It seems there’s been a bit of excitement of late with the release of Baldur’s Gate 3. No real surprise there, I guess. Now, this poll is simply asking you if you are playing, have played, and whether you liked it more or less than others. Somebody had to do one I guess.
For the record, I currently do not own it, but would certainly like to grab it and give it a go at some point in the future.
This is a MULTI option poll with up to four choices allowed.
NOTE: Consider these options as the “most likely” in your own situation.
I had to vote for two options that may contradict each other a bit. I’m having a good time with it, but at the same time I think it’s quite overhyped. Seeing that it almost everywhere gets very near a perfect score is what I don’t get. It’s great in its scope and ambition, but it’s very far from perfect. The game has a lot of “stuff” I don’t like. A lot of other older games like KOTOR, NWN SOU, NWN HOTU, NWN2 MoTB, the Mass Effect games, The Witcher games and newer stuff like Cyberpunk has been a more enjoyable experience to me. But considering there are so few games released nowadays that have a good singlegame roleplaying campaign, I’m happy for Larian’s success. I still haven’t finished it but gotten a bit tired of it to be honest these last few days. I have very recently begun Act 3 of the game.
Weird, I have played all those and having more fun then any of those. I’m at the start of act 3 too. I have played single player and multi. Just like any game do not play a ton of time in one sitting or you get burned out. I think it worth it to give it a try and see what you think and if the price seems high wait awhile, steam put everything on sale pretty fast.
I am not far into the game yet, but what I have seen so far I really like.
Playing with the “Dark Urge” background and the intent to resist. Sounded a bit more… interesting.
I’ve completed it but still put my vote as “it’s a good game”. The game is good overall but there are rather serious flaws that detract from the experience, which include:
“Evil” routes being unrewarding, just leaves NPCs dead, causing you to miss out on merchants. (Spoiler: Blacksmith that sells some of the best armors will die and there’s no replacement NPC for him. Also causes immediate failure of certain quests. Getting the evil companion (who isn’t actually that evil) requires losing 2-3 normal companions, plus she doesn’t have much content in comparison.
Some questlines being really linear and severely punishes you if you refuse to follow in a specific order. (Spoiler: Some NPCs are immortal be it due to censorship or plot reasons. Then one of these NPC can call the guards on you if you enter their area too early due to “trespassing” unless you complete some seemingly unrelated side quests outside that area)
Larian’s typical repetitive NPC banter. It is insane how this is still a thing. You have groups of NPCs repeating the same lines of dialogues every 5 SECONDS. Worse is how sometimes the voice lines include some moaning, groaning or complaining. (Spoiler: NPC complains about the newspaper on repeat every few seconds, or them saying “NUH UH”, “LA LA LA” or “WHEN WILL ROLAND SHOW OFF HIS THUNDERWAVE” Like holy shit shut the hell up!.)
Skill checks. Larian used a D20 + Skill Modifier which doesn’t sound bad at first but Critical Fail is a thing here! This means you can invest a ton of skill points to exceed the skill check but can still fail, resulting in a forced reload which just wastes time. And yes, you have to reload as many of these checks are very important! Hell some even inflict permanent debuffs or give you positive buffs!
Class restrictions. Remember how Strength Rogues could sneak attack with any weapon, well that’s not a thing anymore, you HAVE to use a finesse weapon. Warlocks are one of the strongest classes in BG3 due to their versatility yet don’t feel like actual Warlocks due to a lack of actual fiendish/eldritch skills unlike NWN2. How about Bards you say, they can’t even cast Bardic Song / Inspiration on themselves anymore!
Race imbalance. Although ability scores have been made the same for all races now, races still get different starting bonuses, except there are clearly races that are stronger than others. For example. Tieflings, Drow and Githyanki get a plethora of starting abilities and still get additional racial spells as they level up. Meanwhile, Dragonborn gets only elemental resistance and mediocre breath attack once per Long Rest. Humans get useful weapon and armor proficiencies are outclassed by Half-Elves due to Half-Elves having both human and elven bonuses.
Love the game, a campaign with all this option and outcome is a dream come true, never played a game with all this fredom and consequences. Just remind is a computer game and not a real DM so not all aspect could be cover by a programmed environment but the most common solution are.
Maybe not all the rule/mechanic are there but … again … is a computer game and the program can’t resolve situation like a real DM.
Love all the dice rolling in the dialogue for skill check situation, the ispiration point system is a must, and fail a check in 90% situation is not bad but create a new situation to resolve like in a TTRPG. In a lot of situation is not a “GAME OVER” so play like in a friend session and the accept the dice result, in other game is a “GAME OVER” or land to impossible battle to resolve the situation.
Don’t like aspect like scroll could be used by all the class, alchemy is … useless … and why have disable kit when you fail don’t broke one.
The jump system is horrible when companion can’t follow and you need to control one by one and you don’t remember to “unchain” the party … is a mess.
Romance is … terrible … all the companion want the main character after you reach a certain level of approval … friendship is dead? First day no one know each other the third day … please be my lover ?!?
@night76 - I agree about the romance part. It’s ok but it went too fast from 0 to 100, and like you say, why is there no friendship option? Feels a bit unnatural and forced in that aspect.
I’ve also had about 3 quests that were broken because I did things in the “wrong” order by for example stumbling upon a NPC that I talked to and had some dialogue option that felt weird and I just “guessed” that this would probably something my character would say. Then later I discover that that NPC was vital to finishing quite an important side quest. I think Larian might have fixed this now, but I’m not keen to go back and replay 10 hours of battles and whatnot.
I really like the rolling of the dice in dialogue situations that some has mentioned.
All in all I also think the dialogue is very well written, but that’s pretty standard when it comes to a big game like this.
Another thing I really like is that I managed to talk my way out of two boss fights. This is a very rare thing. Loved that.
Sometimes I feel like there are so many side quests popping up out of the blue and hard to keep track of them all, and I feel it a bit hard to remember all the names and what it was about. Like, I feel like I get sidetracked a bit too much when I’m about to solve another quest and all this other stuff suddenly craves my attention. The game can feel a bit unfocused in that regard. For some reason I can’t remember this being an issue in the Mass Effect games, The Witcher 3 or Dragon Age Origins, but maybe I remember wrong. The journal entries are ok, but sometimes a bit too vague. Ah well, I’m probably just getting old.
I agree totally. I have reloaded a ton of times at important conversations.
Exactly!
Couldn’t agree more!
EDIT: I also find the inventory system a bit messy. I wish one could see all the items you have and all companions at the same time to be able to distribute stuff easier.
Another thing with the companions that I find quite annoying is that you have to go to camp and talk to a companion if you want to recruit him or her into your party.
So, as I’ve stated earlier, I find it to be a good game but with a lot of flaws.
Hit tab to open the whole party inventories.
Grab bag(s) and put item(s) in it by category, place bag(s) in quick bar (potions, scrolls etc…).
Un-click the the little lock icon on you quick bar so you can organize it any way you like.
Never had a issue with failing a skill check, just took the result or used a inspiration.
The hit tab doesn’t show all of the companions’ inventory at the same time, only those you have in your party at the moment (at least to my knowledge).
I think its a solid 5/10. And I mean that sincerely. People will forget about it in a few months and maybe then I can pen a sincere review of it on my website and not get death threats this time from overzealous fans. For pretty much every thing I’ve enjoyed in it has been something that detracts from the experience for me, and I really, really cannot get over the fact that the narrator sounds like they’re on some sort of sedative.
Wow. Getting death threats for a video game opinion sounds like distilled Terminally Online Twitter behavior.
I’d give the game a 6/10 for actual gameplay, story, etc.
But I’d give it closer to an 8/10 just based on how much I’m actually enjoying it right now and its replayability factor for me.
It’s got a few bugs and memory leak issues that make my video card cry even with a high end computer that’s annoying as hell, and its missing a few features that would make me enjoy the game now (A toolset (wishful thinking), a chat box for multiplayer, a ‘photo/gpose mode’ , the ability to “Glamour” your clothing/appearance, and a universal inventory system for all companions, including the ones not currently in your party.)
Otherwise, I’m having decent fun. I haven’t really thought about D&D (And therefore NWN) for a while until BG3 came out so awakening that in me again is reason enough to endear the game to me.
I think the area building gives me some ideas for building my own areas in my module, and I think the way they portray religions is on point for the lore (Not the biggest fan of 5e but some of the quality of life updates in the mechanics are great and I would want to try to bring them into NWN if possible)
I find it interesting seeing people discovering new things about the game, or things they think are new, and getting to have conversations with people who have never touched Forgotten Realms. I also like how there are so many ‘easter eggs’ for FR vets.
I also think I saw at least two references to Barovia in the game (one in a book, and one in an appearance option) that…leave me intrigued…to say the least.
Yeah absolutely, about the terminally online thing. I mostly just brush it off but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t wear you out after a while.
The reason for the like. You’ve got a real turn of phrase there. Made me chuckle.
Hah! Well, it just stood out for me. When you consider for instance Darkest Dungeon, the powerful voice acting of the Narrator is what drove a lot of interest in the game. To me the narrator in Baldur’s Gate 3 sounds like a bored drama student who just took the course as an elective because they thought it’d be easy. It drains a lot of the energy the things the game does right drive, for me.
Hehe. I actually like the narrator, but I can totally understand your point of view here anyway.
Oh! I’m so glad I’m not the only one! I thought there was something wrong with my computer. My computer has crashed 2-3 times and my graphics card is almost the minimum required, so I thought it might be that. Last time it happened was really scary. Couldn’t restart until maybe an hour or so later after trying a few times. The crashes seemed graphics card related and I turned down a few settings to not overload my computer. I will actually inherit my brother’s graphics card since he wanted a new high end one, but maybe that won’t solve the issue then… I’ll probably leave the settings like they are now.
Do you really think so? I mean, the hype for this game seems unreal. I hope you are right though, and that we can have more honest conversations about the game’s (in my opinion of course) actual flaws, and at the same time maybe accept that it’s still a popular game that many people like.
I’m actually a bit curious to know about some of your favourite games and perhaps how you think they do things better than BG3.
I have literally years of my life in Champions Online and it is probably the game that I could go on the most about it’s flaw, because I know that game so intimately, for instance. There is no game that gets even close to the amount of customisation available in that one though and that’s a constant rabbit hole for my crack-addled imagination.
I do wish people could understand that acknowledging a games flaws does not rob your enjoyment of it. It does not have to be a perfect game to be an enjoyable game. Heck, sometimes a downright bad game is bad in an amusing enough way it kind of redeems itself.
Now, this poll is simply asking you if you are playing, have played, and whether you liked it more or less than others. Somebody had to do one I guess. 
