Brilliant game, it's a lot of fun. For sure the DnD dice roll system is a love or hate kinda situation, I personally enjoy it but it can be annoying at times, mostly during combat. This game is hard, even on balanced difficulty, and it's a very fun challenge. This game will kick your ass constantly and make you think in different ways to approach combat, use consumables and crafting to their full effect.

Honestly, most of what I have for this game is praise. It's huge and ambitious, well polished for its size, and a lot of fun. There's so much detail to just about everything you can think of.

But I can't play it, why? The characters. The party members are seriously unbearable. Their dialogue I can only compare to that of a parody. There is far too much inspiration from modern DnD stories, it really felt like the writing team watched some DnD streams and went with that for the characters.
They're horrific, offering marvel-tier one-liners, constantly having pointless banter. Then there's also the extremely awkward 'romance'. Every party member will just throw themselves at you and find any moment they can to flirt, even if it wasn't relevant to your response. It's very cringe.
There's also the issue of every character being someone special. There's no down-to-earth adventurer here, you're all people with a destiny, a history, set powers and unique circumstances. It's like if several 'chosen ones' all accidentally met.

Overall though, the game is fantastic and Larian have really out done themselves. I simply can't play it because the party members are all so unbearable. If you're looking for a classic DnD experience or even Baldur's Gate experience, you won't find it here.

Reviewed on Aug 09, 2023


2 Comments


10 months ago

Honestly a great summary, I got through it despite the writing, but the direction they went with party members was misguided to say the least.

10 months ago

You nailed why I'm hesitant about getting BG3. The party dialogue seems atrociously campy, and based on the bit of D:OS2 that I played, this only seems marginally better. Sure, there were plenty of goofy lines in BG1-2, but they seemed more like comic relief rather than shaping the entire tone of the game.