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

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.