Poll of the Day > Is Baldur's Gate 3 actually good, or is it the lack of quality recently?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Lack of quality in the last couple years making anything look great by comparison. ... or both.

Same goes for Star Citizenfield and the other one i can't remember that was super hyped up

Baldurs Gate has the same polish and even better depth than Larian's previous entry, divinity original sin 2.

It's really, really good.
Oh and saying everything sucks now is a boring old take. We've been saying it on GameFAQs for a decade plus now. There's plenty of gold, take the time to find it.

Cruciferous posted...

Oh and saying everything sucks now is a boring old take. We've been saying it on GameFAQs for a decade plus now. There's plenty of gold, take the time to find it.

I'm particularly grump

Did like Disco Elysium. Haven't played the Divinity OS series, only the OG Divinity

It's good.

it's actually good

Its literally good

Yes and no. There's a lot good, like the story, character emoting, lore, depth, etc.

There's a lot to dislike, like a ton of bugs and glitches, a confusing and ill-explained combat system...actually, virtually everything in the game has little to no explanation, and the game throws a LOT at you. It has a lot of clutter and clumbsy design choices as well.

It's definitely being over-reviewed for being something different and reviving a long-dormant franchise, but it's fun all the same.

It's amazing. GotY for sure

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

a ton of bugs and glitches

Yeah, no

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

a confusing and ill-explained combat system

Again, no

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

virtually everything in the game has little to no explanation

There is an inspect key that explains literally anything you mouse over, what are you talking about

I'm not a DnD fan by any means but I love BG3. The learning curve a bit steep for me personally but worth it.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

and reviving a long-dormant franchise

It's not even really reviving a long-dormant franchise as much as it is rebooting it.

Cameos from Minsc and Jaheira don't really make it a Baldur's Gate game. It's closer to being Divinity: Original Sin 3 set in Faerun.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

like a ton of bugs and glitches

no

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

a confusing and ill-explained combat system

also no, since it's just dnd 5e which is very simple to understand

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

virtually everything in the game has little to no explanation

press the tab key.

It's sad that you only get the lower city of Baldur's Gate, unfinished and YMMV when it comes to bugs and the performance goes to shit.

But the game is good overall, was nice visiting some old locations and seeing Minsc and Jaheira but it was awful seeing Sarevok and Viconia especially Viconia, they murdered her character imo

Zareth posted...

It's amazing. GotY for sure

That's almost assuredly TotK to lose, but that will be the debate.

Zareth posted...

Yeah, no

Except yeah? This isn't up for debate and is universally known. I've had to do 5 save roll backs alone, 2 because my dialog interactions vanished with an NPC and my character sat there staring at the screen for nearly 5 minutes. And I onlying just got to Act 2. This is nevermind the staggering amount of performance glitches - for a game with stunning facial animations, the immersion sure does suffer when eyeballs suddenly pop through eyelids.

There's confirmed game-locking bugs and Act 3 is bloated mess that make all PCs chug and struggle. I'm dreading hitting it after running in my buddy party in Act 3.

If you've somehow played BG3 and managed to avoid these issues, then congrats, you are divinely favored. But it's a well known issue with the game that needs to be addressed, bless Larian for trying. I suggest you head over to the BG3 Board for some of the more "amusing" anecdotes.

Zareth posted...

Again, no

Oh, it definitely needed a way more robust tutorial. Especially if it was going to attempt the movement and placement of XCom and Mario & Rabbids and miss the finesse of either.
Zareth posted...

There is an inspect key that explains literally anything you mouse over, what are you talking about

Which isn't the same as actually explaing what they do and how anything is relevant, of course. I don't mind having to intuit a few things, but the game drowns you in concepts and items and systems that absolutely take a lot of down time to get going, when more proper introduction to the games elements would have gone a long way.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's not even really reviving a long-dormant franchise as much as it is rebooting it.

Cameos from Minsc and Jaheira don't really make it a Baldur's Gate game. It's closer to being Divinity: Original Sin 3 set in Faerun.

This is all true.

Also, I o ly now realized I somehow had you blocked, @ParanoidObsessive . Fuck knows how that happened. Here I was starting to think you left GFaqs (facepalm).

Yeah, PO left PotD after I called him out for fucking my mom.

Sarcasthma posted...

Yeah, PO left PotD after I called him out for fucking my mom.

And I told you never to tell anyone, or everybody's mom would want a piece.

Cruciferous posted...

Oh and saying everything sucks now is a boring old take.

reality is old and boring, yes

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

Which isn't the same as actually explaing what they do and how anything is relevant

man, ikr? i just got this sweet scroll that i have no idea what it does

https://i.imgur.com/ZTOw72B.png

lmfao.

it's really not the games fault you are unable to press tab.

Bg3 is pretty great and Astarion would be the perfect man if he was 50-70 lbs heavier and ya know... Not a fucking knife ear

Baldur's Gate is so much better than TotK.

In TotK the story is bad, the voice acting is clunky and awkward, the world is exactly the same, the gameplay is the same, the shrines are a grind, the korok puzzles suck, the graphics are PS3 level bad and it runs at <20 fps. You spend most of the time wandering through a field. But sure give it goty.

MightBeOverSoon posted...

Astarion would be the perfect man

You can get his voice actor to do Cameos if you want. Apparently he's willing to say pretty much anything. And has done a ton of stuff in-character pretty much for free just for the hell of it.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

And I told you never to tell anyone, or everybody's mom would want a piece.

You've always been PotD's dad. I just want to make things official.

Boy was that a long ass suspension

I had to watch @ParanoidObsessive repeatedly and erroneously call thos game DOS3 when it's clearly not, either in world feel or mechanics.

Even though the game is stymied to a turn-based format, it honestly doesn't feel that different from the original games and lot of the same(or at least similar) logic still applies. The action economy alone is going to catch Divinity purists off guard. The world itself feels closer to OG Baldur's Gate than anything that's come out since aside from maybe PoE1. But reading between the lines, we already know a game in the vein of OG BG/2E DnD was already turned down multiple times by WotC, including a previous proof of concept by Larian.

Either way I'm enjoying the hell out of the game. I bought it as soon as it was announced for EA and played about ~55 hours of that so as to not burn myself out. I'm just now nearing the end of my first playthrough at ~150. With multiple parties created, I'm probably closer to the ~250 mark.

The game is incredible, but there are some annoyances such as bugs and a haphazard inventory system.

That's all I'm posting for now. I'm pretty drunk, but I believe I made my points. Cheers y'all! TO ARMS

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/0/6/AAUBnrAAE1G6.jpg Apparently I'm a bit off from my initial estimate.

Keep in mind around ~50 of tho hours are from EA.

turn based combat in 2023

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/5/AAfh51AAE1HD.jpg

Turn-based makes sense here. Even the original games operated on a turn-based based system veiled by a real-time control scheme.

It's not as dumb as your party standing in a line.

Krow_Incarnate posted...

I had to watch @ParanoidObsessive repeatedly and erroneously call thos game DOS3 when it's clearly not, either in world feel or mechanics.

It's absolutely a DOS2-style game reimagined with D&D mechanics.

The map design is similar. How they handle inventory is similar. Graphic design is similar outside of cutscenes/dialogue scenes. Their entire narrative design and character philosophy is exactly the same (right down to having the "origin characters" for players to choose as the main character). The overall tone of the games is very much the same vein.

It has far more in common with D:OS and D:OS2 in all of those (and some other) respects than it has with Baldur's Gate I and II. Even if you didn't know it was made by Larian, it's very obvious it's made by the same people who made D:OS2.

Yes, it has 5e D&D mechanics, and yes it's set in Faerun. Yes, it has strong ties to the "Dead Three" elements of the original games. But that doesn't really distance it from D:OS2 (or somehow make it the perfect successor to the original BG games).

None of which is saying it's a bad game. But you can definitely see where it's coming from.

It's decent to good other than the metric fuckton of bugs. I also don't really like the party members.

Except the tone of the game is nothing like Divinity at all.

I'll give you the inventory, map design and the origin characters. And to be fair, while I like the characters I was never in favor of having "origin" options. The time spent writing those could be better spent giving us more companions in general which comparatively is very light to the first two games.

Krow_Incarnate posted...

Except the tone of the game is nothing like Divinity at all.

I agree with PO that it is.

In what possible way? The occasional bit of humor that's there? It's not overwhelming and ever present like it is in DOS and let's not pretend Lilichor wasn't ever a thing.

The vast majority of the game is treated seriously.

I don't really know how to explain it. To me the dialogue and writing style in general scream D:OS. Just the way things are worded and how they're laid out. Like I said, I can't explain in detail because to me it's just self evident.

I can see it in the wording. A lot of the characters are pretty sardonic(Even Gale), so I can see why maybe you're getting the feeling from them.

To me, the game still feels largely enough like it's own thing with enough lore from the original games that I can not only respect, but also appreciate it as a Baldur's Gate entry. There are shades of Divinity here and there, but I personally feel they're very minimal. And even then, I feel like the flavor of BG still outweighs that of Divinity.

I also don't agree with the statement that it's closer to D:OS3 set in Faerun. For me the most defining feature of D:OS2 was the combat system and how it interacts with it's armor systems and emphasis on environment effects which are de prioritized in BG3. HOWEVERI didn't play any origin characters for them to have an effect on the feel of the game, same here in BG3 with the exception of Durge if that counts.

Once you get over the ship crashing and the beach landing I definitely felt like I was playing a 5e game like Solasta but not necessarily a Baldur's Gate game. I didn't feel like I was playing a Divinity game at all though (again, after the beach landing).

Play any fantasy RPG in the last ten years and you have Baldur's Gate 3. Nothing new just more crap for D&D nerds to get off to.

Sonicplys posted...

A shit opinion

Sonicplys posted...

The 2023 Game of the Year: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. #beyondperfection

Why am I not surprised

Millea posted...

I don't really know how to explain it. To me the dialogue and writing style in general scream D:OS. Just the way things are worded and how they're laid out. Like I said, I can't explain in detail because to me it's just self evident.

it just sounds like you're taking regular generic dungeons and dragons dialogue as being specific to divinity, when it was divinity copying other things for its dialogue and writing style

Yeah I've never actually had bugs in a game genuinely annoy me before, but something that keeps happening is I aggro a story character from a bug and it changes the story. There should be a way to de-aggro people.

At the end of the hag quest I had to kill the lady I just saved because she stepped on my residual aoe spell when leaving. I also had to kill halsin because I chose thae wrong dialogue.

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Calm_Emotions

it's like there is a way and you didn't actually try and find out if there was

Krow_Incarnate posted...

In what possible way? The occasional bit of humor that's there? It's not overwhelming and ever present like it is in DOS and let's not pretend Lilichor wasn't ever a thing.

The vast majority of the game is treated seriously.

The tone isn't a question of comedy. It's a question of genre and narrative intent.

For all the darker moments in BGI and II (and the option for the player to play straight up evil), the game story as a whole still leans into epic fantasy. That's the default flavor of the Forgotten Realms setting as a whole (and games like Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights all sort of have a similar feel to the BG games because of it - even the Dark Alliance games feel like BG I and II narratively in spite of having a completely different combat system).

Both D:OS2 and BGIII lean much more towards dark fantasy (which is very much the influence of ASoIaF/Game of Thrones on the fantasy genre over the last 20 years or so). People are dicks, the world is crueler, a number of quests tend to have more bittersweet endings. Epic fantasy and dark fantasy just feel different, in the same way that Game of Thrones feels different from Lord of the Rings.

Some players complained during the early access that none of your companions are really GOOD people. Even the nicer ones don't really feel like heroes, and anyone wanting to play a classic fantasy hero is still going to be stuck with all these completely broken people of questionable morals. That's pretty much the D:OS2 design philosophy in a nutshell. Contrast against the original BG games, where you could still form an evil/evil-ish party (Viconia, Korgan, Edwin, etc), but the majority of allies were still relatively heroic (even characters like Imoen).

Ignoring the fact that Sarevok technically had a chance at redemption in BGII kind of falls into the same category. Him remaining evil fits the darker tone better.

None of which is saying that BGIII is bad. Or that having a darker, more cynical tone "ruins" things. But it does feel much closer to D:OS2 in writing and characterization than it does any of the other Baldur's Gate games.


(And that's not even counting more minor things, like being encouraged to bring "blatantly evil" people into your group and trusting them solely because they have useful game mechanics value - Malady and Tarquin in D:OS2 and Withers in BGIII fill very similar narrative roles in that sense.)

Shrek posted...

https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Calm_Emotions

it's like there is a way and you didn't actually try and find out if there was

I did and reddit told me I had to kill them in both cases.

I'll load up the hag save and test it.

I change my mind I don't feel like doing that.

I'm just going to assume that reddit is right by default.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Some players complained during the early access that none of your companions are really GOOD people. Even the nicer ones don't really feel like heroes

i still see so much shit about how people are upset that gale isn't some adonis Jesus hero

the guy literally calls himself a villain lmao

And every single character to my knowledge essentially has redemption arcs where you can influence them to completely change their ways and ultimately take the "good" path.

I agree that there should've been more black/white good/evil companions rather than everyone being morally grey, but I believe that has more to do with the aforementioned small number of companions compared to the first two games more then anything.

And I always thought BG1 and BG2 was particularly dark. The sword coast itself being rife with banditry and the iron crisis basically tanking the region's economy, with obvious corruption in the upper echelon of the city itself. I don't think BG1 was as happy go-lucky as you make it out to be. But I also had this same debate with someone else back when BGIII was still a pipe dream, so obviously other people feel the same way you do.

Shrek posted...

i still see so much shit about how people are upset that gale isn't some adonis Jesus hero

the guy literally calls himself a villain lmao

Missing the point by a mile, but that's pretty much par for the course.

I've seen people justify the horny Gale bug with the fact that he was basically groomed by a goddess and he has no idea that people being nice to you doesn't mean they want to fuck you

Apparently the speedrun for BG3 is like 5 minutes.... noice

The gaming drought is making people thirst for literally anything these days.

Is there really a "drought". Games don't seem any better or worse to me then they've been for the past decade.

Its really that good. Dont know why lack of quality would be a reason for its praise when this year has given us quite a few good games.

trivialbeing posted...

turn based combat in 2023

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/5/AAfh51AAE1HD.jpg

Why would that be funny? Turn based combat never left.