"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.
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 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.
with a very few pretty good cRPGs...So BG3 seems like the second coming.
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.
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.
