After playing both games quite a bit...final impressions:

WOTR is less in your face and technicolor, partly because there are no comparable "cinematic" episodes in WOTR, and WOTR (in a trope) lacks the orc NPCs with pink hair and metallic eyeliner. There isn't as much forcing of degeneracy on your rp (only really a couple of the Sosiel convos, that's about it, whereas in BG3 the invitations to buttsecs are nigh constant and ubiquitous).

BG3 has better exploration and much better environmental/system reactivity, and overall a better sense of immersion (although a lot of that's to do with the miles-better graphics - enhanced even more by the WASD/camera mods btw).

WOTR has better combat and a better build system (though perhaps too fussy at times, there's something to be said for 5e streamlining on occasion, it just goes the other way and is too simple); the mythics are more interesting to build and play with than the illithid powers.

Story and cc-wise, I think they're about even. There are definitely a few weighty decisions you can make in both games.

Encounter design, I have to say that BG3 edges out here. WOTR is no slouch, there are a few very cool set pieces just like in BG3, but each encounter in BG3 stands out more, whereas there are a lot of generic trash fights in WOTR - something I don't hate personally, but in terms of per capita good encounter percentage vs bad, BG3 wins out, if you're being strict about it.

Personally, I remember really loving PFK more than BG3 at the time, whereas WOTR I liked less, but that was mainly because I found the demons a more boring adversary than the fey, who were brilliantly sinister in the first game. BG3's villains, with only a few exceptions like Raphael, don't really stand out as much - although it's difficult here, because the way they're rendered in realism and technicolour makes them all "stand out" more in purely graphics terms, but just conceptually and in terms of writing most of them are less interesting in BG3, even despite being more fleshed-out in some cases in terms of writing bulk.

WOTR's story is pretty coherent, whereas BG3's rambles a bit and feels disconnected in places, with the quest flow not quite supporting it.

About the same level of bugginess on release, they'll probably have about the same level of polish when they're in their final form.

I should say ofc that the VO in BG3 is a billion times better than in WOTR, but that's kind of a "cheat," like the far-superior graphics. It does make every little encounter even with minor NPCs more "real-seeming" and occasionally very entertaining. But it's really a side-issue in the grand scheme of things.

Difficult to say. Personally I give the laurel to BG3, in terms of there being a lot of shit in both games, but the good outweighing the bad in both games. But only just, and mainly because I'm a graphics whore. WOTR is a considerable game in its own right. And if the comparison was between PFK and BG3 (relative to time and immersion/enthusiasm for the games as I was playing them), I would say PFK.

Last edited by Count Turnipsome; 20/09/23 01:17 PM.
It just reminded me of the bowl of goat's milk that old Winthrop used to put outside his door every evening for the dust demons. He said the dust demons could never resist goat's milk, and that they would always drink themselves into a stupor and then be too tired to enter his room..