Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General A lengthy review after pondering about the game.

Not sure if this review is for you or for me, but I write it anyway.

The longer I think about it the less impressed I am with BG3.
To make it short, in my eyes BG3 is fake. A poser that distracts with superficious things from a thouroghly mediocre core.

What are the things BG3 gets praised for?
- Reactivity
And yes, reactivity is great. Its immersive and really enhances the game.
And also pretty much vanishes as soon as you leave act 1. And even in act 1 some races are more equal than others with lots of effort having been spend on the exotics, drow and gith and less on the rest.

- Cinematics
Cinematics and full voice over are nice, but they are icing on the cake. And Larian threw a lot of money on the icing, but left the cake part undercooked, making it look good but taste bad.
Cinematics would elevate a great game to a masterpiece, but BG3 is not a great game.

- Sex
Not that it has sex, but Larians focus on it. They never wasted an opportunity to mention the sexual content, to brag with having used intimacy coordinators and made sex a central point of their marketing with the bear scene. And this focus on sex also affected the gameplay and especially companion design and interaction.
You know what that reminds me of? The movie Idiocracy, especially the part where inthe future and in the face of globally falling IQ companies kept sexualizing their brand more and more to attract customers.
Starbucks exotic coffee for Men to name a tamer example.
That is BG3/Larian to me. Sexual content does not add anything to the core RPG experience. At best it does nothing, at worst, and that is the case in BG3 it is used as replacement for the things that matter and as distraction that you do not have something else.


So what is the core of RPGs?
- Mechanics
Larian has to use D&D 5e, that comes with the IP. But they had freedom on how to implement them. And they did not implement them well when you compare BG3 to Solasta.
Larian didn't even implement true flight or removed some mechanics from DOS2 like how everyone can use scrolls.
And many implementations from Larian did also negatively effect balance. Haste, Tavern Brawler, tadpole power just to name a few. And also the flood of legendary+++ items which are far more powerful than what D&D 5e is designed to handle.
And then there are also other issues like the toilet chain or changing companions.

- Story
The probably most important part of an RPG. And BG3s story is at best average and probably below that.
It has a lot of inconsistencies like people changing into mind flayer without a tadpole, its pacing is bad, rapidly shifting from pretend time pressure to no pressure at all and back to pretend time pressure intermixed with real time pressure.
Often those shifts invalidate the premise of what happened so far like how tadpoles change from a huge danger that you need to get rid off asap to no big deal and actually a boon.
And its also unfinished with many setups lead to nowhere and its very noticable that some strange things are going on like the entrance to Cazadors mansion.
The bad guys also get less and less interesting the further you progress into the game and encounter new ones.
And there is not even a proper ending sequence to bring the game to a closure. Also an evil story does not exist past act 1, just a good story with less NPCs. Apart from Minthara there is no real "evil only content"
It also doesnt help how story is tied to resting and most players will miss out on a lot of stuff until they figure that out.

- Companions
Not all RPGs focus on companions but games like BG3 do. And here too BG3 is aggressively average.
The companions in BG3 are pretty generic with non of them being really memorable the way some WotR, Kingmaker, Dragon Age or Mass Effect companions are.
They are not bad but wont make any Top X RPG character lists.
And while some of them have mire content than others, some also do not say much at all till act 3 while for others their story is over by act 2 and from that point on just exist.
And often you are left wondering what their motivations actually are as their actions feel very forced and disjunct from what happened before like Shadowhearts decision.
The companions are in many ways very similar to each other. "Living on borrowed time", "abusive relationship" and "manipulated by a superior". Also, human, human, elf, elf, half-elf....
The latter can be attributed to Larians sex focus which becomes really obvious with the companions, the amount of lines dedicated to romance/sex talk, the way how romance is the default relationship and how aggressively the companions purse it so that sex or the promise of having sex soon was already available early in EA for marketing purposes.
To me it looks that the cast was designed for sex first and to cover all the usual sexual fantasies and everything else came after that. Which is why the cast resembles more those of a dating game than an RPG. The tsundere, the shy girl, the hurt bully you can fix, the romantic,...

BG3 has its good parts like how it usually avoids doing simple fetch or slay quests, but overall the RPG experience is not all that great and Larian spend a lot of money in superficial things to distract from that.

And when we look at Larian itself instead of BG3, not all is well there either.
Larian lied (tadpole overuse has consequences), mislead (explore the upper city) and purposefully left us in the dark (is Minthara fixed or not?).
N8t to mention things like saying the endings were left out because they were to long after bragging how long a complete playthrough would take (with inflated numbers) or despite everyone knowing that it was because of Starfield jutifying the decision to release early with that the PC version is making such good progress. That by the time of the later release Larian fixed more than 1000 bugs and act 3 is still a mess shows that this was not even remotely true.

Well as I have expressed in several posts, BG3 is both brilliant, and bad at the same time.

I genuinely hope they intend to release a definitive edition that is actually a game in a finished state.

I didn't see many brilliant in this game

I'll never forget that this is the company that Hired out an entire historic castle the size of a city block for over a week in order to do a media presentation and generate self-congratulating back-patting hype... but they could not spare the resources to ensure that we have the option to roll for our stats, like they Said Would Be Available In Game At Launch, or to address why we can't.

Their entire production has been a string of misdirection, false promises, broken words and deliberate deception (which they sometimes even emphasised that they did because it was funny to them), culminating in a whole lot of massive over-promise and under-delivery, and the thing that I find really confusing is why they are given such a great big pass on their poor behaviour and their broken, buggy and obviously incomplete product, when any other studio would be torn to ribbons over behaving like this or delivering a product in this condition. It baffles me.

Have to agree with the points in the review, sadly. The game felt like a step either sideways or even backwards in many areas compared to D:OS2, which was at least concise and... genuine? Definite improvements are the level design and, to some extent, companion interactions - but it feels like the latter came at the cost of there being much too little content outside of those. Combat difficulty in D:OS2 was wacky and jumping from really easy to crushingly hard, but it had a lot of fun tactics and interactions you could use with a varying degree of cheesiness - meanwhile BG3's just lacking in difficulty altogether after half-way through, even without the allegedly overpowered things, all you need is a high-level two-handed martial or two and a support caster, plus potions if you feel like humiliating the enemies.

I used to naively assume that the lack of transparency during development was just their approach to, well, development (show when there's stuff to show), but it did get rather suspicious when the first gameplay of Act 2/3 was shown when the game was practically going gold already, and how there were quick cuts of things even then (like, in the Release Showcase PfH you could see how the companions had unique backgrounds, which were replaced with the generic ones on release, not to mention belts, properly implemented crossbows, EA scenes that never returned (fishermen on the nautiloid, Minthara's alternate scene...).

It sure feels like the development was extremely all over the place, possibly the result of Larian growing in scale with so many studios but the management side of things being unable to adapt to being not only so many people in number, but also spread across the whole globe? Plus there's pressure from WotC, and the release date inconsistencies (was it really worth it to give Starfield a cheeky middle finger when the game was clearly undercooked?), and the team seemingly not really knowing what they want the game to end up like (resulting in heavy story rewrites quite late into development so you can see the seams showing, and writing/design decisions fluctuating heavily in quality).

Add outdated visuals on top (some armors (basic chain shirt, Dark Justiciar's...) look downright bad, and it also ties into the whole sex scene/nudity craze - are you really going to use that as a marketing tool when your bodies look worse than ME: Andromeda or even DA: Inquisition, and are devoid of physics to the point of some animations resulting in, for example, females' breasts caving in on themselves?), and the performance issues in Act 3 (didn't get any myself, thankfully, though I was running the game with a 40 frame lock due to having a somewhat older PC), and the final sequence feeling like a poor re-iteration of Fort Drakkon from DA: Origins, and it does not really hold up to being a supposed "standard-setting RPG", unless of course we're implying that the standards got SO low that this is supposed to be a shining beacon of quality.

I sadly have to agree with a lot of what you have said. If I wouldn't find the combat to be highly addictive and wouldn't really like Shadowhearts storyline, I would have given up by now. Somehow I received a halfbaked product, that probably needs another year in development without pressure and crunch time. Now Larian tries to patch this thing in record time into a usable state with their priorities all over the board and at least for me each patch makes the game worse. Didn't encounter so many bugs in act 1 on release date, that's for sure...

It's shallow. Once you realize it's the Skyrim of CRPGs, a lot of the praise it gets makes sense.

I think now that we have moved into the silly POST SEX , dating NPC simulator adoring crowd as come and gone, we can look to some more interesting criticism on the game's actual RPG mechanics and world story building and immersion. And the freakin lack of OPTIONS for difficulty and gameplay.

Instead of of colorful hair colors, sex dating simulator, and fully voiced 3D animated 7 NPCs for example, I'd rather of had super well written 18 companions with some voice acting and friendship talks with romances here and there, and really AMAZING cinematics during key moments of the story; but staying top down most of the game during most dialogues, having even more options and interesting stories.

In the end Larian concentrated way to much on visual cinematic experience. Results? They already look dated and feel shallow. Mods won't help there either.

I said this elsewhere on the forums. We're in EA 2.0. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. We'll stay in EA 2.0 for probably the better part of a year. The "release," as some pointed out, was much more about market timing than it was about the product being ready. "Full release," ergo the beginning of the second phase of Early Access, probably generated enough income for Larian to actually finish the game the way they always wanted, which, for those keeping track, is all we'll ever get. Larian makes games for themselves first and foremost, and they hope that clever marketing will sell enough copies to keep the ride going. Undercooked is the perfect word to describe this game. Every cake you put in the oven has the potential to be delicious and satisfying, but if you take that sucker out early, all you've got is inedible raw dough. That's what we got, warm cake dough. Yuck.

You’re all entitled to your opinions, but relying on clever marketing? Really? What clever marketing? They LARPed like a bunch of goofballs in a castle. Compared to most AAA devs they had a very mild marketing campaign.

Oh come now, do you think they did that for no reason besides having 'fun'. The whole point was to present themselves as one of the people/gamers, the most effective marketing strategy there is. (CDPRs 'we leave greed to others while focusing on what matters')

There is no way a dev that is goofing around would lie/try to trick you or *gasp* try to sell a product, right? Its not like Larian is running a business and their main interest is in money and fame. And you know what? It worked, redditors/youtubers/gamers are running around singing praises and elevating BG3 and Larian to the heavens. (I might also add that they did the same thing CDPR did by astroturfing/buying of streamers/youtubers. Some of them even ended up being in the game - I really want devs stop doing that.)

So yeah the marketing was clever.

-----


Larian released a mediocre game that any other dev would've been ripped to sherds for (unfinished content, poor optimization, bugs galore etc. but hey ACT 1 is fun) but instead they are being praised for the most basic shit. Patches/hotfixes aren't anything new, no BG3 isn't the only single-player game that has not MTX and adding things that should've been there on release doesn't show how good of a developer they are. (I still laugh at that reddit post saying that no game ever had latin vocalization for their spells)

Gamers are desperate for that good ol dev/game that can stick it to the evil corporations like Activision or EA so they latch themselves onto 'underdogs' (and no Larian isn't a small indie dev like some people like to think) while ignoring reality, add FOMO to that and you have BG3 (people were calling it the best game ever one week in and two months in the act 1 achievement stands at 50%)

ps. I don't hate the devs or want to see them harassed but to say BG3 is the best thing ever since sliced bread is a bit to much for me. Also 'we didn't put in the endings because the game was too long/we didn't think it would make sense for our vision of the game' is just lol, devs make mistakes and devs lie.

The game is at 96% positive Steam user reviews, both total and recent. If you think that’s really all people being tricked into liking the game, wanting to like the game as anti-establishment statement, FOMO, astroturphing and not just people having a different experience and opinion than you do, you need to get off the internet and go get some fresh air. For real.

What is really perplexing is why all of my friends without reservation love this game. None participated in EA, none followed the years of marketing, none watch any streamers. None of any prior experience with Larian or know anything of their studio size or story. Yet somehow Larian still got to them and tricked them into liking this obviously dumpster fire of a game. Larian sure are a crafty bunch.

LMAO Warlocke, I'll ignore you being a Larian cheerleader. Nowhere did I say people cant like the game on their own without being tricked or that I hated BG3, so chill out. Might I even suggest you take your own advice and go check out how fresh that grass is.

You mentioned that marketing wasn't clever or that it was inconsequential to the games success and I disagreed. The rest of the post was separated with those little lines for a reason and was meant to convey my stance on the whole hero worship that Larian/BG3 has received.

As for the rating, Cyberpunk is at 87% despite being one of the biggest blunders/devs lying in recent gaming history. Gamers are sheep and are willing to overlook a lot as long as they are entertained. (As soon as the next CG trailer drops people will forget all about their hate for Blizard also.)

Enjoy your games all you want I don't care, I have my own games that I enjoy despite them being bad or hated (and I'm not saying BG3 is bad just mediocre, I even enjoyed certain parts of it) but do try to satay away from tying your entire being to a product/company that you would lose your shit as soon as someone dares not kiss its ass.

Okay, let’s take it down a notch and avoid being rude, dismissive or accusing people of acting in bad faith. We have different preferences, priorities and takes, and that’s fine. Sometimes we just need to agree to disagree.

In line with Red Queen’s request, I’m going to try and not escalate, but I do feel it necessary to point out:


Yes, you absolutely did.

Quite plainly.

Right here:


And if you weren’t aware and it wasn’t your intention, I’m just letting you know that is reads very much as “my opinion is right and your (fans) opinions are invalid for these reasons.”

Giving you the benefit of the doubt here.

Also, I never remotely suggested that marketing wasn’t consequential to BG3’s success. I don’t know where you picked that up from.

You're conflating, Warlocke - they did not say that folks cannot like and enjoy the game for what it is without having been deceived by the various hype tactics used. They did not say that at all. Many people are, perhaps, and many people were enthused for the game because of said tactics, but that in no way implies that others cannot simply come to the game and enjoy it for what it is without being in that false-hype position. Euph, above, seems to be a good example of this - someone who was not taken in by the hype engine or the over-promising that failed to deliver under the first layer of paint, but who nevertheless enjoyed the game as a somewhat mediocre RPG that was an entertaining fill of their time while it lasted, despite its many issues.

Because gamers ARE desperate, they praised CDPR as the best company ever and Witcher 3 was the best game that ever existed, after that it was Elden Ring and FromSoftware. And now its Larians and BG3 turn while ignoring everything that came before it and acting as it broke new grounds. Something being entertaining doesn't necessarily mean good, if it did Transformer movies would be considered masterpieces.

Again, nowhere in my post did I write that there isn't a possibility for people to enjoy the game or to enjoy it without the interference of others/marketing/devs. Gamers =/= every single person that plays the game.

You and your friends might enjoy BG3 and that's totally fine but the rabid masses of Reddit (echo chamber), YouTube and to an extent Steam have acted differently (ignoring issues that BG3 has, insulting other games/devs, and overall praising the game without even finishing it) and that's what I'm talking about. So its more of a Gamer TM .

Not reading all the posts above me but I read the OP post a little bit (scanning more like, but I get the gist).

Piece of advice for readers: People who post their opinion/review here tend to think their opinion/review is the objective truth, all truth and nothing but the truth.

So read with a kilos of salt beside you because some of their "objective truth" are often laughable.

"The companions in BG3 are pretty generic with non of them being really memorable the way some WotR, Kingmaker, Dragon Age or Mass Effect companions are." -> this is an example of laughable opinion, parading as an objective truth can be.

ps. My counter argument is this: WoTR and KM companions are mostly: a joke. You only remember 1 of them, but that 1 person becomes "all the companions" in later iteration of opinion when you talk about video game companion.
BioWare companion was great, the writing was great, but do you know what they sacrifice to achieve that? Dragon Age series is barely an RPG. Mass Effect is Action game parading as an "RPG", in short: these are RPG games for people who do not understand what an RPG is, that is why it's great for them. They prioritize "good story" over RPG, because they never care to play an RPG in the first place if they are being honest.

Dex, it's understood that when someone is giving a review of their experience, that they are talking about what they experienced and their opinions on it; if you're going to take what the initial post says as being proclaimed as an objective truth, so that you can argue with it, that's on you - but either way, calling other people's opinions 'laughable' is not a good look. Furthermore, I'd say that it feels very strongly as though you are projecting your personal experiences and opinions as objective truths here, not the other way around - you are the one claiming as though it were factual, that the companions of other games were mostly jokes, and that 'you' whoever that nebulously is, only remembers one of them. Sorry, that sounds like you projecting your experience onto others. Maybe you only engaged with and really recall one of the companions from P:KM - that's fine, but it's also personal. I enjoyed several of the KM companions, and got emotionally attached to several of them in various ways. They were conveyed well enough for me to do so, easily in fact, to the point that a specific element of the ending still sits with me as one of the most unjust, unsatisfying and unfairly unrightable wrongs in any game I've ever played and felt invested in.

I don't feel this way about any of the BG3 companions yet, and maybe I will given time... we'll see.

Either way, I'd suggest that you consider reading the post you're giving people advice about properly before you judge it - admitting that you didn't read something, to then tell others what it 'probably' does, and deriding it for that mostly just makes you, yourself, look very foolish. Much of what the initial post states is simple a notation of things that are factually true. Other parts of it are clearly personal opinions or feelings about how some elements landed or didn't - it's very easy to tell which is which. If you've got an issue with any of the factual information provided, I'm sure we'd all benefit from a correction, if you've got it to hand.

The same thing can be said about OP post, Niara.

And yes, the same thig can be said about mine.

And also yes, the same thing can be said about yours, which is why I only scan the rest of your opinion past that sentence.


What I was saying is that I am not feeling as strong - to force my opinion as objective truth - as OP did, to post it as a thread, especially when much of it just an abstract assertion, like "Cinematics would elevate a great game to a masterpiece", or obvious limitation this kind of game has *never* overcome: "And even in act 1 some races are more equal than others with lots of effort having been spend on the exotics", or an entirely subjective assertion parading as truth for the rest of the post.

I am glad that you found someone to conform to things you already believe, but "Much of what the initial post states is simple a notation of things that are factually true" - is simply not true. There are plenty of nuances being swiped below the rug to achieve that sentence.

I'd strongly suggest you read the posts you're reacting against, Dex. Every time you reiterate that you haven't, you make yourself look more foolish - at least to me.

Yes, many things the OP mentioned are simple factual truths. I'd recommend you read the post properly, as it's very easy to sort the baseline truths from the personal opinions, if you read, rather than skim.

Here's one as an example:


This is objectively true. There are more custom dialogues and more custom interactions and reactions for Drow and Gith than there are for elves or humans, or any other race in Act 1. This is not opinion - it's just an empirical detail about the game. Notice I'm making no statement of opinion or judgement about what this means, what I think about it, or whether it's good or bad - it's just a piece of factual information.

Here's one that is NOT a statement of a fact, but rather personal opinion:


This is clearly a personal opinion, and a subjective impression, voiced by the poster as their personal take - it's not posed as being an objective truth or an empirical fact, it's clearly their personal experience and opinion.

Their post contains both types of statements - factually based ones, and opinion-based ones. Writing the entire post off as attempting to blanket one or the other is disingenuous and is not an action taken in good faith or with a mind towards open discussion... it's just an attack.

I did not get the impression, at any point, as though the OP was trying to claim any kind of objective truth about the game's quality - those elements of their post were clearly based on personal opinion and experience, as they noted with their language.

You clearly did feel strongly enough to jump up and attack the OP, and defend the game, rather than simply ignoring a review whose opinion you did not agree with - you are the one pushing to deride, discredit and to make a fight out of someone posting their personal experiences and review.

I'd be curious to know what part of my own comment was me projecting something as an objective truth, which was my own personal opinion only; you say that I did, and I'd like to know where you saw that, especially since you say also that you didn't really read my post. If you've already decided what I'm saying without reading it, then we are not having a conversation, and you are just posting here to start conflict. Please don't do that.

Wonder no more: the entirety of it. Why? Because you prove that simply presenting an argument is a projection of truth, to which I agree, thus making all of it as projection.



The reason is because the *not* a statement of fact become a vocal point of their argument.

Saying:
is not wrong. But making it sole reason is incorrect. Considering the entirety of cRPG genre has never come close to achieving what BG3 has. So yes it's true but incorrect. And probably Pretentious.

Here is a challenge: Mention 1 cRPG (especially DnD-based cRPG) that has reactivity to your race better than BG3, I *will* prove you wrong.

The why I posted here to remind people that these are OP opinions, shouldn't be perceived as fact, because for some the language they're using is not clear enough and tend to be perceived as assertions of opinions as truth.

I think when you make a harsh critique, please make a comparison to what you think is better, The WoTR/KM comparison is decent, so we can understand how laughable/warped/understandable/closer to truth that opinion actually is. I mean comparing BG3 to DA is insult to BG3, compare it to WoTR/KM, PoEs or at least prior Infinity Engine games, but DA/Mass Effect, plain comical.

I'm sure what you just wrote in that top sentence makes sense to you in your own mind... It does not make much in the way of rational sense to my reading though. I cannot respond to something that is unintelligible to me and lacking in coherent meaning; you've conjugated a bunch of words and phrases together, but they don't mean anything of substance; whatever you were trying to convey did not come across, I'm sorry to say. If you'd like to try to explain what you're saying a little more, I'm happy to listen, but if it's waxing philosophical, it might be better suited as PM, rather than derailing this topic further.

Regardless, consider your 'reminder' noted, but also unnecessary, since everyone who is mature enough to post on a public forum is aware that a review of a game is a recounting of a personal and subjective opinion.

If you're disputing that some of its elements are factual, and are disputing those facts, then, as I invited before, I'd welcome you to point out the errors and offer corrections, if you would like to contribute to the discussion.

For example... you took issue with the statement that there is more reactivity for some races than others in the first act; this is factually true (objectively), and severed as the basis for a complaint (subjective opinion). Do you actually dispute that fact, or do you just disagree with the opinion that that particular detail reflects negatively on the game? It sounds like (from your edit) it's the latter. That's fine! The challenge you've set, though, is not really relevant - you might like people to joust at the windmill of your choosing, but I'm not interested in doing so, and the OP certainly has no obligation to do so. If the OP listed a fact, and then commented on how they felt that negatively impacted the feel of the game for them, telling them that no game previously has done that thing more, and challenging them to find one, is not really a coherent response, or a relevant addition to the conversation, at least not in my opinion. What matters for the review is how that element made the game feel for them, and if that disparity caused negative feelings, then that is the comment that they are making.

I'd also invite you to stop throwing around nebulous and indistinct recriminations and dismissals, without actually directing them towards any substantive point - because as I said, that kind of posting tends to come off as attacking for the sake of starting conflict.

Addendum:


It has been politely requested in this thread already that we not insult, deride or mock each others opinions. You are continuing to do so, and I'd appreciate it if you would stop. You have your opinion on the companions in other games, compared to this one, and others have theirs. I'd personally take Linzi and Jubilost over the entire cadre of BG3 companions in a heart beat; that's my opinion, based on my personal tastes and experiences - calling that 'warped' 'laughable' or 'comical' is not appreciated and is not acceptable.

Arcanum you say? I'm just going to leave this here (it's a joke, or is it?)

Euph my boo, I'm just joking about the gnome meme from Arcanum lol. I'm not even the person asking the reactivity question.

No worries


Oh I agree, Arcanum is one of those special games that I wish was more popular.(but then again its old so maybe we'll get something similar in the future) I don't think any other game comes near (there are some that have a lot of reactivity but Arcanum, I think still holds the crown) when it comes to reactivity.

From race to gender, even using magic or tech, it has it all. Hell the whole game changes if you roleplay as a moron.



That's why I find it funny when someone say that BG3 is doing something never seen before or that it beats its predecessors. (Again I don't hate the game, I've enjoyed it for what it is I just don't pretend its something more than it is.)

Arcanum is definitely the ONE game that actually deserves and needs an Enhanced Edition-type remaster, but boy will it probably be sanitized to hell and back if it were done by the hypothetical Beamdog-type team. I would also love to see a second attempt at Dragon Commander by Larian themselves, but the same issue also arises, given how it allowed the player to commit literal war crimes and ban same-sex marriage with a huge grin on its face, not to mention how Swen himself called it something along the lines of a "game for men". Some ten years and now it seems Larian would rather forget it ever existed despite it being their first foray into the "bigger" industry scene after the original Divinity trilogy. Too bad.

My first (and so far only, the game isn't really inspiring enough to jump in for a replay so soon compared to D:OS2, for example) run was as a gith and the reactivity seems to barely exist not only when you'd think it should make your life more difficult (the only moment in Act 3 I found was the Flaming Fist quartermaster who apparently knows who githyanki are and won't sell to them, but every street peddler is perfectly fine...), but the most of Shadowheart's interactions (specifically, hiring her and anything related to her rivalry with Lae'zel) also ignore that the PC is a gith themselves. Act 2 seemed to lack ANY githyanki reactivity whatsoever, although it might be because I let Last Light be destroyed.

As for the city, one would think that given the refugee situation and it being under martial law, any strangers and outsiders running around in the streets would raise suspicion, but specifically those who are literal aliens or from a race that the surfacers have every reason to be conscious about - then again, even the Flaming Fist at Waukeen's Rest who were just attacked by a drow party can only give an equivalent of a stuck-out tongue to a drow character instead of assuming they are here to finish the job, so...

I also really, really loved Arcanum. I like BG3 too.

Arcanum remaster/Enhanced Edition/Remake would give me consternation, because it would quite likely lose the features that made me love Arcanum in the first place. I suppose it could go unpurchased if it is bad though.

"The longer I think about it, the less impressed I am."

This really sums up Larian games in general. Or at least, the DOS games and BG3.

Larian is very good at making games that, at least for a portion of their playthrough, seem very appealing on first glance. Hey, a magic system where you can combine a ton of surface effects? Cool. Hey, a DnD 5e implementation that makes non-attack actions in combat meaningful? Cool. And the early portions of their games - the first act, or the first half - seem relatively well-polished, at least on first glance. And even if there is some jank, you're having fun, so you easily gloss over it. The idea is so charming, the options available to you for solving situations so numerous and seem so well thought out, and combat at early levels is still challenging and fun.

But then the inevitable happens. The inevitable Larian pattern. At some point, you get to the part of the game where they clearly did not put as much attention in. For whatever reason. Maybe they are just chronically bad at planning out the time they spend on various different portions of the game; maybe they keep making the same mistake where they spend so much time on the first part that they simply run out of time on the second part. But for whatever reason, the quality of the game you're playing decreases drastically.

And maybe it takes you a while to realize this. I know it did for me. When I played DOS1, I was so charmed by the game that I easily played all the way through to the end. I remember feeling unsatisfied and disappointed with the ending, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. Playing DOS2, I thought the first half of the game was fantastic....but I kept finding myself starting over after the first two acts. At first, I didn't know why. I blamed it on myself at first; I very often restart games with new classes....though that didn't make sense as an explanation for DOS2 with being able to respec. Eventually I forced myself to stick with a playthrough, and it dawned on me: I kept restarting because they game becomes significantly less fun after the first two acts. When it came to BG3, I went in HOPING that this pattern wouldn't re-emerge, but worrying that it would; and so I spotted it right away.

And so, for a while, I thought to myself: Well, the Larian thing is that they make good first halves of their games, fantastic ones, even, and drop the ball in the second half. If only they could keep up the quality of the first half of their games for the *entire* game, they'd make some of the best video games ever.

But then I started asking myself: What actually was so great about the first half of their games? In what way did they actually stand out? In BG3, what was it I actually liked in the first half of the game?

Because, well...isn't it true that even the first half of their games have some glaring flaws? Isn't it true that even in the first act of BG3, a bunch of spell implementations are really badly bugged? Isn't it true that even early on, the main plot of this game is, well, kind of dumb, and there is major narrative dissonance - urging you to deal with the tadpole in your head as quickly as possible, while at the same time locking a ton of character interactions behind long-rest camp scenes that you will only use if you're going at a leisurely pace? Isn't it true that none of the characters are really all that well-written either? Wouldn't quite a few of them be totally obnoxious if it wasn't for the voice acting making them seem much more charming? (Looking at you, Gale, who when you think about it is a Mary Sue character to an absurd degree.) Isn't it true that character animations seem kind of weird sometimes? I also...don't actually really care all that much for the mocap models. It makes tieflings in particular look like human cosplayers.

That's not to say there's nothing to like. I think the environments look nice, for a top-down game, especially the underdark. I still think the variety of options they give you for dealing with problems in act 1 is very solid (and is probably the most notable thing that disappears over the course of play.) While some people might say that things like voiced lines and mocap are "shallow", they go a long way to making characters more expressive and likable. I'll be blunt: The way they are written, I'd probably *hate* almost every single BG3 character (except maybe Lae'zel.) But the voiced lines, and seeing the emotion expressed in their faces, just inherently makes them feel more real and likable. It made me realize how other cRPGs almost seemed to *go out of their way* to make it difficult to relate to the characters. In most of them you get just a paper doll and a single static portrait - and *some* voiced lines. You don't have to go to BG3 levels of characters with mocap, but like, think of the Pathfinder games. Would it be so hard to have like, a pack of portraits per character - so in conversation with a NPC, you could show a happy portrait when they're happy, a sad portrait when they're sad, etc.?

But in the end, asking myself these questions made me realize: Larian, even in their best moments, doesn't make great games. They make extremely flawed games. But when they put in enough polish, like they do in the first act of BG3, you can gloss over these flaws. But even if they put in that act 1 polish for all of BG3 - even if every act of BG3 was the same quality as act 1 - on a second playthrough, I'd probably still spot the flaws. But I'd be much more satisfied with the game, and much more likely to replay it. For BG3, well...I simply cannot see myself replaying it until the DE, if ever. It was a total chore for me to push through the final act. And in some ways, in terms of sheer *fun*, I think it's a step back for Larian: I actually think the first half of DOS2 was more fun than the first act of BG3, in terms of combat and gameplay at least.

My conclusion from BG3, and what I will tell all my friends if they ask, is this: Never buy Larian games on release. Always wait until, at least, the DE or a massive sale. And to never believe the weird hype that builds up around their games. BG3 absolutely does not deserve the review scores it got, or the level of slobbering praise it got. I don't pay super close attention to these sorts of things, so I don't know *why* so many game journalists seemed so uncritical when it came to BG3, but I don't want to blame Larian for it if it's not their fault.

To put people back into place who think BG3 is this "hail marry" of the most reactive Crpg the world has ever seen...really glad people here mention Arcanum.

Plenty of other older games that are reactive and do things better than BG3, while other things not as well. BG2 and Planescape Torment included.
Ultima 7 in 1992 was also pretty damm reactive. Oh and it had a day/night, weather and NPC schedule system...something BG3 laughably lacks.

If your 15 to 25 years old and never gamed in the 90s, early 2000s. I get it. Nothing too great to boast about in the last decade. So many ACTION RPGs, remakes, and "socially aware" modernized enhanced editions...with a very few pretty good cRPGs...So BG3 seems like the second coming.

Oh and I ask , IMAGINE BG3 with NO cinematic dialogues. No close-ups. Same content/story, no cinematics, no voices, everything in text and top down.

Now we can focus more on gameplay, mechanics and story.

Now think about all the interactions and REACTIVENESS again. Is it really all that original??

This to be a an honest and very on the mark assessment. There has been a level of starvation for CRRPG fans for some time. Devs have spent their time focusing on the Action Adventure style RPGs like Skyrim which leans heavily on better graphics over deeper game play. They also push ARPGs like Diablo that focus alot on the action and mechanics with the storyline as a minor side note. This does not make them bad games, this is just a VASTLY different play style from CRPGs.

Of late we have seen some effort for a comeback; Solasata, Pathfinder, Divinity, Pillars. These have all tried to scratch the CRPG itch and done a good job. However even DOS2 gave the impression of a B tier developer. With BG3 we are feeling like a real A tier effort has been put into the CRPG space and the fact it is wildly successful fills us with hope that this segment will not be delegated to the bottom of the development list any longer.

To be honest, critics were the same way with Divinity Original Sin 2. If you look at the reviews from critics for that game, even then were saying it was going to revolutionize the genre or be the new standard for RPGs unironically. One in particular stood out to me as saying it had some big flaws...while giving it a 100/100 anyway. A lot of reviews didn't mention any flaws at all giving it a decent amount of perfect scores, or if they did, at most it ended up in the high 80s ending up with a high score of 93 on Metacritic...

While the last two acts of the game took a nose dive in quality bordering actually unplayable at the finale.

It did that by being one of the most shallow CRPGs I've seen. 'Mainstream' has never come with more depth or complexity. It has to justify the expense by reaching as broad an audience as possible. So that hope is looking like a money's paw to me.

I’m shocked you guys don’t like the game? What game DO you like then?

Hello Kitty Island Adventure

I am not sure I agree with this assessment but in the end that is subjective. The success of BG3 however is less how it stacks up to older CRPGs and more how it stacks up to other games out now. Comparatively BG3 is a mile deep when you look at Starfield, Elden Ring and other games that are claiming the RPG tag.


It is not about not liking this game, this is an assumption to many people make. Often the people most critical of a game LOVE it, they just see the potential and long for more. |

Take me for example, I am a HUGE DnD fan and an even bigger fan of the Forgotten Realms. I have run campaigns in it using DnD, Pathfinder and Dangerous Journeys over the years because I so love the game world. However I am very critical of the way many games portrait these aspects, I love the games but wish we could have done more. With BG3 a major complaint I have had is I find the whole 5E system to be to loose with translations of race and class. I am a long time Cleric and Paladin player and would have much rather seen a more traditional (2e) styling been implemented. I have been vocal that I feel not leaving in the choice of Deity for Paladins was a mistake that needs to be fixed ASAP, especially since the dialog options appear to still be in the game so an easy fix, turn it back on.

That does not however, mean I am not having a blast playing a Paladin in BG3.

Kenshi might be a contender, dunno if that counts as a C RPG tho.


Thats kinda one of the reasons why I joined this forum cause it just annoys me more than it should.

This has to be the most overrated/overpraised game I have ever seen in recent history.
Even the previous highly praised games, Witcher 3 and Elden Ring, wern't nearly as praised as this and they both don't need a DE for the game to be actually complete. (Although I still remember people hyping up Outer Worlds as a Bethesda killer which then quickly dissapated)

I can only think that some/most of the reviewers (and players) only have experiences with Bethesda/CDPR games, who prefer linearish ARPGs and now suddenly theres a extremely high budget AAA RPG that does RPG elements they've never seen before and don't realise that it's just what cRPG's have always done (even tho this game really doesn't).
(Exceptions exist ofcourse but still I doubt > 1 million people have played a cRPG before)

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(Might've gone on abit, sorry)
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I keep seeing takes all over about how the game is:

Groundbreaking/Pushing the Genre -> How? Other AAA RPG companies don't care about this subgenre of RPG; Bethesda likes making infinite content ARPGs and CDPR (+ most other AAA RPG devs) prefer linear story based ARPGs. Even if they did, does it really do anything new compared to cRPGs released in the last 10 years?.

Setting RPG/AAA Standards -> The game didn't even release finished, it's basically following the same standard as other AAA companies, let alone Larians' own standard of the past 4 games, of release early, fix later. And it doesn't even keep up these RPG standards past Act 1.
(Personally abit salty about one reviewer who usually harps on developers that release unfinished products but still gave it a 10)

Choice and Consequences -> Theres alot of choices, but most consequences are either just an illusion, where the character just dies now instead of later (*cough* 90% of the Tielfling refugees if you save them *cough*) or they become a useless ally for the final battle, or just suck (Choosing the goblins over druids). There is no meaningful consequence on the main story (except the Hammer I guess), your character or companions. (Having no epilogues doesn't help this either)

Reactivity to Race/Class -> To BG3's credit, it does recongise your race/class... until it doesn't (Usually by Act 2). But same as above, not much in the way of meaningful difference, although there are definately a few that I've seen atleast (Drow for entering the goblin camp, Draconic Sorc vs Harpies). I mean, I played a Gith after a Half-Elf where I chose most Gith responses when available (except for murder) and my game ended pretty much the same way (except Rolan was bugged and the Tiefling children + Dex + Rolan's siblings were MIA)

In the end, all I can see from the game is it's exploration and combat thats rather enjoyable and the graphics + dialogue/voice acting/mocap.


See idk, I doubt we'd ever see a cRPG at this budget ever again (aside from maybe Larian), I doubt Obsidian/inXile is going to get $100 million to make PoE 3/Wasteland 4. Even Obsidian gave up on cRPGs and pivoted into ARPGs, especially when PoE 2 bombed in sales.
I mean, you might get those anyway, thanks to BG3, but with a far lesser budget + maybe some new IP's from new indie devs but doubt they'd be as popular (Too much reading lol, not fully voice acted, no romances, etc).
But I doubt AAA Companies will care to make any as ARPG's generally just make more money and don't have much risk attached.

Although, I am very interested to see how Rogue Trader fares with reviewers such as whether or not they suddenly care about bugs or gliches and especially because it's going to be compared to a game that, frankly, doesn't exist.

This comparison will most likely not be in favor of RT. Honestly, in terms of gameplay, I would choose BG3. But everything else is question. I feel a sense of completeness in the Owlcat games, which I can't say about BG3

'One of'. I don't think there is anything subjective about saying BG3 is on the shallow side of CRPGs, both modern and old. Exactly what it compares to and how has room for interpretation, but not that it is shallow. Part of that is 5e is designed to be very accessible, and the rest is on Larian. And 'it's deep compared to SOME non-CRPGs' is the equivalent of saying 5 inches of water is not shallow because 1 inch deep pools exist. That's not much of defense. Were you hoping for just more 'proper' RPGs or were you hoping for more attention on CRPGs in specific? Because you said the latter, but comparing it to general RPGs out of the blue like that suggests the former.

I'm looking forward to Rogue Trader, but I do also expect it to be a buggy mess on release.

At some point I'll write a full review myself but I thought it was a great game with some serious flaws.


Cons

The main story is a disaster. There is no good reason to trust the emperor after we stab them but the game never acknowledges this. The Emperor's decision to join the elder brain is confusing at best. And the lines for the Tav who dislikes being manipulated are awful - The Emperor steals all the good lines.


The elimination of Daisy was a mistake. We're left with a guardian we don't trust but not trusting him is represented as xenophobia instead of a resentment of being manipulated. (and if you don't think the Guardian lies review the dreams on youtube and note that The Emperor admits he lied and manipulated you)

The "absorbing" tadpole system is, well, dumb. The edgelord approved tadpole menu shows it destroying brain tissue in exchange for power. I can't imagine playing a Tav that would think this was a good idea.


Larian never listened to those of us asking for a 6 person party or a replacement for the chain system

If you play a Tav (and the Durge is too edgelord for me) you will have less content than any companion. Gale is better wizard, Shadowheart speaks to her god, Wyll talks to his patron, Lae'zel deals with the most significant figures in Gith culture and Tav is the sidekick.

The game really punishes non completionist runs and we never really get an "feel free to explore" moment in chapter 3 despite the fact that the map was clearly designed for such. It seems odd to visit those lovely shops and try on new outfits while some orphan is being tied down on an unholy altar and Ravenguard is living on borrowed time.

Wyll's rewrite was bad.

(of course this was a true in BG2 as well - who is worst sister of all time? That would be charname who has 80K gold but still hasn't sailed to rescue Imoen)

Larian had to deal with the WotC's floating dumpster fire.

Pros:

The treatment of the FR lore was great. And this is really saying something because this was my greatest worry in EA; early in EA it seemed that Larian knew next to nothing about the lore of game it was developing. But it was great! The Karsite weave, the battle between Shar and Selune, Sharess represented accurately, the books on Nethril and the weave . . . So, so much to say that I'll save for my own review.

The character quests - unlike the disaster of a main plot - were interesting. I **hated** Gale in EA but I came to like the arrogant prick in the final release. Astarian is just a fantastic character all around. Lae'zel developed a second dimension by the end of the game. I still enjoyed Wyll's story what little of it remained. Unpopular opinion but I wasn't happy with Karlach.

The size of game. This should be the new normal. If I am going to shell out 60 dollars I want hundreds of hours of gameplay and some good writing. (and, again, I do believe the character quests, many of the dialogues and most of the books were well written)

I even liked most of the jokes! Which is saying something because I hated the DoS2 sense of humor. Lae'zel is funny.

. . .
Lae: *sultry voice* "Yes, I've been told that I'm scintillating"
Wyll: "Oh, truly?"
Lae: *soldier voice* "No"

The cats. Love the cats

Jaheria was perfect. I wish could recruit her right away. Minsc was Minsc. Or even a bit better than the previous version because his voice actor captured something the previous one missed: how could Minsc be so foolish but still be ranger? I think we see something of the Ranger in Minsc's discussion of the spirits of Rashemen.

Shadow visages. The narrator's delivery was flawless.

The game - unlike WOTR - was playable at release. Despite the fact that I prefer WOTR to BG3 Larian has better business ethics. This *must* become the new standard - games should be playable on release.

I happy with the horniness of the game. I'm a fairly sexual person and the randiness of the game didn't offend me like it seems to have offended some others

WOTR was roughly as playable at release as BG3 was. Just as a quick comparison, at release WOTR only saved locally and had to be patched for cloud saving. If you ran into the cloud saving bug in BG3, you couldn't save at all. I personally ran into the save file corrupt bug in Act 3, meaning I couldn't even load my game, while the worst in WOTR were quest bugs like Lich or Swarm being incompletable or bosses getting super buffed because they weren't working correctly.. Alushinyrra bugs for companion/dialog/TBC/quest bugs in BG3....yeah, seems about equal honestly. Maybe BG3 comes out a little ahead or you get lucky.

I'd prefer no game-breaking bugs, obviously, but a standard for playable at release has been set by Nintendo for decades and BG3 didn't meet it.

In WOTR the Azata spellbook - the second most popular mythic path - wasn't fully implemented until a full calendar year after release. You would plan out your strategy, use the spell, lose the spell slot and nothing happened. Nothing. 3 of the spells that actually worked were implemented in ways that didn't work. The lich path - 4th most popular couldn't completed.

And yes the super vavakia as you mentioned.

The true ending - which takes a great deal of effort - couldn't be completed and it took ~6 months for them to release hints on how to complete the game without using a datamined guide. Before then you completed research on how to get the true ending and go the message "objective complete" Uh. Thanks? When I am supposed to show up at threshold again?

I could go on, it was absolutely unacceptable. I had the BG3 save file error but when I disabled mods it went away . . . I hate that WOTR has become my favorite game

I like the game, a lot. That's why I'm still hoping for a DE that adresses a lot of the problems. But liking something does not mean ignoring its flaws. I love my girlfriend, but is she the perfect human being and possibly the second coming of Christ? Nope, absolutely not.

Same is true for BG3, it is not the saviour of cRPGs and if you play it long enough, these 96 ratings fall apart, they make no sense. If you are a very quick player and were able to complete the game 1 or 2 times on release version or maybe patch 1, chances are, you didn't notice lots of the problems. Rushing through the game you had chance to notice, what is not working, or missing.

If you take it slowly, do stuff repeatedly, try out different things, builds, characters and so on, you start noticing flaws, discrepencies and tons of bugs. A lot of people described those, I don't need to repeat it. It is still a good and fun game and I will absolutely defend it, is someone calls it trash, but I can't deny the truth that this is a half finished product with a very undercooked act 3 and a story, that does not add up.

BG3 has the potential to be one of the best cRPGs out there, including old master pieces and modern releases alike. But at this moment I'd say, we are still in Early Access and will be for 1-2 years.

To answer your questions, what games I like: I love soulslikes with Elden Ring and Bloodborne being my favorites. I'm currently playing Lords of the Fallen and find it quite interesting. Last cRPG I played was Pathfinder and I find it pretty amazing. I have high hopes for Rogue Trader, could be fun.

Yeah, it's hard for me to compare WOTR to BG3 on release cause I picked up Wrath ~6 months later, but afaik, all the story beats were there for a satisfying conclusion and there were 3? seperate unique endings (Normal, Aeon, Secret). By comparison, BG3 feels like it's missing something (or atleast that 1hr long epilogue thats still MIA).

So my Rogue Trader comparison might be abit presumptuous but the only other cRPG I can compare with is PoE 2, which while laggy in certain areas, was pretty much complete and bug free? on release.


Yeah, your not wrong, switching back to RT for abit definitely felt clunkier. I really hope they've removed their annoying puzzles tho...

I wasn't using mods. Neither was the Eurogamer reviewer that we have to thank for telling Larian about it. The problem was apparently the file was too big?

The super vavakia, also Mephistopheles and IIRC Nocticula was AWOL for a while there too. Buuut in comparison, it's not like Act 3 had everything at a bare minimum of working either. The fireworks quest and the dragon broke hard for me, dialog and companion bugs were everywhere (and Gale and Minthara are still buggy), Ethel liked to be actually unkillable, the quest journal wouldn't update so you had to reload from your last save before you started the quest you were on, AI would 'hang' in combat if you were stealthed, sometimes indefinitely and I think the stealing system can only be called 'working' very charitably right now. Not counting PS5 only bugs like the super lag they had or game breaking multiplayer bugs.

When you compare that WotR was Owlcat's second game with a starting budget of 300k with a cap of 2 mil, seeing BG3's bugs raises an eyebrow. It being praised as 'polished' or 'finished' raised the second. And personally speaking, every big patch introducing a problem with saving for some people raises both eyebrows even higher. So in the end, I'd say the difference is the speed of fixing, which is wholly different from releasing playable.

I don't understand this argument. There are a lot of actually very good cRPG. Pillars of Eternity 1 & 2, Atom, Pathfinder 1 & 2, heck even DOS1 & 2... Or in a very different style, but somehow related, Disco Elysium ? There IS a number of good recent games in this niche.
Samely, the countless arguments I saw praising BG3... often just feel like someone played his first cRPG and is awed by something that... we find in every other cRPG ? Just like Skyrim, it seems that it's like a new generation of players is discovering a genre through a gorgeous and overhyped game, and fail to realize that everything it does has already been done before several times, and as such hail it as a revolution.

I am burned out playing BG3. Pretty much done. Waiting for more mods or companions (?). Really tired of these same ol.
Cinematic dialogues are now tiring. Narration is tiring.

That is far from the case for BG2. Even 20 years later. Having the flexibility of 6 party members and a roster of 18 characters + a dozens more playable characters mods that work great into the story...well. The limitless potential for modding, is frankly beyond anything BG3 could ever be.

Wyll's kind of an egregious example of how late things were still getting altered because most (if not all?) of his voice barks are still his old voice actor's. And then we have the artbook still mentioning Daisy.

As for the characters in general, my main gripe is the sheer extent to how much of their personalities just boils down to sex. Maybe that's just human condition and it's actually a realistic portrayal or something, but I am kind of spoiled by the crews from PoE or KotOR2 or NWN2: MotB (there's a game that handles romance EXCEPTIONALLY well and weaves it naturally into the main story!) where you may have a designated sleazeball or two but it's otherwise an adventuring party, a band of (not so) misfits who have enough on their platter to fall head over heels for the PC after a compliment or two.

Meanwhile here we have Halsin, who I am worried got hit hard with a flanderization hammer after Larian saw that most of the discourse around him was about how desirable he is. I guess they got what they asked for, and everyone has to suffer for it. Then there's Shadowheart who makes it seem that Sharrans spent more time on one-night-stands than their cult activities, Lae'zel and the "hot githyanki girlfriend" line of dialogue which I still can't really believe got okayed, Gale with his ex-related angst, Wyll who's... ever-so-slightly dull, Karlach who feels like an isekai self-insert, and Minthara who is blatantly unfinished and is also primarily seen as an object like Halsin. I would usually blame Bioware (and still do), but this slips into JRPG territory, except westernized so it's neither wholesome nor pervy in a sometimes amusing manner but instead a bad romance novel/fanfiction.

Oh I feel you, I haven't touched BG3 in almost a month now. It might just be me but when it comes to Larian games I just can't see myself playing them more than once or twice. (BG3 I finished 3 times which was a surprise)
Might do another run when DE comes out tho. (The game has potential but again I don't know why, I just lose interest faster than other RPGs)




Loved this post, agree pretty much with everything you said.

I like romances in games, they are not that important to me but are a fun little distraction/addition to the story and its companions/npcs. But I do agree that the focus and over the top sexualization has lead to stories suffering and companions turning into waifus/husbandos.

As for KotOR2 and NWN2 (I like both OC and MotB), I never romanced anyone in those games because the story never felt like it needed them.


I think that BG3 being successful is going to be a double edged sword for the RPG world. It will probably lead to more RPGs being developed but games like Rogue Trader that are more classical in their design are going to be criticized and treated poorly compared to BG3 for their lack of full voice acting, animations, spectacle etc. As for bugs, lol its Owlcat. Maybe RT being their 3rd game the bugs wont be as bad.

I'll do a proper review myself once I fully finish the game, but your post hit many of my grievance points well enough.

Ultimately, I enjoy the game. And while the flaws become more apparent the longer I play - and especially so when I feel both interest in Act 3, but also like I'm forcing myself through it at times - I would still cite it as being probably in my top 5 cRPGs for now, and just like DOS2, I can enjoy it despite the flaws.

But that said, I've always had a complicated outlook on Larian as a studio, and their games as a result. I do feel they vastly improved BG3 since EA, at least - heck, EA turned me off of it entirely, as I only enjoyed it when playing with a friend, but had so many issues with the way it wrote itself and how... not Baldur's Gate it felt. I do at least feel like it can carry the Baldur's Gate name now, even if not perfectly - but as much as I love BG1 and 2, they weren't perfect or entirely well-written start to finish, either.

But, despite being able to enjoy it, and feeling it better carries the franchise' legacy name now, I still ultimately feel the same complex sense of dissatisfaction with it as I do with all Larian games. And I'm going to swear up and down until the cows come home, that Owlcat would have been a much better company to give the D&D license and Baldur's Gate franchise to.

Hopefully I can finish soon, and maybe try to brain a proper review after.

Interestingly, Act 2 and 3 is where I actually got invested in the game more because of how much of Act 1 remained unchanged from EA, but it was mostly exploring the regions there. My run was very dialogue-light because I only had Lae'zel and Shadowheart (and a hireling monk) and my character mostly killed whoever inconvenienced him (that the game allows for such a run is a big plus, if nothing else).

Ultimately, though, this feels like the weakest nu-Larian game for me, because before they have at least been in their element and seemed to have an idea of what the games should end up like (not that it didn't stop them from lots of rewrites of stories very late into development EVERY TIME). I have enjoyed both OS games immensly and find them to be some of the best RPGs out there, but BG3 felt like it underdelivered spectacularly - plus the late shift in marketing which made me question as to what they perceive their target audience to be, and the current circular back-patting regarding how this is the new standard in characterization, romance, player agency, and so on. And once the hype dies, what shall remain?

Have to agree with everyone who thinks that the companions are too horny. It is very cringe. Stellar voice acting aside, the writing for most of the them is just bad.

Shadowheart and Laezel are the only ones that have somehow meaningful connections to the story. Their arcs are well developed. Then we have Jaheira and Minsc, which are a blatant fan service and are very forced into the game, but still i can’t help but recruit them ASAP, because they’re written quite well. Disconnect between character power and story is also awful. They both killed sarevok, irenicus,amelissan, but start at level one. (Same for karlach btw. Level one blood war veteran without any money or equipment? lol)

Rest of the companions are a fail.

Gale - sexed a goddess? Then did a karsus without even realising what’s going on and now he is a big sad that wants to blow himself up, cuz his ex said so (despite sexing a greater God, he still wants to stick it in you too).

Karlach - immersion breaking “fuck yea!” “Ohh damn shiit” , dancing like that back pack ticktock kid. Not buying it.

Astarion - gay for gayness sake, i fail to see any reason not to kill him on sight. Big sad cuz was forced to eat rats, soo he wants some of your blood now. Pls? No.

Wyll is soo cringe it makes me wanna puke. Boredom and annoyance personified - blade of frontiers! No, now I’m a BLADE OF AVERNUS! I will kill you, devil! Cuz my master says soo. Ok! I will not kill you, you’re not a devil, i see good in you! PLS SAVE MY PAPA!!

Halsin - we all know why he’s in the game. Nuff said.

Minthara - had potential, but not it’s not realised.

Still, i want to emphasise how absolutely phenomenal the voice acting is in this game. Only RDR2 can come close. Maybe. Genius voice actors are a saving grace for failed writing. Bravo.

I am not entirely sure what you’re actually trying to get at here, ladydub, but it sounds disturbingly like the fact you personally interpret Astarion as gay as a rationale for killing him, and that is something that would not be acceptable to say on these forums as it has clear and very worrying implications for your real life attitudes to gay folk. Please be more careful about how you express yourself in future.

The summary of mine would be 'It's great, until it isn't.' In many, many ways it feels like that meme with the horse drawing. Act 1 is the flash and sparkle that sets up a game that ultimately doesn't exist. Act 2 the flaws start becoming readily apparent, but there is still enough there to enjoy yourself even if all the 'extras' are noticeably trimmed and then Act 3 is a mess that doesn't seem to know what it's doing, why it's doing it or how to end on top of the technical issues coming to a head. It's fun despite the warts, but man...

There are a lot of warts.

Personally Karlach is my favorite character, followed closely by Lae'zel. But if there was any reason beyond "this is what Larian wanted" for her to be the way she is, then it would be the fact that despite having been part of the game from the start, and apparently Larian being confident enough in her eventual inclusion to have her get a card in the BG3 magic the gathering set, she was one of the last characters to get worked on.

I don't mind Karlach, though she's not my personal favorite; I don't mind some anachronisms here and there for the most part (though I will say BG3 is one of the few games where they become so blatant that they actually did get on my nerves at times. Specifically when Mizora mentioned 'gold stars' in a line.) The one thing that does bother me is when their background doesn't match up with their power level. Gale is one of the most powerful knowledgeable wizards! Who starts at level 1 for some reason. Karlach is a veteran of the blood war! A level one veteran. I know they try to handwave it away with "Uh ummm the worm depowers them" but honestly it just seems dumb to me. Just write a more appropriate history for a level 1 character, is it that hard?

The only thing that is good about Karlach is her voice actor.

And I agree 100% on the power level disconnect from the story.

How about Jaheira? She should be one of the most powerful druids in the realms, fully decked out with artefact-level gear, yet she can get 2 shot during harper battle (and drop mundane gear, not even magical, lol), btw she has no tadpole in her. And we can find a scroll in her room with a ritual that allows ARCHDRUIDS to extend their lifespan. She’s also keeping Belm there, instead of taking it with her on a dangerous mission.

If we are starting at level one, there is no need for larger than life backstories, like blood war veterans or mages who fcked the gods (literally). There are ways to develop characters from scratch as the game goes on. And if we are meeting returning characters, it should be a huge deal, not just another dude to level up and gear up with leftovers from your camp supply chest…

It is strange that the vampire spawn and interplanar warrior are the more mundane, down to earth part of the companions...

I would agree that every companion in BG3 is a bit too special. I've never gotten to play much tabletop, but it reminds of sketches I've seen where people come up with these really elaborate backstories for their level 1 character, only for them to be killed by a rat. As a general rule in writing, the interesting part of a character's life should be the things that are about to happen to them.

Regarding Karlach's power level, I think that being from the blood war isn't in itself over the top. I think the concept of a tiefling who got sold into fighting in the blood war is genuinely pretty interesting and an acceptable backstory. It's when Larian started adding to that, saying she was Zariel's favored warrior, some elite, well-known warrior of Avernus and when they put the infernal engine in her chest that was when it got to be too much. They simply lacked restraint. She could have just been an unlucky warrior who struggled and survived by the skin of her teeth in a meatgrinder she shouldn't have had any business surviving in. But Larian simply had to just keep piling on, as they did with everything else.

Unpopular opinion maybe but Shadowheart should have been even more special - she should have been Aylin's sister - and I suspect she was in some early draft. This puts her on par with the other origins. Otherwise why would
At present she's the least remarkable of the origins.

Imo the problem isn't that the origins are too special but that the Tav isn't special at all. But then again I chose to become a god in both BG2 and WotR so that shows that I have bad taste.

I actually agree in 1 thing yu said.. Tav is not that Special if yu Bring Gale in your Game the game will actually put him as the Protagonist kinda sux this.. and he is the only origin that i have this feeling that i was his companion not the other way around and i actually hate this feeling so much that i never bring him again in any of my games befor the first time.
But Regarding Shadowheart stuff.. i actually think that she is the best companion and her history dosent matter the side yu chose for her is great.
Her, Minthara, Jaheira and Minsc the rest i really don give a F..hauhauha
i only bring then for the Xp at the beginning of the game then get rid of all of then when i had the chance asap never think twice..hauhauauha
BTW sorry for the Poor english thats not my first Language im trying my best..rs
(Astarion is always the first to go i kind enjoy kill him my self and i was glad that i get to kill him twice in the game) huahauhauha
Shame i cant do the same with Gale i had to send him away.. why larian why ?!?!?!
Let me cut his head off it will make me feell so goood for the itens he stole from me...
and from the times i had to tolerate him anoying my ass with romance stuff that i refuse 300 times.

Actually, for Jaheira, I didn't mind nearly as much. First, it's left a bit fuzzy just how much of the original "Bhaalspawn saga" canonically happened or in what way, or how 2nd edition power levels translate to 5th edition levels. And I can accept the idea of something along the lines of "Jaheira aged, and took a long break from adventuring, and when she DID adventure it was against threats a bit more mundane than she fought with the Bhaalspawn. So over the years she deleveled a bit as she lost her edge, and she gave away her powerful equipment to others who really needed it." The rationale for Jaheira becoming depowered feels a bit more natural.

Gale and Karlach are definitely the worst offenders for "Why the hell are you level 1." Like, look at Astarion. He's definitely got a "Special" background, but it makes sense for his level: he's just some vampire spawn, a puppet abused by his master until he escaped. If we boosted Astarion's backstory to the level of Gale, it would be like "ASTARION WAS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL VAMPIRE LORDS WHO EVER LIVED."

I agree for certain, and especially as time goes on, it slowly falls down and down the list of enjoyable cRPGs for me. No longer in the Top 5, and feels mostly held up by its gameplay at this point - which, despite Larian's distaste for 5e to the point they took all consequences away from using the tadpole powers, is still incredibly fun and well-done.

The story is a mess, though. Both in terms of the timeline of events, how glaring some of the rewrites are, how poorly treated some characters are, how messy others are...

I basically can't care about Shart's story anymore, because of treatment of a certain old BG character in her storyline. I don't WANT to do her story anymore, to the point I don't take her with me anymore (or get her killed so I can at least take the prism off her).

Wyll? I took him with me to Which really feels like it's a bug, but Act 3 is such a bloody mess that I genuinely can't tell if it's a bug, or he just got shafted that hard by his close-to-deadline rewrite. Either way, it just soured me entirely, to the point I no longer pick him up.

Karlach's endings are so mishandled I can't bear to take her with me anymore.

Halsin? We have a nearly 70 page thread about what's wrong with Halsin.

Lae'zel and Astarion feel like the only two companions who are mostly well-written or at least don't have a ton of "warts", as you call them, in their storylines.

Gale is just kind of there.

Jaheira is mostly fine, no comment on Minsc since I haven't seen him yet.

BG3 is, effectively, a spectacle best enjoyed by mindlessly going along with it. If you look too hard, it all begins to fall apart.

I've basically only got three playthroughs left planned, then I don't know if I'll be picking the game up ever again - unless a Definitive Edition release magically fixes the copious amount of problems it has, from storyline to lore to bugs to endings, etc. And only one of those playthroughs will involve taking any companions besides Astarion, really. One of them will be a pure hireling "solo" run for an evil Durge, because I just cannot care any more about these characters - not because I dislike them, but because almost all of them are so mishandled or shafted that it becomes too disappointing and frustrating to go through 90+ hours for their stories.

It's not a terrible game, but it just... isn't a good one for me, I suppose.

Good thread. Saying anything critical about BG3 has me feeling like I'm being gaslit.

For context, I've got about 600 hours in BG3. I've nearly completed 5 playthroughs. I've had fun. But the cracks in the game are becoming increasingly apparent with each playthrough, and as a longtime D&D fan I feel like I'm done with this one until modders can hopefully give it more longevity. I started adding difficulty mods by the time I hit Act 2 on playthrough #1 because the game is so ridiculously easy, and I don't use half of the changes Larian made to the 5e ruleset... much of which is completely out of scope for a D&D game. 12 attacks per round? Seriously? No other D&D game, ever, has fubarred the ruleset this badly.

There's a handful of companions, and the only one who seems to have a different story from the rest is Wyll, who has the least content. Every other companion is essentially, "I was abused by people in my past."

Credit where credit is due, the voice-over performances are very good. Some of the changes to the classes are good and addressed flaws in the 5e ruleset. But it's overshadowed by just how ridiculous the other changes are.

The story is all over the place. We don't know much about the antagonists until it's time to kill them. Ketheric seemed like an interesting character for a hot minute there. The only antagonist we are exposed to throughout the game is Raphael, who's probably the best character.

The maps are beautiful and the terrain makes for interesting vertical combat, but again I'm forced to adhere to a list of self-restrictions just to feel any sense of being pressured. The AI is buggy and can't handle when you use spells like Darkness. The players are flooded with consumables but the enemies have access to none of it.

The camping/rest system is pretty terrible. It's something that D&D games have always struggled with a bit, usually refined by community mods, but BG3 was supposed to be closer to a tabletop experience, where you can't rest constantly and go nova at the start of every encounter. Instead we got OC NWN1 where we can rest constantly. They added a few zones that prohibited rest - they were SO close. All they needed to do was extend this idea to more areas on higher difficulties.

Speaking of difficulties - having Story Mode, Easy Mode, and Normal Mode is not enough granularity for a cRPG in 2023. Look at the other games in the genre today. Look at them 20 years ago. They all have more complex difficulty settings that allow the player more control over their experience. I shouldn't be walking over modded high difficulty on my first playthrough without even utilizing any multi-class builds or specific D&D knowledge.

I really want to put this game up with the greats on my replay list. I replay most of the D&D cRPGs annually. At this point it will need a massive overhaul mod, or just huge changes in the Definitive Edition, for that to happen. At the very least I need a good tactical experience that pressures me to make decisions about my resources and doesn't require that I hold myself accountable for not breaking the game at every turn.

Yup, sounds like you are in the C/RPG genre for the writing, eg lore, narrative, character development etc. And unfortunately, that is the one area Larian has never been good at and BG3 did not buck the trend in any way whatsoever.

BG3 feels like half of a game. So many aspects of it are simply cut short or left unfinished that the more I play it, the more I find myself disliking it. I cant really comment on the combat due to not really playing CRPGs of old (bar Neverwinter Nights, if we are talking 'old school') and only being familiar with one other Larian title, nor do I have an understanding of D&D lore, so these are my blind spots. But I think my time with EA has coloured my opinion of BG3 somewhat, as I really feel like the final product is complete jank due to missing/residual narrative content that seems especially egregious when you hit Act 3, which almost feels like the entire plot got a complete redux as well as several other aspects throughout, but was simply never expanded upon, let alone finished.

If Im being frank,(to me) some of the writing in the latter half of the game almost feels like when a uni student just blurts out whatever random thing comes into their head to fulfill the word count requirement on a written essay that is due to be handed in the next day.

This isnt to say that I dont like the game, I enjoy it. I also like that it brings a new audience to a genre that has been stagnating for quite some time. But for now I think I'll be taking a big step back from playing for likely at least a year or more unless my friends wish to play multiplayer.

You do not seem to understand why people are complaining regarding this issue.
Romances are pushed onto players whether we like it or not. Its either sleep with me or I dislike you. What if we just want a BRO? Or a Friend? There are no friendship talks or options, which is a MAJOR oversight in my opinion. Particularly since the prior games did that quite well (and even better with some amazing Friendship mods).

At worst, this leads to player not even wanting to engage/talk with companions.
I believe in order of importance Larian should of concentrated on:

1. Friendships/ Bro talk.
2. Friendships/ Bro talk.
3. Friendships/ Bro talk.
4. Light romances leading to kissing.
5. Deep romances leading to sex.

But what we got are

1. Sudden deep romances leading to kissing and sex.

Arguably It is way easier to write a deep sexual relationship dialogues (lol) than a deep friendship dialogues...Maybe why Larian gaved up on the later. But....
It feels more like the developer is trying to make some kind of point? Like everything is sexualized nowdays or whatever etc...

Not been my experience but, again, I tend to be comfortable with flirting coming from people I don't want to sleep with. Lae'zel and I had fling, I ended it she still thinks I'm great. Wyll and I danced, our eyes met and I turned my head before it could lead to anything more. 100% approval. Karlach is pretty bro with me - talking about killing demons and askin "what's cookin" often. We argue about soul coins but otherwise get along. Jaheria and Minsc are friends.

Is it a video game romance? Yes. Would it better if it were longer? yes Better if you could talk about the boundaries of your relationship? Sure. Was it any worse than Anoyamen my lady?

Yeah honestly, I complain about this game a lot but I don't get what people mean when they say it's too horny. I mean, all I really know is:

1. Lae'zel is very forward, but then again she's from an entire other alien culture so who knows how gith are usually.
2. Gale seemed to have problems taking no for an answer, but from what I understand that was a bug.
3. It can feel a little weird early on when so many characters are flirting with you (because you recruit so many people and they want to give the opportunity to have their romance initiated ASAP I guess.)

But that's really it; I really don't know what people mean when they say that it's pushed on players or it's "Sleep with me or I dislike you." There's other criticisms I have (namely all the romances seem pretty shallow) but I never had this problem rejecting people.

I totally agree. I was only interested in Shadowheart and rejected the other advances. Danced with Wyll but went no further. Looked at the night sky with Gale and went no further. We stayed good buddies and they never bothered me again.
And Shadowheart... was hard to get. Reading some comments makes BG3 look like some kind of porn game, but there's less nudity here than on prime time television.

I think what probably feels the weirdest to me is the fact that romances will initiate even if you spend pretty much zero time with the person; a consequence of the camp system.

Like, comparing it to BG2. There was no "camp". If you booted someone from your party, or weren't traveling with them, they were kinda off doing their own thing. (They could be recruited again in a tavern, but they weren't assumed to be traveling with you.) As a result, romances only initiated with people you *actually traveled with*, and there was a lot less opportunity to swap characters around. (If I remember right, removing your romance from the party actually broke the romance? Maybe I'm remembering wrong.)

In BG3 the background assumption is that members of your party, even when they aren't with you, are in your camp. But imo, this feels weird with the romances sometimes. Like Gale, I never bought him with me ever (because my MC was a wizard). And yet his romance triggered, and then even when I rejected him I still got the weird confession scene later too. It felt very strange because it seemed to me like *I had spent barely any time with him at all.* But then other characters that I had with me all the time (namely Karlach), I somehow apparently missed their romance triggers because I never got an opportunity to romance them.

Ngl I think the sex in the game was handled very immaturely, the romances in general felt too much like a '' horny teenagers '' thing.
I get on some level it kinda has to happen very quickly and suddenly due to time constraints in the game but still, I tried to be friends with Gale and Wyll and they wouldn't stop trying to get inside my pants.
I did enjoy the Shadowheart romance tho it was a bit cheesy but it felt a lot more genuine and adult imo, while most of the others are just moreso straight up horny ( Karlach especially, I rly can't get over how '' tumblr '' she comes across... The romance with her just comes across like actual children I just find it weird ).

I think it's something RPG's in general struggle with where romance = sex, rather than actual intimacy and a real relationship.
I know these are very different games but Clive and Jill in FFXVI is probably one of the most adult and believable romance I've seen in a very long time in gaming, they're two adults who support and love each other it's not just about sex and kisses they're very clearly in love and in relationship with each other while in BG3 it feels like '' friends with benefits ''.
Again it's not unique to BG3 I think it's an issue in general with RPG's but it's a little disappointing I guess.

That's also why I did enjoy the Shadowheart romance because it did feel like you were there for her on an emotional and supportive level altho you don't really get much back from her in that regard and it's still just kinda okay.
It just feels like romance in RPG's is like pick the right dialogue options for a reward sex scene and little else.
The actual emotional and mental part of what it means to be in a relationship and devoted to someone is kinda missing and it's just all about physical contact, like people seem to think it's more important to get a hug option than better writing.

I know ppl get upset about Karlach criticism and all that but I rly do think she's one of the most frustrating ones with this and how people talk about her online, most conversation about her is basically more like fetishication of '' muscle mommy '' and memes and '' ha ha such quirky '' it feels like there's no adult substance to it.
And I also do think that shows in the marketing too I do think the marketing was kinda immature about it.
I am not saying that as a prude I actually really enjoy sexualized content if I had my way we'd have literal '' bikini armor '' in the game lmao this isn't about being a prude and anti-sex.
But sex and romance/ relationships are different and I think there's a bit of a childish hyperfocus of the former while conflating the two.

Edit: It's not even just your companions btw, it's also NPC's that are just bizarrely horny and very in your face about it.
That orc lady in act 2 just completely out of nowhere started talking about how she wanted to sleep with me lol, again I am a horny person and even I think it's too much and just weird.

I genuinely want to know what you mean by this, specifically. I got a total of two flirting scenes from Gale; one where we did the magic together early on, and I rejected him. And then later, where he invited me out to look at the night sky and he had an emotional confession of how he was in love with me (and from what I understand, I got that scene after I rejected him due to a bug.) As for Wyll, I got just one scene where he tried to dance with me, I refused, and then never got any flirting from him ever again.

So what do you mean when you say "they wouldn't stop trying to get inside your pants"? Did some things trigger for you that didn't trigger for me? I very rarely ever bought Wyll or Gale along in my party, so maybe i missed something.