For a forever DM this is a dream come true and a clear Game of the Decade contender AT LEAST. Larian has always been stellar at creating stories and worlds worth taking an extra look around, providing many an opportunity to turn a game's whole story on its head and this game is no different. Add on top of the fact that they showed the entire world what games could be, and what they could go back to, and I'm hit with a sort of dissociative nostalgia that makes me want to cry. Near perfect, will become perfect in time, just you wait.

i have some minor issues with this game that bring it down, but on the overall this game is great fun. there is a caveat however, that being that if you go in expecting this game to be like baldur's gate 2 and comparing the two games, you will be sorely disappointed. this game is not better than baldur's gate 2. however, they play very differently from each other despite being a part of the same series and can't really be compared as a result.

i found the companions to all be really interesting and fun, at least the ones i didn't miss in act 1 anyway. they all have their own unique struggles and personalities, and act in believable ways. as you learn more about them, you empathize with their struggles more, as all of them have something gnawing at them. it's astounding that this game made me go from disliking laezel to absolutely loving her. i have a really soft spot for shadowheart and astarion as well, with shadowheart being the character i chose to romance, and astarion being probably my favorite personality-wise. shadowheart and astarion have beautifully written companion quests, ESPECIALLY shadowheart. i seriously recommend keeping her around, and not just because clerics are strong in 5e.

though, i thought the character writing to be stronger than the actual main plot itself. i felt way more engrossed in seeing what happened next in the companion quests than i did the main story, and honestly i think the game doesn't do an amazing job at setting up a BBEG. i know i just said that you shouldn't compare baldur's gate 2 and 3, but it's difficult to step out of the shadow of jon irenicus, and this game doesn't manage to do that. i didn't manage to identify any deeper themes that run in the plot of this game, either. which isn't necessarily something that everyone craves within RPGs, but definitely something i do. it's for that reason why i absolutely adore planescape: torment, another d&d game. the main story of this game did feel pretty cut and dry. HOWEVER, you are given a lot of different options as to what kind of decisions you'd like to make. i've only gone for one ending so far, but i'm curious to see what the others bring.

i really fucking wish they would fix companion tethering, add group roll, fix the camera, and add a pause button. in the words of avgn:

"i mean, if you have to answer the phone or take a shit, it's like, tough shit if you gotta take a shit. you gotta take a quick shit. you gotta have turbo turds. i'm trying to play the game, i've got shit stains in my pants, and an answering machine that says sorry, i'm playing ghostbusters 2 on nintendo. what a selfish game. bottom line, have a fucking pause button, goddamn it."

update mental illness (also known as shadowheart brainrot) got to me im now 40 hours deep into the game and my thoughts about it have significantly changed i'm leaving this review up for me to edit later on. i think my points are still valid especially as first impressions of the opening hours of the game though, coming over from dos2.
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to preface this review i'll start off by saying that dos2 is my second favorite game of all time, and hearing all the glowing reviews i had very high expectations going into this game, which is why i'm a lot harsher on it even though it's by all means a very decent game (and more). this review is mostly going to be comparing the two games, and how the dnd setting affected bg3 for better and for worse.

first up i'll talk about what bg3 does really well, and it's what larian always does really well - making a damn good roleplaying experience. just like dos2, the gameworld has incredible environmental storytelling, surprisingly aided by the isometric camera so that there's always a botw-esque type of 'oh that looks cool let's check that out' nearby. very little of the world feels like filler, and almost all of the quests and people you meet have interesting consequences to follow. however you want to interact with the world, the game usually allows it to play out, although to a less extent than dos2, most likely due to cutscene costs and the restrictions of dnd's spell and element system (more on that later).

dnd's established ruleset also brings forth bg3's greatest asset though, which is the tag and character creation system. it genuinely feels like your identity in your world shapes what you can do and how you can do them, with so many options and winding paths that the game is begging to be replayed. whereas in dos2 i never felt the need to make my own character and always went with an origin character, bg3's tags felt so tailored that i couldn't not make my own. the only downside is that all those tags and stats and dice rolls and whatnot might give you brain damage eventually, especially when you miss a hidden dice roll and the game Tells you that. on the actual character creation front, my only comment is that for some reason bg3 is the only game where i've made a female character that i get serotonin from looking at, which definitely makes the constant flow of going into and out of cutscenes less grating, as someone who couldn't care less about plot in games and would much rather speed through all dialogues.

which brings me to my next point of story and characters and whatnot. bg3 definitely enjoys better worldbuilding and plot due to dnd's already established world and lore, and the graphics and cutscenes have gotten a very big upgrade from dos2. i've been told that like dos2 though, the last act suffers greatly from lack of dev time, ending in some less than satisfactory conclusions for a lot of the characters. i agree that the characters are generally more well written and complex than dos2's, but for me personally none of the characters really had that charming spark that made me want to uncover more to them. (this is not to say dos2's companions were much better, but lohse has a very dear place in my heart.) my favorite of the bunch was karlach, but in unfortunate typical larian fashion, finding out her ending just made me want to tear my hair out and i lost most my motivation for finishing the game.

and it was at this point that i realized something must've gone deeply wrong if my motivator for a game wasn't gameplay-related, and it was then that bg3's true glaring problem hit me like a truck - dos2's combat is absolute freedom of interaction and expression, and bg3's feels like dogshit in comparison.

i feel as if i could sit here all day analyzing bg3 and dos2's combat systems and still not be done explaining how much of an absolute downgrade the former is, but to larian's credit the fault really doesn't lie with them (for the most part). if not compared to dos2, bg3's combat system is relatively Fine, but who would've guessed that, oh wow, a tabletop combat system doesn't translate well to a video game format!

there aren't any fun skill and element synergies due to the simplistic nature of dnd's systems, and three ap economy absolutely sucks ass, where i feel like i'm spending more turns moving than actually doing anything fun. i get that crowd control is a divinity thing so i didn't mind the exclusion of it (even if strategizing the best ways to cc as many opponents as i could was something i missed deeply), but the removal of a proper armor system meant that skills couldn't be heavy hitters anymore, with most skills just being direct damage dealers with chances of applying a debuff.

some skills might create a surface, but that only really works with oil + fire synergy, and that's just no fun compared to casting a spell to make it rain blood, then turning the blood into poison so that it heals your undead while damaging the living. i get that the battlefield turning into an absolute mess of elements was a complaint in dos2, but to me that was part of the fun and with the larger ap economy you could always afford to spend some on clearing the field. a lot of this is nitpicking and being spoiled by dos2 where you could literally cast a spell onto someone that made them take damage when they moved, and then follow up by turning them into a chicken so that they panicked and moved a lot resulting in massive damage, but even beyond that even the most simple of mechanics have been taken away in bg3.

most the fun skills are gated behind the rest mechanic so you're discouraged to fight in order to conserve spell points, and again, movement is just objectively bad in this game, with very few options aside from just walking. this is especially apparent when the beginning tutorial of the game literally has a section where you just spend every turn just walking forward to get to a goal point. as someone who loves playing a rogue, it definitely left a sour taste in my mouth when i realized that not only couldn't i teleport behind someone to backstab them, backstabbing wasn't a mechanic at all in bg3, like excuse me what.

maybe i never got deep enough into the game to unlock actual fun skills, but even from the start dos2's combat was so fun i'd purposely pick hard fights to challenge my brain and see what sort of synergies i could conjure up, while in bg3 i purposely picked de-escalation dialogues all the time to avoid fights bc of how boring it is, leading me to suffer through even more boring (to me) dialogues.

tldr: dos2 with shiny graphics and better worldbuilding bc of dnd lore, but absolute dogshit combat and element systems.

It just dawned on me that I don't really like D&D, a couple of friends can make it fun, but alone? Eh.

There's clearly a lot of care, love and thought put into BG3, so far the story and characters feel solid enough, the presentation is superb. But the underlying mechanics just make it kind of dreadful to play? Combat in particular feels terrible, I didn't like the tabletop version of it and I like this even less, I don't like the action economy of D&D, you can't execute on anything significant and it rather rewards relying on the same strategies that worked.

Maybe I'll keep on playing it, but I think it just isn't my kind of game. I didn't expect DOS3, yet still I'm kind of dissapointed.

Typically I pass on games like this because I find myself overwhelmed by the plethora of options available to me at any moment. With the sheer magnitude of substantial choices to make like what class to pick, what party to bring with you, whether to sneak around the enemies, outwit them, or face them head on, or how to handle the surprisingly large number of ways to solve main quest conflicts. I simply find myself in a state of analysis paralysis or choice overload. Basically I start feeling like my wife when I ask her what she wants to eat for dinner.

Because of this and the fact that it's essentially been in beta for the better part of a decade, I was reluctant to give it a shot. However, thanks to some heavy recommendations from friends and after seeing the backlash this game got from lesser developers for being... Idk too good or something. I felt obligated to give it a try and boy am I glad I did. This is probably the most pure feeling RPG I've played since Dragon Age Origins. And once you come to terms with the fact that rolls aren't always going to go your way, and not every conflict is going to unravel exactly as you planned, you are left with such a beautiful world with an endless chasm of depth and replay-ability. This game is not only a technical marvel but is also a true game FOR gamers. It isn't bloated with launch DLC and overpriced microtransactions, what you see is what you get. Larian Studios seems to be one of the few developers that is still making video games because they love video games, not just trying to squeeze as many dollars and cents as they can out of every project and because of these facts Baldur's Gate 3 should be celebrated.

O RPG em sua mais pura essência

Sabe aquele jogo que tem um mundo meio sem graça, a exploração vazia e uns personagens que são quebra galho? Pois bem, eu estou falando de Cyberpunk, porque com Baldur's Gate 3, é tudo ao contrário.

Passaram minutos, horas, dias e semanas que eu comecei a jogar Baldur's gate e não consegui parar, esse jogo me prendeu do começo ao fim, e ele me pegou em todos os sentidos! Ambientação, gráfico, história, personagens, sistemas de batalha (qual eu nunca havia experimentado antes), TUDO NESSA PORRA É PERFEITA!

Eu que nunca fui de CRPG, decidi iniciar nesse gênero pelo Baldur e namoral não me arrependi de maneira alguma, o sistema dele é muito convidativo (não confunda com fácil) e explica direitinho tudo que é necessário pra domina-lo, mas vou ser sincero aqui, não que a batalha do jogo seja desinteressante, mas ela é o de menos pra avaliar.

Quero paparicar mesmo é a forma que os personagens desenvolvem nessa maravilha e TODOS digo.. TODOS eles SÃO carismáticos, não tem um que realmente te faça odia-lo, claro que tem uns que são chatos e outros que você vai se aproximar mais, mas foi impossível pra mim odiar um deles, a Umbralma (aka shadowheart para quem gosta do nome ingles) tem um jeitinho dócil e decisivo, Astarion o clássico ladrão debochado de histórias medievais, Lae'zel que é durona e mandona e eu não posso deixar de cita-la.. Karlach, que só jogando vocês vão entender o porque de eu amar tanto ela.

Ainda há mais companheiros além dos que eu citei, ah e te contar um segredo aqui, longe de mim de querer fazer comparação de jogo pra jogo, mas diferente de Dragon Age, todos os companheiros aqui nesse jogo são NAMORÁVEIS, então se tu curte fazer casalzinho em RPG.. ahh meu querido, querida ou queride, tenho uma boa notícia pra você!

Outra coisa que eu quero muito avaliar bem de Baldur é sobre a sua diversidade ENORME nas classes, são exatamente 12 classes primárias e 46 subclasses, ah e todas elas bem puxadinhas do universo de DnD em do jeitinho que nós gosta, eu só fiquei um pouquiiinho decepcionado com a criação de personagem dele, tem muita opção sim mas achei que faltou umas barrinhas ali de ajuste mais legalzinha, e também não poder trocar de cabelo depois é meio paia, BOTA UM BARBEIRO EM BALDUR AI LARIAN!

Ah e essa variedade de formas ai de concluir uma batalha ou uma missão em? Porra, eu gostei demais que nesse jogo pra você abrir uma porta tu não precisa necessariamente de uma chave, se tu quiser e ela te der essa oportunidade, TU PODE DESCER-LHE A MARRETA e cabou, porta aberta. Nas batalhas então tu pode sei la pegar a peça intíma do teu personagem e tacar na cara do inimigo, e os status de carisma aqui valem a pena ta, não é la igual esses RPG que bota o carisma ali pra ficar de enfeite, aqui tu pode acabar matando um boss sem nem começar a batalha com ele, só na lábia que nem tu faz na vida real pra faltar aula ou arrumar aquele atestado maroto.

Eu to viciado nessa aventura que embarquei e tenho certeza que vou fazer outras jogadas pra conseguir os finais que restaram e fazer missões que foram impossíveis de eu concluir na minha primeira run, todos os dias eu durmo e acordo pensando nesse jogo e não consigo aceitar que um título dessa grandiosidade existe!

At Long Last, Divinity Original Sin 3: Baldo's Gate has graced us and saved teh RPG genre and gameing industry in turn. Given that this masterwork spent three years in early access it is about as polished as one would expect, especially towards the end. When I benched Shädowheart the hedgehog out of the party early on and magically ended up with her macguffin artifact she'd been secretive and possessive of in my inventory so that the open-ended narrative where your choices matter™ would still play out as intended I knew I was playing a proper successor to Dragon Age Origins, but what really convinced me were all the dialogue options tagged as [Halfling] validating me for picking the best race, which made no actual difference but nevermind that (Arcanum is small time compared to this!!!). The Combat? incredible, I had no clue about 5E DND rules so finding out about concentration for instance blew me away, not being able to cast both cloudkill and haste truly made my wizard feel powerful and added so much more depth, how could Knights of the Chalice even hope to compare...? However there's no ♀tabaxi romance option (most important aspect of arpeegees as we all know) so the game fkin suxx0rz. End of line.

This game is legitimately so good it feels like it has no right to exist. Going into this game, I knew that it was going to have an extremely well done and in depth combat system, and be absolutely brimming with well thought out combat encounters that would force me to think tactically to make it out alive. Because, well, it’s a Larian game. I already know they’re the best at that. What I didn’t know was that I was also getting a story that sweeps you off your feet in epic fashion. I genuinely couldn’t tell you how many times this game had a cutscene or line of dialogue that made my jaw drop. Or how many times my heart was pounding from pulling off a very narrow victory against oppressive odds. The story covers pretty much all of the major beats I enjoy in my fantasy stories: low-stakes adventure, to extremely epic fantasy, to throwing in some conniving villains with political intrigue, all in one big game.

I also wasn’t expecting the characters to be so good and feel so human. In Larian’s last game, DOS2, all of the companion characters were fine. They all had well developed, unique personalities, and that serves their purpose well enough for you to spend a few dozen hours with them while you go off on epic adventures with them. But in BG3?? These characters that you spend so much time with have such well written and believable dialogue they feel so much more human than I ever could have possibly expected them to. I also found their character arcs really well done, two of the characters I spent a lot of time with on my first run made me tear up at several points in their character arc. There are also SO MANY companion characters, it makes me really excited to replay this massive game with a different set of companions, to see which other ones I really like.

I know a lot of times in RPGs like this, the dialogue choices you get often boil down to: 1.) “Goody two shoes” 2.) “Neutral” 3.) “♥♥♥♥♥♥♥” but that absolutely couldn’t be further from the reality of how dialogue choices are in BG3. Of course you often do have the “goody two shoes” and “♥♥♥♥♥♥♥” responses in there sometimes, but they’re THE VAST MAJORITY of dialogue choices in this game feel like a very logical and proper response than any other game I’ve played. I spent a lot more time reading and thinking about my dialogue choices than I would have expected because of how natural most of them feel. Plus I LOVE how many dialogue choices you get for the race or class you’re playing! It feels awesome to be playing a barbarian, then to be given advantage on your intimidation because you picked the choice, “Grip the wreckage. FLING IT ASIDE.” it practically feels like you’re playing DnD at the tabletop with your friends, and your DM just said, “Hell yeah, go ahead and roll that with advantage.”

Speaking of comparing this game to DnD, people who are very familiar with the lore of the Forgotten Realms, either from playing the tabletop games, or the first BG games are gonna have a field day with this game. There are so many references to stuff you’d know from them, it’s like being given a nice little treat fairly frequently. And Larian absolutely NAILED how a campaign that involves Illithids a decent amount should feel. From the epic scale of the plot to the general tone throughout the story, they just did an excellent job handling one of my favorite fictional monsters.

The character customization is another HUGE draw. It’s DnD, the game people have been playing in their minds for decades pretending to beat up epic monsters for decades. Of course it’s not without its flaws, but saying that you have a “wide amount of options” when thinking about making a fun character is an understatement. There are so many fun ways to beat the ♥♥♥♥ out of your enemies in cool and creative ways, and that’s before we even think about multiclassing! Of course Larian knew this would lead to choice paralysis and let you respecc your character for a small gold fee, so you don’t feel too bummed out if you think you’d much rather be playing completely differently. The way items work is REALLY smart in this game too. Pretty much everything is a sidegrade, you’re always reading the descriptions of magical items to see what kind of effects the gear has, and if it’ll work better for your character than what you’re currently using. I like this system a LOT more than the leveled items in DOS2. It felt like I was practically throwing out all gear and replacing it every level, because the increase in stats made your gear feel irrelevant, FAST. Towards the end of the game, I was constantly comparing passive buffs and active abilities on all my equipment. You might hang onto an amulet for most of the game because it lets you use a great spell every short rest, or you might replace it in 15 minutes because you found something that gives JUST the right passive buff for your character.

The combat is maybe my favorite part of the game. The way Larian designs their combat encounters just really works for this kind of game. The way enemies engage with the nuanced combat system and environment is sure to make you really slow down and think. It forces you to understand what sort of buff the boss’s minions are applying to him, and how you can use the environment and your own abilities to make the fight unfair. You will NOT make it very far in this game taking fair fights, and this is a big part of what makes it so engaging and replayable. As every party comp will want to solve things differently, as will every player! They definitely threw more than a few combat encounters at me that made me wish they’d bought me dinner first, but hey, that just made me feel that much more satisfied for outsmarting them once I figured it out. I will most certainly be back SEVERAL more times to explore this ludicrously content dense game(seriously, there’s stuff to do everywhere, and once you get to the city proper it feels like you can’t even cross the street without bumping into a cool questline) both in coop modes, as well as just single-player on tactician difficulty.

As for things I didn’t like? It could definitely go for some quality of life upgrades as far as party management goes. An auto-formation while walking around would be nice, as would a way to manage all your companions' inventories at once, as would a quicker way to add or remove people from your active party! I do think a lot of the NPCs are a bit too horny, it genuinely feels like I have to beat most of my camp off with a baseball bat if I'm only interested in one of them. Also, you gave JK Simmons a role in your game, but he hardly sounds like JK Simmons!! Lean into that, I want to hear that man get mad! Demand to speak to your manager! Do you know who he is?!?

Never that much of a fan of these games, especially since I'm not competent in the DnD system it's built on, but this really grew on me despite a LOT of annoyances. It's mainly my lack of knowledge of DnD rules that annoy, but a lot of smaller things also get in the way. Like how I chose a rogue for my main character, but stealth didn't really work out. A lot of characters I tried to sneak up on would just initiate a cutscene and ruin it and in general the whole luck base of it all isn't great for stealth. Or how after a successful pickpocket, people will still blame you for it and you have to pay them or win another dice roll. The dice rolls in general are pretty dumb, making so many skills just based on luck. With most of my magic never going above 60% in hit rate and healing is pathetic, making it so my whole game was almost completely melee. And that's another annoyance with the class I picked, I get one attack per round, while my warrior can get up to 7, making it no real reason not to just make a party of 4 warriors. The list goes on really with these complains throughout, but none the less, I completed it in little over a week or so and got a lot of enjoyment out of it too. And a big reason as to why I'm not rating it lower is that if I did the research beforehand, I probably would have had a lot more fun.

Jogaço ainda não terminei e francamente ainda estou no primeiro capitulo.
No entanto esse jogo é tão bom e com tanta coisa para você fazer que eu já gastei 50 horas nele. Para falar a verdade, eu pirateei esse jogo no inicio pois eu ainda estava em duvida, já que todo mundo só falava coisas boas sobre e ele; com certeza foi uma das melhores coisas que eu fiz pois eu conheci e desfrutei desse universo super bem construído.
E após uma semana inteira jogando, eu comprei o jogo e não me arrependo em nada, os desenvolvedores merecem meu dinheiro e toda a fama e gratidão que está sendo dita sobre esse jogo.
Na minha opinião é goty, super recomendo para qualquer pessoa que esteja atrás de um RPG. E bote rpg nesse jogo, pois ele é bem pé na letra quando se diz do universo D&D.