does not affect the plot whatsoever.
- The game just ends. You've spend 100 hours doing something amazing and saving the world, and the best we get is a 30 second clip of Withers trash talking the 3 dead gods.
- It truly feels like none of my choices in the game matter, because at the end of the day - I get the same ending choices no matter what I do. The only flavor I really have is who is with me, and who I have or have not killed along the way. That's it. I've played cheap AVN games that have more diversity and plot response to player choices than BG3, and they have no budget by comparison, nor were they in EA for as long as BG3.
- The inventory system is straight trash. Idk why you guys keep using it. Having played BG3 & now am playing DOS2, you guys got to move into the 21st century when it comes to your Inventory management. Half the game should not be based around how to manage your growing inventory. Because honestly, half of the stuff that you can craft is pretty pointless and just allows you to save space by crafting it.
And it's honestly disappointing that you guys knew you could get away with shipping a half-baked product because you would have additional time to patch it. It makes the fact that you released the game 4 weeks early to beat Starfield all the more obvious and gross. Praise should be given to you for the good work you did in Acts 1 and Acts 2 (mostly), but I think GOTY can wait until you finish the game. Properly.
