I dunno what this obsession with comparing BG3 to Starfield is... It's kinda low-hanging fruit to compare it to a Bethesda game lmao especially when it comes to things like stilted characters. Altho BG3 does have quite a bit of stilted and weird animations too at times.
But well, these are my thoughts.
For me the Resident Evil 4 Remake is my GOTY still, I dunno if remakes can win GOTY but I don't rly care about those rewards anyway it's my personal pick. I did enjoy BG3 but I do think it kinda nose dives in act 3 and is clearly not finished, I beat it on release patch too so I ran into a massive amount of bugs the last stretch of the game was borderline unplayable for me and I do think that's unacceptable and do take that into consideration too. Stuff like that does harm my trust in developers and I did lose quite a bit of respect and trust in Larian I don't think it's okay to release a game in that state especially without disclosing it imo ( especially performance issues, which no is not a hardware issue ). I dunno why gaming is the only industry where we kinda just accept being sold borked products in no other industry would it be accepted.
Even without all of the bugs too it's clearly rushed with unfinished animations and awkward scenes and writing etc ( imo the writing of the main plot was really disappointing in act 3 and really hurt the replayability for me ). The dead three were really disappointing too and took a backseat to a less interesting plot twist, the only character I felt like I got a fair bit of interactions with was Orin and she was ultimately quite one-dimensional. I also think the progression just stops and the game is way too easy even without min-max, it feels so bare-bones in hindsight. A lot of people excuse it with '' they'll fix it later '' and point to the same happening in Divinity 2 but I mean... If the same happened last game then that just makes it worse? It kinda just shows that they haven't learned anything I dunno why people act like it's worthy of praise especially when other devs get criticized for that.
Imho I don't believe a game should qualify for GOTY when it released in a state that BG3 did. I don't really say that easily because I did enjoy act 1 and most of act 2 a lot and act 3 does have genuinely good bits. But I don't think it's revolutionary and I think it's kinda silly how people are using the game to shit on other devs, to me it's basically an unfinished DA:O. It really just feels like a very significant amount of people talking about the game online didn't even play it or only played act 1.
Pathfinder WoTR came out in 2021 but it's my favorite RPG I've played this year, I think it released in a borked state too tho ( not okay either.... -_- ). The level of difference in depth is quite staggering, BG3 wins in presentation tho it's a significantly bigger budget game. And WoTR definitely has a lot of weird jank and balance issues too, even tho I think BG3 is way too easy I do prefer the consistency of it over WoTR at least.
To be a bit less negative, I did really enjoy how immersive the writing was for the characters. The writers and voice actors did an incredible job, I like that characters like Lae'zel for instance actually feels distinctly different and '' non-human ''. Only character I didn't like was Karlach ( it's my opinion, relax... ), her writing felt bizarrely too modern and off-putting to me. Everyone else sorta had this LoTR timeless feeling to them but she didn't, she just came across like someones Tumblr OC. Shadowheart also had one of my favorite companion storylines in any RPG, she definitely did feel A LOT more tied to the main plot than the rest tho. And I liked Astarion more than I expected, Cazador was hilarious too lmao his voice actor was great.
But yeah the companions and their writing and voice acting overall was definitely the highlight and elevated the game a lot for me and I don't think I am alone in that. I think they're a pretty HUGE part of the games success and why people like it.
