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I will say in the 11 months since this video came out, the game actually has going through incredible levels of optimization and polish. It's still a little incomplete but way less so than it was before.
Karlach and Halsin both come off as bad fanfic. Astarion is well written but I can't stand him anyway. I feel like Wyll was a lot better during early access and then they screwed him up somehow. It's funny how the dream scenes were so much more intense and compelling in early access too, but it seems like they chickened out from that approach and went with the pretty neutered version we got at launch instead. Laezel is passable. Gale was another well written character that I couldn't stand anyway. I think shadowheart is the only companion I have nothing bad to say about, her character arc is beautiful, even if you can see it a mile away.
I think my biggest issue with BG3 companions is that they tried way too hard to be different and avoid stereotypes, failing to utilize the tried and true tropes that simply carry a good D&D party. Also where the hell is my trusty dwarven companion?? Shadowheart and Gale are probably the most true to tradition characters and as such stand out quite a bit to their advantage, both are tropes with a unique twist, but they fully embody their respective tropes nontheless. Shadowheart is the sensitive and vulnerable maiden being devoured by evil just begging to be saved by the player; not very original but incredibly satisfying and intensely emotional. Gale is the very personification of the arrogant and ambitious wizard who thinks he's smart enough to outwit reality itself.
Another thing that is missing is a proper male companion, a trusty friend and comrade that DOESNT want to sleep with your male protagonist. Someone you can count on through thick or thin. Minsc was that loyal companion in BG 1&2, Canderous was a twist on it in KotOR, Carth was obviously written more with the femPC romance in mind, and it sort of ruins him a little when playing malePC. Khelgar nails the role in NWN2, Daelan in NWN1. If I had had my way, I probably would've just canned karlach altogether, introduced Minsc relatively early on in A1 and had Khaga join the party instead of Halsin after the events of the Grove. Either that or have Minthara (another well written character I have nothing bad to say about) join the party regardless of what you choose to do with the grove.
The only issue with Wyll is that they downplayed his narcissistic side way too much. In early access I felt that character going in an entirely different direction, one decidedly less heroic and more self-serving. I would've loved that character, the redemption arc he could've had would've been epic.
One of the best tracks on NWN2 ost ^^
Man, it’s been a lot of time, a lot of stuff has been ironed out.
why have his view numbers gone in the toilet?
Was the song from ff8?
Keep up the great content! I have been really enjoying your analysis on games for years now! Some I play and some I don’t…. I really love your insights and perspectives. Merry Christmas!
I watched this review right before the game awards lmao
Had almost no problems on PS5. I've all but given up on PC gaming, it's a joke unless you wait months after release for it to be stable.
Baldur's Gate 3 > Dragon Age: Origin, get over 2009 already this game dances circles around that ones boring MMO style gameplay. Cry.
I loved the game and the vision the devs had but it was so buggy! Characters got stuck outside of bounds in fights, I got teleported a couple of times to places I'd never been to, the quest log didn't get updated, and a random romance I did not want initated at the end which made for a very immersion breaking, but funny, ending.
I was so glad to read Larian Studio's news letter that they are adressing the feedback and will continue to polish the game as needed. I think that all game companies policies should be to release bug free games but idk I want to be lenient on Larian because this was a huge vision to fullfill and they almost got there. And we only get these kinds of games every now and then when I read harsh critique on reddit etc, when it's so clear the devs have a drive and passion to make the game better and I can't help but feel bad for them
Somewhat spoilers:
I will say that I play on an older computer and while I had the memory leaks as well, I barely had any other performance issues. I kept thinking that "no way will they be able to have a whole city loaded, that will break waaaay too many computers" and was SHOCKED when I got to act 3. And it ran so smoothly on my old computer!
I think it's worth buying and trying, but for the optimal experienece, definitely wait a year or two.
tldr I agree with most people in this comment section lol. Thanks for the review!
Lorerunner! I've missed you
Play spark the electric jester 3 it's an amazing indie game
Coregoth here… really was hoping you'd love it a lot more than you appear to here.
I found so much joy in this game. Peace Friend.
i'm so happy u made this as someone who has played this game u name a lot of why i dislike this loot wight is it add time and stuff cost way to much what adds to u feeling like u need to pick stuff up and sell it but i think after u play the game 1-2 times u can let go off picking up everything as u know what u want to buy what take away hours in looting/selling
I knew lore daddy would have something to say about this game! Thanks for not waiting 10 years to upload your thoughts!! Haha jk all ❤
I just finished the game today and one thing that really got to me is just how slow and tedious the turn combat gets over time. In bigger fight you take your turn and then wait for 2 minutes to take it again. And there is SO MANY of those. By the end of the game found myself muting the sound and putting on podcasts during fights.It's not that I mind turn-based comabt per se. It was fun at first. But the sheer frickin' volume of it is insane. The game sort of reminds me of 90s point and click adventures in the way it totally disrespects player¨s time. Option to turn off animations or auto-resolve for more routine fights would be a godsent.
I am also kind of sick of "save the world and everything" stories. It is not really necessary to tell a good story. Often it is downright detrimental. Witcher 3 was about Geralt looking for his daughter for fucksakes.
Right now it is solid 7/10 for me.
I just have to add the irony in all of this. Players derided other developers for not making perfect games, and raised Baldur's Gate 3 onto a pinnacle as some fantastic, perfect game. Demanding developers make more games like Baldur's Gate 3. Well, if players get even more buggy, unfinished games then they got exactly what they asked for sadly.
The monkey's paw curls. The monkey's paw always curls.
p.s., I guess always be hesitant whenever devs and publishers hype up sex in their games. CDPR hyped it up in Cyberpunk 2077 and that game was horrific. Meanwhile, close to release, Baldur's Gate 3 hypes up bear sex to get players hooked. If devs hype up sex in their games, be weary I guess.
I'm here for the pumpernickel.
6:00 You can skip the first step by talking to character you want to remove in the overworld and sending them back to camp there. You can even right click on their portrait and select talk (assuming they aren't the active character). Then you just need to find the character you want to bring along in camp and ask them to join. Of course if you're just switching characters around in camp (or trying to manage inventories) it can get annoying. (I like the different camp layouts though and there's not really any other reason to explore them.)
What kind of game, excluding Tetris etc, has NO plot reveals or spoilerable moments at all? What's the point of a disclaimer saying merely that these exist, when basically nobody in the modern age tells a completely predictable story with not one surprise?
But there's only one question that matters…did Lore have sex with the bear?
A little off topic but … is that Neverwinter nights 2 'neverwinter city background' music you're using as you're background music?
THAT'S FANTASTIC!! Love it.
Love the NWN2 music 😀
I am possibly 2/3rd through Act 2 of what I would call a "merc-run" (as in, "ah screw it, this seems bugged so let's just merc these guys") and I keep running into what I'm calling Failure Buckets. The narrative realises I've burnt enough bridges and puts me in the bucket until I crawl out the one or two holes at the bottom. This is unlike when a narrative gathers threads, there's no narrowing, just the bucket. It makes me wonder if the story is built like this – like holes at the end of a pachinko table, or if this is just how the game does its safety nets.
Appreciate the spoiler alert!
Kinda wild how lucky I've apparently been with bugs. I have had almost nothing quest trigger wise go wrong.
Ive encountered most of the mentioned bugs/issues, but they didnt kill the fun during my playthroughs. I personally wouldnt wait a year cause Id say the game is totally play- and enjoyable, but it still needs to iron out those unnecessary bugs and unoptimized mechanics. I have 16 gigs of ddr4 RAM @3600 MHz and a fairly Standard SSD, a 6700XT GPU paired with a 5800x3D and enemies take around 20 seconds to start their turn sometimes (esp. in Act 3). Loading times are equally as long sometimes, so when that happens better have a Lore rumination open on your second screen to kill some time 😅
I hope Lore will do a proper in debth review someday, cause I think this is a gem which shouldnt be left out. Nice and honest review nontheless!
Loved this review!
Strong recommendation for Nvidia cards, use DirectX 11 and not Vulkan for a renderer. Even running Linux the performance and stability issues were way worse on Vulkan.
Hey Lore, do you have any recommendations for handling companions in terms of getting having the most fulfilling engagement with them? I'm nearing the end of the first area and my conundrum is that one companion doesn't really fit in with my "try and be good" blind playthrough (he has pointy teeth). So far he's mostly is there to remind me people can disapprove of me in games and in real life. I wouldn't mind that, but he's also just not really had much interaction or presence compared to the others, I don't know if it's worth sticking out for (DAO conditioned me to give these sorts a chance because conflicting characters and personalities tend to have more payoff than not), or if I'm better off replacing him, like, do you think certain companions only react when they're in the right party as it were or is it just early game writing?
My other concern with the companions is that the other person I would possibly swap him out with seems very tied to another origin companion (they've both been through hell together, so to speak) and I don't know if I'd end up experiencing half a story by leaving one out.
As an aside, I am happy to hear DA:O is getting some more love and only had a tiny heart attack seeing that the vods I think I watched were a decade old 💦
For the technical issues, make me think we played two different games? I had nowhere near 10 seconds delay, and my PC is not even high end. I would not say this was a "buggy mess" release. Had some bugs for sure, but nothing game breaking.
I do agree with the camp and switching followers though, we should not go back to camp every time to switch.
Best reviewer on the internet, thank you sir
Oh I care about the gameplay. Bad gameplay = bad game.
Great review. This is truly a bresth of fresh air; a break from all the hypetrains and uneducated minor criticisms
Always happy to listen to lorerunners takes. I always enjoy listening to you man
It feels like ages since I’ve seen a lore review
Thank you for this review. Yours is the one that has been most consistent with my experience so far. And also just seems most consistent with reality and what can be achieved in six years of game development for a cRPG of this scope and with these production values. I bought the game early access so I could get the deluxe upgrade for free. I don't regret it, but I don't not regret it either. It is so poorly optimized, so many bugs, and as far as plot goes, hasn't given me any indication it's not going to be more than meh in content, even if it nails the form of storytelling presentation. PC Gamer gave it a 97, their highest score in decades. The bugs and poor performance alone should have prevented it being rated so high. That review claimed BG3 even had the best parts of *Planescape: Torment*, which I frankly am pressing X to doubt very, very hard because I frankly will only believe it when I see it.
I'm enjoying the game so far, especially the characters, but it's buggy, the new version of the engine feels super bloated compared to D:OS2, and it's missing lots of quality-of-life features that have been mainstays of the cRPG genre for quite a while (and even drops the ball on some things Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous nailed at its launch). Like a 90/100 doesn't seem inappropriate to me, but anything higher is questionable. It has the potential to be quite solid, but not life-changing. Certainly not a 97. Larian did a great job, for sure. A stupendous job. But the game needs a lot more polish, and reviewers need to be reviewing the game as it launched in August 2023, not the game they hope to see a year from now. So thank you for doing that.
I agree with everything you said, but at the same time I don't regret getting it day 1 in the slightest.
Decision: Act 1 was the only act in early access. Unintended consequences: Acts 2 and 3 fall off badly in quality. So I have to wonder if they did any analysis of the bug reports from Act 1 to check for repeats in acts 2 and 3. On a side note, quest triggers seem like the type of thing that could be scanned automatically for duplicate triggers (not necessarily a bug, though an XOR trigger would be a big help in declaring parallel paths that are mutually exclusive) and events that have no triggers.
I'm watching the old DAO stream at the moment, I'm looking forward to the new version
based lorerunner who i watched years ago for final fantasy rumination now reviewing the savior of modern rpgs nice. even before the game came out i already knew it would take at least a year if not longer for the game to be fully polished, its just too hard to get all the triggers correct when decision trees get this complicated. having said that, i think we have a tendency to view the classic games through rose-colored fan-patched years of polish lens. BG3 is absolutely amazing for what they were able to create.
Really? I thought the whole praise the game got was because it wasnt as buggy or that it had polish… damn what a let down then… I withstood the being broken and buggy with Cyberpunk 2077 , honestly dont know if I can withstand another game like that. Bummer :/
Thank you for the review! I didn't want to watch the streams at risk of being spoiled, so I really appreciate this. Sounds like the game is definitely worth my time, but after a few patches (reminds me of CDProjektRed's games in that regard)
The ending absolutely sucks, it was literally unfinished.