They really need to take notes from the Pathfinder games when it comes to the inventory. Automatically labelling and being able to sell junk items would be such a massive time-saver.
@@KingslayerSrb Even that inventory was better when it did not have search bar than BG3 without global inventory. Add to it bad comapnion managment system, where you have to switch party memebers to get to their inventory and level them up and you have incredibly bad invetory managment that is only trumphed by DOS2.
Excellent review! I like that you don’t sugarcoat the issues this game has. I consider it to be one of the best games I’ve ever played, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement! I’m still plodding through the game at my usual slow pace, but I’m enjoying every minute!
Pathfinder wotr is still better as a base game. I think divinity 2 is better also especially with out good the mods were. Even tho bg3 is obviously brand new im not sure if they will get mods like dos2
The lack of an epilogue or ending slides really hampers what is an epic adventure. It didn't have closure for a lot of aspects of my plathrough such as companions and how we affected the world. SPOILERS BELOW I played a good aligned paladin romancing a converted Shadowheart. She had no dialogue after the ending battle and nothing was said as to what she and I will do now that we're free of the tadpole. Wyll and Karlach go together to Avernus. But in my run, Wyll broke his pact with Mizora so when we killed the brain, he lost his powers. I don't see how Wyll can protect her from Zariel in hell now that he's just a normal dude. What becomes of Karlach? Will she eventually find a cure? Astarion didn't become a vampire ascendant and the ending was unsatisfying for him cause he just slinks off funnily after he gets burned by the sun. I told Gale to take the crown back to Mystra which he said he would do. But what happens once he does? Is he chosen again? What does Jaheira, Minsc, and Halsin do after the events? Does Halsin take his position back as Archdruid? Lae'zel's ending had the most closure. She leads the revolution against Vlaakith. But how does it go? Does she succeed? We've been told there most likely won't be story related DLC so a lot of the story threads are open ended and it remains to be seen if there will be a Baldur's Gate 4.
I also romanced Shadowheart (good path) and we had an entire scene (with dialogue options) at the end of the game . . . it was my last scene before going to credits . . . I'm sorry you didn't get it. I really ended the game nicely for my playthrough.
Thanks for the review. Too bad you didn't enjoy the combat as much. I really enjoyed this combat, it's super tactical and has so many variables such as terrain, height, environmental effects etc. I don't think I've played a better CRPG combat system. It takes what's good about 5E tabletop and adds many cool tricks like the added bonus actions such as jump and shove. While I agree with you the combat on Balanced is fairly easy, it took me until about level 5 to really feel powerful. This is pretty true to tabletop as well. First four levels in tabletop 5E can be really unforgiving and dangerous, especially levels 1 and 2. Once Martials ans Casters hit 5, things kinda get flipped on their head. I DM'd a lot of 5E and once players get that big power boost at 5, you have to really struggle to make it challenging for them. Same in this game.
5E is already a very broken system, combat-wise. That is extremely skewed towards magic users, which is simply bad . - Add to that the "Larian magic" , and things get completely out of hand; destroying any real sense of challenge and accomplishment for the player : BG3 manages, which is no small feat, to squeeze more power creep in favor of the player into 12 levels than BG2 , as mythic level 20 campaign, ever did: 5 levelled spells per round, e.g. as a multi-class Sorcerer, is way stronger than combining the effects of Improved Alacrity and Time Stop : Two 9th level spells. 😁 Where you mostly had to magically breach through all the different defenses and Chain Contingencies the enemies in BG2 usually had, anyways. Not even to talk about itemization, where high-level gear from the Classic, like Carsomyr or Flail of Ages, completely pales in comparison : - It's all candy, folks. ^^
@@johndeighan2495 I mean you're not wrong. BG2 isn't nearly as complex as BG3 simply because most of what is going on is so under-the-hood that most people won't even understand or need to. It's all happening in real time (the dice rolls). All you need to know is that game is which spells are good and getting THAC0 as low as possible.
@@Badbentham I agree that, for the most part, magic users are stronger. At least if you rest a lot. But I just finished the game on Tactician and I think Lae'zel(the fighter) was the character that saved me from most headaches in big boss fights specifically. Sure she got buffed with bless, haste and elixirs and stuff but a boss with 600+ health could be action surged down to 120 in one turn. Even if I spammed disintegrate I wouldn't have been as effective as her. I think personally that archery-based builds get the short end of the stick in this game until level 11(at least for ranger). They they actually become pretty good esp for taking down small enemies without having to pay spell slots. Early on an archer prolly also wanna be a fighter due to action surge. However I didn't mind that it was on the easier side. And yes in most fights that aren't boss fights spellcasters definitely shone more than others. A lot of enemies also had resistance to slashing piercing and bludgeoning so that may be a reason as well.
Your point about failures being so often so satisfying is so true and has me wanting a mod that I haven't seen anyone ask for, seen people ask for "all natural 20s" mod but I kinda want to do a run with an "all natural 1s" (in dialogue not combat lol) mod, or one that lets you set the roll to whatever you want so I can experience a failure heavy game!
Those people just need to play Disco Elysium to realize that, sometimes, fails are actually more beneficial to your goals than wins. But that game is such an oddball in so many ways.
I'm really excited to see what Larian does with their Patches. The 4 hot fixes have corrected hundreds of bugs (including many things I've seen in game). And Swen has said they have a planned out Patch 1 and Patch 2 to incorporate more significant stuff. And knowing how they fixed up things with the DOS games it wouldn't surprise me if they really enhance Act 3 and cleanup some of the ending stuff.
Really looking forward to it. By far the only thing keeping me from playing is that I want to wait for the release on ps5 so that the pc version will be more polished (less bugs, and FSR2)
Inspiration not insight, insight is a skill. It does get handed out like candy. I respec'd as a dual wield ranger to test. It's good. It's sad it needed so much help.
I played the game on tactician and overall did find the game a bit too easy too - although I had a lot of Early Access experience. The difficulty in the game actually went down due to early access feedback in my experience - I hope they add additional difficulty options on top of Tactician to really make the game more fun on replay - otherwise I guess there's always mods or other challenge runs.
@@SlanderedGaming I hope so too. For us PC gamers we do have mods to fall back on in the worst case, but I think it'll be great for the PS5 players that are coming.
Like with a lot of game if its your first time and you dont know what to expect its harder. But once you have an idea of what to expect and prep yourself before what would have been a surprise encounter, well yeah. That and many new people don't know how to min max with the system and cheesing certain item combos on their first time. But im cool with that because what draws me to this is the story and the choices more then the combat. Like mentioned A hard mode that removes the ability to make camp as often or go to camp from anywhere. Maybe can only go to camp from certain safe areas. As for the real time / turn based combat. You can actually turn off turn based whenever you want. The issue is I don't think your party members have any decent AI to do things on their own to deal with the enemy. So your party members are kind of meh in real time. In fact i think they just sit there doing nothing while the enemies proceed to move in real time wailing on you as you control only one character.
So about the combat, it seems easy as hell I agree, but that's probably because we are folk who are veterans of party based CPRGS. I know a few people that have tried BG3 because of the hype but have never played a party based CRPG before, and they are finding it way too difficult on the balanced setting. I am hoping for a more difficult setting in a future update or mod for a future playthrough, but at the moment I am trying to play as an iron-man type playthrough (though I have seen the game-over screen a few times through combat, but I try to do everything I can, use any consumable etc, to avoid it) to help keep the challenge high. Loving the game and in the beginning parts of Act 3.
In my playthrough I have played 110 hours and only have the final encounter left. In that time I have only had two crashes, one in act 1 and one in act 3. Apart from that the only problems I had were about five minor graphic issues in cut-scenes.
I've had a similar experience the only crash I've had was when I smacked one of those cursed skulls in act 3 with a sword. I think they fixed a ton of the performance issues with the 4 hotfixes which I think I've benefited from by dragging out my playthrough.
same; the game is massive i expected there to be bugs, especially with an 870k+ player count lol i had 1 crash when they rolled back hotfix 4 and the worst bug ive run into is dialog lines repeating twice, or my dice rolls not adding bonuses which those things are annoying but it happened like 3-4 times altogether
This is one of my favorite reviews of this game I've seen. And I've pretty much watched all of them. VERY thorough, and you explain all of the systems really well. While I'm glad I picked up the game regardless, I wish I had come across this video before I started playing.
Great review. I gather most of your audience has already purchased the game, so I get that you're kind of preaching to the choir, but it also necessitates you make valid criticisms. Which you have done. Which is important because Larian does listen to feedback. Hopefully they will address some of these concerns with a definitive edition like they did with DOS2. My main concern is the inventory system. Mine has turned into a hoard, which might have been an acceptable roleplay scenario if I was playing a Dragonborn character, but I'm not.
I'm only 40ish hours in and still on Act One since I'm slow and exploring everything, but my god, this game is SO much fun. I really like all the different ways I can approach a situation and how the game rewards creative thinking. And of course, there's the fact that I can just use Karlach to grab a goblin and beat his friend to death with him. Surprisingly effective!
I too hated the idea of just 4 characters, so apart from an early run I've used a party limit remover mod. If you don't bring all 7 along at once there's still enough balance, and you can adjust the difficulty manually if you still think there isn't.
even with the few minor flaws the game has, mostly UI related, its such a gem. i got it like 3 weeks before it dropped and i havent played any other game except one my friend had to rip me away from to play and the whole time i was like wow i cant wait to play bg3 its been so long
I love the energy you give off, hon. So friendly and welcoming. I can’t finish the game, I keep restarting XD Done it 2 times now, last time was because I discovered Poly isn’t actually possible.
Hey I appreciate the review, thanks! I haven't picked up the game yet, money be a bit tight this month, but I've been mostly on an information blackout regarding the game. I knew very little about the mechanics and origin characters. Your review has given me a better idea of what I'm going to do for my first playthrough when I get the game. It's great to know about the resting being almost as exploitive as it was in the original games in advance. Resting all the time is immersion breaking in my opinion so this information has also given me some better ideas for what I'll be doing. All in all, I can't wait to get the game and I'm also really looking forward to Rogue Trader!
I set a simple rule for myself: I have to use all short rests before I can long rest. Since my main is a bard, I have 3 short rests. That one rule forces me to be much more judicious about using my resources. So the rest system can be worked around; it doesn’t have to be exploitive.
@JosieJOK this is similar to what I was planning on doing after finding out about it. Not quite sure what I'll do yet, but I'll figure it out when I get the game!
A problem I have felt especially in act 3 was heavy railroading and little narrative agency. No matter how much I tried to roleplay I felt like I was constantly pushed into the casual hero archetype. If you play an origin character it is not so bad, because they already have their established personas motivations and quests, but if you play custom, you are pushed into either a neutral good or into a chaotic evil playthrough. Also resisting or giving in to illithid power has no consequence whatsoever. After stressing myself so hard in act 1 and 2 whether or not to use them this felt like a slap in the face. In this regard Larian felt like a DM who wanted to run a very specific campaign about a hero, who uses illithid powers to save the city from mindflayers, but gets petty and b*hurt if you wanna play differently and refuse to use the cool powers he developed for you. "You wanna play evil? Okay you can side with an insane whacky cult and slaughter refugees and children, oh and I will take away 3 of your companions." "You don't wanna turn into a mindflayer? Then Orpheus have to turn into one. Now the githianky are f*ed and Laezel hates you! I hope you feel good about yourself..." Despite all this it is still one of the best RPGs I played, but man these things are infuriating...
You feel the dice are fair because of karmic dice. They were designed to "feel" random, but sre not trully random. "Unlike the tabletop, you can't completely dump a stat" except you can't do it on the tabletop unless you use rolled stats. If you're using point buy, the lowest you can go is 8
In defence of the treatment of Jaheira, there is no reason why she would not speak fondly of Khalid and as for making assumptions about the Bhaalspawn, it would be far more jarring for far more people to talk about him frequently but in very vague terms or for him to have a clearly defined character. I think the actual cannon Bhaalspawn is Abdel Adrian based on the novelisation by Philip Athans, which by all accounts was atrocious.
Which is why they should have just left her out. There's no good way to include her in this game that's still respectful of the playthroughs people had in BG 1 & 2.
The author himself disavowed those terrible novels and wishes they were never published. As he tells it WOTC published his first drafts instead of editing them or anything.
All the issues you highlighted are valid, the most infuriating thing is when another party member accidently triggers a dialogue scene and there is no option to switch characters so I'm stuck with mumbling barbarion trying (and failing) persuasion checks which would be aced by my main charcter. Also I was under impression that you can get ALL party members except J and M in act 1. So I was really disappointed when it did not happen. Which is not really necessary in the narrative.
16:30 "Act 3 tied it all together" I really don't understand you saying that. Raphael's offer from Act 1 _never_ comes up again. We gave up searching for a tadpole cure once Act 2 has begun, and his new offer is complete rubbish. You don't even need anything he offers because The Emperor has already offered an alternative.
*Spoilers* In my playthrough Raphael was the first person who explained the nature of the crown and provided more background on how they were able to capture an Elder Brain. Also in my playthrough siding with a Mind Flayer felt very repugnant while aligning with a Devil who will focus on dominating Avernus, freeing Baldur's Gate from this threat, was very appealing.
😂😂😂 I’m cracking up about what you said regarding the Karlach intimacy scene. I’ve romanced Lazel and Minthara so I haven’t experienced that yet. I probably would have been a bit disappointed by that 😂😂😂😂
Great review that was both fair and informative. I fully agree with your negative points as well. I'm still in act 2 so I'm hoping I will get to act 3 just as a performance patch drops though as it sounds pretty bad.
I've been reveling giddily in all the positive reviews for this game that have come out in the past few weeks. Straight up soaking that stuff up like a thirsty plant lmao. Finally a studio that cares about the players and product first and everything else second, and everyone is being forced to take notice. AAA developers may not like it, but this is what true quality, true success, actually looks like-and it's all DRM and microtransaction free.
I have one way to deal with the "terrible equipment for late companions" thing.. and i kinda stumbled into it bc this is just how i play: just dont sell your magic items 😅😅... i have a really hard time selling any magic items that have any special ability (beyond just being a +X), so when i found jaheira i had a whole stash of things to try
This is an important note for Act 1: Don't get super attached to both of your eyes. Risk one of them for a chance to remove the tadpole, you'll be surprised at the results.
I was waiting for this review. It's absolutely up there for me too, tied with WoTR for sure. My only criticisms are that I really wish they had the slides for the ending as I find that's a really sweet reward for committing to completing content, and I think act 3 needs a lot of work (I had the same critique of Divinity OS 2 so this seems like a trend) - other than that, absolutely awe-inspiring game. I am so excited for the future of CRPGs, especially considering how many new CRPG fans this game attracted. :)
The mythic system alone puts bg3 to shame. You can't even be a mind flayer until the very end of game. They really coulda did more with this system to add more replayability
Literally all my rl friends who played BG2 romanced either Jaheira or Viconia. I romanced Jaheira in at least half of my 5 or 6 playthroughs, Viconia once and Arie another time, but Jaheira was the first one I romanced and the last. She *definitely* seemed a lot closer to the Bhaalspawn than she did Khalid, even if you didn't romance her. They should have at least had a tag where they asked in the beginning of the game whether or not you played BG2, if you were a male or female and if you were involved with Jaheira. It could have been like in the Witcher 3 where they ask general questions and you simply answer. That kinda is a big deal for people who spent 150 hours in BG2 and ToB with Jaheira just to have her babbling about Khalid, whom she mourned for about an hour in-game after treating him like an emotionally abusive spouse in BG1, and no, I do not say that lightly. He also behaved like a traumatized guy. It was kinda weird. Anyway, it's still a heck of a game so far. I've put about 110 hours in and am closing in on the end of Act 2. maybe a little more. I fell asleep with the game on a couple of times, but 165 hours seems like a bit on the high side for me even though I do tend to do almost everything. I just skipped my first available area that I'm not 100% sure I am going to do. It's the _"Toll House"._ I've done everything else in that section I've come across, so who knows, maybe I'll do it before the Dark Justiciar finale. I was a bit irked that is one of the cut off points but I'm sure they have their reasons...not sure what those could be, but I'm sure they have them. ;^) . Still no real complaints about the game, and like you, I hav only had a couple of bugs. One was hooking up with Karlach, breaking up with her to be with Shadowheart and not being able to take her out of my party. She'd simply refused to talk to me beyond _"Sorry, already have a best friend."_ I was like _"You have to be fricken kidding me, so I had to load an earlier save and choose not to finish _fixing_ her until I decide what's up with S.H.. I don't understand why a girl can be with 2 guys and it's fine, and a guy can be with a guy and a girl which is again, AOK, but two women at the same time? Forget about that you perv. Still, if those are my biggest issues with the game, well besides not having a weight/height slider with having a facial feature slider being third on the said _gripes,_ well it means they came about as close to making a perfect turn-based Western Style RPG as I've come across yet. I'd also have preferred the character be voiced. I get it, they can't have 10 different voice actors do the main characters lines to suite everyone, so you may have a Gnome or Halfling Wizard who focuses on Necromancy sounding like a 6'1" Paladin of Tyr, but hey, that's life. At least toss a male and female option in with a button to shut it off. That's a very, very minor negative though. If it would have had them cut dialogue by more than 10% then I'd say it was not worth it, even if we don't see 90% of said choices in one playthrough. Anyway, love the game, and if what you say i true about romances, I agree, they (video games in general) need to start doing them better. They are always great until you hook up, then they hose-dive hard. People say shit like _"Do you want an adventure game or a fricken teen romance novel?"_ and to that I say *_"Yes."_* No, not quite that far, but it can certainly be a bigger part of the game. Bioware got slightly better at it up until Origins, then they got worse, then a little better, then they settled on the crap status quo. CDPR was very good in TW2, decent in 3, then fell off a cliff in Cyberpunk until the end *with Pan AM,* missing a big chunk in the middle and pretty much only getting her endings _right_ in the way that they feel. Idk, I know they don't want the _"once you are in a relationship"_ to take away from the rest of the game, but adding side activities, the option to sleep together, a handful of options for _deeper_ conversations...idk, it would go a long way. For all the writing and voice acting they did for this game I sure that would not have been the financial deal breaker. I really am nit-picking here, as most games don't come anywhere near this level of interactivity. It's just the build up for the romances as so fricken good. So good.
While the game is great, it's clear that Act 3 suffered a lot of cut content due to the release being pushed forward, along with bugs and performance issues. There's just something with Larian and Act 3 that never works out at release
Just such an amazing game.... Im 80 hours in, still in act 1, and am already thinking about my next playthrough. The best part is, my wife agreed to do a couch co op playthrough with me😊❤ Im more excited for that than my own playthrough, lol.
not sure how old are you, but as someone who's been in his profession for 15+ years, yeah, you lose a lot of levels in time xD Jaheira gained in wisdom for example but lost DEX, seems realistic to me
BG2 and Throne of Bhaal had a canon plot and ending, that's just a fact of the DnD universe. CHARNAME has a canon name of Abdel Adrian, he has a canon path through life, he has a canon for who he romances, sticks with and what choice he picks at the end. I realize that the canon plot might not fit your personal playthrough of BG1-2 (it certainly doesn't match mine either) but it's not Larian's fault that there is a canon plot, it is baked into the Forgotten Realms story line itself to the point where they cannot set a game handling Baldur's Gate related plotlines without acknowledging that there is a real canon plot and building on that. That said it would have been mindblowingly amazing if the game accepted BG2 or BG2:EE savegames to determine the world state though, but in no way do I think that can be demanded or expected. Especially since basic plot hinges on CHARNAME's death, so if he picked divinity the plot breaks down. Jaheira should be mentioning what she does, it's not Larian's fault that her canon choices don't match your personal choices, and if we don't want them accidentally stepping on personal choices at all, then they cannot make a BG sequel at all, it comes with the territory.
It's not Larian's fault that there's a canon BG2 ending that conflicts with most people's playthrough. It is their fault that they chose to include Jaheira in this game despite knowing that. As I said in the video the game would've been better served if they had left her out of it.
@@SlanderedGaming I understand your point, but why should they leave her out specifically? There were plenty of choices made which have a canon outcome which are also referred to. My point is that while it sucks that canon contradicts our personal choices, I think it is weird to single her out as a problem there, she is just one of many possible contradictions. I dunno, I think her inclusion is fine. She is capable of living that long, and she is one of the first and primary companions of both prior games, other than her the only one who could have stayed with us for longer was Imoen but she is heavily suggested to have died years before. Jaheira is a great choice to tie back to the whole BG1-BG2 continuity from start to finish.
game took me 130 hours to complete and I loved it, already made a 2nd character to try different choices but its so difficult being mean and possibly killing old friends in this new playthrough
Heya bg3 is playable tomorrow on PS5 and this is the review I've been looking for. You are fair, logical, and constructful. But when you said big ol red, well y'know, I was crying laughing. I may be 22 but that was beyond hilarious
Tactician offers plenty of challanges, particularly in act 1 where you can easily go somewhere the game expects you to have taken a longer path to. Unless you have some super-cheese build, some shit in DnD 5e is simply way too OP but that says more about 5e than it does the game and usually low level characters don't snowball until after level 5. Of course if you engage in using consumables then tactician becomes plenty approachable with pretty much any party. As far as long rests go, there are downsides in taking too many story-wise, certain things progress in each act based on how many long rests you took, so, sure you can long rest most of the game at any moment but there can be downsides to long resting after each fight, there are some incentives to taking short rests instead of spamming long rests.
I noticed this because I made sure to take as few rests as possible in act 3 and progressed a bit too far. Some events hadn't even happened yet in camp before I apparently had solved the issue by killing some dude that would be the instigator of those problems. And it didn't seem buggy. I only realized this after seeing some dialogue get messed up chronologically with a companion after. But if they fix those things then some playthroughs become very different based on how you rest, as you say. I'm only writing this to add to your point. I too experienced that the amount of rests you take seems to matter at least to a decent but not overly punishing degree.
What an excellent well thought review this was. Thanks! You pretty much addressed all my concerns, and then some. So many greats points. Yeah I don't like that the game doesn't tell you what further abilities unlock in your class. Some other things I don't like too, but I can't wait to play the game on PS5. Thanks again for this excellent review!
I was kind of disappointed of Karlachs Quest and Romance on my first Playthrough... I ran into the same problems with Minthara on my second Playthrough. It feels like they cut out some of the storys or couldn´t finish the content. Saw a post on Reddit saying that it´s a bug. I hope they fix it or add stuff in the future. I guess I will put my second run on hold and Play as Dark Urge instead.
Going evil doesn’t feel stupid and Minthara is great. Haven’t finished my run, but the kind of “lawful evil” approach that you were alluding to is definitely my plan.
@@SlanderedGaming I guess the non-origin companions have less content, at least when it come to dialogue. But Minthara is tied into the main story and there is a nice epilogue with her in act2. I dunno yet if it will carry into act3 and lead to a satisfying evil ending, but I’m hopeful. Also having a second Paladin in your group is just powerful.
@@SlanderedGamingMinthara is supposedly bugged. A lot of her dialogue and romance flags are not triggering or pop up at strange times. Even her dialogue has lines like “Attack the gates!”deep into Act 2 and above which makes zero sense. Some people have been posting on Reddit that devs at Larian confirmed her arc is bugged and should be fixed in an upcoming patch.
I finished the game after about 85 hours and currently doing a second playthrough on tactician to get a different ending and path through the game. Whilst the game's awesome and most certainly a lot of fun... I honestly have to say that Act 3 left a lot to be desired with how much they hyped it up. The ending though... oh boy I hope they add to it in patches with ending slides and more companion reactions... Like, did you know, that at the end of the game, it randomly selects a couple of your companions to comment on your ending choice and what they want to do next. But, some don't get to say anything... ANYTHING! after 85 hours of doing everything related to Shadowheart and being best friends with her pretty much... she did not get to say a single word once the game was over... instead Minsc, Minthara and Astarion were the only ones chosen by the game, then when I reloaded due to a model freaking out during the end scene... it then picked completely different characters to comment and say something completely different, and again Shadowheart became a background character. Didn't feel great... not gonna lie, reload the ending 9 times to get everyone to comment... yikes. Well, here's hoping for patches like they did for DoS2 I suppose.
34:05 I highly recommend a playthrough as a good DU trying to resist as well. It feels like how BG3 was meant to be played. I imagine Larian decided the DU stuff would be overwhelming for some so they included a blank slate character storyline as well. As a BG1/2 fan I cant recommend it enough, its extremely heroic/thematic!
Great review and my thoughts as well. AS far as a tabletop recreation its a 10/10. as far as a game i would say 9/10. though if we add the deceptive marketing into the mix(romance and endings) then i will say 8/10. idk who started the 1700 endings but Larian went with it and even though i knew it was ridiculous and more of a "half-truth" due to permutations in endings so sure random npc 5 survives, thats a new ending technically for example. the fact they didnt clarify how someone came up with that number and used it for a pr push is pretty scummy. that said as far as the game goes, game kinda fizzles out midway through act 3. act 1 is front-loaded so hard it really does give you a great impression, act 2 carries it and this is when your build comes online so its at its absolute peak in act 2 and then act 3 its like. okay ur probably near level cap so these sidequests dont even give xp anymore just do them if you want or not idc basically . And i agree with you on the romance, from all the dev talks there was this big emphasis on the sex scenes and they were really gassing it up as some romantic adventure on top of the main story you could have when all the romance options are lackluster and window dressing at best (i only experienced the female romance scenes at least).Despite all the talk before game release about how deep and content rich the romance system in BG3 is, it was very dissapointing to be absolutely honest. so thats another knock on the deceptive marketing. without going into all of them for spoiler reasons. i will just say i am also jaded b/c i lost 2 companions and bathed in a river of blood(technically 3 but i mean, who considers gale a companion? ) for her to give up the kooey-kooey and it was the worse trade deal in the history of trade deals.
I'm waiting for it to eventually come to Xbox Series X, but hopefully by the time it does, Larian will have been able to implement some of this feedback into the patches!
Yeah on the romance front one of my scenes that was about to that romance was blocked by another cutscene of a different character trying to romance me 😑
Haven't watched video yet, but have watched people's thoughts on the end gane. Have you seen info on the cut content? There's apparently a ton left out, so that could fix people's issues if they add it in with a future update/definitive edition.
I think I may have been luck I got about 100 hours through my first playthrough and had 1 hard crash the whole game. Honestly I think it's a masterpiece.
I finished my first, Dark Urge, play. I didn't have quite the same experience. I only remember one "bug" in the last act, except some abilities not working but those were there throughout. Performance was iffy though and one quest went a bit funny. Mind in act one two of my companions said they killed each other in dialogue but didn't - not sure what was going on really. I like the super easy crafting but don't really care for crafting in general though as you say the combat on Balanced was pretty easy so you don't need consumables. I don't care much about the endings - the play's the thing wherein er not that sort of play. I did get a very binary outcome for my character that ignored my very evil and empowered companions which might support what you heard about evil runs. Their stories were satisfying in themselves though, the 3 that survived. Inventory was pretty full - I sorted things into bags but it would be nice to have scroll cases and potion belts and "generic stuff" boxes - they have food and alchemy already and those other things were available decades ago. Still it was never enough of a pain to be really frustrating as you can zap things to camp and carry tons anyway. My biggest complaint is that it was all a bit too epic and I prefer at least some lower stakes stuff, at least in side quests, which is a personal preference. I loved the absence of garbage collection quests, which are not much of a crpg tbf thing but are there in Dragon Age I and Mass Effect. I like the skill system here a lot. In Rogue trader I don't think I ever failed a skill test. It was trivial to max out every skill then always test with the best. That made it feel pointless. Until the last act of course when the main died in a skill test when they were alone....
i played tactician and pragmatic evil. can agree with near every point you brought up, with a few caveats while i think the game let me play the evil character i wanted to, without being dumb, it didn't quite live up to the fantasy. it was incredibly lonely and i wasn't even a murder hobo, just power-hungry. finished the game with only 5 companions, and while 4 of them were fantastic, Minthara (the whole reason i went evil) is either bugged or cut. there was NO romance with her beyond that first scene in act 1, and the bigger bummer, only like 3 actual conversations to be had. two of which were in act 3. max approval with her by the end of the game and nothing, was SUPER bummed to say the least. especially when the few conversations i did have with her were just so damn well written. there is an amazing character there, and for some reason just nothing came of her IMO evil is not worth it unless you are playing Dark Urge? maybe? def was felt i was just shooting myself in the foot as a custom though. edit: added sentence to Minthara point
@@SlanderedGaming the little content we DO get is actually incredible. its just here is so little, but she's everything i want in an evil aligned drow companion. also according to reddit, she has a ton of files that are just not being triggered, so it may just be a bug
I was thinking about romancing Karlach.. until your review happened. Now I'll stay as far away from her as humanly possible.. or in my case.. as dwarfanly possible 🤣
Great review. I completely agree with your criticisms; I love this game but the add-on companions are lacking...Minthara is even worse and going the evil route means you miss out on a lot of content as well.
Bringing back legacy characters from the original Baldur's Gate games was always going to cause problems . . . those games had so many variations for how things played out that any choices they used would feel off to some players. In my case I really loved how they handled Jaheria's character . . . but I didn't romance her in BG2. And I'm sure 99.5% of BG3 players won't have either. It would have been much nicer if they let her join the active party earlier in Act 2 however (similar to Halsin). Especially as there was no way I was going to mix up my party team at the moment she did become available. Minsc was a total dud. Way too late . . . and I hated his introduction story. It feels like he was just forced in there for marketing purposes, very disappointing and for my future playthroughs I will likely just skip his questline. As for the mystery character you weren't happy with . . . again I actually really liked how they did the story. It fit with what my OG Baldur's Gate playthroughs were like, and also fit with the 'canon' ending. So again I think its another of those can't make legacy characters work for everyone things.
About real time and turn based. I was a big advocate on how BG3 should have been real time or both but after seeing what Larian did with the possibilities of what you can do in a turn based I can see this game being as near real time anymore: they took turn base to a whole different level. That could have never been possible in real time. They made me love turn base again.
Things I would like to see is when in camp. One can see everyone’s inventory. Those in the party and not in party. Also able to swap out companions without all the talking. Other than that I think it’s amazing game.
Minsc DOES have an approval rating. It was "Very High" in my playthrough. And I also did get the option to ask Minsc for sex, which I didn't do, but the option was there. Don't know if that would have started a romance.
@@SlanderedGaming yes that's a known bug. Doesn't happen only on Minsc, but with other characters as well. I simply restarted the game and the approval ratings showed up again.
Playing as a companion character after playing as a custom character is a uniquely interesting experience. I can't even describe it, but it doesn't feel repetitive at all.
I can agree most of your claim except for some. 1) do romance important for the game? of cos yes, the first thing ppl do is sex speedrun so .... do I want the relationship with the character influence the game story or what? maybe not, let's it be a fling or else it will become mandatory and totally again the freedom of the game. 2) Do I want Jerhira in Act1? For me, it makes no difference, I haven't played BG1 or 2, but I know for many BG fans here will be compulsory to play her. And what level should Jerhira if she's with us at act1? 3) The real issue is on act3. The map is too big, too many npc and my 3yrs-old PC is struggling.
That's tough about the ending. It sucks to spend so many hours on something and get a crummy, ambiguous end. There's nothing worse than a waste of time and you won't know it's a waste of time until you've spent the time... Good review.
Thanks for the honest review. Some places omit the negatives entirely. Personally I've had a few serious bugs in act 1. One might potentially be game breaking. My entire party acts we killed LaeZel despite she being with us. I had the scene where I had to choose between her and Shadowheart and I chose the latter. Game went into battle but it bugged and I just woke up from the night. Everyone talks about how we killed her... While she is standing right there.
I had that same thing happen. Was weird for a while, didn't seem to break anything aside from her not being dead...I am pretty sure if she dies from that event properly she can be rezzed. The reason why I say that is that I had Lae'zel die (mine blew her into a chasm) after this bug occurred and the journal updated with an entry about Shadowheart killing her and that her spirit could be recovered even without her body.
I'm that guy who loves the old CRPGS and Owlcat and is always dissing DOS and DOS2, so I wasn't hyped for this game in the least. You and Mortisimal gushing about the beta though got me to give it a chance. There's still a lot of Larian-isms that annoy me a bit (for instance every gnoll is a grenadier and phase spiders now shoot big poison pools because Larian needs to have big elemental damage aoes that leave a surface in every single encounter) but on the whole I've been really impressed by it. Never would have expected a Larian game to be my GOTY but BG3 has a very good chance this year if Rogue Trader doesn't release.
I guess being an altoholic is a good thing here. I started SO many characters, and only one has so far saved Halsin xD The later bugs will for sure be ironed out by the time I get to it haha
Im doing my evil run now. It's missing content for sure. It feels like that. Spoilers ahead. I was sad that you can not join the big 3 as evil. Just stuff like that
There is some other issue I would add. The writing and how you can CLEARLY tell what was rewritten at the last moment. Some things just... don't make a lick of sense. Omeluum I think is a good example of that.
I think it is a GOTY candidate but I don't see how anyone could give it 10/10 or really even 9/10 if you have gotten to the very end. Act1+2 might be on the level of all of my favorite CRPGs. Act 3 though...man. If it took them 6 years to get here I can easily see them needing 18 months to make Act 3 the experience that Acts1+2 were. For me the best part of the game is the combat. I think it is too Lariany even, with all the damn surfaces and exploding shit on every map and trash mobs all blowing their consumables wads on every turn. Still it's so much fun playing with different builds. But yeah I am a turn based guy if this was RTWP I might not have even played it at release, likely would have waited a year or two for them to get the game better and better and maybe hold out for a mod like Kingmaker eventually got. So if you favor RT or RTWP this combat is likely not going to thrill you the way it does me. I would say the story is pretty great too, aside from the way it ends in so many ways. Great dialogue and voice overs. Outside of, quite ironically I think, the academy award winner, all of the voices did amazing work. Kethric is phoning it in big time though. Crazy how bad of a job he does relative to your companions or someone like Raphael. Shit inventory system. Way too many containers and trash loot you are encouraged to hoover up and sell. I don't love the itemization either, it seems they were not done there. There is a quest heavy crossbow that is very easy to get in Act 1 that is arguably the best ranged weapon until Act 3. Legendary Mace in Act 1 that is better than anything you get in Act 2 and the craftable armors out of Act 1 are, again, better than anything you get in Act 2.
Well if you have played through Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or at least watched some detailed summery of those games story you can play the Dark Urge. You will know enough about way he is like he is and about the world you play in without having to play BG3 first. I would consider the Dark Urge is the canon story line that follow up on the previous games so.
Good review. Like you said tactian is fairly easy. I've played the Divinity and Pillars games a ton but as someone who knows next to nothing about DnD character builds I went with a moon druid and breezed through the game. Some boss fights were just super underwhelming like Orin. Resting costing 80 supplies was irrelevant I never really looked at my camp supplies and just rested whenever. That Karlach scene in act 3 felt odd to me as well. lol
BG3 romances suffer from having an overly horny fanbase that was heavily involved in early access. They basically ruined everything except flirting and a few sweet moments with each of the origins. The flirting was fun, the very few sweet moments were good, and then everything else was cringe at best.
“…big red dick!” 😂 THANK YOU. I laughed so hard when you said that I almost crashed the car. I’m straight. I’ll be avoiding a “romance” with Karlack. I’m sorry about what happened to Wyll dude. 😂
Excellent review sir, nice to see a little balance between the good and not so good. Haven't seen that much at other channels. I bought the game a couple of days ago but after seeing your take on it right now I will wait for a couple of more patches before diving in..
still watching your review, but as someone that likes to play custom characters and have origin characters as companions. I had no clue that you don't get to choose dialogue options if you play as an origin character. That seems like a disadvantage. Edit: also I could see why you thought the Karlach scene looked like pegging, but it pretty much matched the Tsundere attitude she has, in which she takes control and uses "you" as a sex toy. Just grabbing your legs and ramming you into her.
You can choose dialogue options but don't get any voice acting if you play as an Origin character. I'd have no problems with Karlach using Wyll as a sex toy, that's just not how the footage looks at all.
Awesome awesome game, possibly best I’ve ever played. The good things are so good, they outweigh the bad things easily. That said, the bad things still exist. Inventory management definitely needs a rethink, ESPECIALLY how you need to swap characters in and out the party if you want to access their inventory. That, as you say, is a baffling design choice and massively inconvenient. But thankfully, it should be really easy to fix. Combat is easy (I’m playing on balanced), but that’s only because I know what I’m doing. I’m not getting bored of it, because enemy variety, encounter design and combat animations are all excellent. Fights may be easy (so far), but they’re not samey. I’ll give tactician a try next time, see if that presents more of a challenge (ie, not just tankier enemies, but smarter & better-equipped ones).
The lack of information about what you get for the class was pretty jarring for me I can kind of get why they may not have prioritized it as the wiki's will have it in a month or two but as someone who remember what it was like getting the manual for NWN1 and having the entire list of spells for all classes and all the feats right at my fingertips it felt weird. And as someone who bought it EA but didn't play it or 5e until release it was a big shock to learn how much 5e had changed from what I was familiar with from the old 3.5 and pathfinder like systems. One big complaint I have that may seem minor but I really hope they would do is that I wish they would have the Lightning Circle Dimension door effect from the old BG games as It turns out it is something I didn't realize I missed until i cast it and didn't see it.
Considering Pathfinder and Solasta have this feature BG3 absolutely should've. Having to open up a wiki just to know what you get as you level shouldn't be necessary.
There is a mod that gives you choice of inspiration points. I chose one point only and luckily my toon is high charisma cause I would not be able to keep this band together. Last night I rolled bad and then my one inspiration point rolled bad and we had to kill Lae'zel. She was my favorite character and we lost her cause I need the cleric!
Im already seeing a couple bugs myself. I also find myself questioning how heavy handed they are with how easy it is to break a paladin oath. Like I took out some clearly evil jailers to free captured people and I got oath breaker for it. Yeah i get that I wasn't obeying "their" laws, but they were the ones that unlawfully imprisoned people first. As to endings, i havnt beaten the game yet. But I imagine they are leaving it semi open in part due to all the possible choices made on the journey. Also I think they have said they wont make a sequel to this. I think we should just treat it like a sit down table top D&D campaign with some open ended closure where we kind of imagine our characters full ending ourselves rather then the DM setting it all down in stone. If they did do another game it would most likely be a new different campaign.
I was lucky? and didn't really have any technical bugs to speak of . . . even in act 3. There were a handful of cutscene issues throughout the game but perhaps a dozen total so barely any impact. What I did have in Act 3 were a lot of continuity issues. Characters would talk about a quest as if it was still active even through I had already completed it. And some quests were started mid-quest and it was confusing what was going on. It was kind of understandable given how many quests and storylines were active at the same time and how free you are to explore and approach things. It wasn't a huge deal but it did detract from the Act 3 experience a bit.
idea for a harder mode. more frequent auto saves, but no way to save the game yourself outside of resting or quick resting nor a way to reload because you didnt like the roll. eliminate save scum slight buff to fights. gg hard mode activated
I am in Act 3 and haven't had any crashes at all during my 80 hours so far. I did see a few graphical errors on a few scenes, but nothing earth shattering. (like a missing drinking glass or character during part of a scene)
I just wish our character was fully voiced. I'm enjoying all the combat and exploration so far, but then you get into all these nice cutscenes and dialogues and there we are standing around doing nothing lol.
this seems nice but with all the possible dialogue options through this 100+ hour game, voicing all of those lines would add an absolute ton of money to the budget and restrict the writing. i always prefer no voice acting for the PC because i want the highest quality writing possible
Oh I understand the budget stuff. Its just pulls me out of these moments when the npcs are so well voiced and animated and then it does a quick cut to my character looking like he's trying to hold in a huge shit or wondering whats for dinner lol
@@jizamkizam9611 that's just the way crpgs are, i think the tradeoff for good writing makes it more than worth it but i definetly understand where you're coming from
SPOILER only now i realize that the fact that Balduran himself is the emperor ilithid is described to us every time we start the game, with that fighter turning into a ilithid logo, awesome
My biggest gripe with the game is that there are no ending slides. None. The ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying, not even all of the main characters get mentioned during the epilogue sequence. Also that one legacy character implementation, the one with the three ghosts, was kinda bad. But other than that the game is really good, I'd say slightly better than Wrath of the Righteous for me.
The Karlach sex scene you are referring to is called the Amazon position. It is still very much the male at the bottom doing the penetrating, but it's the woman on top controlling the depth and rythym of said penetration. It is not an uncommon position, and is usually done to give the reigns to the woman, as some feel that the cowgirl position feels too much like the woman is just servicing the man. I believe the position has only been popular in the last 10 years or so, so it might not be common for most people.
The inclusion of Jaheira and Minsc as companions felt a bit tacked-on and fan service-y to me. They're fine characters, and I'm sure exciting to have around if the player is nostalgic for past games, but they're not members of the brain worm club and feel a bit like outsiders to me. I feel like they would have been much better suited to the role of allies, in the same style as Zevran or Withers, etc.
Any idea when we will see a patch that help with the Act 3 performance issues? I'm slow walking my character to give Larian time to sort this out before I get to act 3 but not sure if it is going to take them days, weeks or even months to get the performance issues under control.
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 85 | คู่เอก "ยอดเหล็กเพชร vs ผึ้งหลวง"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qq_19bnnxEo/mqdefault.jpg)
They really need to take notes from the Pathfinder games when it comes to the inventory. Automatically labelling and being able to sell junk items would be such a massive time-saver.
I 100% agree. Didn't want to keep comparing the game to WotR so I left that out but yeah.
pathfinder games weren't like that on release though. Inventory in wotr on release was way worse than even in BG3
@@KingslayerSrb So Larian shouldn't copy a good system because it used to be bad? I don't follow.
@@KingslayerSrb Even that inventory was better when it did not have search bar than BG3 without global inventory. Add to it bad comapnion managment system, where you have to switch party memebers to get to their inventory and level them up and you have incredibly bad invetory managment that is only trumphed by DOS2.
@@MortalReaver you can press tab to open all party members inventory at once..
Excellent review! I like that you don’t sugarcoat the issues this game has. I consider it to be one of the best games I’ve ever played, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement! I’m still plodding through the game at my usual slow pace, but I’m enjoying every minute!
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
Pathfinder wotr is still better as a base game. I think divinity 2 is better also especially with out good the mods were. Even tho bg3 is obviously brand new im not sure if they will get mods like dos2
The lack of an epilogue or ending slides really hampers what is an epic adventure. It didn't have closure for a lot of aspects of my plathrough such as companions and how we affected the world.
SPOILERS BELOW
I played a good aligned paladin romancing a converted Shadowheart. She had no dialogue after the ending battle and nothing was said as to what she and I will do now that we're free of the tadpole.
Wyll and Karlach go together to Avernus. But in my run, Wyll broke his pact with Mizora so when we killed the brain, he lost his powers. I don't see how Wyll can protect her from Zariel in hell
now that he's just a normal dude. What becomes of Karlach? Will she eventually find a cure?
Astarion didn't become a vampire ascendant and the ending was unsatisfying for him cause he just slinks off funnily after he gets burned by the sun.
I told Gale to take the crown back to Mystra which he said he would do. But what happens once he does? Is he chosen again?
What does Jaheira, Minsc, and Halsin do after the events? Does Halsin take his position back as Archdruid?
Lae'zel's ending had the most closure. She leads the revolution against Vlaakith. But how does it go? Does she succeed?
We've been told there most likely won't be story related DLC so a lot of the story threads are open ended and it remains to be seen if there will be a Baldur's Gate 4.
I also romanced Shadowheart (good path) and we had an entire scene (with dialogue options) at the end of the game . . . it was my last scene before going to credits . . . I'm sorry you didn't get it. I really ended the game nicely for my playthrough.
@trengilly01 Yeah apparently its a bug that I didnt get that scene. Shame
Everything you just mentioned is EXACTLY what I am talking about. The endings just really do not tell you enough.
Thanks for the review. Too bad you didn't enjoy the combat as much. I really enjoyed this combat, it's super tactical and has so many variables such as terrain, height, environmental effects etc. I don't think I've played a better CRPG combat system. It takes what's good about 5E tabletop and adds many cool tricks like the added bonus actions such as jump and shove. While I agree with you the combat on Balanced is fairly easy, it took me until about level 5 to really feel powerful. This is pretty true to tabletop as well. First four levels in tabletop 5E can be really unforgiving and dangerous, especially levels 1 and 2. Once Martials ans Casters hit 5, things kinda get flipped on their head. I DM'd a lot of 5E and once players get that big power boost at 5, you have to really struggle to make it challenging for them. Same in this game.
All in all I think they did a great job with combat. It's only due to my experience with other games that I see where things could've been better.
5E is already a very broken system, combat-wise. That is extremely skewed towards magic users, which is simply bad . - Add to that the "Larian magic" , and things get completely out of hand; destroying any real sense of challenge and accomplishment for the player : BG3 manages, which is no small feat, to squeeze more power creep in favor of the player into 12 levels than BG2 , as mythic level 20 campaign, ever did: 5 levelled spells per round, e.g. as a multi-class Sorcerer, is way stronger than combining the effects of Improved Alacrity and Time Stop : Two 9th level spells. 😁 Where you mostly had to magically breach through all the different defenses and Chain Contingencies the enemies in BG2 usually had, anyways.
Not even to talk about itemization, where high-level gear from the Classic, like Carsomyr or Flail of Ages, completely pales in comparison : - It's all candy, folks. ^^
BG2 is p*ss easy, tbh, for anyone who has a clue what they’re doing.
@@johndeighan2495 I mean you're not wrong. BG2 isn't nearly as complex as BG3 simply because most of what is going on is so under-the-hood that most people won't even understand or need to. It's all happening in real time (the dice rolls). All you need to know is that game is which spells are good and getting THAC0 as low as possible.
@@Badbentham I agree that, for the most part, magic users are stronger. At least if you rest a lot. But I just finished the game on Tactician and I think Lae'zel(the fighter) was the character that saved me from most headaches in big boss fights specifically. Sure she got buffed with bless, haste and elixirs and stuff but a boss with 600+ health could be action surged down to 120 in one turn. Even if I spammed disintegrate I wouldn't have been as effective as her. I think personally that archery-based builds get the short end of the stick in this game until level 11(at least for ranger). They they actually become pretty good esp for taking down small enemies without having to pay spell slots. Early on an archer prolly also wanna be a fighter due to action surge.
However I didn't mind that it was on the easier side. And yes in most fights that aren't boss fights spellcasters definitely shone more than others. A lot of enemies also had resistance to slashing piercing and bludgeoning so that may be a reason as well.
Your point about failures being so often so satisfying is so true and has me wanting a mod that I haven't seen anyone ask for, seen people ask for "all natural 20s" mod but I kinda want to do a run with an "all natural 1s" (in dialogue not combat lol) mod, or one that lets you set the roll to whatever you want so I can experience a failure heavy game!
Those people just need to play Disco Elysium to realize that, sometimes, fails are actually more beneficial to your goals than wins. But that game is such an oddball in so many ways.
I'm really excited to see what Larian does with their Patches. The 4 hot fixes have corrected hundreds of bugs (including many things I've seen in game). And Swen has said they have a planned out Patch 1 and Patch 2 to incorporate more significant stuff. And knowing how they fixed up things with the DOS games it wouldn't surprise me if they really enhance Act 3 and cleanup some of the ending stuff.
For real, they even rewrote most of an act for divinity 2 definitive edition... larian is my spirit animal
Yup I agree 100%. Fully expect to shore up the game's issues.
Really looking forward to it. By far the only thing keeping me from playing is that I want to wait for the release on ps5 so that the pc version will be more polished (less bugs, and FSR2)
Yeah I’m doing a lone wolf DOS2 play through while I wait for the big patches. Mostly for performance improvement as my computer is several years old.
Inspiration not insight, insight is a skill. It does get handed out like candy. I respec'd as a dual wield ranger to test. It's good. It's sad it needed so much help.
I noticed that to, were going to comment on it. The first time happens at 6:50.
Damn you are right for whatever reason I had Insight stuck in my head.
I played the game on tactician and overall did find the game a bit too easy too - although I had a lot of Early Access experience. The difficulty in the game actually went down due to early access feedback in my experience - I hope they add additional difficulty options on top of Tactician to really make the game more fun on replay - otherwise I guess there's always mods or other challenge runs.
This seems like an issue a lot of the community has talked about so I think they will address it.
@@SlanderedGaming I hope so too. For us PC gamers we do have mods to fall back on in the worst case, but I think it'll be great for the PS5 players that are coming.
Like with a lot of game if its your first time and you dont know what to expect its harder. But once you have an idea of what to expect and prep yourself before what would have been a surprise encounter, well yeah. That and many new people don't know how to min max with the system and cheesing certain item combos on their first time. But im cool with that because what draws me to this is the story and the choices more then the combat.
Like mentioned A hard mode that removes the ability to make camp as often or go to camp from anywhere. Maybe can only go to camp from certain safe areas. As for the real time / turn based combat. You can actually turn off turn based whenever you want. The issue is I don't think your party members have any decent AI to do things on their own to deal with the enemy. So your party members are kind of meh in real time. In fact i think they just sit there doing nothing while the enemies proceed to move in real time wailing on you as you control only one character.
There is Tactician plus as a mod on Nexus.
So about the combat, it seems easy as hell I agree, but that's probably because we are folk who are veterans of party based CPRGS. I know a few people that have tried BG3 because of the hype but have never played a party based CRPG before, and they are finding it way too difficult on the balanced setting. I am hoping for a more difficult setting in a future update or mod for a future playthrough, but at the moment I am trying to play as an iron-man type playthrough (though I have seen the game-over screen a few times through combat, but I try to do everything I can, use any consumable etc, to avoid it) to help keep the challenge high. Loving the game and in the beginning parts of Act 3.
You are probably right, I am used to these types of games so it's much easier for me.
In my playthrough I have played 110 hours and only have the final encounter left. In that time I have only had two crashes, one in act 1 and one in act 3. Apart from that the only problems I had were about five minor graphic issues in cut-scenes.
That's awesome. Consider yourself blessed. LOL
Same here. Very little issues.
Mine mostly takes its sweet time loading in, but my computer is also getting on a bit so not sure that is entirely the games fault 😂😂
I've had a similar experience the only crash I've had was when I smacked one of those cursed skulls in act 3 with a sword. I think they fixed a ton of the performance issues with the 4 hotfixes which I think I've benefited from by dragging out my playthrough.
same; the game is massive i expected there to be bugs, especially with an 870k+ player count lol
i had 1 crash when they rolled back hotfix 4 and the worst bug ive run into is dialog lines repeating twice, or my dice rolls not adding bonuses which those things are annoying but it happened like 3-4 times altogether
This is one of my favorite reviews of this game I've seen. And I've pretty much watched all of them. VERY thorough, and you explain all of the systems really well. While I'm glad I picked up the game regardless, I wish I had come across this video before I started playing.
Great review. I gather most of your audience has already purchased the game, so I get that you're kind of preaching to the choir, but it also necessitates you make valid criticisms. Which you have done. Which is important because Larian does listen to feedback. Hopefully they will address some of these concerns with a definitive edition like they did with DOS2. My main concern is the inventory system. Mine has turned into a hoard, which might have been an acceptable roleplay scenario if I was playing a Dragonborn character, but I'm not.
Yup I am really looking forward to how Larian updates the game.
I'm only 40ish hours in and still on Act One since I'm slow and exploring everything, but my god, this game is SO much fun. I really like all the different ways I can approach a situation and how the game rewards creative thinking. And of course, there's the fact that I can just use Karlach to grab a goblin and beat his friend to death with him. Surprisingly effective!
I hope you've taken the Tavern Brawler feat.
Glad you are having a great time!
I too hated the idea of just 4 characters, so apart from an early run I've used a party limit remover mod. If you don't bring all 7 along at once there's still enough balance, and you can adjust the difficulty manually if you still think there isn't.
even with the few minor flaws the game has, mostly UI related, its such a gem. i got it like 3 weeks before it dropped and i havent played any other game except one my friend had to rip me away from to play and the whole time i was like wow i cant wait to play bg3 its been so long
Yup without question the game is incredible.
I love the energy you give off, hon. So friendly and welcoming.
I can’t finish the game, I keep restarting XD
Done it 2 times now, last time was because I discovered Poly isn’t actually possible.
Thank you!
Great review, one of the very few that properly addresses the drawbacks of this game.
Thanks glad you enjoyed it.
Hey I appreciate the review, thanks! I haven't picked up the game yet, money be a bit tight this month, but I've been mostly on an information blackout regarding the game. I knew very little about the mechanics and origin characters. Your review has given me a better idea of what I'm going to do for my first playthrough when I get the game.
It's great to know about the resting being almost as exploitive as it was in the original games in advance. Resting all the time is immersion breaking in my opinion so this information has also given me some better ideas for what I'll be doing.
All in all, I can't wait to get the game and I'm also really looking forward to Rogue Trader!
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the review!
I set a simple rule for myself: I have to use all short rests before I can long rest. Since my main is a bard, I have 3 short rests. That one rule forces me to be much more judicious about using my resources. So the rest system can be worked around; it doesn’t have to be exploitive.
@JosieJOK this is similar to what I was planning on doing after finding out about it. Not quite sure what I'll do yet, but I'll figure it out when I get the game!
A problem I have felt especially in act 3 was heavy railroading and little narrative agency. No matter how much I tried to roleplay I felt like I was constantly pushed into the casual hero archetype. If you play an origin character it is not so bad, because they already have their established personas motivations and quests, but if you play custom, you are pushed into either a neutral good or into a chaotic evil playthrough. Also resisting or giving in to illithid power has no consequence whatsoever. After stressing myself so hard in act 1 and 2 whether or not to use them this felt like a slap in the face. In this regard Larian felt like a DM who wanted to run a very specific campaign about a hero, who uses illithid powers to save the city from mindflayers, but gets petty and b*hurt if you wanna play differently and refuse to use the cool powers he developed for you. "You wanna play evil? Okay you can side with an insane whacky cult and slaughter refugees and children, oh and I will take away 3 of your companions." "You don't wanna turn into a mindflayer? Then Orpheus have to turn into one. Now the githianky are f*ed and Laezel hates you! I hope you feel good about yourself..."
Despite all this it is still one of the best RPGs I played, but man these things are infuriating...
You feel the dice are fair because of karmic dice. They were designed to "feel" random, but sre not trully random.
"Unlike the tabletop, you can't completely dump a stat" except you can't do it on the tabletop unless you use rolled stats. If you're using point buy, the lowest you can go is 8
8 is pretty much dumped though. Why would you want to go below 8 even in Tabletop?
@@TK-zd7ymshrug. I wouldn't, but slandered would, and that's fine lol
Ya'll never play super dumb characters? I love doing that. LOL
Karmic dice is not enabled by default, so I think most people just play normally. I know I do and it still feels fair.
@@christianbay7614 it is enabled by default. It was for me at least
In defence of the treatment of Jaheira, there is no reason why she would not speak fondly of Khalid and as for making assumptions about the Bhaalspawn, it would be far more jarring for far more people to talk about him frequently but in very vague terms or for him to have a clearly defined character. I think the actual cannon Bhaalspawn is Abdel Adrian based on the novelisation by Philip Athans, which by all accounts was atrocious.
Which is why they should have just left her out. There's no good way to include her in this game that's still respectful of the playthroughs people had in BG 1 & 2.
The author himself disavowed those terrible novels and wishes they were never published. As he tells it WOTC published his first drafts instead of editing them or anything.
All the issues you highlighted are valid, the most infuriating thing is when another party member accidently triggers a dialogue scene and there is no option to switch characters so I'm stuck with mumbling barbarion trying (and failing) persuasion checks which would be aced by my main charcter.
Also I was under impression that you can get ALL party members except J and M in act 1. So I was really disappointed when it did not happen. Which is not really necessary in the narrative.
16:30 "Act 3 tied it all together"
I really don't understand you saying that. Raphael's offer from Act 1 _never_ comes up again. We gave up searching for a tadpole cure once Act 2 has begun, and his new offer is complete rubbish. You don't even need anything he offers because The Emperor has already offered an alternative.
*Spoilers*
In my playthrough Raphael was the first person who explained the nature of the crown and provided more background on how they were able to capture an Elder Brain. Also in my playthrough siding with a Mind Flayer felt very repugnant while aligning with a Devil who will focus on dominating Avernus, freeing Baldur's Gate from this threat, was very appealing.
😂😂😂 I’m cracking up about what you said regarding the Karlach intimacy scene. I’ve romanced Lazel and Minthara so I haven’t experienced that yet. I probably would have been a bit disappointed by that 😂😂😂😂
😂😂😂
Great review that was both fair and informative. I fully agree with your negative points as well.
I'm still in act 2 so I'm hoping I will get to act 3 just as a performance patch drops though as it sounds pretty bad.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the review. Larian is working on a major patch to address many of the issues.
I've been reveling giddily in all the positive reviews for this game that have come out in the past few weeks. Straight up soaking that stuff up like a thirsty plant lmao. Finally a studio that cares about the players and product first and everything else second, and everyone is being forced to take notice. AAA developers may not like it, but this is what true quality, true success, actually looks like-and it's all DRM and microtransaction free.
Yessir I’m happy to hear your thoughts!
Thanks! Hope you enjoyed the review!
I have one way to deal with the "terrible equipment for late companions" thing.. and i kinda stumbled into it bc this is just how i play: just dont sell your magic items 😅😅... i have a really hard time selling any magic items that have any special ability (beyond just being a +X), so when i found jaheira i had a whole stash of things to try
LOL Yeah that's is one way to do it.
This is an important note for Act 1: Don't get super attached to both of your eyes. Risk one of them for a chance to remove the tadpole, you'll be surprised at the results.
You can actually risk your eyes twice in Act 1, one has good results and one has bad results.
I was waiting for this review. It's absolutely up there for me too, tied with WoTR for sure. My only criticisms are that I really wish they had the slides for the ending as I find that's a really sweet reward for committing to completing content, and I think act 3 needs a lot of work (I had the same critique of Divinity OS 2 so this seems like a trend) - other than that, absolutely awe-inspiring game. I am so excited for the future of CRPGs, especially considering how many new CRPG fans this game attracted. :)
The mythic system alone puts bg3 to shame. You can't even be a mind flayer until the very end of game. They really coulda did more with this system to add more replayability
@@Lefthandrightband Oh WoTR blows it away in the replayability department, not even close.
@@SnowHimbo the only bad part of replaying wotr is the crusade mode and the 20 buffs you gotta do constantly
@@Lefthandrightband not gonna lie, I always turn that mode off anyway lol
Without seeing the scene, I’m assuming that Karlach had Wyll in the Amazon sex position
Nope. She is standing up not crouched on top of him with his legs up. It's not Amazon.
It's called pegging
Literally all my rl friends who played BG2 romanced either Jaheira or Viconia. I romanced Jaheira in at least half of my 5 or 6 playthroughs, Viconia once and Arie another time, but Jaheira was the first one I romanced and the last. She *definitely* seemed a lot closer to the Bhaalspawn than she did Khalid, even if you didn't romance her. They should have at least had a tag where they asked in the beginning of the game whether or not you played BG2, if you were a male or female and if you were involved with Jaheira. It could have been like in the Witcher 3 where they ask general questions and you simply answer. That kinda is a big deal for people who spent 150 hours in BG2 and ToB with Jaheira just to have her babbling about Khalid, whom she mourned for about an hour in-game after treating him like an emotionally abusive spouse in BG1, and no, I do not say that lightly. He also behaved like a traumatized guy. It was kinda weird.
Anyway, it's still a heck of a game so far. I've put about 110 hours in and am closing in on the end of Act 2. maybe a little more. I fell asleep with the game on a couple of times, but 165 hours seems like a bit on the high side for me even though I do tend to do almost everything. I just skipped my first available area that I'm not 100% sure I am going to do. It's the _"Toll House"._ I've done everything else in that section I've come across, so who knows, maybe I'll do it before the Dark Justiciar finale. I was a bit irked that is one of the cut off points but I'm sure they have their reasons...not sure what those could be, but I'm sure they have them. ;^) .
Still no real complaints about the game, and like you, I hav only had a couple of bugs. One was hooking up with Karlach, breaking up with her to be with Shadowheart and not being able to take her out of my party. She'd simply refused to talk to me beyond _"Sorry, already have a best friend."_ I was like _"You have to be fricken kidding me, so I had to load an earlier save and choose not to finish _fixing_ her until I decide what's up with S.H.. I don't understand why a girl can be with 2 guys and it's fine, and a guy can be with a guy and a girl which is again, AOK, but two women at the same time? Forget about that you perv. Still, if those are my biggest issues with the game, well besides not having a weight/height slider with having a facial feature slider being third on the said _gripes,_ well it means they came about as close to making a perfect turn-based Western Style RPG as I've come across yet. I'd also have preferred the character be voiced. I get it, they can't have 10 different voice actors do the main characters lines to suite everyone, so you may have a Gnome or Halfling Wizard who focuses on Necromancy sounding like a 6'1" Paladin of Tyr, but hey, that's life. At least toss a male and female option in with a button to shut it off. That's a very, very minor negative though. If it would have had them cut dialogue by more than 10% then I'd say it was not worth it, even if we don't see 90% of said choices in one playthrough. Anyway, love the game, and if what you say i true about romances, I agree, they (video games in general) need to start doing them better. They are always great until you hook up, then they hose-dive hard.
People say shit like _"Do you want an adventure game or a fricken teen romance novel?"_ and to that I say *_"Yes."_* No, not quite that far, but it can certainly be a bigger part of the game. Bioware got slightly better at it up until Origins, then they got worse, then a little better, then they settled on the crap status quo. CDPR was very good in TW2, decent in 3, then fell off a cliff in Cyberpunk until the end *with Pan AM,* missing a big chunk in the middle and pretty much only getting her endings _right_ in the way that they feel. Idk, I know they don't want the _"once you are in a relationship"_ to take away from the rest of the game, but adding side activities, the option to sleep together, a handful of options for _deeper_ conversations...idk, it would go a long way. For all the writing and voice acting they did for this game I sure that would not have been the financial deal breaker.
I really am nit-picking here, as most games don't come anywhere near this level of interactivity. It's just the build up for the romances as so fricken good. So good.
Yeah supposedly there is some romance related cut content that they might add back into the game.
While the game is great, it's clear that Act 3 suffered a lot of cut content due to the release being pushed forward, along with bugs and performance issues.
There's just something with Larian and Act 3 that never works out at release
Wyll: I didn’t peg you for a romance
Karlac: oh you aren’t pegging anyone
😂😂😂
could be the amazon position?? idk, havent seen it @@SlanderedGaming
Aah, now I know what Karlach means with the "Infernal Machine" that gets her going! 😂
😂😂
Just such an amazing game.... Im 80 hours in, still in act 1, and am already thinking about my next playthrough. The best part is, my wife agreed to do a couch co op playthrough with me😊❤ Im more excited for that than my own playthrough, lol.
Minsc and Jaheira went through BG2 Throne of Bhaal. How did they lose so many levels? 🤔
EXCELLENT QUESTION. 😂😂
not sure how old are you, but as someone who's been in his profession for 15+ years, yeah, you lose a lot of levels in time xD Jaheira gained in wisdom for example but lost DEX, seems realistic to me
Jaheria, Minsc, Kratos and Dante walk into a bar...
I really enjoy this review, I was on the fence as to whether i wanted to get this and you've swayed me to buy it for my PS5
Awesome I hope you enjoy the game!
BG2 and Throne of Bhaal had a canon plot and ending, that's just a fact of the DnD universe. CHARNAME has a canon name of Abdel Adrian, he has a canon path through life, he has a canon for who he romances, sticks with and what choice he picks at the end.
I realize that the canon plot might not fit your personal playthrough of BG1-2 (it certainly doesn't match mine either) but it's not Larian's fault that there is a canon plot, it is baked into the Forgotten Realms story line itself to the point where they cannot set a game handling Baldur's Gate related plotlines without acknowledging that there is a real canon plot and building on that.
That said it would have been mindblowingly amazing if the game accepted BG2 or BG2:EE savegames to determine the world state though, but in no way do I think that can be demanded or expected. Especially since basic plot hinges on CHARNAME's death, so if he picked divinity the plot breaks down.
Jaheira should be mentioning what she does, it's not Larian's fault that her canon choices don't match your personal choices, and if we don't want them accidentally stepping on personal choices at all, then they cannot make a BG sequel at all, it comes with the territory.
It's not Larian's fault that there's a canon BG2 ending that conflicts with most people's playthrough. It is their fault that they chose to include Jaheira in this game despite knowing that. As I said in the video the game would've been better served if they had left her out of it.
@@SlanderedGaming I understand your point, but why should they leave her out specifically? There were plenty of choices made which have a canon outcome which are also referred to.
My point is that while it sucks that canon contradicts our personal choices, I think it is weird to single her out as a problem there, she is just one of many possible contradictions.
I dunno, I think her inclusion is fine. She is capable of living that long, and she is one of the first and primary companions of both prior games, other than her the only one who could have stayed with us for longer was Imoen but she is heavily suggested to have died years before. Jaheira is a great choice to tie back to the whole BG1-BG2 continuity from start to finish.
game took me 130 hours to complete and I loved it, already made a 2nd character to try different choices but its so difficult being mean and possibly killing old friends in this new playthrough
Awesome. Hope you enjoy the second playthrough.
Heya bg3 is playable tomorrow on PS5 and this is the review I've been looking for. You are fair, logical, and constructful. But when you said big ol red, well y'know, I was crying laughing. I may be 22 but that was beyond hilarious
😂😂
Tactician offers plenty of challanges, particularly in act 1 where you can easily go somewhere the game expects you to have taken a longer path to. Unless you have some super-cheese build, some shit in DnD 5e is simply way too OP but that says more about 5e than it does the game and usually low level characters don't snowball until after level 5. Of course if you engage in using consumables then tactician becomes plenty approachable with pretty much any party. As far as long rests go, there are downsides in taking too many story-wise, certain things progress in each act based on how many long rests you took, so, sure you can long rest most of the game at any moment but there can be downsides to long resting after each fight, there are some incentives to taking short rests instead of spamming long rests.
I noticed this because I made sure to take as few rests as possible in act 3 and progressed a bit too far. Some events hadn't even happened yet in camp before I apparently had solved the issue by killing some dude that would be the instigator of those problems. And it didn't seem buggy. I only realized this after seeing some dialogue get messed up chronologically with a companion after. But if they fix those things then some playthroughs become very different based on how you rest, as you say. I'm only writing this to add to your point. I too experienced that the amount of rests you take seems to matter at least to a decent but not overly punishing degree.
Thanks for the heads up for Karlack. That's too goofy and uncomfortable 🙃
What an excellent well thought review this was. Thanks! You pretty much addressed all my concerns, and then some. So many greats points. Yeah I don't like that the game doesn't tell you what further abilities unlock in your class. Some other things I don't like too, but I can't wait to play the game on PS5. Thanks again for this excellent review!
I was kind of disappointed of Karlachs Quest and Romance on my first Playthrough... I ran into the same problems with Minthara on my second Playthrough. It feels like they cut out some of the storys or couldn´t finish the content. Saw a post on Reddit saying that it´s a bug. I hope they fix it or add stuff in the future.
I guess I will put my second run on hold and Play as Dark Urge instead.
Going evil doesn’t feel stupid and Minthara is great. Haven’t finished my run, but the kind of “lawful evil” approach that you were alluding to is definitely my plan.
I heard Minthara feels like she has significantly less content than the other party members. Thoughts?
@@SlanderedGaming I guess the non-origin companions have less content, at least when it come to dialogue. But Minthara is tied into the main story and there is a nice epilogue with her in act2. I dunno yet if it will carry into act3 and lead to a satisfying evil ending, but I’m hopeful. Also having a second Paladin in your group is just powerful.
@@SlanderedGamingMinthara is supposedly bugged. A lot of her dialogue and romance flags are not triggering or pop up at strange times. Even her dialogue has lines like “Attack the gates!”deep into Act 2 and above which makes zero sense. Some people have been posting on Reddit that devs at Larian confirmed her arc is bugged and should be fixed in an upcoming patch.
I finished the game after about 85 hours and currently doing a second playthrough on tactician to get a different ending and path through the game. Whilst the game's awesome and most certainly a lot of fun... I honestly have to say that Act 3 left a lot to be desired with how much they hyped it up. The ending though... oh boy I hope they add to it in patches with ending slides and more companion reactions... Like, did you know, that at the end of the game, it randomly selects a couple of your companions to comment on your ending choice and what they want to do next. But, some don't get to say anything... ANYTHING! after 85 hours of doing everything related to Shadowheart and being best friends with her pretty much... she did not get to say a single word once the game was over... instead Minsc, Minthara and Astarion were the only ones chosen by the game, then when I reloaded due to a model freaking out during the end scene... it then picked completely different characters to comment and say something completely different, and again Shadowheart became a background character. Didn't feel great... not gonna lie, reload the ending 9 times to get everyone to comment... yikes.
Well, here's hoping for patches like they did for DoS2 I suppose.
Yeah the endings definitely need more content.
34:05 I highly recommend a playthrough as a good DU trying to resist as well. It feels like how BG3 was meant to be played. I imagine Larian decided the DU stuff would be overwhelming for some so they included a blank slate character storyline as well.
As a BG1/2 fan I cant recommend it enough, its extremely heroic/thematic!
Yeah, I at the endgame with DU as well and agree that this feels like how it was meant to be.
Awesome I am looking forward to it!
Great review and my thoughts as well. AS far as a tabletop recreation its a 10/10. as far as a game i would say 9/10. though if we add the deceptive marketing into the mix(romance and endings) then i will say 8/10. idk who started the 1700 endings but Larian went with it and even though i knew it was ridiculous and more of a "half-truth" due to permutations in endings so sure random npc 5 survives, thats a new ending technically for example. the fact they didnt clarify how someone came up with that number and used it for a pr push is pretty scummy.
that said as far as the game goes, game kinda fizzles out midway through act 3. act 1 is front-loaded so hard it really does give you a great impression, act 2 carries it and this is when your build comes online so its at its absolute peak in act 2 and then act 3 its like. okay ur probably near level cap so these sidequests dont even give xp anymore just do them if you want or not idc basically .
And i agree with you on the romance, from all the dev talks there was this big emphasis on the sex scenes and they were really gassing it up as some romantic adventure on top of the main story you could have when all the romance options are lackluster and window dressing at best (i only experienced the female romance scenes at least).Despite all the talk before game release about how deep and content rich the romance system in BG3 is, it was very dissapointing to be absolutely honest. so thats another knock on the deceptive marketing.
without going into all of them for spoiler reasons. i will just say i am also jaded b/c i lost 2 companions and bathed in a river of blood(technically 3 but i mean, who considers gale a companion? ) for her to give up the kooey-kooey and it was the worse trade deal in the history of trade deals.
I'm waiting for it to eventually come to Xbox Series X, but hopefully by the time it does, Larian will have been able to implement some of this feedback into the patches!
Yeah on the romance front one of my scenes that was about to that romance was blocked by another cutscene of a different character trying to romance me 😑
😂
Haven't watched video yet, but have watched people's thoughts on the end gane. Have you seen info on the cut content? There's apparently a ton left out, so that could fix people's issues if they add it in with a future update/definitive edition.
Nope I hadn't seen that yet but that's awesome. Would love to see expanded endings.
I think I may have been luck I got about 100 hours through my first playthrough and had 1 hard crash the whole game. Honestly I think it's a masterpiece.
Fantastic. Glad your experience was more smooth.
I finished my first, Dark Urge, play. I didn't have quite the same experience. I only remember one "bug" in the last act, except some abilities not working but those were there throughout. Performance was iffy though and one quest went a bit funny. Mind in act one two of my companions said they killed each other in dialogue but didn't - not sure what was going on really. I like the super easy crafting but don't really care for crafting in general though as you say the combat on Balanced was pretty easy so you don't need consumables. I don't care much about the endings - the play's the thing wherein er not that sort of play. I did get a very binary outcome for my character that ignored my very evil and empowered companions which might support what you heard about evil runs.
Their stories were satisfying in themselves though, the 3 that survived. Inventory was pretty full - I sorted things into bags but it would be nice to have scroll cases and potion belts and "generic stuff" boxes - they have food and alchemy already and those other things were available decades ago. Still it was never enough of a pain to be really frustrating as you can zap things to camp and carry tons anyway.
My biggest complaint is that it was all a bit too epic and I prefer at least some lower stakes stuff, at least in side quests, which is a personal preference. I loved the absence of garbage collection quests, which are not much of a crpg tbf thing but are there in Dragon Age I and Mass Effect. I like the skill system here a lot. In Rogue trader I don't think I ever failed a skill test. It was trivial to max out every skill then always test with the best. That made it feel pointless. Until the last act of course when the main died in a skill test when they were alone....
Nice glad you enjoyed the experience for the most part.
I've literally been playing since day one and have only gotten to Act 2 once. The game is so amazing by the time I finish act 2 BG4 will be announced.
i played tactician and pragmatic evil. can agree with near every point you brought up, with a few caveats
while i think the game let me play the evil character i wanted to, without being dumb, it didn't quite live up to the fantasy. it was incredibly lonely and i wasn't even a murder hobo, just power-hungry. finished the game with only 5 companions, and while 4 of them were fantastic, Minthara (the whole reason i went evil) is either bugged or cut. there was NO romance with her beyond that first scene in act 1, and the bigger bummer, only like 3 actual conversations to be had. two of which were in act 3. max approval with her by the end of the game and nothing, was SUPER bummed to say the least. especially when the few conversations i did have with her were just so damn well written. there is an amazing character there, and for some reason just nothing came of her
IMO evil is not worth it unless you are playing Dark Urge? maybe? def was felt i was just shooting myself in the foot as a custom though.
edit: added sentence to Minthara point
Damn I am definitely disappointed to hear that because Minthara is a big draw for my evil run as well. Exactly what I was afraid of.
@@SlanderedGaming the little content we DO get is actually incredible. its just here is so little, but she's everything i want in an evil aligned drow companion. also according to reddit, she has a ton of files that are just not being triggered, so it may just be a bug
I was thinking about romancing Karlach.. until your review happened. Now I'll stay as far away from her as humanly possible.. or in my case.. as dwarfanly possible 🤣
😂😂 It's probably just a bug that will be addressed.
What a great and detailed review. Thank you very much! You are so nice, i hope your channel grows!
Thank you so much!
Great review. I completely agree with your criticisms; I love this game but the add-on companions are lacking...Minthara is even worse and going the evil route means you miss out on a lot of content as well.
Thanks glad you enjoyed the review. Definitely seems evil is punished as opposed to just being an alternative option.
Bringing back legacy characters from the original Baldur's Gate games was always going to cause problems . . . those games had so many variations for how things played out that any choices they used would feel off to some players. In my case I really loved how they handled Jaheria's character . . . but I didn't romance her in BG2. And I'm sure 99.5% of BG3 players won't have either. It would have been much nicer if they let her join the active party earlier in Act 2 however (similar to Halsin). Especially as there was no way I was going to mix up my party team at the moment she did become available.
Minsc was a total dud. Way too late . . . and I hated his introduction story. It feels like he was just forced in there for marketing purposes, very disappointing and for my future playthroughs I will likely just skip his questline.
As for the mystery character you weren't happy with . . . again I actually really liked how they did the story. It fit with what my OG Baldur's Gate playthroughs were like, and also fit with the 'canon' ending. So again I think its another of those can't make legacy characters work for everyone things.
Yeah maybe you are right there was just no right way to do it.
About real time and turn based. I was a big advocate on how BG3 should have been real time or both but after seeing what Larian did with the possibilities of what you can do in a turn based I can see this game being as near real time anymore: they took turn base to a whole different level. That could have never been possible in real time. They made me love turn base again.
It is really a fantastic interpretation of what turn based games can be.
Things I would like to see is when in camp. One can see everyone’s inventory. Those in the party and not in party. Also able to swap out companions without all the talking. Other than that I think it’s amazing game.
Minsc DOES have an approval rating. It was "Very High" in my playthrough. And I also did get the option to ask Minsc for sex, which I didn't do, but the option was there. Don't know if that would have started a romance.
Weird when I looked at his character sheet there was no approval rating at the bottom and I never got that option. Maybe he was bugged for me?
@@SlanderedGaming yes that's a known bug. Doesn't happen only on Minsc, but with other characters as well. I simply restarted the game and the approval ratings showed up again.
Playing as a companion character after playing as a custom character is a uniquely interesting experience.
I can't even describe it, but it doesn't feel repetitive at all.
I can agree most of your claim except for some.
1) do romance important for the game? of cos yes, the first thing ppl do is sex speedrun so .... do I want the relationship with the character influence the game story or what? maybe not, let's it be a fling or else it will become mandatory and totally again the freedom of the game.
2) Do I want Jerhira in Act1? For me, it makes no difference, I haven't played BG1 or 2, but I know for many BG fans here will be compulsory to play her. And what level should Jerhira if she's with us at act1?
3) The real issue is on act3. The map is too big, too many npc and my 3yrs-old PC is struggling.
Jaheira should easily have 30 levels so her scaling is just completely off. Hopefully more patches come out soon that stabilize Act 3.
That's tough about the ending. It sucks to spend so many hours on something and get a crummy, ambiguous end. There's nothing worse than a waste of time and you won't know it's a waste of time until you've spent the time... Good review.
Thanks for the honest review. Some places omit the negatives entirely.
Personally I've had a few serious bugs in act 1. One might potentially be game breaking. My entire party acts we killed LaeZel despite she being with us. I had the scene where I had to choose between her and Shadowheart and I chose the latter. Game went into battle but it bugged and I just woke up from the night. Everyone talks about how we killed her... While she is standing right there.
Yikes. I never experienced that sorry to hear it.
I had that same thing happen. Was weird for a while, didn't seem to break anything aside from her not being dead...I am pretty sure if she dies from that event properly she can be rezzed. The reason why I say that is that I had Lae'zel die (mine blew her into a chasm) after this bug occurred and the journal updated with an entry about Shadowheart killing her and that her spirit could be recovered even without her body.
I'm that guy who loves the old CRPGS and Owlcat and is always dissing DOS and DOS2, so I wasn't hyped for this game in the least.
You and Mortisimal gushing about the beta though got me to give it a chance. There's still a lot of Larian-isms that annoy me a bit (for instance every gnoll is a grenadier and phase spiders now shoot big poison pools because Larian needs to have big elemental damage aoes that leave a surface in every single encounter) but on the whole I've been really impressed by it. Never would have expected a Larian game to be my GOTY but BG3 has a very good chance this year if Rogue Trader doesn't release.
Awesome! Glad you ended up enjoying it.
Surely a text/still image epilogue would be easy to implement? I hope they do it. Great video.
I guess being an altoholic is a good thing here. I started SO many characters, and only one has so far saved Halsin xD The later bugs will for sure be ironed out by the time I get to it haha
😂😂
Im doing my evil run now.
It's missing content for sure.
It feels like that.
Spoilers ahead.
I was sad that you can not join the big 3 as evil. Just stuff like that
Yup that's exactly what I heard.
There is some other issue I would add. The writing and how you can CLEARLY tell what was rewritten at the last moment. Some things just... don't make a lick of sense. Omeluum I think is a good example of that.
21:55 wtf LOL
Druids my jam, I liked what Larian did with the wild shapes. If you haven't played one at level 6 or above, I'd highly suggest giving it a go.
Maybe im just luck. Im in act 3 and about 76 hours into my first playthrough and it just crashed on me last night
I think it is a GOTY candidate but I don't see how anyone could give it 10/10 or really even 9/10 if you have gotten to the very end. Act1+2 might be on the level of all of my favorite CRPGs. Act 3 though...man. If it took them 6 years to get here I can easily see them needing 18 months to make Act 3 the experience that Acts1+2 were.
For me the best part of the game is the combat. I think it is too Lariany even, with all the damn surfaces and exploding shit on every map and trash mobs all blowing their consumables wads on every turn. Still it's so much fun playing with different builds. But yeah I am a turn based guy if this was RTWP I might not have even played it at release, likely would have waited a year or two for them to get the game better and better and maybe hold out for a mod like Kingmaker eventually got. So if you favor RT or RTWP this combat is likely not going to thrill you the way it does me.
I would say the story is pretty great too, aside from the way it ends in so many ways.
Great dialogue and voice overs. Outside of, quite ironically I think, the academy award winner, all of the voices did amazing work. Kethric is phoning it in big time though. Crazy how bad of a job he does relative to your companions or someone like Raphael.
Shit inventory system. Way too many containers and trash loot you are encouraged to hoover up and sell.
I don't love the itemization either, it seems they were not done there. There is a quest heavy crossbow that is very easy to get in Act 1 that is arguably the best ranged weapon until Act 3. Legendary Mace in Act 1 that is better than anything you get in Act 2 and the craftable armors out of Act 1 are, again, better than anything you get in Act 2.
Yeah I want Larian to get all the positive accolades but saying there is no room for improvement with this game is wild. LOL
Well if you have played through Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 or at least watched some detailed summery of those games story you can play the Dark Urge. You will know enough about way he is like he is and about the world you play in without having to play BG3 first. I would consider the Dark Urge is the canon story line that follow up on the previous games so.
Good review. Like you said tactian is fairly easy. I've played the Divinity and Pillars games a ton but as someone who knows next to nothing about DnD character builds I went with a moon druid and breezed through the game. Some boss fights were just super underwhelming like Orin. Resting costing 80 supplies was irrelevant I never really looked at my camp supplies and just rested whenever. That Karlach scene in act 3 felt odd to me as well. lol
Thanks glad you enjoyed the review.
BG3 romances suffer from having an overly horny fanbase that was heavily involved in early access. They basically ruined everything except flirting and a few sweet moments with each of the origins. The flirting was fun, the very few sweet moments were good, and then everything else was cringe at best.
😂
“…big red dick!” 😂 THANK YOU.
I laughed so hard when you said that I almost crashed the car.
I’m straight. I’ll be avoiding a “romance” with Karlack. I’m sorry about what happened to Wyll dude. 😂
Excellent review sir, nice to see a little balance between the good and not so good.
Haven't seen that much at other channels.
I bought the game a couple of days ago but after seeing your take on it right now I will wait for a couple of more patches before diving in..
Glad you enjoyed it. Acts 1 & 2 are very solid so if you play at a slow pace Act 3 will probably be patched by the time you get to it.
still watching your review, but as someone that likes to play custom characters and have origin characters as companions. I had no clue that you don't get to choose dialogue options if you play as an origin character. That seems like a disadvantage.
Edit: also I could see why you thought the Karlach scene looked like pegging, but it pretty much matched the Tsundere attitude she has, in which she takes control and uses "you" as a sex toy. Just grabbing your legs and ramming you into her.
You can choose dialogue options but don't get any voice acting if you play as an Origin character. I'd have no problems with Karlach using Wyll as a sex toy, that's just not how the footage looks at all.
Looking forward to this!
Awesome awesome game, possibly best I’ve ever played.
The good things are so good, they outweigh the bad things easily.
That said, the bad things still exist. Inventory management definitely needs a rethink, ESPECIALLY how you need to swap characters in and out the party if you want to access their inventory. That, as you say, is a baffling design choice and massively inconvenient. But thankfully, it should be really easy to fix.
Combat is easy (I’m playing on balanced), but that’s only because I know what I’m doing. I’m not getting bored of it, because enemy variety, encounter design and combat animations are all excellent. Fights may be easy (so far), but they’re not samey. I’ll give tactician a try next time, see if that presents more of a challenge (ie, not just tankier enemies, but smarter & better-equipped ones).
Yup I agree it's a fantastic game.
The lack of information about what you get for the class was pretty jarring for me I can kind of get why they may not have prioritized it as the wiki's will have it in a month or two but as someone who remember what it was like getting the manual for NWN1 and having the entire list of spells for all classes and all the feats right at my fingertips it felt weird. And as someone who bought it EA but didn't play it or 5e until release it was a big shock to learn how much 5e had changed from what I was familiar with from the old 3.5 and pathfinder like systems. One big complaint I have that may seem minor but I really hope they would do is that I wish they would have the Lightning Circle Dimension door effect from the old BG games as It turns out it is something I didn't realize I missed until i cast it and didn't see it.
Considering Pathfinder and Solasta have this feature BG3 absolutely should've. Having to open up a wiki just to know what you get as you level shouldn't be necessary.
Yeah it's super weird to me that this information isn't readily apparent.
There is a mod that gives you choice of inspiration points. I chose one point only and luckily my toon is high charisma cause I would not be able to keep this band together. Last night I rolled bad and then my one inspiration point rolled bad and we had to kill Lae'zel. She was my favorite character and we lost her cause I need the cleric!
Agreed about your negatives. There should be a party inventory and party skill check system.
Thanks glad you enjoyed the review.
Im already seeing a couple bugs myself. I also find myself questioning how heavy handed they are with how easy it is to break a paladin oath. Like I took out some clearly evil jailers to free captured people and I got oath breaker for it. Yeah i get that I wasn't obeying "their" laws, but they were the ones that unlawfully imprisoned people first.
As to endings, i havnt beaten the game yet. But I imagine they are leaving it semi open in part due to all the possible choices made on the journey. Also I think they have said they wont make a sequel to this. I think we should just treat it like a sit down table top D&D campaign with some open ended closure where we kind of imagine our characters full ending ourselves rather then the DM setting it all down in stone. If they did do another game it would most likely be a new different campaign.
Strongly agree that breaking a Paladin's oath felt way too easy. I am not sure how they fix that but it definitely should be addressed.
I was lucky? and didn't really have any technical bugs to speak of . . . even in act 3. There were a handful of cutscene issues throughout the game but perhaps a dozen total so barely any impact.
What I did have in Act 3 were a lot of continuity issues. Characters would talk about a quest as if it was still active even through I had already completed it. And some quests were started mid-quest and it was confusing what was going on. It was kind of understandable given how many quests and storylines were active at the same time and how free you are to explore and approach things. It wasn't a huge deal but it did detract from the Act 3 experience a bit.
Yeah you have definitely been lucky. LOL
idea for a harder mode. more frequent auto saves, but no way to save the game yourself outside of resting or quick resting nor a way to reload because you didnt like the roll. eliminate save scum slight buff to fights. gg hard mode activated
I am completely unsurprised about Act 3 being buggy and it's the reason I haven't started playing yet. Thanks for beta testing the game though! (J/k)
😂😂
I am in Act 3 and haven't had any crashes at all during my 80 hours so far. I did see a few graphical errors on a few scenes, but nothing earth shattering. (like a missing drinking glass or character during part of a scene)
I appreciate the thoughtful content!
My pleasure!
I just wish our character was fully voiced. I'm enjoying all the combat and exploration so far, but then you get into all these nice cutscenes and dialogues and there we are standing around doing nothing lol.
Yeah from a pure cinematic perspective I think Mass Effect is better.
this seems nice but with all the possible dialogue options through this 100+ hour game, voicing all of those lines would add an absolute ton of money to the budget and restrict the writing. i always prefer no voice acting for the PC because i want the highest quality writing possible
Oh I understand the budget stuff. Its just pulls me out of these moments when the npcs are so well voiced and animated and then it does a quick cut to my character looking like he's trying to hold in a huge shit or wondering whats for dinner lol
@@jizamkizam9611 that's just the way crpgs are, i think the tradeoff for good writing makes it more than worth it but i definetly understand where you're coming from
SPOILER
only now i realize that the fact that Balduran himself is the emperor ilithid is described to us every time we start the game, with that fighter turning into a ilithid logo, awesome
I didn't catch that. Awesome!
race unrelated +2 +1 to attribute rule is actually a new DnD 5e rule, along with half-races gone.
There are no more half elves?
@@SlanderedGaming no half elves and no half orcs
My biggest gripe with the game is that there are no ending slides. None. The ending is very abrupt and unsatisfying, not even all of the main characters get mentioned during the epilogue sequence. Also that one legacy character implementation, the one with the three ghosts, was kinda bad. But other than that the game is really good, I'd say slightly better than Wrath of the Righteous for me.
Yup that was a complaint of mine as well. The endings really need more content.
The Karlach sex scene you are referring to is called the Amazon position. It is still very much the male at the bottom doing the penetrating, but it's the woman on top controlling the depth and rythym of said penetration. It is not an uncommon position, and is usually done to give the reigns to the woman, as some feel that the cowgirl position feels too much like the woman is just servicing the man. I believe the position has only been popular in the last 10 years or so, so it might not be common for most people.
I am fully aware of the Amazon position and that is NOT what she does.
The inclusion of Jaheira and Minsc as companions felt a bit tacked-on and fan service-y to me.
They're fine characters, and I'm sure exciting to have around if the player is nostalgic for past games, but they're not members of the brain worm club and feel a bit like outsiders to me.
I feel like they would have been much better suited to the role of allies, in the same style as Zevran or Withers, etc.
Yup I definitely agree with that.
Any idea when we will see a patch that help with the Act 3 performance issues? I'm slow walking my character to give Larian time to sort this out before I get to act 3 but not sure if it is going to take them days, weeks or even months to get the performance issues under control.
Wyll Origin question.. Will the game let you as Wyll make bad decisions against the Grove? Keeping it vague! Great review!!
Yes you can.
@@SlanderedGaming thank you!!