Baldur's Gate III (2023)

Act 1 is a great DnD set of adventures, nicely connected, filled with mostly nicely written and well played companions. Mechanics are fun, engaging although on intendent difficulty, a bit too easy. Quests are interesting and have a variety of tones, humor is nice but not over the top. Overall, act 1 of the game is the best cRPG we got in years, maybe since Tyranny. But then you leave act 1 and things start falling aparat. Every companion wants to pin you down and have a smooch, suddenly they are not just companions, but thirsty shells with side quests, some of them start to be really annoying and writing goes down, interactions are less and less frequent. Questlines start to fall apart, bug out, not register your decisions, or they become just meaningless. Still the area for act 2 has a ton of interesting and fun quests, cool encounters, good music, even if it is a worse rehash of act 1 with the same shtick (kind hearthed refugess, opposed by a bunch of aholes). Then you get to act 3 and the game starts throwing plotlines and characters from old games at you and it butchers every single one of them, often not making sense (like the Dark urge storyline, which is just stupid and seems to break any logic and causality of the setups of previous games). But bad fanfic of previous games plotlines aside, act 3, filled with cool, but east boss battles, struggles to close out any storylines, including the main one, which at the end of act2 finally shows what it really is - save/ruin the world plot using mcguffins.

Old games had this great feeling of having a personal hook to a story that has a more local, managable and believble stakes. Here, we once again go from goblin slayer, to world savior/destroyer. It is all so tedious. Combat mechanics are good, some companions maintain good writing throughtout the game (even if often undermined by buggy or unthough interactions) that is upheld by great vocie acting and animations. However the overall stories are often dissapointing or lead nowhere.

This has all the flaws of Original Sin 2 and then some, since it is a more ambitious project, but the first part of the game is so enjoyable that I am willing to forgive a lot, but not a bad story in a cRPG. If at least they would leave the old games characters and plotlines alone. It is nice to leave stories opened sometimes you know? Specially if you are not the one who came up with them, and just want to add yoru fan fic to "canon" when you can.

Story, writing and companions being the major complatins seem like a big blow to cRPG, but all of those also have their upsides and high points so with all the things that are not flawed in the game, or not as flawed as those I can only recommend the game, but with a rather bittersweet feeling.

Already having way more fun with Act 3! The density of the city environment really lends to the feeling that a cool new quest or character beat could be waiting around every corner, and the game delivers on that promise pretty dang frequently.

Special mention has got to go to Barcus Wroot, love how this seemingly one-off NPC goes on to have an intricate, parallel quest of his own that spans the entire game.

I already have too many additional runs planned:

1. Bard: I really want to play around with this class because I love a good support class, and Bard seems like a fun class for it's Charisma and unique conversation skills alone.
2. Cleric: I want to do a Cleric run because I love support healers and I'd like to play around with Light or Life Domain. I also thought this would be a good candidate for an ultra righteous run during which my character acts only upon principle and devotion.
3. The Dark Urge: who doesn't want to do a Dark Urge run? This is also a great chance to run as a Sorcerer, since that is the default for The Dark Urge.

Do I have it in me to do three more runs after I finishing my initial run? I don't know. Maybe I should just respec Shadowheart into Life or Light domain during my bard run and call it a day. Maybe then if I want to role play some sort of righteous jerk, I can roll a pally sometime in the new year.

The behaviour of characters in act 3 often didn't make sense in regards to their motive like the emperor who wants to be free of the brain joining the brain if you free orpeheus, this act is aslo the worst for companions repeating lines they've already said and characters bringing up completed quests like they are ongoing.

The games ending was so dissapointing that it soured the overall experience, here I was expecting an ending that would detail what happened after the ending based on your choices, something akin to fallout new vegas but all you get is brief farewells and a cryptic cutscene with Withers.