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It was too long and had too much content.
Seriously, though. In the last act, Baldur’s Gate was so huge and took so long to explore that it destroyed the momentum of the overall story. (The evil army is invading! Oh wait, they are now hiding underground doing nothing, so that you can take your time exploring the city).
The game is good despite DND 5e’s rules, not because of them.
Unfortunately, DND is mega popular. Many people have never played anything else. Many people have never even played it. So any discussion about it has a “of course 15 strength is +2, isn’t that just how RPGs work?” segment where you have to establish that DND is in fact weird.
I strongly dislike turn-based combat and I would love an option for real time combat. I just want fights to be over, they distract me from enjoying games. With real time combat I just mash the same attacks until it is over. BG3’s combat is a fucking chore and it’s the only reason I abandoned the game on the second map (in that monastery ruin).
Scalding hot boiling take
It’s a glitchy, unpolished game that, while being fun and having amazing dialogue, did not necessarily deserve GOTY.
I don’t know about unpolished, wasn’t my cup of tea in a lot of ways but felt very polished in almost every regard I can think of
4 max party size was a mistake
I find Astarion severely overrated
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The original vision for the game would have been better. EA was more interesting.
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Pacing and toes of gear is done poorly. There’s swords for days but only 2 interesting tridents, war picks, or hand axe for example. There’s barely any usable druid gear (anything that actually matters if you wild shape). And the most useful stuff for monks is found only in act 3.
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A lot of people are nitpicky only because it won so many awards and it’s not their own perfect game (if such a thing exists).
I still give this game a 10/10 for what it is. Despite knowing if it baked another year it might have been so much more.
What was different in the Early Access?
tl;dr, the story and motivation for everything was far more fleshed out
Here’s just some of the things. Not even going into mechanics that are removed (like Wyll’s eye). Or my personal opinion some of their starting looks were a bit more interesting/better (you get a bit of an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MeutkQFliM or from the CohhCarnage videos I link later)
There used to be way more dialog options for one. Your class/subclass/god/etc actually got reflected in more options. There was a great video of a cleric giving some unhinged prayer to the tiefling that opens the gate. It’s not major, but it adds to a lot to the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KameRUsFv8Y (with all the BG3 videos now, it’s harder to find some of the classics). Also, Shadowheart had a much more interesting conversation if you were also a cleric if you were a Cleric of Shar too.
The camp was way more interesting. There’s a ton of story ripped out of the game from the camps. This, was the thing that hooked me in EA. Daisy (the in-game code name for what would be replaced by your dream visitor) would entice you with power, encourage you to use the illithid powers. And when you finally do, and the narrator says “you’ve lost something you can never get back” probably makes more sense now. Once you did that, you got a class specific illithid power. There was no weird illithid skill tree, it was based around how often you used the powers. But going back to the camp, the companions would comment more about each other. Shadowheart and Lae’Zel’s hatred for each other was shown way better, even commenting if you talked to one or the other first. Here’s a couple of examples https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYRe2jHhBRc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw5q6u_iMN0 but overall, the camp at the end of the day was 1000x more interesting and really fleshed out the characters more and I’d say in important ways.
I’d even say the starting area (Nautiloid) was better. The current one is sufficient I guess. But the original showed you more about the fight the Illithids have with the Gith, you got to see more of the ship, what the Illithid did to people, what it meant to become a thrall (to really sell it that this is a terrifying process). But it showed you a few more mechanics too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-GWA_Yj2c starts at EP2, but you’ll want to go to EP 3 as well. But you can see the differences.
Tav used to talk.
For me, the story around “Daisy” was way more compelling. The song “Down by the river” is in reference to these encounters. Here’s a video on that https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTw_9vM5LgA
… So these are just some of the things, lol. There’s more like when you got down to the Underdark and some serious changes that happened there. And I haven’t even touched on the stuff that never made it in (like the extra companion that was to be a werewolf… or the original Nightsong) (you can see some of it cataloged here https://bg3.wiki/wiki/Cut_and_unimplemented_content ) and I’m fairly certain all the companions were originally supposed to show up in Act 1 instead of 1, 2, and 3. There’s a lot of dialog from characters for places they’re not “supposed to be” like the eagles (can’t find video, but its out there). But none of that is EA stuff, just cut stuff… but if the game had baked longer… I’m just saying… it might not have been cut sutff.
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The game is not that big, it’s far more linear than advertised, the maps aren’t really that big, and loot is lacking. The only reason people have 100+ hours is due to extensive conversations, dialogue, and the fact that it gives you no direction. Once you know what to do and where to go, the games shortness becomes apparent. The spell list is underwhelming, and so are the number of classes available. Not producing an expansion is going to hurt longevity, and eventually, people will stop playing because of it. The level cap sucks. Yes, I know, you dont need to be level 20, but who cares if you’re brokenly op? It’s supposed to be fun, and believe it or not, there are people (like myself) who DO enjoy grinding levels, and there are more of us than people realize. The level cap is a huge miss. The story is not that great (I’d even go so far to say it was very clearly rushed), and the only thing holding it up are the party member quests, which are far too easy to fuck up thanks to the lack of direction. Exploration is strongly discouraged due to the abysmal loot, and it feels unrewarding. There aren’t enough legendaries, and you often stick with the same weapons throughout the campaign and are rarely encouraged to try something new. Also, horny companion system makes no sense. Please, please tell me why I was a complete, total shithead to gale and halsin yet they still both “confessed their love” to me? Like, I literally went out of my way to earn their disapproval, and I chose the shittiest dialogue options with them every opportunity I could, and they still said they wanted to sleep with me. Wtf?
mic drop
Fight me.
I agree with a lot of what you said. I’m pretty sure though that I read that the level cap was in place because after level 13 wizards gain access to level 6 spells, many of which would either be impossible to program properly or, if they worked as intended, would break the game.
Could have just excluded those spells?
Well, if you did you’d have the whole D&D community after you. Some of them weren’t pleased that specific spell effects and conditions weren’t the same in game, and that was a hot topic in the community when the game first dropped. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing, so why break the game or disappoint players?
But they already crossed that line. There’s tons of shit from 5E that aren’t in BG3 and lots of mechanics work differently. You don’t need a rope to climb, you don’t need to find and secure and area to rest, there are no hit die. Shit, Cleric is missing like 7 entire domains.
So what if they exclude a couple impossible to balance spells?
Gale’s “bad” ending is actually the best ending in the game.
Who cares that he doesn’t get character growth, he disappointed a cat and an old man, HE’S A GOD! Seriously, nothing else matters. So what if Ao is going to make him earn his spot on the pantheon? He’s immortal, he has literally forever to do it. Sure professor Gale is fun and more chill, but he’s still mortal. In six months Gale does what Vlaakith has been attempting for centuries. I don’t know how you can be disappointed in someone for successfully becoming a god
I find all the party members insufferable. I change their classes almost immediately for better synergy or I switch them out for the soulless NPC’s Withers has. Ironically, I’ve been D&D 5E Dungeon Master numerous times and I find the party members to be absolutely authentic characters real people would play. Good work Larian, ya made the characters so table top believable that I want to find a new group to play with.
