I'm just listing my problems with BG3 since you've probably already heard the many reasons this game is good. And despite my problems with it, BG3 is still a game I was happy to put over 300 hours into across 4 playthroughs.

Imbalance in Stats:
Some abilities and stats are favored over others. Charisma (CHA) related skills, particularly Persuasion and Deception, felt like the most common skill checks in dialogue by far, which in turn makes CHA a very beneficial stat. To be fair, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Having to make decisions for a character’s strengths and weaknesses is something I enjoy in RPGs. So there can be an interesting dilemma here where for example someone can sacrifice some combat ability for that boost in CHA or vice versa. And CHA being useful in dialogue is completely fine on its own. My problem comes from how much more useful it and its related skills feel compared to other options. Perception and Insight, 2 WIS skills, were definitely useful but after that it becomes a lot more niche. Sleight of Hand is very useful for the multitude of locks and traps throughout the game, but you’re most likely only putting this on 1 character with high DEX and letting them handle all those checks. After that, I found most skills get much worse. Acrobatics, Religion, Animal Handling, and Medicine are just examples of the many skills that saw little use and for relatively little reward compared to the skills I mentioned before. I don’t mean to say any of the non-CHA skills are absolutely worthless, but that they never felt worth investing in. This ties in to stats in general. INT always felt like an easy dump stat for any non-Wizard. STR is one I’d dump less but wasn’t one I invested in if the character didn’t utilize it for their attacks. And funnily enough CHA became a dump stat for my companions while I did all the talking with my Tav. Like with the skills, I’m not saying these didn’t have any use at all but it was never a difficult decision to dump them over DEX, CON, or WIS. Making these decisions so easy is part of the problem for me. For dialogue specifically, Fallout: New Vegas is an example where they allowed its Speech skill to remain extremely useful in skill checks, but also allowed a lot of opportunities for other skills to be used in various conversations and quests. I would have loved to see stat and skill usefulness at least somewhat more evened out.

Villains:
Most of the antagonists don't feel all too interesting. I don't mean to say they're all outright bad but more that it feels like there's a lot of untapped potential. The Elder Brain does give incentive for you and the characters to stop it, but its character doesn't really go beyond a generic BBEG that wants to rule the world. Orin similarly feels like a generic sadist who is just very evil. Gortash at least had some interesting ideas. He's genuinely interested in cooperating with you and does seem to believe in his absolute rule. It's unfortunate most of his screen time is towards the end and whether or not you align with him really doesn't matter. Ketheric felt like he was the most fleshed out, but like Gortash I wish we got to see more of him.

Bugs:
The other main issue I had with BG3 is bugs. Of course bugs in games are inevitable, especially in one where there are so many factors interacting with each other and the possibilities that brings. So bugs existing in BG3 at all isn’t really a problem for me so much as when quests outright broke. In the quest to free Nere, you’re able to align with the Duergar for some gold and help during the combat encounter at the end of the quest. But it seems like if you have a smokepowder item when you arrive at the Duergar colony, their leader won’t even bother talking to you and you’re locked out of working with them. I suspect having a smokepowder item is the issue here as whenever I encountered this bug, reloading a save and removing any smokepowder items before entering the Duergar colony would fix the problem. People online also seem to have the same problem and are where I got the solution from. A quest that I couldn’t easily fix was Wyll’s companion quest during Act III. Early in the act you’re given the objective to attend Gortash’s coronation at Wyrm’s Rock. You’re supposed to see what’s happening with Wyll’s dad, who after the coronation is sent to an underwater prison. However when I got the coronation as an objective, I figured it was a big important event I should save until later in the act. When I eventually did do it, Wyll’s dad just stayed at Wyrm’s Rock with minimal dialogue. Even when trying to progress the quest, having Mizora tell me he went to the prison or just going there myself, Wyll’s dad did not show up at the prison and remained at Wyrm’s Rock. I had done so much between first getting this objective and actually doing it that I just left Wyll’s companion quest for another playthrough. The last large bug I faced was in my Honour Mode run during the high wall section of the final battle. When you interact with the second part of the brain stem that takes you to the next part of the fight, the game is supposed to teleport your party up to whoever interacted with the brain stem and take you out of combat to prepare for the last encounter of the game. But it seems like the game only teleports party members who have passed the large door of the building where the brain stem is. Half-Illithids, Monks, and probably other characters have a really easy time reaching the brain stem immediately, and I found myself doing this while not knowing The Emperor, who hadn’t yet reached the door, wouldn’t be teleported. Because of this, the game did not let me start the final encounter and I was forced to go back to get The Emperor. When I did, my characters were forced into combat with the remaining enemies who, because the game bugged out, refused to take their turn. My game was then stuck in a softlock state with there being nothing I could do. And because it was Honour Mode, reloading a save was not an option. While the enemies not taking their turn was the bug itself, having every party member, even ones who haven’t reached the door, teleported to whoever reaches the brain stem would have completely avoided this problem. Regardless of this bug, I struggle to see why this isn’t how it works. I also had Gale in my party and both him and my Tav at the brain stem, so there was no story reason why I couldn’t have sent Gale up to finish the game right there. The game was just arbitrarily locking me out. With all of this put together, I was literally one short conversation away from completing my Honour Mode run but lost 60 hours because of a bug. In all 3 of these quests these bugs felt somewhat like the game wasn’t prepared for what I did, which especially stung knowing how good BG3 is elsewhere regarding player freedom.

I like this game overall but so much of the repetition could have been removed without detracting from the experience for me.

Route B felt like it justified its existence with the new scenes providing new perspectives for primarily the characters you’re fighting. Having this occur after Route A created a greater contrast and impact compared to if it all happened the first time around. However, what little was added in Route C and the C and D endings being locked behind it felt very arbitrary. I would have enjoyed the game a lot more if all the new Route C content had just been in Route B. If you’re going for all the endings without downloading someone else’s save file, you’ll play through the game’s second half a total of 3 times. Ending D also requires a 4th run through the game’s final level, which felt especially boring having just done it for ending C. Another issue with Route C is new players trying to figure out what is actually new. Players can skip most cutscenes if they (understandably) don’t want to watch them for a third time, but this risks missing out on actual new content. When I learned Ending E required repeating even more of the main game, I resorted to using someone else’s save from just before Route E.

But even if the game was just 2 routes, there’s a lot of my time that would still feel wasted. Most of the sections I found annoying in Routes B and C were ones I still found annoying back in Route A. The constant walking back and forth between areas takes up so much time, and the introduction of a fast travel system didn’t remove this as an issue for me. Not to mention things like the extremely slow ladder animations you’re forced to watch multiple times for every trip to the Junk Heap or the extremely slow door animations you’re forced to watch multiple times in the Lost Shrine. So much of this came across to me as padding and/or sloppy design, and I would have enjoyed the game so much more had my problems with the game been refined upon. I understand the tedium in NieR is why some people enjoy it so much, doing things like helping players relate to the characters/world. However I can’t say it was the same for me, regardless of whether or not these design decisions were intentional on the part of the creators.

What really sucks about my complaints is I really liked most of the story and dialogue you get once you’re past each tedious segment. The characters have a lot of fun interactions with each other and there are a lot of interesting plot points and reveals across the entirety of the story. It was all more than enough for me that, even if I did have all the issues I mentioned above, the game was still overall enjoyable and one I’m glad I’ve experienced.

This game has some interesting ideas but it's difficult to recommend when it costs $26 CAD and doesn't even last 2 hours.

The first ~30 minutes were the best part since it was when I was most on edge. Your arsenal is at its weakest which means Charles poses the largest threat here, and you never know when he might appear. Moving around the island by train also makes you feel vulnerable due to the limited control you have. These parts came together well to create a good sense of tension.

However, once you start doing the various main/side quests, the enjoyment really starts to decrease. Every quest is some generic fetch quest and none of them really stand out. Having interesting NPCs can make up for mechanically bland quests but unfortunately that's not the case here. The quests that involved sneaking around cult members were particularly obnoxious. Stealth is extremely barebones and enemies who spot you will chase you to the ends of the Earth. But there were points where I could just try to run past enemies and get the objective before they could kill me, something I imagine wasn't intended and made them come across as poorly put together.

Most rewards for quests are upgrades for your train, either a new weapon or scrap metal to upgrade its stats. There is a sense of progression but in this case I found it really took away from the tension Charles created at the start of the game. Your collective upgrades quickly become more than enough to deal with any Charles encounter. There is the benefit that trying to quickly swap weapons in response to guns overheating and Charles' distance can create a frantic rhythm. However, Charles becomes less like a monster you should fear and more like a mechanic you need to deal with, which really took away any horror for me. And after only a couple Charles fights, each encounter becomes pretty routine. So even if you didn't get all these upgrades, I imagine Charles would still become pretty repetitive to face.

There were parts of Choo-Choo Charles I like and would love to see applied on a larger scale, but unfortunately many of them aren't very developed here. The game taking under 2 hours and costing $26 CAD makes it especially hard to recommend. If the concept is interesting enough you might think it's worth it but I'd look to the many other indie/horror games that will cost less and/or have better quality.