Cool, thank you. No it does not have to be perfect, just well. That is something BG3 does well, but I do have to point out that such things is Larian's niche. DoS 1 and 2 are the same way, all the way down to the cutscene cheese with the difference being that it is not an isometric small sprite game. I have already filed that under Larian's engine/environmental interactivity but I can delineate it further for co-op specifically though I doubt that has factored much into scoring in the broad sense.
This game is very Larian, and I�m okay with that, because Larian are trying to move the genre forward and bring the video gaming experience closer to the table top experience, which was the thesis statement of the original Baldur�s Gate game in the first place.
I�ve had other games attempt to just recreate the experience of Baldur�s Gate with Pillars of Eternity, the little I�ve played of the Owlcat games, and a few others, and I didn�t enjoy these. I found them rote and stagnant.
Was the narrative you were playing through coherent and compelling?Yes. There was nothing exceptionally incoherent about the narrative. My only experience of incoherence was when I did two quests out of order, but the only reason I knew about the second quest (that I did first) was because I read about it online, so I give Larian a pass on that.
As for compelling, yes. I became remarkably attached to these characters and their plights. When I reached Baldur�s Gate, I thoroughly enjoyed the various parties trying to politically maneuver me to their favor, even though the entire time I knew it was a foregone conclusion that I would murder hobo them all. This is very much in the spirit of table top gaming.
And don�t even get me started on my multiplayer game. I�m playing the Dark Urge (as a necromancer) while the rest of my party doesn�t even know the DUrge is a thing. The chaos it�s creating is delicious. This has become one of my singular favorite experiences in all my decades of gaming.
Was the combat challenging but balanced for all 4 of you playing together? No, but honestly, almost no SRPGs are ever challenging for me. I play chess at a 1450 ELO, which isn�t crazy spectacular or anything, but it�s high enough that the process of getting here means I know enough about tactics, priority, reading a battlefield, and deducing the correct course of action. I play the fuck out of Fire Emblem games too, and those games provide no challenge. I learned to enjoy the experience of them bereft of challenge. While that doesn�t accuse Larian for getting the balance wrong
How was the UI for playing in co-op? Great. Functional and none of my friends who have no prior experience with Larian games have had any issues.
How was the stability/bugs/performance?I�ve had almost no bugs at all. Some stability issues in act 3, but I�m expecting those will get ironed out via patches, and I don�t mind this. Nothing I can�t deal with.
Did the game explain itself well when you made characters or did you have to rely on prior knowledge/googling? Probably not, but I�m a DM so I don�t need 5E explained to me. I imagine it would�ve be much harder for a new player.
The question is not whether or not the game is enjoyable. It certainly is. Haha, for some people on this forum that definitely is the question. They post here ever say about how this game is terrible. That�s okay. Their decisions.
But as I pointed out in my first posts, you can enjoy the everliving fuck out of a 7/10 game because DnD with friends in videogame form is your shit, but that is giving awards based on what it is, rather than how well it's made. It's the equivalent of giving Forza 5 a 10/10 because it is definitely a racing game. If it was the first racing game on the planet, does it automatically get an advantage on review scores rather than it being a reason the reviewer recommends the game if you are a fan of Fast and Furious? I personally think scores of 10 are inherently dumb and never rate anything on that scale. I only rate things on a scale of five:
1 - I hated it
2 - I disliked
3 - mixed or no impressions
4 - I liked it
5 - I loved it
For me, BG3 is a 5/5, and I�m not interested in trying to award it an objective score. Nobody is paying me to do that so why bother? I understand why other woolen don�t enjoy it or enjoyed it less, that�s fine. But I�m not going to feign objectivity. I don�t need to convince anybody to charge their minds about the game so their objections similarly don�t matter to me.
