Just beat Baldurs Gate 3, my review

How is it overall 9.5/10 when none of your other ratings are above 8.5?

>peepee choices

>no breast slider

Play BG1, 2, TOB if you want a Jaheira romance so badly.

Did you play either of the previous BGs?

act3 was bad. youre just fricking teleporting around all the time because theres zero linearity in the quests. half the quests are bugged in some way and most of the fights are giga boring. the bosses are incredibly lame and easy, nobody at larian figured out why DND bosses have legendary actions. act 1 and 2 were really good and by act 3 i was like "this is so fricking boring but i might aswell play it until the end". the only way this game is 9.5/10 is when they eventually fix all the bugs and make the combat less annoying (bhaal cultists, the perma invis ghosts, generally 15 monsters taking 10 seconds each to think only to dash + end turn)

also maybe im just a turbo neurodivergent/dnd experience but the game is way too easy even on tactician, kills any motivation in me to actively seek out overpowered builds

Just finished it as well on tactician.

For some background, played BG1 & 2 a lot when I was younger. I played through them from May-July in anticipation of the game. I play most CRPGs, with the most recent being Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. I got to Act 3 about two weeks ago on my barbarian, but leveled up a monk/rogue waiting for the second patch to fix bugs I was running into and performance issues since Baldur's Gate was crippling my computer (Ryzen 7 1700, GTX 1060). The patch helped both significantly.

Gameplay- Very solid. I despised DoS 2's gameplay (I liked DoS 1) so I was worried but really enjoyed this. I've always been in the camp of classes should mean something, which I know others disagree with. It borders on the simplistic side, but it was nice just slamming the level up button and not worrying if you're going to gimp your character like the Pathfinder games. At first I thought the 4 party system was really limiting, but then I realized that rogues just aren't crucial for traps/lockpicking so that opened things up. 1 rogue level on Shadowheart will get you through act 3. There are lots of callbacks to the original games towards once you reach Baldur's Gate.

Story- I thought it was good but nothing exceptional. It's open enough to where most decisions do matter, and I was wondering how a choice would impact everything. I've seen complaints that Act 3 is rushed/doesn't make sense but I disagree. It gets janky in some parts with some quest flags/triggers still bugged, but there are a lot of notes/side events that explain things pretty clearly. Anyone confused by the Guardian's actions fell for mindflayer tricks and shouldn't be trusted. The game beats you over the head with instances of yes certain creatures/races are in fact evil and outside of some very rare instances they aren't salvageable.

Characters- I liked most of them or in the very least saw their purpose. They should really make it so the guys don't relentlessly chase you but I'm sure a lot of people would be complaining about how they ended the romance and didn't realize it even though at no point were any of them subtle. The main comp was me monk/rogue, Karlach/Lae'zel/Astarion (swapping out when I thought the story was important to them), Gale, and Shadowheart. Wyll was permabenched for being an idiot who kept getting tricked by devils. The others came too late for me to care about them.

Wishlist/Improvements:

• Party management/inventory management is bad. It was cumbersome to find things with just lightly swapping characters

• Using the tadpoles should be more consequential/have some downsides. Once again, I'm sure it's due to feedback of people complaining they didn't realize letting more parasite worms in their brain would have downsides.

• They need to smoothen out the act 3 decisions. Early on I sided with the Voss saying I would free Orpheus and the Emperor threw a fit saying I would never get into the astral plane again. When I slept he was then fliting with me and it was never mentioned again. Jaheira's is basically all bugged out too and I just had to look up how to do her quest.

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thank you for the effort post but how can you give an overall rating a whole point over even the highest individual score lmao

Malders gayte plays fine on my 3060ti on ultra settings at 1440

The fact it has a peepee slider but not a face slider is enough for me to pass

I'm still playing, it's fun (I wouldn't go as high as you on scoring but it's a decent game despite genuine flaws). I'm doing my first playthrough as Astarion and I just now in Act 2 finally got a tender, very romantic night of lovemaking with Gale who out of nowhere came on to me and declared he's in love with me.

While I feel this is very sudden leap ahead in our relationship (up until now it's been Just Good Friends) he did get over his ex, the goddess of magic Mystra, really fast in order to get into my pants, so I guess suck it, goddess?

Lae'zel has been hitting on everybody all game long and I've been running away from her because she's coming on way too strong (plus I don't fancy her) and by this point I'm kinda concerned about the dog in our camp. Also, apparently, the story thinks I've been in a romance with Karlach up till now (er, no?) and I just broke her heart by dumping her for Gale. Which I would feel more guilty about but I never even touched her, your honour, so this love story is all in her imagination.

Neurodivergent.