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Just beat Baldurs Gate 3, my review

Just beat the game as a Morally Golden Paladin, I will try and avoid spoilers but be warned I'm not gonna try that hard.

Character Creator: 4/10

I feel like this is an important element in any game, and the fact that I had the choice for 3 different kinds of peepees… but no facial or breast sliders was lame. Also when making a human the default race is black which I thought was funny. The default for a dwarf though is South American which I feel is accurate.

Story: 8.5/10

I enjoyed the story and the absolute, I feel like the first act was a bit weak, second act was better, and 3rd act was best which is unusual for a Larian game. Also a weird thing in the second act is that you have the chance to save some lesbian angel thing, idk but I felt it was weird that an Angel could be gay… there were gay demons too but that feels more normal.

I liked a lot of the twists and I like the fact that you would have to play the game multiple times to truly get how each character feels. I think that overall the story is well enough made that my decisions feel important.

Gameplay 8/10:

I like that they fixed a lot of the bad mechanics from DND in this game. Since I'm married to a woman under 200 lbs it is safe to say that I don't play DND regularly but I am familiar with how some classes are broken and some are strong. The Druids still feel a bit over powered compared to other classes but overall I feel like everyone brings something useful. Except wizards and sorcerers, I don't understand why there are 2 separate classes for them and I can't seem to get the gumption to care.

I feel like the fights are balanced rather well in the mid game, but by end game I felt like most of it was far too easy. The only challenge was at the end and if you have a cleric and since all other romance options are dog shit except minthara who is queen it's not too bad. I think I one shorted every boss encounter with the exclusion of the Githyanki patrols and the Dragon Ansur, who I only lost too by a small amount.

I did not play tactician mode since I'm above a 6/10 in looks so I can't speak to it..

Characters 6/10:

I'm gonna break this into 2 sections, the romance and their personalities.

Personalities:

I really think the game punishes you too much for playing a bad guy, though you can keep most of the best characters so it's not too bad. I do have some gripes with some of their stories.

Shadowheart: Average Waifu bait and not even that great. I do like her moral flexibility and think overall she's a pretty good character

Lae'zel: kind of standard helicopter lesbian without a lot of interesting things. She got kidnapped by Orin in my play through and I forgot about her

Gale: Kinda liked him, he was like a less interesting Arcade Gabon from New Vegas but somehow even gayer

Karlach: Boring, heard there is a patch to fix her but I forgot about her largely

Astarion: Actually a good companion despite being gay.

Wyll: Theres a mod that makes him white, I have the option to frick his master… didn't do it because I wanted to do it in a bad guy run but can't since he leaves if you're too evil :marseysulk:

Spoilers:

Minthara: can't ever remember her name, she has a neck tattoo that goes away if you see her naked. Has a silly s*x scene pretty early in. Have to kill her if you're a good guy so idk too much about her.

Jaehira: My favorite companion, you can't have s*x with her so I'm disappoint.

Minsc: I like him but you get him way too late in game. Should have been second act.

Halsin: Juiced up elf whose kinda gay

Mind Flayer: wish they would turn back to my dream companion rather than stay squid

Romance

So I didn't care about this one too much but your options as a good guy are diesel demon woman, frog woman, or actual woman. They may as well have thrown in some trans women too because your options suck. I wanted Jaheria

Performance 5/10

I have a 3090 TI and the game runs like butt. Lots of hiccups and lots of the character menu disappearing requiring me to reload the game. I'm glad they spent so much time making it so that I can gang bang an elf… but can't progress without a restart because of game loading

Overall: 9.5/10

Despite all my complaints and seemingly non-sensical scoring it all was super fun too me. I liked the game, it flowed well and I will definitely play it for a while. I like it more than DOS2 and it will hold my attention until I hop on Starfield. It is weirdly enough one of my favorite games in a while despite some of the hiccups.

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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.

I give it a 9/10. I would get it now if you think there's any chance you'll like it. If you're on the fence, give it another major patch or two to sort out some of the bugs you run into later in the game.

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I don't have enough spoons to read this shit

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