Baldur's Gate 3: Returning to the city after 20 years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0uYhTLPGLQ
So this is the video I mentioned in my recent post in the "End of the Tyranny of Programmers" thread [
> ]. Setting that controversy aside, let's talk a bit about the game itself that just came out and is breaking all sorts of records.
First off, great for Larian and Wizards of the Coast, and great for roleplaying itself.
BG3 is a result of the recent GMRPG renaissance, and
BG3's success will doubtless in turn boost GMRPGs themselves. So win-win all round.
NEVERTHELESS, there is a lot to be negative about here, a lot to criticize, and the failures are coming from both Larian and their traditional "Original Sin" design, and Wizards of the Coast and their dumbing down of all facets of D&D: the adventures, the settings, and the rules. That's why it's gonna be so hard to find a good review of the game: there's probably not a single game reviewer who understands both worlds, let alone their complex interactions as they collide in
BG3.
Still, I have found a couple of reviewers who hit the mark on several points. Note that most of the comments I produce below were written during Early Access, but that makes no difference. This post isn't a full review, it's just early impressions. Nevertheless, they are damning.
Let me explain something here though before I proceed with the copy-pasting.
BG3 is in all probability a 4/5 game. If I wasn't playing GMRPGs though, I'd probably give it a 5/5, just due to sheer thirst for roleplaying, so it makes perfect sense that so many game reviewers and regular gamers who have never played a GMRPG and probably don't even know what those are, would give it 6/5 and call it a masterpiece. For THEM, it is, and it makes perfect sense when you compare it to so much other garbage they could be playing, such as e.g. every JRPG ever, and even all SRPGs in fact, or "Dragon Ages", and so on.
And yet, there are CRPG-only gamers who are critical of the game, and their criticisms strike home. They see the game's, and Larian's, faults even though they don't play GMRPGs. Larian's leader is a fruitcake with no sense for a good fantasy story and no sense for drama. His wargaming/tactical sense is also barely passable, and he thinks exploding barrels laying around every other street, and in the middle of the wilderness, is acceptable game design and world-building. There's not the slightest doubt that Owlcat's Pathfinder CRPGs are an order of magnitude better than Larian's (hence 5/5 versus 4/5).
Nevertheless
BG3 is still something that everyone should be playing who doesn't play GMRPGs, because something is better than nothing. I will probably never play it because I am running 4 GMRPG campaigns, and soon a 5th, so I simply don't have the time for it, and if I made some time I'd still do something else as my life has more than enough tactical wargaming already, and much better than this. So if you want a review of the game, it'll have to come from someone other than me. The reviews I post below are a good start.
P.S. When the reviewers say "Divinity" they mean "Original Sin". There are many Divinity games that aren't like the Original Sin games, and these reviewers refer exclusively to the Original Sin ones. No one seems to have played the old Divinity games (and probably with good reason).
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1086940Gorp wrote:Yes, it's Early Access.
Yes, it's got a lot of promise.
Great graphics, amazing environments, killer first hour or so—and then your ship crashes and you find yourself in the most generic CRPG of 2003. Bland characters, insultingly generic story quests, unbalanced repetitive combat, nightmare of inventory management, atrocious load times—those are all fundamental issues that are far beyond bugs and glitches and crashes you'd expect from an alpha title.
In your first battle, combat seems to have so much depth. So many classes, abilities, items! A few battles later, and it's yet another slog of ranged misses while the entire battlefield and everyone on it is on fire.
The intro mission is so fresh! Awesome baddies, incredible setting! And then bam, you're right back to finding yourself shipwrecked on a beach (I wish I was kidding) and fighting goblins and bandits in a cave.
There's so much to the world! So much that you get overwhelmed with a million unmarked containers everywhere you have to individually click on to find out that they're either empty or contain another five carrots and two sausages. A few hours in, your inventory is overflowing with books and keys you have no idea if you'll ever need again and other crap you have no idea where you'd sell for useless gold since no vendor has anything decent for sale, and scrolls and potions and poisons and arrows and rings and necklaces and possibly quest items but who knows if they're ever going to be useful. Soon enough you begin to neglect inventory management completely because on top of everything the UX is atrocious and basic tasks like equipping items or reading letters for exposition or eating potatoes for HP is an almost masochistic experience where the game seems almost deliberate in hiding relevant information and closing screens from under you.
The dialogues are cinematic! But skill checks are completely broken, not to mention done by someone with zero understanding of D&D mechanics and/or basic math (adding an integer to a random roll and comparing to a target value is not the same as subtracting that integer from the target value). So a few dialogues in, you're quick-saving before each conversation, then reloading when the roll fails and redoing the dialogue again, and the reload time is painfully long and after watching the loading too many times you no longer care which way skill checks go, and suddenly you're in combat all the time.
The world is so large and open! And then you sneak into a location and break a quest flow yet again, which you only realize an hour later, and the second or third time you ponder restoring an ancient save and retracing your steps, and realize everything's become a chore.
And so you begin to realize that issues in this game are not merely cosmetic or the lack of polish. Generic bland dialogue, cookie-cutter characters, and tired cliche missions you've played in every CRPG since 1993 aren't "Early Access". They're here to stay. Find the missing duke and return a stolen shipment without looking in the chest, that's the AAA CRPG experience we've all been waiting for. Combat is a bore because while multifaceted on paper, in reality 999,998 facets of that million are so tiny they get completely lost behind the two giant ones the game forces upon you every battle, namely "the floor is lava" and "everybody comically misses round after round of ranged attacks".
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1086940Vell wrote:In its current state, this game is essentially Divinity 3 with D&D-themed gift wrap. Loot containers with offensive consumables every 5 feet. An inventory packed with scrolls of resurrection from the very outset. A great many items and abilities create "pools" of an element or substance that greatly influences combat. Surprise-attacking others leads to immediate conversation cutscenes half the time instead of combat and when that conversation does lead to combat the person you just attacked to near death starts the fight fully healed. These are all old Divinity game problems that haven't changed at all.
The dice system also seems broken, it doesn't feel random at all. The game has a weighted dice option in the options menu! By default it seems to be weighted in favor of failure, but if this option is enabled it weighs the dice in your favor instead. The entire dice-rolling system needs to be scrapped and completely redone because this is AWFUL. I hope this is just a band-aid feature for Early Access.
With that out of the way, the main reason I am giving this thumbs down currently is because this isn't a D&D or Baldur's Gate game. It is an incredibly misleading Divinity 3, and an incredibly unfinished and buggy one at that. I will likely still play it because I enjoy the Divinity games, but if you dislike Divinity and want something more akin to the old Baldur's Gate I will have to say stay far away from this for now but keep an eye on it.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1086940riphimfromhisfuckingthrone wrote:As someone who was first exposed to RPGs via the Baldur's Gate saga, it took a long time for me to figure out what I wanted to say in this review. Ultimately, I wouldn't recommend this game, not yet, not in its state.
At some point I had to lower my expectations, because this game will always be first and foremost a Larian game, and a Black Isle successor second. Playing the early content does give you a good view and scope of how massive and engaging this game can be, but I don't know if it will ever be able recreate the atmosphere of wonder and high adventure that made earlier games in the franchise sell for two decades. Being able to wander and explore the world at your own whim, especially when they were just introducing random encounters to the world of gaming [They what? If anything, Infinity Engine games REMOVED random encounters from CRPGs, and that was a good thing because CRPGs' load-saving shenanigans meant they could be abused to reach endgame power from the first scene. -icy], was a sense of freedom that made every vista and epicly-scored windswept cliffside worth finding and taking in.
Here it just feels like Divinity all over again. Even the characters are not as engaging or compelling. The interaction with goblins, the architecture of towns, the accent of the locals, even the feel and look of the regions seems to have been completely abandoned without Larian really giving any regard to those things for the sake of recycling Divinity assets. Why do the monsters sound Australian and so unusually well-versed in Common? Why are tieflings, an exceedingly rare race, so plentiful? Why is a vampire vulnerable to mind effects and a suitable candidate for a tadpole embryo when it's a walking corpse? These and many many other questions keep popping up, making what should have been a Forgotten Realms game feel generic and un-researched. There's nothing that really retains any elements from the earlier franchise. I wanted another Baldur's Gate sequel, and adventure in the Forgotten Realms, not another romp through Larian's first glance interpretation of it.
This, combined with many other design decisions that plenty of others have already voiced in other reviews (party size, limited companion options, spell effect changes, enemy groups and compositions that are wildly harder and more punishing than what the source material would suggest throwing against you, and more) made it miss its target. I still think it has a very strong foundation for a great game, but I realize a lot of the shortcomings are hardcoded in at this point, and likely won't be changed. I'm not getting a Baldur's Gate game out of this, but once it's completed, I think it can still be worth the high price tag. Until then I'm just going to keep watching the updates, and hoping that the day finally comes when I can change my review to a glowing one. P.S. For the love of everything, just give us unfettered access to the DM tools. The fanbase will make it work, and prop this game up for years.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/765 ... ed/1086940Azg wrote:So the game's finally out and I feel like I can update the review. Unfortunately, this is still a "thumbs down" from me. I'm sure that many people will enjoy it, and Larian is certainly not trying to rip you off or anything, but in MY OPINION, while the art is great and the combat is generally good, the game overall is immature, the world-building is mediocre, and BG 3 is not a worthy successor of Baldur's Gate 1 and 2.
So let's break down things a bit:
1. The music. It's phenomenal. Just great.
2. The art/map artwork is outstanding. Some of the maps are just breathtakingly beautiful (Temple of Lathander is my favorite so far). Note, I don't like the "map design" so much, where everything is jammed together, but aesthetically they are top notch.
3. The combat is pretty good, with two notable exceptions. 5E is a pretty good combat system and Larian has stayed largely faithful. Their addition of weapon-specific special attacks works well. Where it really breaks down is shoving. In BG3, shoving is king, and it often breaks the combat. There are three interlocking problems: BG3 makes shoving a bonus action (so you can attack AND shove), it increases the shove distance (from 5 feet to A LOT), and it makes big fights very vertical—with lots of ledges and bottomless pits. This introduces a lot of save-or-die Athletics checks (either when you are shoving an enemy or the enemy is shoving you) that just break the system. They're especially prevalent in "big battles"—for example, of the six big battles in Act I, 4 have save-or-die shove mechanics, either from bottomless pits, high heights, or pits with monsters. The second major issue is surfaces and grenades, which make armor and concentration spells less valuable. I know Larian loves shoving and surfaces, but it's too much.
4. The potential party members are good in some ways and terrible in others. Honestly, the writing and quips are mostly fine. The "romances" seem like they were written by and for teenagers with no idea what real romance actually is (I mean, these NPCs are throwing themselves at me just because I'm not a jerk—it's... off-putting). By far the worst though are the origins of your companions—they're all super special snowflakes, the "Coolest Adventurers That Ever Cooled", who just went down to 1st-level because of the tadpole. They honestly outshine the player character, and that's REALLY BAD. The PC should be the hero of the story, but the other party members are just written to be so much better than you. Larian did this in D:OS2 as well and I hated it. It's like playing with a DM who made a bunch of super-cool NPCs that are just better than the players. Very lame.
5. The world-building is where this game really fails for me. BG1 and BG2 felt like real, lived-in places, with politics, economies (BG1's whole plot was economic intrigue), and towns where people live. BG3 feels like a series of disconnected setpieces and "the world" breaks down as soon as you think about it. "World-building" doesn't mean putting a few books in and referencing place names, but that's the Larian approach. The problem is that there's no deeper thought into making sure things "make sense". There are tons of examples of this: from two brothers walking 10 days "from Baldur's Gate" to find their sister, to the merchants constantly refreshing their supplies, etc. Honestly, I think this is less Larian and more "modern D&D"—which has moved away from "realistic fantasy worlds" to "exciting fantasy fights". I hate Critical Role, for instance (I find it shallow and splashy—the Michael Bay of fantasy). If you like Critical Role, you'll probably like the "world" that BG3 builds for you. Just be aware that it doesn't compare favorably to BG 1 and 2. This lack of consistency/internal realism is a big turn-off for me (and if you're about to ask "Why are you looking for realism in a game with dragons?", just realize that this statement isn't the burn you think it is, but rather says a lot about the low-brow fantasy you obviously enjoy).
6. UI/Itemization/inventory management. It's really bad. It's the same system as D:OS2's—it was bad then and it's bad now: a clogged action bar (Solasta does the 5E UI just so MUCH better, even if the game is much rougher than BG3 overall), too many magic items/different items to track in inventory, no good way to sort things, and merchants with better items than what you find after epic quests (the only +2 item I saw in Act 1 was in the Zhent merchant at the Goblin Camp. This isn't a key point for me, but yeah, it's certainly bad.
7. They really treated the original voice actor for Minsc poorly by refusing to bring him back to voice the character that HE made so iconic (yes, Jim Cummings wanted to reprise his role). Instead they went with Matt Mercer because Matt is popular and Minsc is popular. By all means, write another character for Matt (I think he's very talented), but writing Jim out of BG3 really reflects poorly on Larian (and honestly on Matt for taking the gig).
Anyways, buy it if you like. I'm disappointed in it: given the resources, time (remember, they originally said 2021), and source material they had to work with I feel like it's come up short.
https://steamcommunity.com/id/Azrienov/ ... ed/1086940Azrienov wrote:This is a game that does not really know what it wants to be. It's ambitious, engaging, and enjoyable. It's also torn between two systems, and I fear that Larian will only make this worse as they go along.
Larian's character system is taken right out of D&D 5e. This is actually a good thing. 5e has quite a lot going for it, but the biggest thing is the extensive playtesting it has received as a combat system [lol -icy]. 5e D&D has been around for a while now, and it does an excellent job of providing robust classes that work in the 5e combat system. Except for the ranger. They botched that one.
The problem here is that Larian is not building their encounter system to fit D&D 5e. The Red Cap encounter is an excellent example. A monster which opens an engagement on a character with a 3D10 attack is utterly lethal at the level you'll encounter said monster at. That damage level is usually seen around 7th-9th level with serious help, or with a specialized ability. Add to the damage that it can knock your character prone, and you've got a serious balance issue. In this encounter, there are three of them.
This isn't the only time Larian tilts the fight heavily out of your favor. In early early release, the enemy would focus-fire a character into the grave once they were in the dying state. With a three-hit multi-attack in a certain encounter (which a PC class can't pull off without dual-wield and multi-attack at 5th-level or a fighter at 11th), you basically watched a character go down, and get executed.
Larian also brought back the Divinity cheese that are exploding barrels. Need to wipe out an entire legion of individuals? Throw a barrel at them when they're all standing together. Have your friend stealthed out, and wait for it to land. The tosser may end up in combat, but your stealthy friend is completely free to move about the world. One fire attack later, and you've got a mob barbecue. Note, some targets may not die because they've got a pile of hit points appropriate for their level.
I don't really take issue with the Early Access bugs. That's to be expected. They're in the game, and they can screw up your run. You knew that when you bought it as an Early Access.
I take issue with the design philosophy. This is a game trapped between a strong 5e ruleset that is the most playtested gaming system on the planet [lmao -icy], and the utter madness of the Divinity game mechanics.
What made the Divinity system work was the unparalleled flexibility it gave its player in building synergies. This allowed the player to cope with an ever-increasingly complex threat portfolio. You died pretty often. You might have had to completely strip down your character and rebuild them, floor up. In one session, your favorite character was a sword-slicing, lightning-slinging, plated-armor warrior. In the next, he was a no-hecks-given, watch-the-world-burn pyromaniacal mage.
This is not how 5e operates. Each character has strengths and weaknesses, and player creativity has to be employed to solve the various challenges the game brings. Usually through teamwork. By adding the kind of mechanics that belonged in Divinity, the game design strains the system of 5e to its very limits. Larian's solution in Baldur's Gate is to let you facecheck the newest bastardized concept they've introduced, and mark your death down in their statistics. You're going to die, and it'll come down to a badly-designed attack that you didn't know could happen, and had no solution for prior to its deployment. If you're fine with that, then the game might be for you.
I also take issue with some of the characters. Gale, specifically. His backstory is ridiculously stupid, considering he's a basic 1st-level wizard. No spoilers here, but how did someone who can't even cast 2nd-level spells at your first meeting manage to pull off everything he says he did? Maybe he's lying. Maybe I need to murder him and leave him in a ditch. Probably that one.
