My issues with this game can best be summarized by the fact that i kept re-doing a mission over and over again, and looked up the best way to deal with it, and the only thing i learned was to just change my build and do something the way the game wants me to do it. I think customization has no purpose if you're actively punished for playing the game in a way that even slightly deviates from the optimal way to do things. Towards the end of the game enemy builds even start to get more unvaried, so i think the devs were fully aware that they were making a horribly unbalanced game in which around 60-90% of the equipment is completely useless. It has far, far too much busywork in it for a game that came out a month ago. It's mostly based on trial and error since you never know exactly what you're fighting until you actually play a mission, and thus have no idea how to pick the specific weapon the game wants you to use. It'd make sense if you had 8 weapons, not 4. It doesn't help that there is essentially no purpose to ammo as a mechanic, it's irrelevent 90% of the time and nothing but a nuisance the remaning 10%, it never challenges you, only irritates you, it's a mechanic made to punish you for playing too aggressively in a game designed around playing aggressively, it has a stagger bar for Christ's sake.

A respectable attempt at offering a middle ground between the more classical style of RPG that Bioware started with, and the more casual style that they've found themselves making since Mass Effect 2 or so.

Character creation itself is probably the greatest strength of Baldur's Gate 3, as i find it to be one of the most engaging i've ever seen in an RPG, from race to class and everything inbetween. I find that there's actually a pretty good amount of variation in playing seperate character types, as soon as i finished playing a tanky paladin, i immediately made another character, a more stealth and dialogue focused bard, one who was able to get to some way higher leveled areas than i initially was able to, simply by sneaking past enemies with their invisibility skills. I found Baldur's Gate to be a game that made me love roleplaying again, i spent entire hours in the character creator to make more and more unique combinations with the options given, writing out their own lore and developing attachment to them.

When you get into the actual game, Baldur's Gate doesn't hold your hand but refuses the brutal newcomer-slaying of the earlier titles, and a lot of more hardcore RPGs. Characters can be easily re-spec'd, money comes just as easily, and you can save whenever you want. It's a light adventure, but one that has it's challenges here and there.

The world of Baldur's Gate 3 feels more like a sampling of what the DnD universe as a whole has to offer, going through light developments in a number of iconic locations, with similarly iconic beasts here and there. I can't say it uses these concepts to it's full potential, but one could also praise it for refusing to oversaturate the player on it's world. When you see a dragon in this game, it feels like a big moment, a monstrous and terrifying beast that towers over the player with it's double-digit level, you fear it, yet respect it's majesty. It's a very classical fantasy story in that case.

I'd say i could do with less of the combat, but maybe i was doing a little bit more of it than i had to, playing a combat-based character.

Overall it's a great game, possibly the best western RPG since New Vegas, i'd absolutely recommend it. You might want to wait until they iron out more of the bugs though.

A game with a decent amount of interesting elements, the story and characters have potential, and the world isn't wholly boring. The gameplay is just far too dull for me to invest any time into, there's not much point in doing anything other than smacking enemies with your sword over and over, upgrades are miniscule and unecessary most of the time, and abilities seem to have limited to no use. Once i got to the second area i was just not feeling it anymore because the game turned into a series of fetch quests and obnoxious dungeon crawls that just felt designed to waste as much time as possible, it's too much of a video game for it's own good.