I played Baldur's Gate with some of my best friends in the world, the ones whom I play DnD with every single week and who I plan on continuing to do so with for as long as I am able and they are willing. That alone made the experience infinitely wonderful for me, and I think together we created some fantastic memories through the context of this game and the characters whom we played.
This game is so close. So so so SO close to being perfect to me. The stories each companion has told that I've been experiencing in my solo playthrough, the acting for each of them. Just the general DnD feel, and the power creep and cheese-ability of everything. It is so wonderfully put together and led to such a fantastic time while playing it. There are moments that I feel could only happen in this type of game as a medium that I think will stick with me as some of my favorite DnD moments, one that comes to mind is accidentally crushing my friend with a giant hammer while trying to get a platform to raise, a circumstance all to familiar to the character I played whom would unknowingly walk into and activate traps at every moment.
That said, despite my enjoyment, despite the familiarity of Dungeons and Dragons being brought so spectacularly to video game, I have to dock some points for the performance. This game is flawless through the first act. They had several years of time to perfect it with early access and get rid of any existing bugs. But after Act 1 that's where things take a switch for the worse. Instantaneously after entering act 2 we were swarmed with bugs that would either halt our progress on a questline we were invested in, or ones that would make us lose control of our characters; unable to interact with anything. The amount of times I had to restart, or that the game had crashed, or the performance and FPS had dipped during longer playing sessions down to nearly single digits (especially during ACT 3) was nonsense, and quickly soured a lot of the great experience of playing this game.
I think some day the definitive edition will come out, as Larian usually does with these games (DOS 1 and 2 specifically) and most if not all of the problems will be fixed, and the Upper City will be available to be explored, and I think that on that day I will be a incredibly happy person. Despite it's flaws though, I think this is easily one of my favorite games of all time.
This game is so close. So so so SO close to being perfect to me. The stories each companion has told that I've been experiencing in my solo playthrough, the acting for each of them. Just the general DnD feel, and the power creep and cheese-ability of everything. It is so wonderfully put together and led to such a fantastic time while playing it. There are moments that I feel could only happen in this type of game as a medium that I think will stick with me as some of my favorite DnD moments, one that comes to mind is accidentally crushing my friend with a giant hammer while trying to get a platform to raise, a circumstance all to familiar to the character I played whom would unknowingly walk into and activate traps at every moment.
That said, despite my enjoyment, despite the familiarity of Dungeons and Dragons being brought so spectacularly to video game, I have to dock some points for the performance. This game is flawless through the first act. They had several years of time to perfect it with early access and get rid of any existing bugs. But after Act 1 that's where things take a switch for the worse. Instantaneously after entering act 2 we were swarmed with bugs that would either halt our progress on a questline we were invested in, or ones that would make us lose control of our characters; unable to interact with anything. The amount of times I had to restart, or that the game had crashed, or the performance and FPS had dipped during longer playing sessions down to nearly single digits (especially during ACT 3) was nonsense, and quickly soured a lot of the great experience of playing this game.
I think some day the definitive edition will come out, as Larian usually does with these games (DOS 1 and 2 specifically) and most if not all of the problems will be fixed, and the Upper City will be available to be explored, and I think that on that day I will be a incredibly happy person. Despite it's flaws though, I think this is easily one of my favorite games of all time.