Baldur’s Gate 3

[radiofloyd]

Started playing this again recently so I can get this cursed game off my back.

 

I have a two week break from Monday, I’m determined to finish it before the year is out, so I can move on with my (gaming) life.

 

I would say this game is vastly over rated and the weakest game Larian have made since they broke out with Original Sin 1.

[radiofloyd]

Pumping the hours into it now, mopping up quest after quest. I’ll try to do a decent write-up at the end, but it won’t be easy. 
 

Passed the 150 hour mark now.

[radiofloyd]

162 hours now, I’m very close to the end I think.

 

Here’s some stuff I wrapped up yesterday and today, and what I have left to do:

 

Spoiler

Defeated Orin

Cleared the Iron Throne and destroyed the Steel Foundry

 

That just leaves me with Gortash to face, and the Elder Brain.

Ultimately, there’s no chance the game will come close to 200 hours, possibly not even 170, we’ll see. The end is in sight now.

[radiofloyd]

Done! 168 hours. Started this on launch day and put off playing anything else until I finished it, so that’s about a year and half playing only one game, on and off.

 

Overall, I’d give it 8/10. Which is being generous, as the ending is terrible and the game deserves to lose a point for how bad the last few hours are.

 

I would say Act 1 is the most fun, Act 2 is the most interesting, and Act 3 is when they just said fuck it and threw the kitchen sink at you.

 

I think the game hurts itself by trying too hard to match the scale of an epic fantasy novel - it works in a book because you can turn the pages quickly, it doesn’t work in a game when you have to act out every small little thing and the game plays at a snail’s pace.

 

Fundamentally, the game is solid. But Larian’s games have been solid since Original Sin 1, and it’s disappointing to see how ambition over-ran common sense here.

 

Should a game be this long and have this much content? No, in my opinion.

 

Is the pay off worth it? No. I had no emotional investment in this game or its story, which is absolutely necessary for a game this long.

 

I might make another post talking about ways they could (and should) improve their next game, or how they could have improved this one, but one area they really need to look at is storytelling and characters.

 

I would like to go back and finish Original Sin 2 someday, and compare them properly. I would say what I played of Original Sin 2 (60 hours or so) is better than this.

[one-armed dwarf]

The stuff people say about act 3 is the main reason I've never beaten this. Firstly cause of the weird scripting bugs people would talk about, then its inelegant pacing and structure and the fact you can apparently hit level cap really quick and lose a lot of motivation to stick with it.

 

It's made me curious about evil runs or Dark Urge playthroughs tho cause apparently they're shorter

[radiofloyd]

I haven’t encountered any scripting bugs, at least none that stick out in my mind. 
 

The pacing is definitely bizarre. It’s not just a Larian issue but it is an issue with all of their games, a complete lack of forward momentum. The game basically starts again in each act, so you basically have to finish three (full size) games to finish one.

 

Yeah I reached the level cap very early in Act 3 (if memory serves) and played the majority of Act 3 at the same level. I wouldn’t say it hinders the game massively and I can see why they did it (I’m assuming so that Act 3 is relatively balanced for everyone). I played the game on normal difficulty (I think it’s called Balanced) and I think the combat had the right level of challenge and fun for the majority of the game, until a certain point in Act 3 at which point your party becomes too strong for everything. 

[Nag]

I think I left off somewhere inside the Githyanki Creche around early/mid December, I've every intention of returning to it but there's a shed load of games I've bought (and want to revisit for NG+ options) before I realistically will get back to it... and that's a shame as I was slowly starting to wrap my head around the slightly convoluted controls and I'll basically be starting off from scratch again.