BeeRadTheMadLad Baldur's Gate 3 Review

Overall a very good game and as far as modern day AAA gaming goes and all the baggage it comes with, it’s probably one of the best. I generally prefer RTWP combat but I know turn based is Larian's forte and for a turn based game this feels about as intuitive and natural as it gets. Movement in relation to the environment, party members, and enemies all makes sense while being in the style of a strategy rpg ala Tactics Ogre while offering enough creative ways to outplay the CPU to avoid boredom even where a similar game might start to feel repetitive. Verticality also adds a layer of strategy that enhances the experience. I still have some of my usual turn-based complaints like wonky and unnatural pacing, difficulty-without-being-cheap being an issue, and a heavy bias toward just blowing everything up while spells and effects like web and grease and many other utilities just don't really feel like they have much of a place here other than very situational instances, which is a jarring contrast compared to the RTWP games which actually rewards you for experimenting with everything you have and figuring out what works best in a given scenario. I'll give BG3 credit for coming closer to recreating this than most turn based rpgs, as they do give you more opportunities to be strategic than most games with this particular system (wall of fire + narrow corridors, anyone?) but all too often I still found myself more incentivized than not to just toss my most damaging spell everywhere, long rest, and repeat. This makes the magic system feel comparatively one-dimensional and, all too often, boring to me. Again, I think BG3 is about as intuitive and natural feeling as turn based combat comes, but there's usually a glass ceiling on how much enjoyment I get out of such a system for numerous reasons and this is one of them. I suppose it could just be a skill issue or something but either way, the game is good enough to where I’m likely to start another run at some point so maybe I’ll try the RTC mod and see how that affects the combat experience for me. While I strongly prefer the character creation and progression system in the Pathfinder games (and the OG Baldur's Gates, for that matter) due to the amount of depth, BG3's equivalent systems are still better than most, plus it has it's own unique ways to add layers of depth, flavor, and freedom and while none of them by itself can compare to Pathfinder's sheer barrage of customization options, they do all add up to make a big impact. From things like giving you the option to use your highest str character's turn to shove an enemy off a cliff to using a random bottle of grease you found 20 hours ago and might have assumed was useless to fix a rusty lever to have your 50th different way of progressing a substory, this game is full of ways for you to get creative like that in order to plow ahead and while none of them are particularly groundbreaking by themselves, the seemingly constant barrage of little things like that all add up to make a very substantial sum of all of the different parts. Story-wise, tbh I thought the main plot was dumb and felt like it was written as an afterthought. And the party members writing is kinda weak (all of them have at least one or two cool ideas in their writing, but most of them never actually amount to much and only couple of companions actually felt to me like they mattered). I also feel like everyone wanting to bone you after you say a single nice thing within a hundred mile radius about them is very cringe and no, the setting doesn't make that make sense - if it did they would all be boning each other at all times too but that's obviously not the case, in fact they don’t interact with each other at all save the bits of overworld small talk (which to be fair can be clever at times) it's just schlocky self-insert fanservice for the player. I suppose some might consider that a strength or at least not a weakness but let's at the very least actually call it what it is instead of contorting our brains to try and make it something logical. Speaking of schlock, I felt like fanservice was prioritized over immersive writing far too often with how all of the characters are unambiguously written to make young nerds go “UwU!!!” - the writers seemingly beg you to love them and only a couple are written in a way where it even has the potential to feel earned at all. I’ve heard that there were a few such as Wyll who were more complex and of a more “controversial” disposition during EA but their writing got butchered due to fandom complaints. While I wasn’t there to experience it, I cannot wrap my head around such complaints at all, let alone even begin to relate to them. For a CRPG, there’s absolutely far too many companion interactions with the MC that feel an awful lot like they were pulled from a cheesy LN-inspired jrpg series. Why would anyone complain about having a diverse range of dispositions among the party? ESPECIALLY for this genre? This specific kind of baggage seems to always come with written rpg stories and characters that have movement toward mass appeal in mind at this time in gaming history, which is unfortunate imo, as it is rare for it to land with me. That said, I do think Larian did a lot better with the NPCs than they did with the companions. There are a LOT of NPCs that were handled well, easily enough to make the setting feel alive and immersive. I've heard complaints about the big bad and I agree with them, but other antagonists like a certain devil were WAY better and intermittently spiked the quality of the late game for me. I do think the quality drops off in Act 3. It seems to add additional fanservice for fans of the OG Baldur's Gates but does so in a way that felt pretty unsatisfying for me for numerous reasons. Character stories are also HEAVILY backloaded in this game and almost all of them are all dogpiled into Act 3 which makes for some extremely wonky pacing. On the other hand, Act 1 is very good and Act 2 is excellent overall. That said, Act 3 does have it's moments. If you complete a specific path of a certain devil's storyline it actually ends up having arguably the game's best moments imho. All in all I would stop short of calling act 3 bad, but it is a noticeable drop compared to the first 2 acts in my opinion. I'm disappointed that the Flaming Fist soldiers don't actually talk like "AH SURRRV DA FLAYMUN FEEYIST!!" but I'm probably alone on that one. Final Verdict: 8/10 seems fair to me and I could see up to a full point in either direction being reasonable unless you just hate TB rpgs or something else I missed bothered you. Make no mistake, the game is very good - good enough for me to likely want to do at least one more playthrough down the road despite my backlog that is likely to outlive me. It may be possible that an evil run can change my perspective on the companion writing when I come back to this game down the road. If the baggage that seems to always come with modern gaming designed for mass appeal at this time doesn’t grate on you the way it seems to more often than not grate on me, you might well end up thinking it worthy of an 8.5 - 9.5 range score - like I said, it is very good overall - if not excellent, but it does have what I consider to be flaws and I rarely see them mentioned. With all of that being said, the flaws I’ve mentioned seem to be a non-issue to most who have played it. You’ve probably seen some people raving over this game to the point of claiming that it’s “ruined gaming” for them. For this most part, I would caution against taking such claims too literally. If there’s any sanity to be found in all of the wild “ruined gaming for me” claims out there about BG3, it’s the fact that every generation seems to have its game of a certain genre that takes a lot of young gamers’ “checks every box” virginity and for many at this time, BG3 appears to be it.