After almost two whole months I have finished the main adventure and it's the most fun I had with a CRPG since "Kingmaker" (have not gone through "Wrath of The Righetous" yet). While there's a lot of good here, there are also small bits that bring down the game a little, which I'm sure will be addressed in the upcoming months (so I'm leaving it at 9/10 for now).
The first two acts are really strong and work really well in not making you notice you're being rail-roaled and have a great sense of freedom in how you approach every encounter, but the "dread" act 3 takes a dive, not as strong as other say in my opinion, but there's a lot to do in Baldur's Gate and not much relevant to the overall plot. Granted, not all sidequests in a game have to, but in the previous acts it seemed as if the side quests naturally branched from the same tree, as opposed to act 3 where you do stuff because you just "where around". And, without giving spoilers away, the end of the final act presents you with a pretty narrow set of choices that could really be summed up in "choose which body guard will jump in front of the bullet", when in previous acts you would've had the option to deviate the bullet, get the president out of the way or kill the shooter before they even get the chance to aim.
That said, this game has the stronguest set of companions of the overall series if we take into account there are no wet farts like Cernd, though some still have the short end of the stick. The trash mobs are greatly reduced and the combat even though it is turn-based it goes way faster, specially since the new system doesn't really on 5 minutes of pre-battle buffing and countles attempts at breaching the enemies magical defenses.
Still though, bring back Jan Jansen.
The first two acts are really strong and work really well in not making you notice you're being rail-roaled and have a great sense of freedom in how you approach every encounter, but the "dread" act 3 takes a dive, not as strong as other say in my opinion, but there's a lot to do in Baldur's Gate and not much relevant to the overall plot. Granted, not all sidequests in a game have to, but in the previous acts it seemed as if the side quests naturally branched from the same tree, as opposed to act 3 where you do stuff because you just "where around". And, without giving spoilers away, the end of the final act presents you with a pretty narrow set of choices that could really be summed up in "choose which body guard will jump in front of the bullet", when in previous acts you would've had the option to deviate the bullet, get the president out of the way or kill the shooter before they even get the chance to aim.
That said, this game has the stronguest set of companions of the overall series if we take into account there are no wet farts like Cernd, though some still have the short end of the stick. The trash mobs are greatly reduced and the combat even though it is turn-based it goes way faster, specially since the new system doesn't really on 5 minutes of pre-battle buffing and countles attempts at breaching the enemies magical defenses.
Still though, bring back Jan Jansen.