bought it

[Antimatter]

When I played BG1 & BG2, I often used my rogue character (preferably, a F/T) to complete some areas with stealth kills. Or used a cleric to fight the undead, especially the vampires, alone and buffed. Or sometimes, for magical duels, I preferred to face an SCS spellcaster with my raging berserker, or my own buffed-to-the-max sorcerer.

I don't think NOT putting all 4 characters in BG3 in the radius of one fireball-like effect is any different to that.

When I played BG1 & BG2, especially with the SCS mod, I relied on using consumables such as wands, necklaces with charges, scrolls, different types of arrows (hello, arrows of dispel!) and potions. In BG3, you can use many consumables. In fact, enemies will use them as well, to make battles fairer.

I hear complaints about BG3 (and other Larian games') combat a lot, it's fine if you don't like it. Don't mean to dump on anyone who says that, it's been years of constant dialogue about pros and cons of their games. I always found combat one of the best parts of their games, and BG3 is not different,-- but for me.

The aim of this comment is to give you ideas, not convince you of something.

You can play without splitting the party before ANY combat, and be just fine. However, you MUST use your character classes and abilities, that's true. E.g. if your rogue has a bonus action of Sneak, and attacking from stealth gives you an advantage, it makes sense to first set up the character in shadows, sneak, and only then attempt your action (attack), rinse and repeat every round of combat.

You have a very strong party setup. Use a ranged weapon for Astarion for now, try to utilize his bonus actions, and try using movement after your attack to put him in cover.

I'm playing with a paladin atm, and that's how I use her (she's also with a shield and tanky, just as your MC) - bonus action of Shield of Faith is a must, then put her next to the most dangerous opponent.

Lae'Zel should be your main finisher, so attack targets low on health, utilizing her great jump abilities.

With Shadowhear, focus on Bless, Aid, and smaller (bonus action) heal.

There are "ritual" spells in BG3 that don't cost spell points. You should cast them after every rest/before an upcoming battle. Think about prebuffing in BG1/BG2. Enhance Leap will last for 10 turns, and will turn both Lae'Zel and your MC into unstoppable force. Longstrider lasts until the Long rest, have it on everyone, including familiars/summons.

As for surfaces, I don't know, really, what is the problem. DA: Origins had spell combos in 2009. This game just goes a bit further. You can add fire to the grease or oil surface for a bigger boom.

But the actual damage from simple surfaces such as fire, acid, it's very small, around 3-4 hp. Just jump out.

The key to understanding the BG3 combat is accepting that verticality and the actual physics of the fight is a part of strategy, similar to picking the right spell. E.g. use the Cloud of Daggers spell (AoE), and push enemies into it. You don't only cast the AoE spell and wait until enemies enter it, move them into it.

I would suggest adding a magic user into your party, @O_Bruce. Maybe respec Astarion as a bard, or make Lae'Zel a bladesinger. You will notice how even just using scrolls can enhance your group power.

 

[Black Elk]

I had a pretty similar impression to O_Bruce, like definitely during the Early Access period, but even after launch I'd still have many gripes.

For me the main issue was down to frustration with party controls and movement, the group/ungroup stuff, or with character selection one by one. I guess that could be summarized as not having much control over the group, but instead having to rely on follow the leader stuff, or the chain scheme.

Also how the party enters/exits initiative. I feel like that is a major issue with this game. Again because the player doesn't have a ready way to control the party as a party, or as a unit. Since there are no formations, no long or short lead follow distances, no loose formation spread vs some sort of tight wedge. No scouting on point in a single file line etc. Instead the player has to move each character individually which feels weirdly stilted and meta to me. Prepositioning is tedious and also pretty unreliable, because one character can be pulled into initiative where the clock freezes, while for everyone else it's still ticking down.

Conversely, I switch to a different character outside of initiative, but then if it's the enemy's turn they will just start taking them immediately. The clock ticks differently for characters who are ungrouped inside or outside combat, even though ostensibly we are still a party operating as a team. Time doesn't seem to exist in BG3, except for in those instances where things start getting out of sync like that, as one half of the party is in a real time exploration mode, while the other half is in TB mode.

The whole idea that being hidden or invisible would prevent that character from entering the combat when everyone else does is just odd to me. Like you'd think there'd be a button for shared initiative or skip initiative or something. Something that accelerates the enemy turns/animations would also be nice.

I agree that many of the Enemies behave like all-knowing automatons. The way they will always seem to intuit who is hiding and move to spot the exact spot with that special reveal ability where every single enemy somehow has detect invisibility. Or like how they will always know who is concentrating on a Haste spell, and nail them first with some sort of crazy double crossbow attack. On the flip side, some enemies will predictably run right into a firewall or a cloud of daggers to reach the Party, making kiting them into AoE type damage pretty straight forward. Mage casts Cloud of Daggers then runs the opposite direction, 10 Goblins try to chase them down and all die running through the spell. So I suppose it cuts both ways. It can be variously pretty frustrating or also cheeseball gamey satisfying, depending on which end of the stick I'm catching.

Another thing I found really grating, was how the mouse targeting is set up. In BG3 the player first chooses their attack or spell from the hotbar or hotkey, then the second click confirms and executes that attack. To me this feels backwards, and the opposite of similar games, where there will be a simple way to cycle targets and confirm the target first, then select the attack or spell. I think they did it the way they did to sorta force the player into making misclicks. So they hit a floor or a banister, or have to hover over whatever pixel and sorta agonize over whether their mouse is going to drift at the last second like that. Traps are sorta similar, where the most danger comes in that final click. Nothing is more irritating to me then when a character moves, when I wanted them to remain perfectly still. I've noticed in Patch 8 that if I have an inventory screen open, sometimes the cursor will drift through this and my character will start moving in the environment when all I'm trying to do is find a potion or item in my pack. I've had some accidental click on red items, be accused of stealing or something. I came really close to accidentally attacking a firewine barrel at the Last Light Inn and blowing up the Quartmaster or Dammon. It got to the point where I stopped even trying to do inventory management anywhere near non-hostiles or merchants and such, for fear of that. Doesn't happen all the time, I'm pretty sure it's my laptop with the positioning of the touchpad, if I get a lazy wrist.

For me the main thing I had to do to get into this game (cause I mean I absolutely hated BG3's control and camera movement scheme, and still do) was to give up entirely on ambushing or pre-positioning prior to an encounter when the party is ungrouped. I just found that it never really worked out and I would expend all this energy to try and set something up, only to have the group/ungroup initiative thing just totally bork out at the last second. Now I just always go in let the chips fall wherever, with everyone still grouped together. I mean for the most part that's a big nerf, allowing the enemy to get the drop on me, or even surprise me, just to avoid separating my party. I find the chain system infuriating compared to just about every other game I've ever played, or an RTS style drag and select control scheme.

Still all that said, BG3 is somehow nevertheless my favorite combat in any game to date, not for the jank ass controls, but for the way the character's individual abilities all seem to key off each other in the moment to make surprising things happen. I don't feel like I could solo this game. I mean I think I could, I just don't think it would be very engaging or entertaining to play that way. The fun for me is in those moments of imminence, where each character in the party is building off the last person's play.
Most of the solo tactics seem to involve gaming in/out of initiative, and effectively breaking the game so that your selected character is operating in real time, while all the enemies are stuck in some strange TB timewarp. Running around, wondering who just shot them from the shadows and immediately became invisible like 6 times in a row lol. I mean I guess if I'm playing a rogue, but I never am. It's just not how I want to play a party based game. I don't find it fun in the way that trying to do that in BG1 was sometimes pretty fun for me, since BG1 was an effectively an RTS game, there was always something to do in the moment, something to click to keep pace. Here I feel like I'd just spend hella downtime waiting for the enemy AI to make it's moves. A lot of the combats do feel like puzzlers though, like where I'm trying to crack the code on it through the rinse repeat meta, more than like just going in guns blazing and trying to use the standard abilities to come out ahead. I think the game is designed to be run in the know, not blind. I mean that's just like the BG rubric I think. If I don't die a couple times, the encounter feels like it was not designed particularly well. I think this is why BG3 is just groundhogs days basically, but also I loved that flick, so I think I'm predisposed to let some stuff slide there, just cause I love what they did with the Goblins and such heheh

 

[O_Bruce]

Time to update on my impressions since last time.

What I did:

Spoiler

- Instead of banging my head against the wall, I decided to explore the map some more and level up at least once
- I found and adopted Scratch. I love him.
- Battled Harpies and saved a thiefling child. Found some more loot.
- Explored a temple dedicated to some unknown deity. Found both references to previous BG games but also possibly hints about the game's plot. Maybe?
- Found Karlach and helped her with "paladins"
- Battled Gnolls by the cave, and I saved some more people.
- Wyll found me
- Have Volo and a respec guy in my camp
- I have decided not to bother things in the swamp for now
- Dug up some treasures
- Explored the cellar under Blight Town (or whatever it was called)
- Battled Phase Spider Matriarch and won

- Met Wyll's patron
- Helping Karlach with her heart device
- Helped the owlbear cub
- Finally won a battle against the hobgoblin leader who walled me before
- Saved Halsin

My thoughts on the combat system:

Spoiler

After getting more different samples of the combat system, I concluded that my problem regarding enemies acting like all-knowing machines is mostly localized around the goblin camp area. I had no such problems vs gnolls, "paladins", spiders, or harpies. In a way, hitting a combat-related frustration so early in the game made me appreciate consumables and other single-use items (like elemental arrows etc.) much more. These especially came in handy when fighting the Phase Spider Matriarch. I wonder if it is a flaw in game design that an optional boss battle with 125 HP creature is much less challenging than a fight with stinking goblins and a hobgoblin. If I think about it, the goblin camp is one of the first things you are sent to in your journey, and that either is a problem or an attempt from the developers to say "git gud, scrub". Granted, there might be different approaches to the entire situation, though in my case, handling it differently didn't have much sense roleplay-wise.

On characters:

Spoiler

- Karlach is very lively and I think I can work better with her than I do with Lea'zel. Her role as a heavy-hitting front liner works better with my main character role as a tank, than more generalist Lea'zel did. I like the fact that her and Wyll's storyline is interconnected, and this is one of the reasons I am keeping them in party.
- Wyll is interesting, as in he seems like a good person willing to go through questionable means to achieve good results. Due to his storyline being connected to Karlach, and him being a spellcaster, I decided to keep him with me, replacing Astarion. Initially, I started to invest his level ups into Sorcerer (as this is something I am more familiar with), but after seeing how his Warlock backstory is heavily tied to his storyline, I might respec him to be purely a Warlock. Or I may level him as both Warlock and Sorcerer. I don't know yet. I think my character will get along with him well.
- Astarion. He doesn't like me. If that's his impression after witnessing selflessness and some good deeds, then I am not surprised. Still, my character wants to help every companion infested by Illithid's toadpole all the same.
- Lea'zel. Nothing new to report here, although if I'll be meeting those Gihtyianki, then I might bring her along
- Shadowheart. She seems to trust me the most and I am inclined to say I really like her, despite her worship of Shar, her ambition regarding her worship and some other circumstances. Then again, her memories are mostly suppressed, so she might start acting differently if they are restored, who knows? I'll be keeping my eye on that. Shadowheart trusts me enough to show vision of some of her unrepressed memories, and I think I saw Viconia in there. I also have some theories of what circumstance of those events might be, but time will likely tell I'm right. Aside from all that, Shadowheart, despite serving Shar and such, is surprisingly well-adjusted person. She also loves Scratch, and I think it is adorable that from all companions in the camp, she is often petting him and playing with him.

I am thinking, just for flavour's sake, if I should multi-class my paladin to a bard. What I have in mind is a character that swore Oath of the Ancient and has huge appreciation for life and nature. When not in combat, a character like that might want to express that appreciation through art, for example.

I also haven't shared how my Guardian looks like:

Spoiler

23 Hours invested so far.

 

[Antimatter]

That's a huge relief! That's more like it, now we're talking. Additional props to you for not giving up on the game.

I wonder what made you complete the "main" quest first, even ignoring a few places that would come much earlier, such as the cellar and temple, or the harpies.

Did you go to Defiance Bay in Pillars of Eternity ASAP instead of exploring areas before the town? Did you go straight for Imoen in BG2 (when you first played it)? I'm accustomed to completing side content first, before taking on the main mission, if possible from a time sensitivity perspective. I'm just curious, not saying some should play like X and not like Y.

 

[O_Bruce]

I wonder what made you complete the "main" quest first, even ignoring a few places that would come much earlier, such as the cellar and temple, or the harpies.

I think it is due to the urgency of curing your condition. Knowing what ceremorphosis is (and even seeing it in the game first teaser back in the days) makes you want to search for a cure. And even if

Spoiler

my Guardian claims to protect me from the fate of becoming a mind flayer,

the rest of my companions aren't aware of that.

From a more "meta" perspective, it appears rather obvious that the game won't give you a very limited time to cure your condition. Then again, in BG1 you had limited time to deal with Marek's poison or being infected with lycanthropy.

Circumstances in both Pillars of Eternity and BG2 are different, though, as in: they are urgent, but not that urgent. Especially with BG2, given who and what you'll be up against, some preparation beforehand seems justified.

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

I think it is due to the urgency of curing your condition. Knowing what ceremorphosis is (and even seeing it in the game first teaser back in the days) makes you want to search for a cure.

You aren't alone. I felt the urgency as well, and rushed ahead in my first run. Sometimes I wish they'd add a narrative element in these games where you're advised not to rush.

Glad to hear you're enjoying it more!

 

[Antimatter]

I see, thanks for the explanation, it makes sense.

But hey, that might not be a bad thing. I saw a lot of complaints about how RPGs don't handle the urgency factor, and people criticize the plot for not feeling important enough.

I think I read that complaint about almost every RPG, from The Witcher 3 to Dragon Age.

Well, when I first played BG3 in EA, I didn't rest even once (until saving Halsin), as I was afraid of the consequences as well.

 

[Antimatter]

Captured a moment the AI (in the Honour mode, no less) made an obvious mistake, attacking with Magic Missiles one of my party members protected by the shield spell (the shield spell wasn't used as a reaction in this particular attack, it had already been cast earlier in the same round).

So definitely not all-knowing machines.

 

[Black Elk]

Haha Danna got robbed!

Yeah that was how I played in EA for sure. Also with that same remembrance that O_Bruce had, about being poisoned TPK in BG1, then reloading after reloading. Trying to steal a Remove Gaes scroll from Jalantha at the Bitch Queen's Temple, before the clock ran down, from the last autosave. Or similarly Viconia being burned alive in BG2 if I foot dragged it too hard in the Temple District. Stuff like that and the whole narrative set up from the mini-movie opener, which seemed to say that things were about to turn all bad if we didn't hurry up and do what needed doing hehe.

Then on the very first rest, everyone totally questions the decision, as if it was the worst possible idea lol. Until that point on the nautiloid with those restoration pods seemed like maybe it wouldn't matter, but then we hit the beach and suddenly I'm being visited by dream visitors and probably losing my mind. I mean that's what I figured at any rate. I thought our first dungeon was intended to be the Dank Crypt since this area was accessible before the battle at the Gate. This was usually my first long rest, with all our spell slots expended and leaning heavily on health potions and such just desperate and trying not to get killed at the gate battle which felt pretty elaborate.

From there, by doing what we're told would be the most obvious thing to do, go to the Goblin camp and rescue Halsin, we get launched into some pretty hard setpiece battles and what seemed like a really insane Boss fight with Droar Ragzlin. Not having played any Larian games or having much experience, it seemed to me that every battle I got into turned into some massive thing with like a dozen enemies all bearing down on us and spillover combats, where as soon as one would just seem like it was about to be over it would knock into another group of NPCs and agro. The promo'd Evil path, so I sided with Minthara on the first playthrough. I thought everything was cool and really hooked by Shadowheart, Lae'zel and Minthara. I really enjoyed Shadowheart and Lae'zel being incredibly just ice cold, and not friendly at all, I remember being bummed when they changed some of their emotes to make them play nice. I played Early Access periodically for a year and never ran into Karlach even once! I don't think I advanced into the Underdark until whatever patch introduced Grym, because I thought it was an area we weren't even meant to access. I remember doing the floor puzzle, but facing the wrong wall, leaving in frustration lol.

Then found some other way there down via a chasm fall, to drop right on top of a Minotaur. I did not think that was a place we were meant to end up, and it was much darker and much scarier than I thought we could handle. I liked the experience a lot, especially the Goblins. Quickly determined that I didn't want to play the EA too much and ruin the later game for myself. The whole idea that we'd go exploring all that side stuff before trying to resolve the main tadpole thing just seemed counter intuitive, but then if we 'd do what we're told to do, we'd hit the cap at lvl 4. Not being able to hitch a ride on any boats yet, or take any mountain passes, it felt like Act I was just that, Kill the Goblin leaders or the Raid on the Grove and kill the Druids, everything else playing second fiddle. Maybe also because they said the thing would run on a 970 gpu and the HHD, but I think those were both misleading minimum specs lol. I could barely move the cursor around in the environment, nothing would stick the click, character selection brutal and party movement felt haphazard and dangerous outside of combat, that the idea of casual exploration gave me complete anxiety hehe.

I think it was only on the 5th or 6th replay, when the Druid class came out that I tried to figure out an excuse to explore the Swamps and surrounding wilderness areas. Eating the tadpoles always seems pretty sketch. I thought it was going to be like nightmare on elmstreet 9, 10 never sleep again, and that was Daisy's whole deal.

In the full release they did one big thing to change the tone, which I think made it slightly more obvious that we should sleep to advance the story, and that was basically to remove like 2/3rds of the prologue along with any real pretense of that level being a 'tutorial.' Instead of meeting a bunch of insane fisherman who are obviously hallucinating and thinking 'damn I don't want to end up like them' we get Shadowheart crash landed right next to us, so that she's just totally unavoidable, even if she was freed from the pod. With a spellcaster as the first recruit the pressure to long rest was much greater, and so it made sense to camp right after the Intellect Devourers. But even then, it still felt like maybe not the best idea to sleep!

I'm surprised they never made a Nightmare Mode. I thought the follow up to Honour would be that, or maybe a Lone Wolf.

 

[Black Elk]

This was pretty amusing to watch.

Ed Greenwood messing around in the BG3 character creator and talking shop...



If only there was a write biography blurb button! hehe I would like to see his take on Vogue Githyanki!

With all the elaborate Mods and such for BG3, what it really needs is a standalone expansion to just the character creator. For me low hanging fruits would be things like heads, hair, wardrobe. The ability to name everything and add special notes to our mundane starting equipment. If that was somehow what the BG3 launcher did, I'd let it run in the background on the system tray all night and never give that a second thought!

 

[O_Bruce]

Guys...

I haven't made much progress since the last time, but I have explored the swamps and finished

Spoiler

Swamp Hag quest

, and then found out some things about Astarion. I think by letting him do some things, I have gained some of his trust. Not that it matters much: I don't suppose I'll be keeping him as a part of the main party for most of the time anyway.

Some things aside (like some small quests left unfinished, some of which I wonder if I managed to mess up the scripting in those), I am ready to get on with the plot. There is just a small problem I have noticed - I don't feel like playing at the moment.

I need to be honest with myself. When deciding what to play in my spare time, I often prefer either something I can play with my friends, or a game that is more fun to me at the moment. Right now, BG3 is a 7/10* or 7.5/10 game for me, so when I have 8-9/10 options instead, then no wonder I gravitate towards them. Maybe BG3 will get better as it gets on, but right now I just don't see how it could earn game of the year award, because that indicates it was a rather crappy year for video games.

*I don't work for IGN, so my scale starts from 1 to 10, instead of 7 to 10.

 

[Cahir]

Guys...

I haven't made much progress since the last time, but I have explored the swamps and finished

Spoiler

Swamp Hag quest

, and then found out some things about Astarion. I think by letting him do some things, I have gained some of his trust. Not that it matters much: I don't suppose I'll be keeping him as a part of the main party for most of the time anyway.

Some things aside (like some small quests left unfinished, some of which I wonder if I managed to mess up the scripting in those), I am ready to get on with the plot. There is just a small problem I have noticed - I don't feel like playing at the moment.

I need to be honest with myself. When deciding what to play in my spare time, I often prefer either something I can play with my friends, or a game that is more fun to me at the moment. Right now, BG3 is a 7/10* or 7.5/10 game for me, so when I have 8-9/10 options instead, then no wonder I gravitate towards them. Maybe BG3 will get better as it gets on, but right now I just don't see how it could earn game of the year award, because that indicates it was a rather crappy year for video games.

*I don't work for IGN, so my scale starts from 1 to 10, instead of 7 to 10.

Which games (that you actually playing) do you consider 8-9/10?

 

[O_Bruce]

Which games (that you actually playing) do you consider 8-9/10?

As in right now-ish? Sekiro, Dark Souls, Monster Hunter Wilds.
In my Steam library, there's more, but those I don't play right now-ish.

 

[Cahir]

As in right now-ish? Sekiro, Dark Souls, Monster Hunter Wilds.
In my Steam library, there's more, but those I don't play right now-ish.

Well, I find none of those games 8-9/10, but I wouldn't say any of those didn't deserve awards. It's just not the tyle of game I like. Maybe it's simply the same with BG3 in your case. Saying BG3 won because it was a crappy year for video games is a bit disrespectful to BG3 (and Larian), but also to other games BG3 thought for GoTY (like Alan Wake 2).

 

[Antimatter]

I think it's totally fine to play action games instead of BG3, depending on the mood. BG3 requires a lot of time to stay focused on your journey in it (and to feel more involved/immersed). I've been busy for the last month, and haven't played BG3 either, instead preferring session-based/faster/shorter games. For example, I've discovered Hades is pretty good for my current time/activity/availability.

It's also totally fine not to continue games, pause them, or come back later (or not). Maybe there will be a time when you feel like playing BG3 more, @O_Bruce!

 

[O_Bruce]

Well, I find none of those games 8-9/10, but I wouldn't say any of those didn't deserve awards. It's just not the tyle of game I like. Maybe it's simply the same with BG3 in your case. Saying BG3 won because it was a crappy year for video games is a bit disrespectful to BG3 (and Larian), but also to other games BG3 thought for GoTY (like Alan Wake 2).

BG3 is hailed as a masterpiece, despite the fact it just does what good cRPG should, instead of dumbing down cRPG elements. It does what was *standard* and *normal* few years ago. That's about it.

I said what I said for a reason, though. If around 2023 many RPG games were dumbed down, their writing subpar etc., then no wonder a good RPG will look even better in comparison. I did not meant my comment to be disrespectful towards Larian.

 

[Black Elk]

I wouldn't stress it. Took me like 3 and half years to actually get into this game lol. For the whole rest of the time I thought it might be the worst thing to ever happen to Baldur's Gate lol. I legit thought it would probably tank the whole franchise and the legacy, from the janky party movement controls and just the overall supercharged campiness and focus on all the hambone stuff. I found the slow almost non existent drip of content during EA to be infuriating and bugs that would just go unfixed forever, like months and months, sometimes a year or more. People were very generous with this one. I mean several run ending glitches for a game that takes like a hundred hours to complete? I think now it is a bit of a cultural touchstone though, so it's probably good to be conversant in it, or at least to get in on some of the jokes or whatever. It's hard for me to think of another cRPG that had a similarly outsized conversation going on around it coming out of an EA, surely not for D&D at least, so a bit of a novelty there.

I think BG3 was at least in part celebrated more for what people thought it would surely become, rather than what it is or what it was at the time. What I mean is that, it won all those awards right, but then immediately they said there would be no DLC or Expansion or Sequel. Like right afterwards? lol. I think it probably still deserved Game of the Year for sure, but I don't know, that really pulled the red carpet out from under things for me. The whole idea of a continuing series of D&D adventures using the same systems and the same overall presentation, something with stylistic cohesion and all the branding to help prop it up.

To me the campaign itself feels pretty disjointed. The early game is pretty strong, but also frustratingly almost the exact same thing that we played in Early Access since 2019, so like 3 years of that non stop. Act I or the first half of Act I, it was just played to death. Act II delivered and is probably the peak, but then Act III is so different from the rest of the game in terms of the flow, also how things are organized and presented, just feels like a bit of a different beast. A Masterpiece would have recommended a more timely Epilogue, and more Minthara! heheh Also the amount of time between the Epilogue patch and this last patch with all the new subclasses and such, that felt like a really long time. It's about as feature complete as we're going to get for something like this probably, and the modding stuff is nice, but I just think it could have used more of a sendoff. Larian takes their sweet ass time that's for sure. I thought the game would come out like in 2020 lol.

I wonder what they will do next? There's a lot of speculation floating around for what Excalibur might mean. I'm sure some are really hoping it will somehow be critical role, or something like that, where they just like kinda pickup with the same sorts of people and doing the same sorts of things, just without all the Wizards baggage. I don't know though, I still feel like there is something quintessential about the D&D here, otherwise without a framework that exists outside the game, just seems like it would be way harder to drop everyone in cold and expect them to figure it all out. That's a pretty big ask I think, for anything with this much rules overhead. Just a very tall order for anything that's like still brand new. D&D has like 50 yrs under the belt and lots of just easy to search whatevers, or to have someone chime in on it with random tips and such, but it's hard to picture that same sort of thing with other systems that aren't so well established.

I'd say it's good one to have in the library all the same, just cause you never know. For me it took finding a character concept and a class that I liked and then finally getting to Act II, when I started to enjoy myself more.

 

[mlnevese]

I have over 70 hours in it and I still don't like BG3... maybe it will grow on me someday.

 

[O_Bruce]

Uninstalled the game.

My Steam review:

Long story short: I really wanted and tried to like this game, but I just can't.

Now to elaborate: I had 44 hours in this game. I was still in Act I (in the underdark), and it took me that long because I geniuely wanted to give this game the best chance I felt it deserved. I explored, I read up lore, tried establishing relationships with characters and decided to suck it up and deal with combat system I don't particularly like. That effort was for naught.

I love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, these are the crpgs dear to me. BG3 however, is not a Baldur's Gate game. Not only status quo in the game means Gorion's Ward entire journey was for nothing, for years I keept hearing how little respect this game offers to legacy characters. I think there might be point to it now. There is a reason why people talk about Shadowheart, Astarion and other Larian's OCs, and no one mentions Minsc or Jaheira. Or how no one talks about Sarevok or Viconia. On other things, the game doesn't really attempt to make me believe BG3, BG2 and B1 are taking place in the same timeline.

On it's own merit, it is 6/10 crpg. It doesn't do anything that haven't been done before in crpg genre, nor does it improve on it. Unfortunately, some basic things like exploring the world (you can move only one character at once or entire party, with nothing in between. Sometimes it is detrimental) or even inventory managament feels like a chore. The combat has all it should have to be enjoyable, but no kidding, Baldur's Gate 3 is the first crpg I have ever played that I found myself consistently procrastinating, when I knew combat encounter is coming.

I needed to be honest with myself, I just can't enjoy this game regardless how many chances I gave to it. I also don't understand what people see in it. And that's a shame, because as I said, I really would like to enjoy this game.

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

That’s a fair take. I’m sorry you didn’t get any enjoyment from it. Hope you’ve got another game lined up that will be a lot more fun.