Cole Baldur's Gate 3 Review

Apparently, I didn't review this after finishing my first playthrough. I don't quite recall why, but I suspect it would have something to do with having so much to say about it that I was promptly overwhelmed with no idea where to start. I'm going to have to take the easy way out and do most of this in bullet points, because there's genuinely such a broad ocean of Stuff here that it's impossible to address everything. I'm halfway through my second playthrough, a half-elf fighter Dark Urge, but my first completed playthrough was a tiefling bard. Positives: - The companions are well-developed, interesting, and likeable. I don't particularly dislike any of them; I wasn't sure what to think of Lae'zel at first, considering she pounced on my gay tiefling man declaring she knew he wanted to taste her, which was more than a little off-putting for both of us, but I warmed up to her by the end. I'm probably most fond of Gale, Shadowheart, and Astarion (that first run's romance choice was Gale), but I suspect my feelings will vary the more I play and the more I focus on different companions. - The voice acting is broadly praised, and for good reason. I don't think I ever came across a character who was voiced badly or in a way that took me out of the experience. Astarion's is without a doubt the one most often brought up for this point, but I also really enjoyed Gale's. - The roleplay aspect was certainly satisfying to me. I don't recall a moment where I wished I could do something and wasn't given the option to, minus some obvious ones like wishing I could save someone who dies no matter what which I understand not being allowed to do, and the replayability is high enough that before I'd even finished my first playthrough I'd already come up with 20+ character ideas I want to try out sometime. - It's definitely made me more interested in D&D as a whole, as well as other CRPGs like this. I'd tried a D&D oneshot in the past, as well as a brief foray into Divinity Original Sin 2, but neither of them quite clicked with me at the time just because I was a little lost and had no clue what I was doing. Playing BG3 helped familiarise me with the rules and controls, so I now feel much more open to jump back into those. - I love that the companions are all romanceable regardless of your character's gender, etc. I know some dislike that, but it makes sense considering bi/pansexuality is canonically the norm in the Forgotten Realms lore, and I personally much prefer being able to romance whomever makes the most sense with my character rather than having options that would have fit them most being locked away. - The graphics are gorgeous; not the best I've seen in any game, in my personal opinion, but definitely great. - The music. I'd wager most players have gotten "Down, down, down by the river..." stuck in their heads before, and I loved Raphael's boss theme enough that I stopped fighting and just sat to listen to it all the way through first. Negatives: - When I first played, Act 3 was borderline unplayable. It was absolutely riddled with glitches and lag, to the point where it would take me a few seconds just to take a single step, let alone get anywhere. This was no fault of my PC, which can run absolutely every other high-requirement game I've ever tried no problem. I would have to exit the game and restart it to experience twenty minutes or so of no lag until it hit the point it started again. Hopefully this has been fixed since that first run; I guess I'll find out when I reach Act 3 again. - Pathfinding and AI can be unreliable. You'll likely find yourself going back and forth a lot trying to wrangle your companions into jumping over a gap, with them all jumping back over as soon as you switch to the next person. - The load times... they're so long... - Things can be a little confusing and unclear in the sense of the order of quests you're supposed to do or how many long rests you can safely take before certain things are locked off permanently. For the most part, you can tackle quests in any order you like, but once you hit Act 3 doing some quests too early and others too late will remove content or get characters killed, and in Act 1 too many long rests before completing questlines will result in you failing them. The latter is exacerbated by the fact that in later Acts you're encouraged to take a lot of long rests, so mixed messages. - The dice rolls can interfere with roleplay, e.g. if you have a character who would be able to charm their way out of anything but is instead constantly forced by the game to make a fool out of themselves by rolling low on charisma checks. - I wish there was more variety in the items you can find in barrels, bags, on corpses, etc. It's pretty much just endless rotten food or miscellaneous dishes and cutlery, which you can't use or even sell for gold, and it's eventually just not worth it to keep checking everything.