Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What do you think? Looking for opinions.

1. What do you think of BG3?
I don't know what I think about it yet, as I'm still in Act 2. Nothing that I can verbalise at this point.

2. Did you play from early access or did you wait until full release?
EA, from the very early days, although I got fed up with how the community's feedback was handled and stopped playing about 1.5 years before this so-called "release".

3. What did you find the most enjoyable?
I've noticed that, when I play BG3, it feels like I'm playtesting my own custom campaign. A lot of stuff is still broken, but sometimes things do work as they are expected to. Every time it happens, that's an enjoyable moment.

4. What about the least enjoyable?
I'll second most, if not all, of what Niara has mentioned, vide supra. In addition to that, how shall I put this... it appears that I dislike the game developer company more than I dislike the game itself. This is the first Larian's game I ever played (for longer than 5 minutes, that is), so I had no idea what to expect when I was jumping onto the hype train when EA version has been made available.
The hardest hit for me was the overall feeling of immaturity. More often than I'd like the writing is so cringe that it feels like a theatrical play written and performed by primary school students in a kindergarten. Everything is over the top from the very beginning, yet a lot of stuff is nothing but a Potemkin village. The game tries to overwhelm the player with the plot of ludicrous proportions (similar to how many real world religious cults operate), yet it delivers very little when it comes to actual delivery. I don't like my intelligence being insulted in such a primitive second-hand manner.

Apart from that, I find many design and business decisions made by Larian to be at least questionable, if not outright insulting (mostly the latter). By no means comprehensive, in no particular order:

• Overall plot, or at least a significant part of it has been recycled from their previous product, D:OS 2.
• The game engine was repurposed from their previous project, as well. Understandable, but because of this some worst aspects of DOS2 have migrated into BG3 - "toilet chain" party movement system and the absence of day/night cycle are probably the most visible ones.
• Release strategy was again repurposed from DOS2. Instead of releasing a product of proper quality, Larian released what I'd call "Early Access 2". Which is: Act 1 is pretty well polished because it had 3 years of EA, and the rest of the game being a bloody mess. Now, 10+ million players will have to wait for about 1 year for the game to become somewhat worthy of its name, if past experience is any indication...

... and many others.

5. What would you like to see added? Any DLC, tweaks or extra features?
Add? Ready action and Shove Prone. After playing Solasta which has them implemented, I often find myself constrained by their absence in BG3, infuriatingly so.
Having said that, there are lots of things I'd like to see gone. These are the so called "larianisms" - changes in the 5e ruleset introduced by devs. Their main purpose seems to be equalisation of all character classes and races (DOS2 was class-less, and this is the way Larian likes things to be), but there are many other aspects as well. If you have ever visited this forum during EA, you would know them very well: ridiculous Shove arcs in the style of Wyle E. Coyote, ridiculous Jump trajectories that turn STR 20 characters into Jedi knights, the fact that a throwable can be thrown twice as far as arrows from Longbow can fly (and with perfect precision, at that), Spirit Guardians lasting 10 turns instead of 10 minutes... I can go on forever, but it's already past midnight here, so I have to be brief.
(I'm not trying to say that 5e is perfect, but it's a fairly balanced ruleset. Only a handful of Larian's changes make sense from my viewpoint.)

6. Do you use any mods? If so which and why?
Currently - no. I'm waiting for good de-larianising mods that would bring the ruleset closer to what it was supposed to be. If only mods could also fix bad writing...

7. Do you play any other kind of D&D, Baldurs Gate or Forgotten Realm games/campaigns?
I've only participated in a pnp campaign once, some 20 years ago.
On PC, played pretty much everything DnD-related starting with BG1 (and even some earlier titles, such as "Eye Of Beholder"). That is, BG 1&2, IWD 1&2, NWN 1&2 (with all official campaigns, and some unofficial ones), PS:T, TOEE. Also tried DnD Online, I think. Oh, and of course Solasta.

You are very welcome. Always a pleasure to help.