Baldur’s Gate 3

This game feels so big, ambitious and (initially) high quality that it makes it very easy for a player to ball gag their inner critic, push them into the locker and just try to earnestly engage with the experience they're offered - which, if there is a "correct" way to play any game, this must be it - suspend your disbelief, enjoy the view and ignore the seams. The problem with this approach for BG3 is that it's just too long for me to sustain that kind of mindset throughout the game. I was willing to look past many of its flaws the first ~60-ish hours (most games would already be over by that time), and during this very long grace period the game failed to provide a good reason to care once it ended. Neither the combat nor the story is good enough to warrant interest past that point, and the main thing that kept me going is sunk cost and just wanting to see how it ends - not in the "edge of my seat" way, but in "finally done with this" way.

As a tactical RPG it's completely anemic (not to mention - way too easy), the overwrought combat system simply collapses under its own weight. All the intricate mechanics, twelve classes with god knows how many subclasses and multiclass permutations, a hundred or so spells, and still the most effective thing is to just hit bad man with big stick/hot ball until he stop moving. A lot of this is due to high variance in combat, resulting in simple here-and-now solutions being more effective than coming up with tactics that span multiple turns only to see your plans fall through because the enemy resisted being knocked down or some shit. In a game where a fight is won or lost in 2 rounds, where losing means game over and where you're free to reload as much as you want, having such high variance is simply idiotic (I don't care if this is how DnD works. We're playing a video game). The forced spell slot/resource system further sours things. Food is far too abundant for it to be legitimately limiting, so all it does is add tedium ("fight - short rest - fight - short rest - fight - camp - reapply buffs" is a cycle you'll be doing dozens of times) and frustration. I understand you don't want players casting Disintegrate every round (and you absolutely need them to camp to advance plot), but there are far better solutions for limiting usage of the most powerful abilities.

As a "story-rich" RPG it's merely adequate. I don't expect much in that department from video game stories and characters, they are slaves to gameplay limitations (and here also to genre and the parent franchise), so of course the branching and reactivity will be limited and most decisions will ultimately be inconsequential, with predictable setups and payoffs. But a good game can elevate an average story by supplementing it with interesting locations, characters and quests. Act I did a pretty good job with this. Act II was a significant drop in quality, but still overall decent, and the finale seemed like a proper ending to the story, with tension constantly escalating and all the major plot threads converging on a single location and a single antagonist. You bring down The Dark Lord, your friends and allies cheer as you grab The Artifact, all is well. The end... what do you mean, there's more?!

After the insane Act II finale, you are dropped off in a huge city with a task to defeat some guys and prevent the realm's impending doom - but also to explore at your leisure, run some errands for strangers, engage in all kinds of tomfoolery and dilly-dally to your heart's content. This is major tension whiplash that makes it very hard to take the plot seriously, especially since the new bad guys come out of nowhere and their motivations are eye-rollingly banal. This would be ok if in exchange we got a city full of cool characters, interesting quests and beautiful locations to explore, but most NPCs have one line of irrelevant dialogue, those who have more to say usually give you some filler "fetch X/kill Y" quest, and most locations are houses or establishments that feature attractions such as a locked chest in a cellar, containing 100 gold and some penis enlargement pills. There are some genuinely cool bits in Act III, but they are a fraction of the schlock that makes up most of the content. I wandered an empty city, did shallow quests for no payoff (because I hit the absurdly low level cap already), and waited for the game to be finally over so I can shelve it and never play it again (just for the sake of comparison, when I finished DOS2 which had similar length, I immediately started a second playthrough - and then another one). At least it ended with a bang.

This game really should have come out in 2025 to be good. Or it could come out in 2023 and be half the current length. There was probably no saving the combat system, no matter how much time they took, but it could at the very least get tuned higher. I'd rather rage-reload after a flunked fireball than curb stomp every fight past lvl 5, killing any interest in playing with builds and class combinations.

Despite spending most of this review tearing it down, I still think it's a decent game. I just don't think it's good enough to warrant its own length. Unless you're positively salivating at the prospect of dating your 3D waifu or playing an RPG specifically in DnD setting, 130 hours of your time are better spent elsewhere. Also, Astarion has herpes in the game's poster.

Hands down, the most I have loved an RPG since Dragon Age: Origins. BG3 really captures the freedom of playing a TTRPG on a level I haven't really seen before. My only real issues with the game are: The way the performance dips in act 3 (though that is rapidly being improved with every update), how a lot of act 3 feels like it was cut down for time (I would have gladly put another hundred or so hours into this game, Larian), and how disappointing it can be when you find a choice or mechanic the game doesn't account for (and that's simply because the game accounts for so much more than one would expect it to).

If you love messing around with character builds, I'd say it's one of the best aspects of the game. I think a little less than half of the total hours I have in the game were spent on respeccing my character, respeccing my companions, buying hirelings to respec them, and restarting the entire game to roll a whole new character to mess around with.

The turn based tactical combat was an excellent choice as well, and it's somehow the most engaging version of the style that Larian has done. I can't quite put my finger on why but where it's something I didn't quite think about in the Original Sin games, it is actually one of the main things that instantly clicked and sold the game for me. I've always said that while Dragon Age Origins is my favorite game of all time, I cannot stand Bioware's real time pause and play combat style, something that has always been my biggest downside for not only that, but Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 as well. I am incredibly grateful Larian stuck to their guns with the combat, it's far more true to D&D as well as not overwhelming and annoying like constantly pausing to keep up with what your whole party is doing.

I have seen Act 3 accused of bringing down the game but I don't see it. Despite my criticisms mostly stemming from Act 3, overall it is on the same level if not better than the other two. It's certainly far more dense, it makes the first two look like an extended prologue. Every single time I thought my interest in the game was going to hit a snag I ended up being wrong, I cannot think of a single questline I do not love.

note: beat on balanced, GOOlock 12, did good non dark urge run

have never played 5e, played 1 3.5e campaign, played and beat dos 2 de three times, never played bg1-2 megacampaign, rtx 3060 super

also note: spoilers, probably

things i like the most:

- the starting six of lae'zel, shadowheart, wyll, astarion, gale, and karlach were very memorable to me. you can tell the VA's had a blast working on it and it pays off multiple times
- the additional two of jaheira and minsc are equally witty, imo even more so. found jaheira's dialogue to be the most entertaining of them all.
- played straight GOOlock eldritch blast maxxer, found juggling 4 people fairly intuitive and fun, found core gameplay loop very fun overall (maybe a bit too easy but idrc)
- supporting cast is all very cute and fun (alfira, aylin, rolan, scratch, mizora) and you can see them again and again
- orin the red gets me going
- raphael boss fight
- iron throne prison escape

things that could be better:

- act 3 in general, i probably enjoyed the last act the most simply because of the resolutions for some overarching quests as well as the House of Hope / Wyrmway but its clear it is the place that was playtested the least
- oddly enough didnt encounter many bugs in the actual game but apparently this is a point of contention so ill leave it in
- distinct drop in reactivity and banter in act 2-3, still some gems in there
- the leadup to the final boss fight was kinda fun but also a slog, would make calling in allies a bonus action was a quick fix

things that straight up suck:

- performance sometimes slowed the game down to like 3-4 fps for bursts
- epilogue is the only "part" that i would think does verge on bad - a lot of companion endings verge on bittersweet but it wouldn't hurt doubling back on the npcs and companions that came with you from act 1 in the elfsong tavern
- debating on putting karlach's ending here (circa patch 2), it's fine for now but id still like to see proper closure on it later
- i will probably never do an evil playthrough because i like the good npcs that much but its clear that a huge amount of content is simply gone if you do the Bad Choice

ACT 1: 8-8.5/10
ACT 2: 8.5/10
ACT 3: 8-8.5/10 (objectively take a point off but idk things just clicked for me here lol)
ENDING: 5-6/10
OVERALL: 8-8.5/10 (got that larian swag to it, they worked hard so ill be lenient on them)

CRPGs are in a weird spot for me because, at least high fantasy ones such as this, I end up just wondering why I would play it over an actual dnd campaign. Some get around that, by making the overall gameplay fun and engaging due to its own rulesets, but this is just a variation of 5e and doesn't even contain all the PC options current 5e has on offer.

So the only option I have is to try to ignore the fact that it's a poor mans facsimile of one of the oldest games someone can play, but even on that front it's tiresome and frustrating. So many actions are just tedious, quality of life options are almost non-existent, dialogue is often not an option, and there's a lot of encounters that are vestigial at best.

A lot of the above would be tolerable if the story was interesting but so far while the main plot of 'you have a worm in your head that'll make you into an illithid' is a good hook, it's taking awhile for that to really lead anywhere and where it's leading looks to just be generic 'chosen one' type beats. So, ok, main story is whatever, but basically every RPG lives and dies off its world and sidequests anyway, right?

Well the sidequests so far have been even more dull. Very very simple stuff; talk someone out of imprisoning a child, jailbreak the goblin so you don't have to fight your way into their encampment, that kinda stuff. And those are just the ones that actually have a purpose. So many side encounters - because really, they aren't quests - have next to no real options. You can see and hear a tiefling locked in what looks to be a storage room in the first town, clearly frustrated with something not working. Lets ignore for the moment that we can see that she has the paralyzed condition. Anyway; can't talk to her from outside, game isn't built for that, and the door is locked and will get you in trouble if you try to interact with it. So you go around back, climbing through the caves in the prison, and get inside through the roof. She tells you to get out, but if you pass an insight check to realize she's paralyzed, she drops it and says something to the effect of "Alright fine, you can stay, just don't touch anything."

You can ask vague questions but the most info you can get out of her regarding her situation is that she drank a potion from some old lady who was very nice to her. You can't ask for more info on the old lady, where she is, anything like that. You can't offer to help the girl in any way shape or form. So you go to leave out the front door, and the second you touch it she calls the guards on you, who immediately open the locked door and put you into the generic 'stop right there criminal scum' dialogue where you have to pay, fight, or pass a really hard check with no situational bonuses.

I could go on; there's been at least 4 different encounters where dialogue just leads to people drawing swords on me for saying or doing very normal, non-confrontational things, and when presented with more context later down the line, it become even more non-sensical since you see that had even less justification to react so harshly. There's also plenty of instances of what I would call 'game dev bread crumbs' that lead absolutely nowhere, such as a potion of speak to animals next to a magically locked chest in an owlbear cave. I'm sure if you've played... really, any open ended video game, or any TTRPG, you can see what my first instinct was, but turns out that is completely pointless. Yes, there is TECHNICALLY something to be gained from following that trail, but it can also be gained by simply not engaging with it at all, and the act of engaging in of itself has no real merit because it's a conversation of only 2-3 dialogue lines.

I don't even really feel the need to talk about combat. It's 5e but more broken. That's really the end of it. The point of this game is to present the player a world and characters to roleplay with and in my eyes it falls dramatically short of basically any of it's well respected predecessors. I'm of the mind that this is always an inevitability when something becomes too high budget since making ends meet and taking risks are usually not things that go hand in hand on this scale, but I truly just do not see who this is for besides people who have never played any other CRPG or TTRPG, or specifically the kind of player who picks bard and roles to seduce every NPC in DnD.

Similar to how DnD itself has evolved into essentially being 2 totally different games depending on who you're playing with, this is far closer to Dragon Age than any of the 'masterpieces' people refer to when talking about CRPGs as a genre. I guess if being able to fuck a bear and a vampire twink is all it takes for a game to be a 10/10 for you, go wild, but like, you know you can also have the rest of the game be good too, right?