This game richly deserved every award it got. What an absolute masterpiece! And the best part is that we got to enjoy it without any of the “best practices” of the gaming industry, like an inflated initial price, micro transactions and loot boxes. It was just one fee upfront, and you got hundreds of hours of riveting gameplay in return.
On a personal note, this was the first time in my life I got to play a game at launch. The hype and excitement of playing alongside everyone who was discovering the game at the same time as me was magical.
I agree, BG3 is phenomenal and deserves every bit of praise it gets. But I'd also like to mention that this has been a ridiculously good year in gaming in general. Playing these new releases, I've been giddy like a little boy for the first time in years. It's like if I made a top 5 of this year, every game in that list would deserve to be GOTY way more than anything that was released in the previous couple of years.
I agree, PS5 has a real problem with a lack of games. AAA single-player development cycles have now gotten so absurdly long, a studio might release a single game an entire console generation, if the studio is brave enough to make a single player game at all. Thats a problem for Sony, who've staked their claim with AAA single player experiences. They think a pivot to live service is going to fix this, with something like 12 upcoming first party live service games in the works. I tend to think thats a horrible strategy, and they should focus on building up AA studios instead.
AC is a niche series, historically no other games played like it. Chrome Hounds or MechWarrior are/were also niche for that reason.
the newest release is the least niche AC ever gameplay-wise, similar to newer MechWarrior. The controls now play similarly to an over-shoulder shooter rather than being pan/scan limited and tracking focused, and not much maneuverability is lost during any high speed segments like boosting/etc.
those control differences in the past excluded a large player-base due to perceived awkwardness, thus the reverse-controller meme associated with the franchise. Understandably a lot of fresh blood has joined now that it plays more similar to what is expected in gaming trends.
and if we're just nitpicking due to the meaning of niche, i'd argue that the entire mecha segment of entertainment is niche.
While that may have been your intent, you said _I_ in the following quote
> Unless the new AC does something different, I would always classify AC as a niche series, implying that your decision to consider it niche is predicated on the control scheme.
I don’t really understand what you are arguing for or against, but I think we are diverging from the main subject anyways, so let’s agree to disagree - whatever it is.
It controls a lot better than the old ones certainly, should feel comfortable enough if you play the souls series. Actually the old-hat AC players whined about AC6 a lot on the grounds that there is less overwhelming focus on mech customization options (though still enough build variety), or they prefer the obtuse AC2-3 controls. The stages are also more interesting in general.
IDK watch some yt clips of the early levels, I bounced off the old AC series too and enjoyed this one.
i'm certainly one of those old-hat players. The entire game/physics/movements/animations just felt like a re-skin of Elden Ring to me; I think the 'obtuse' controls aided in the feeling of magnitude/momentum/mass.
I enjoyed the game for the technical design and world-building and so on, but the gameplay left me on the shore, and I missed the tactical aspects of ACV.
I think the likeness in the movement/feel to Souls is highly overstated. It's more along the lines of Daemon X Machina, or maybe Zone of the Enders which is decades old, for lighter builds. I think med/heavy builds still give you a sense of mass without compromising ease of movement.
They basically kept the myriad of weak but hard-hitting enemies over large maps, though there's a stronger focus on duels, and melee is now viable but optional.
Have you considered that maybe you just don’t like games? It’s hard to imagine what would impress you. God of war was one of the finest storytelling games in recent memory. And my wife is addicted to Spiderman 2.
Hm, to each their own I guess. I kind of see where you're coming from, though - my partner isn't really into RPGs and the Switch is apparently such an underpowered children's toy console that it's unfathomable it could have any decent games. It's been quite a quiet year on the gaming releases front for him.
I'll recommend Viewfinder as a neat game (take pictures with a camera, then you can place down those pictures and they become full level geometry) and The Finals for fans of multiplayer shooters. It's a 3v3v3 destruction based objective shooter from the team behind Battlefield after they left EA.
Baldur's Gate 3
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Super Mario Bros: Wonder
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Alan Wake 2
Hogwarts Legacy
Metroid Prime Remastered
Pikmin 4
Starfield
Jagged Alliance 3
I was thinking about Elden Ring and Dwarf Fortress for the last two spots instead, but seems like both of them were last year's releases. Time flies! That makes last year a bit better than I'd initially remembered, though.
- Aliens: Dark Descent
- Last Train Home
- Like a Dragon: Ishin
- Chants of Senaar
- Diablo 4
- Resident Evil 4 Remake
- Talos Principle II
- The Expanse
- Age of Empires II: Definitive
and probably tens of other smaller excellent games.
I bought into the big three RPGs this year : Cyberpunk 2077, Starfield and BG3. I first played Cyberpunk 2077 and it was a marvelous experience, so well acted/executed. After that Starfield felt a bit stiff, unfinished even though there are also lots of good points that immersed me into this universe and I hope it get its time to shine.
BG3 however has been a joy. What a great experience from the moment you boot it to every interaction and scenery. Definitely deserved. Overall its been a amazinf for RPG players this year.
I played Cyberpunk 2077 after BG3, and though the production values and story are very strong it feels a bit like a walking simulator after the gameplay richness BG3 offered. The RPG elements feel more or less meaningless in comparison, as though I could make most any dialogue or leveling choice and it'd scarcely matter. As a result I feel very much like a passenger in a very long and mildly interactive movie.
It's an interesting experience, a situation where I can acutely detect the bar getting moved for what I expect a game to be. I hope recent progressions in AI will bring us more interactive stories a la BG3 in glossy and well-funded packages a la Cyberpunk 2077.
But the Starfield feels quite finished. It is just poorly designed and written. Cyberpunk's gameplay design is not the best, but it is still better than Starfield's, and the story and characters are much better.
Played them each back to back this year - CP2077 characters are worlds better. Starfields World is better.
I put CP2077 as a clear winner mostly due to stiff dialogue in Starfield and poor choice corralling. If they put 3+ years into polishing SF, I can def see it turning into a clean masterpiece.
And they definitely didn't change any of the writing or the story in Cyberpunk 2077 post-launch. The only thing they did was add a couple of more side missions, and release a story-focused expansion.
> The hype and excitement of playing alongside everyone who was discovering the game at the same time as me was magical
As a relatively busy working adult, this actually ruins games for me. It creates FOMO and people rushing to beat the game to post their DAE low brow moment on social media.
I'd rather play it patched at my own pace, 2 years later.
It's also an incredibly fun game to watch friends play. Unfortunately I haven't had enough time to jump into BG3 for more than a few hours, but I've watched a ton of it through my friends playing it on discord. I think that's super unique.
Personally I've gotten the most fun out of it streaming my game on and off to my friends (who had already finished it). I could get info from them but still make the choices + it's fun to hang out
I joined a multiplier lobby on ps5. To my surprise, there was voice chat, and I spent the next eight hours playing through most of act 1 with some friendly fellows from across the world.
Eventually there was a sex scene, and the host graciously enabled the setting to let us all watch.
"Multiplayer voyeurism" wasn’t on my bingo card for 2023, but it was an interesting experience.
When I was 11 or so, I used to play StarCraft 1 custom games. Some of the maps rewarded the players by revealing a smutty image in the minimap if you won. It was funny seeing everyone suddenly go idle for a couple minutes after winning the map. Usually everyone disconnects right away. Somehow this reminded me of that.
> "Multiplayer voyeurism" wasn’t on my bingo card for 2023, but it was an interesting experience.
Wasn't that more akin to watching a porn movie together with your buddies? "Voyerism" means you're watching as someone is having sex, not watching a recording of someone doing it in the past. (not to mention that here actually no one was having sex, it's just pixels in a video game).
Technically the host was having sex, and we were all watching. Or technically no one was having sex, and we were all extremely amused. Whichever you prefer, given how into roleplaying you are.
I used to play an old game called Underlight, where you weren’t allowed to break character. There was a lot of sexting, which got the tongue in cheek name of QRP aka Quality Role Play. Back then we had to imagine https://underlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/UthyTrial.... as something sexy, which in retrospect was quite a feat given that the avatars were from the original Doom engine. So we didn’t even have pixels in a video game, just our imagination; the ultimate mod.
They set out to get "the best sex scene" according to them, which - apparently - is the one you get when you betray the Druid defenders instead of repelling the oncoming horde. The horde leader is a woman who shows up in your dreams.
One wonders if they used mocap animation. There were about four different positions during the ~3min scene. Bravo to the animators.
I think that was about four hours in. We eventually got to a spider nest, and somehow just barely won. Then we ended up in the forest hag’s lair, and got our asses handed to us five times in a row, at which point we all passed out from exhaustion.
That was probably the most fun I’ve had in a game in a long time. There were a bunch of memorable things. E.g. I was playing a berserker, and they told me to take off my armor because otherwise I wouldn’t get a special damage boost unique to berserkers. So I stripped off my breastplate and leggings, and then realized I could take off my bra and underwear too. They all burst out laughing when I stormed in to the next fight naked. (I was playing as that devil-looking woman that normally you recruit a few hours into the game, since I didn’t feel like setting up a character from scratch.)
I feel… mixed about BG3. Mostly it’s 5e’s fault. The combat is bad. The stats used in game are really stupidly balanced. The game is very easy and full of cluttersome mechanics that don’t matter much. Divinity 2 was way better as an rpg.
The romance has basically no agency and it’s weird that multiple side characters want to fuck you out of nowhere before the person people are identifying as your partner. Frankly the sexual tone of the game is super weird. It’s very tame despite how horny everyone at least for the characters I chose.
The story doesn’t offer you many forks to branch off of. Act 2 is particularly disappointing in this regard.
Act 3 is kind of slog of ticking off boxes and losses the appeal that Act 1 offered imo.
Stopping leveling up at level 12 near the beginning of Act 3 was super lame.
Several character arcs felt extremely underdeveloped (mol, Arabella, zevlor, karlach).
It’s still pretty good though. Good writing and good production values can carry it. Divinity 2 with BG3 production values would have been much better though imo.
It's funny that lots of folks complain about the game being oversexualized while me and my partner - 120 hours in, in Act 3 now - somehow managed to completely fail triggering any romance subplots despite actually trying to raise approval of all the companions (okay maybe we gave up on Astarion). Not sure if it's a somewhat clunky split-screen handling of approval mechanics or just bad luck.
I played it a second time after the patch and still found the characters too sexual. Sure, at the beginning everyone was awkwardly horny, but even afterward, I still I got quite some unwanted attention from most companions. It felt a bit like taking the worst parts of owlcat’s romances in WotR where you accidentally romance some of them, and apply it to everyone.
I’m pretty sure it’s just glitches then. These things are nigh unavoidable with at least some party members. I tried to be as rude to gale as possible at every dialogue but he still liked me.
Split screen did seem to have some bugginess whereby side characters would randomly decide they wanted to fuck whichever player talked to them first, regardless of past interactions.
i had to backtrack about three hours when i started act 3 since for some reason Karlach was saying our relationship had fizzled out. i had missed a lot of interactions from not visiting camp enough.
other than that i do remember the companions being really horny for me at the big camp party in act 1. i did find it jarring but one perspective that i liked was that you could look at it as casual sex - games usually treat sex as an end goal for relationship mechanics. its still hard to square it up with almost everyone wanting to get in your pants - but i think that's a by-product of making sure players have choice and i can live with that. it also only happened to me once and once i turned everyone down i wasn't interested in they left the matter alone ( except Gale lol )
I thought the fact that some characters seemed down for casual sex not as a relationship end goal was good too.
I found it outrageous that shadowheart was so reticent, while simultaneously encouraging polyamory and saying she was down for a hooker foursome. Three side characters offered to fuck before shadowheart. Felt like those narratives either should have been much longer and deeper or not there at all.
To me, Divinity 2 felt like the "every fight devolves into a sea of necrofire" game. There are people online who make ridiculous builds and seemingly do 100x the damage I'm able to, but I found the combat to be inscrutable.
Eh. Both games have many exploits that make the game busted. BG3 is honestly way worse because of its consumables systems. But ignoring it and playing a fairly vanilla strategy is probably better.
Divinity 2’s fighting was very unusual but I think it was great in retrospect.
Ah, there is still a lot of room for improvement. People talk a lot about a definitive edition, which should fix the plot holes. They did this before with Divinity 2. And they are definitely already doing it for BG3 on the patches. Mol has more space on the latest patch, and the whole added Epilogue chapter signals that Larian is still up to adding more content to the game. Let's wait for the extra content. I expect some DLCs in the future as well.
I'm with you on Divinity 2 having better combat. I loved BG3 but I'm definitely looking forward to Divinity 3. The 5e system just isn't well suited for a video game.
I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who finds the game's romantic elements peculiar. I'm fully anticipating backlash for expressing this view, but to me it appears the romance plot was crafted to mainly accommodate various minority groups. This strategy, combined with attempts to make the game entirely non-offensive, appears to have compromised its authenticity and indeed, significantly lessened its believability.
It's a Dungeons & Dragons game, which is one of the least realistic story genres ever created. This is a game world that officially includes monsters like Gelatinous Cube.
Are you serious that the "authenticity and believability" of a fantasy RPG have been compromised by some gay romance?
No, I don't think "some gay romance" is a problem. Being gay is nothing new and you can totally make believeable gay romances. I do think that "being a 2023 san francisco gay in faerun" is making the game feel less authentic, the same way as adding adding flying mindflayer vehicules doesn't make it less authentic but adding a boeing 737 would. And FWIF Gelatinous Cubes also make the game less believable.
Huh. Thanks for being brave enough to articulate that. You're not the only one tired of twinks being the face of gayness.
It's a fucking RPG in a medieval setting about a sadistic world full of actual dungeons. Where are the leathermen? Why are wisened bosses of dungeons not called...Masters?
I feel like there must be something odd about me, because I just could not get into it. Campy story/unfunny humour, slow paced/turn paced combat, confusing UX with a million options/choices, and unclear overall guidance of what to do at any time. Maybe I'm too old for these games.
The fact that you're getting downvoted says a lot. I have a really hard time taking all the praise seriously when you're not allowed to dislike or criticize this game. It feels like a cult.
The downvotes would be justified if they had somehow provided a bad review/comment. But they described what they didn't like about the game in a concise manner without directing any sort of insult at the game's devs/supporters.
I think this happens with a lot of older games too. Games like Bastion or FlatOut 2 sometimes don't get criticized enough for any bugs they may have had, and people look at them with rose-tinted glasses. It definitely happens a lot less with more recently released games.
No worries, you're not alone. I can see it has decent (not great imho) production values, but it's not for me. It's slow and uninteresting, I'm level 2/3 and facing unbeatable level 5 enemies (a hag in a swamp, some tiny island after a swamp or some underground minotaurs). I know I should find entertainment in doing other things in the game, but I'm 10 hours in already, and progress is agonizingly slow. All I got is that I've bug in my eye I want to get out of it, somehow all my companions have it as well, and there's a refugee camp that's being evicted by more druids. I have no idea what the overarching story is, I just go from little set piece to new little set piece (which feel rather artificial), but it's not very interesting and my characters feel as weak as when I started the game. I have fond memories of bg1 and bg2, played them into early morning cause I wanted to know what was next. But now, I just don't care, I just feel lost and like making no progress at all.
That there seemingly is no great story shouldn't be that much an issue to me, it doesn't always matter to me, but with the battles not being engaging, character progress nonexistent, exploring not being exciting nor rewarding, there's just nothing that makes me want to come back. Now i do have a great dislike for open-world games, and it seems bg3 just has all the elements that makes me dislike it, too much make your own adventure. I don't recall the earlier baldurs gate games being this way.
I was getting stuck on some of these things too. Ended up having to explore more of the map to find stuff that was more manageable as well as checking YouTube for some tips on how to play.
Sure maybe they could have included a little more education on how stuff works in game, but it’s not too bad.
What has me most entertained about the game is that your choices and dialogue options have real impacts on your path through the game. Unlike most games that feel like they are on rails.
I tried to play it last summer and it didn't work out. Thankfully I gave it a second chance with the intention to fully RP and with my main objective being to romance Shadowheart (because it's good to have goals), and it's been better. I must say that at times I felt overwhelmed, and I'm grateful to have some friends who played the game that could help me with some questlines!
Yeah, I think I need to give it another chance at some point. There's just so many games and so little time. :) I'm having a blast with RoR Returns right now, and that requires 0 investment to get going.
I'm definitely an Old (53) but I love a good game, and tend to enjoy RPG type games, so I have BG3 on my radar -- but the reviews make me think I might not enjoy it AT ALL.
It has been such a blast to play this with some friends. It's been like DND sessions without the stress of remembering things or DMing too hard. It's actually been difficult to get them back to the table because of just how well polished everything in this game is. Really a pretty excellent intro into TTRPG though one must bring a little bit less save scuming and realism to a real DM.
The only thing missing now is a modding community ala Neverwinter Nights. Then BGIII can truly be the heir apparent to the infinity engine/bioware legacy!
The only problem I have with BG3 is now it has (hopefully temporarily) ruined everything I've tried to play after. I just started in on Rogue Trader and so far I'm enjoying it so I hope the "Nothing can compare to BG3" phase has passed for me.
At least for me, even returning to WotR (now interrupted for Rogue Trader) still felt awesome after BG3, I enjoyed the return to mechanical depth a lot ;)
Really good game, I would give it an 8/10. But the fact that it's considered a 'masterpiece' is more of an indictment to the industry at its current state rather than saying much about the quality of the game itself. I had a lot of gripes:
1. Last act was mostly a chore
2. The plot was a mess, you don't have to tie everything into a single path ending up having to come up with ridiculous shenanigans. Also they threw every part of Forgotten Realms lore into a melting pot.
3. The writing was quite disappointing most of the time as well. I can't stand characters in a medieval setting saying "Wow" multiple times in a row or "f*ck" and acting like emotionally stunted teenagers. Also the fact that every companion wanted to have sex with my avatar for no reason was very annoying.
4. Even though it's praised for its polish, it has a LOT of bugs. Some of them game breaking or locking you out of storylines/options.
What kind of DRM do you mean here? Since it's sold on Steam it automatically has Steam's own DRM.
If you're referring to DRM like Denuvo though, I don't think BG 3 has anything like that. Which is good for us because things like Denuvo heavily impact performance.
No! Just because a game is on Steam does not necessarily mean it has DRM.
The developer is in charge of what happens when the game is launched and the player does not own the game on Steam. Steam does not require you to shut down the game immediately. For instance, the games we port will just run fine in, what we call "DRM-free" mode, when the Steam API cannot be initialized.
Yet most of their sales come not from GOG but from Steam.
..and I don't quite get your comment? Games sold on GOG are meant to be DRM-free. It's a requirement for them to be on GOG, not something they do out of the kindness of their heart.
If they were praising BG 3 for choosing to be on GOG as well as Steam then that'd have been a very valid point. But saying that there is no DRM associated with the game is false.
Larian studio is really a great story. From community-funded beginnings with Divinity, its success yielding Divinity II and both of those putting Larian in a position to get the BG3 job I assume is really motivating for independant gaming studios. All the praise is well deserved
Usual reminder that it’s Divinity: Original Sin I & II, Divinity is the series [0], and Divinity II [1] is even a specific game by them. Even just calling it "Original Sin" or "D:OS" is clearer.
yep, I assumed when reading it they meant the original divinity game (which is amazing) and also assumed they were skipping over some history when claiming it led to them getting BG3.
2023 has been the best year for me in gaming. I was a "patient gamer", always trailing the latest games by about ten year. But, being a huge fan of BG2, I couldn't not play BG3 at launch. So I picked it up and immediately dumped 100+ hours in. It was so good I couldn't put it down.
After that I thought, why not try some other "newer" games? Since then, I picked up and played Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty, Persona 5 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Each close to 100 hours, and each far exceeded my expectations. What a blast! Thank you, BG3.
I'm always at awe at how many different titles others manage to play. I started with BG3 in September, have played nothing else at all since then and I'm still on my first play through (at around 160 hours in). I guess this takes the rest of the year for me, at which point I can start with another game.
I, too, have been "patient" but for me it's more driven by not having time to get around to playing ____ for a while. I really DO enjoy paying $20 instead of $60, though!
The Raphael boss fight music is quite possibly my favourite audio moment in 30 years of gaming ;) (Alas I’m not sure how to describe it without spoiling the surprise, since it is quite different to the rest of the soundtrack)
i cannot read the article because of paywall and i cannot open the link to archive because of cloudflare captcha which dont wants to redirect me. The internet is trash
I’ve seen the infinite cloudflare captcha problem before, but I can’t remember anything about it. If anyone knows or if you figure it out, post some info here.
I feel like the only person on the internet who doesn't like BG3.
The turn-based combat made the game really tedious. The 3D camera made me want to throw something at the monitor. The story is awful. The companions are unlikable and hypersexual. The environments are often so over the top they wrap around into boorishness. The reddit-style humor (like the "poop knife") was just completely inappropriate. The unfinished state and constant patches made me feel like I was doing QA for free.
I loved BG2, but this wasn't what I wanted at all.
I agree with everything you just said. It was probably my biggest letdown of the year.
For each turn on the turn based combat, there’s overhead and waiting required. The characters slowly accelerate as they start to move and take their turns. Sometimes it feels like forever by the time you get control of your characters again.
Some of the battles are so one-sided against you. You have to come back later after grinding everything in the map.
Inventory management is horrible.
I could go on, but I’d be preaching to the choir. But I’ll just say it is an unfinished game.
> Some of the battles are so one-sided against you. You have to come back later after grinding everything in the map.
I had the same experience at first but it really just comes down to using all resources the game gives you. For me it got significantly easier once I stopped hoarding items.
The difficulty seems very dependent on playstyle and motivation to optimize damage, I've seen people destroy bossfights with 10+ enemies in one turn with a single playable character.
I'm with you on the sex scenes (and bathroom scenes? I must've missed that). I never want or need them.
I was more responding to their complaints about turn based combat. BG3 nails that aspect, and it's strange to me that people don't like it. It's literally a turn based rpg.
I definitely liked it _despite_ the turn based combat. That was pure drudgery, but the rest of the game made up for it.
I'll recommend it to my wife if they ever add a "tourist mode" type thing which dramatically speeds up the fights, she's got a lot less patience than me.
Because I also liked the D:OS games despite the combat.
These games are mostly about exploration, stories, decisions - there's a lot that's not turn-based combat. I also liked the Banner Saga games - same. I love XCOM, which is way more turn based, because the combat is quicker and more fun.
> The other poster was pointing out that table-top is also turn-based,
That's not in their response as written. Could be they play at a boisterous table, with boorish jokes, a hypersexual bard, constant efforts to troll the DM, and tedious combat.
> And I guaran-fucking-tee you someone, somewhere, has roleplayed sex in a tabletop session.
Which is why I only claimed 90% of in-person D&D groups don't, rather than 100% :)
You're not alone. I didn't even bother trying BG3 because of the turn-based combat. I'm sorry, but in my opinion turn-based combat has no place in a AAA game, aside from maybe a mini-game. It's just lame.
What do you mean, BG3 is an AAA game by all measures?
I do hope this combat mechanic becomes more widespread, the added tactical depth here really beats the usual RTS hassle. Tabletop D&D is turn based too so it was very puzzling why the old BGs and Neverwinter Nights didn't do it this proper way.
You are not the only one! Significant amount of people who like BG2 are not happy with "Divinity: Forgotten Realms" (renamed to BG3 for cash-grab reasons).
> The reddit-style humor (like the "poop knife") was just completely inappropriate.
Larian games tend to do this. Note that intersection of sets of people who worked on BGs 2 and 3 is most likely an empty set.
That’s a weird set of complaints. Yes of course it’s a separate group of people. It’s a very long time apart and completely different studios.
I would rather complain that it wasn’t more like divinity. Divinity’s game design was vastly superior to 5e. But it clearly is a BG sequel. The plot connections are pretty strong. Perhaps more than ought to have been expected
> Divinity’s game design was vastly superior to 5e.
Sure. But if it's Baldur's Gate, why isn't it 2nd Edition AD&D? It's far superior to Divinity, it's what we expect from BG, and it would win points for nostalgia reasons.
> Sure. But if it's Baldur's Gate, why isn't it 2nd Edition AD&D? It's far superior to Divinity, it's what we expect from BG, and it would win points for nostalgia reasons.
As bad as 5E, 2nd is far, far worse. There's basically nothing for martial characters to do any round. Shoulda rolled a wizard. Hope you like making save or die rolls in high level play.
Nostalgia is literally the only thing AD&D has going for it - it's a clunky, incoherent, and thoroughly unbalanced mess, designed when tabletop gaming was only a decade or two old.
We've had 35 years of experience with tabletop and CRPGs since then, both with systems that tried to stick closer to D&D and with ones that tried new things altogether.
The Divinity system isn't perfect by any means, but I can't imagine how rose-tinted your glasses must be to think that THAC0 and the golden age of Linear Fighter, Quadratic Wizard are better.
Have you... actually played ToB to completion? At the end it shows you the epilogue explaining _exactly_ what happens to all your companions (spoiler alert: Minsc doesn't become a statue in Baldur's Gate). Cameos, forced tie-ins and straight up alternations of story lines of previous games doesn't make it a sequel.
Well, those people can play Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteus, which is essentially in spirit, storytelling, world and presentation very close to original BG1 and BG2. It launched in 2021.
It's amazing that we have two great games that modernize the formula in different ways - Pathfinder showing how to do the old style with modern tech and BG3 interpreting it.
I'm not sure what's patronizing about it? We got two great games in last two years for both types of players - the ones that want old-school approach and the ones that want a modern approach. Both games are well reviewed and great to play.
And that doesn't even include all the other games you've mentioned (or Larians previous Divinity games) or Solasta or others... we're in golden age of CRPGs again.
They could choose not to get the IP if its not something they can treat with respect. Getting it anyway and shitting on the previous games makes this a cash grab.
Treating with respect != slavishly mimicking a previous studio's effort.
Just because there's a '3' in the name doesn't mean it should feel like a clone of '2', especially when the studio changes. Dune II was a completely different game from Dune. GTA 3 was completely different from GTA 1/2. Armored Core. Max Payne. Wasteland.
Sports game and certain shooters are widely mocked (among nerds) for being basically identical release after release.
> Treating with respect != slavishly mimicking a previous studio's effort.
Absolutely is if you are pretending to make a sequel to someone else's game.
> Just because there's a '3' in the name doesn't mean it should feel like a clone of '2', especially when the studio changes.
You got that the wrong way around. The original team wanting to go in a different direction is one thing. But a completely different studio wanting to create something very different from the original game should just do that and create a separate game instead of a purpoted sequel. So yes, a different studio being given the license for the sequel (which is already a very questionable practice that rights holders should be called out for) should strive to mimick the feel of the original game very closely.
> Sports game and certain shooters are widely mocked (among nerds) for being basically identical release after release.
What an absurd comparison. Literally taking the infinity engine with BG2 systems and creating a new campaign with that would not even be close to the yearly EA rereleases. And no, I'm not saying that there can't be any changes at all but Larian went well beyond what would be needed to update the game for $current_year audience.
> So yes, a different studio being given the license for the sequel (which is already a very questionable practice that rights holders should be called out for) should strive to mimick the feel of the original game very closely.
I'm just going to have to fundamentally agree to disagree. I would 100% endorse this quote if we were talking about novels or theatrical plays, and maybe 50% if talking about movies (Godfather? Yes. Alien? Nah).
But a game, outside of odd niches like visual novels or 'walking simulators', is a much more open-ended experience, and the expectation of a sequel is not merely to continue the story - that's typically called an 'expansion', a concept that doesn't exist in novels or movies. A sequel is generally expected to innovate, and the longer since the previous title the more innovation is expected.
You can innovate while still staying true to the original and not making a fundamentally different game. BG2 itself did change many things compared to BG1 but still managed to retain the overal feel.
"BG3" on the otherhand innovates on Divinity: Original Sin 2 instead and then slaps a Baldur's Gate paint on the result.
I also don't see why games should be inherently different from other media in this respect. Yes, games are often seen as lesser art compared to more established forms but this is (in part) a result of them being treated as products first and not a justification for it.
> "BG3" on the otherhand innovates on Divinity: Original Sin 2 instead and then slaps a Baldur's Gate paint on the result.
Do you think that the setting, themes, story, and RPG rules are just 'paint'? Is the Infinity Engine so much more important than the Forgotten Realms?
> I also don't see why games should be inherently different from other media in this respect.
Because games aren't media: games are media generators. The same game can be a tragedy to one player and a comedy to another. So you can have two different kinds of follow-ups: ones that simply generate more media in the same way ( = expansion), or ones that improve on how the media is generate ( = sequel). The distinction doesn't make sense for fixed media like novels or films.
Note that I'm not talking about video games in particular, it applies to any kind of game. If I publish a book that adds a new secret level to the crypt of Acererak in the same style as the original, it's an expansion. If I publish a story about a different crypt that feels connected to the original but with its own unique design choices, that's when I can call it Tomb of Horrors 2.
I've played dos and dos2 and I liked them(well I enjoyed dos's combat system more than dos2 but I loved playing them both in general), I've never played any DnD games, should I buy bg3?
I haven't played DOS (though now I might). My understanding is that BG3 is more story and character focused.
And while they've done a surprisingly good job adapting D&D combat to video game format, it's definitely not perfect.
Yeah, almost all of it (level 14 or so). I felt the tone was super light-hearted, which was fine but I was concerned that BG3 might be similar. Fortunately, it's not it has a more appropriate tone.
To be fair though, we had our second child in September, so I'm just at the end of Act One (hoping to get some time to finish it over Christmas).
Pikmin has always been a console focused RTS with puzzle elements. It's a bit different from "traditional" RTS like StarCraft but it works better with a controller because of that.
The other strategy/sim nominees were Fire Emblem: Engage, Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp, Company of Heroes 3 and City Skylines II (sim).
> It's a bit different from "traditional" RTS like StarCraft
Note that StarCraft is called a "real-time strategy" game to differentiate it from the existing category of "strategy games", which has now been relabeled "4X".
Based on your list, Giorgi appears to be correct that there were no strategy games nominated in the "strategy" category.
What do you mean by "now"? RTS and 4X as terms are basically the same age (92 and 93) and both are older then StarCraft(98). Both of those are subcategories of "strategy games". Also, first strategy video games were not games that anybody would call 4X games so saying that "strategy games" were renamed into 4X is nonsense.
There was a time when "strategy", unadorned, was the only genre descriptor available for Civilization.
The same genre, considered at the time, also included games like Empire, which is more of a 3X game. I was interested, rereading the manual to Empire Deluxe recently, to see that it obviously considered itself to be competing with Civilization - I never considered the two games all that similar.
Abandonware Dos right now also includes board games under the "strategy" category. (RTSes are in there too.)
> There was a time when "strategy", unadorned, was the only genre descriptor available for Civilization.
Sure, there was a time before 4X was a term when games that would now get that label would not have a narrower subgenre label than “strategy”, that doesn't mean that what strategy meant then was what 4X means now, it means that there weren't enough 4X games to distinguish them within strategy (nor enough turn-based strategy and overlapping label to 4X -- but not all TBS are 4X, and there have been realtime 4X games -- to segregate those out.)
RTS wasn't coined to distinguish StarCraft, etc., from “strategy” which label later evolved into 4X, it was to distinguish it within “strategy” from TBS, which also didn't need a label until RTS was common enough to distinguish the two.
I haven't played those, so I'm going off what I can learn about them in a reasonable time frame.
A contemporary review of the first Fire Emblem game to release outside Japan shows one reviewer referring to it as "turn-based strategy" at the same time that another reviewer (writing in the same magazine, possibly cooperating on the same review?) says it's a "tactical RPG". That second description matches the uninformed impression I had of the series and also matches how it's described on Wikipedia. Plus, this isn't exactly an early usage - Fire Emblem first released in 2003.
Nobunaga's Ambition seems like it would fit perfectly in a genre defined by Civilization and Empire; I'm not sure why you're saying it's not a 3X game? And the same appears to be true of North and South.
Fire Emblem was first released in 1990, the first western release was in 2003. Tactical RPG and Strategy RPG are the same thing and the two terms are used interchangeably.
4X games like Civ have exploration as a key element with players starting off on the same foot. Grand Strategy games like Nobunaga don't. I guess it could be "3X" but it depends what X you remove.
I've played it exclusively on the Steam Deck, which runs Arch Linux + Proton (Valve's compatibility layer that anyone can run).
If you’re as keen on Linux as you seem to be, then Proton is your friend. We may never see native builds, but already developers are putting way more effort into making sure the Deck (meaning Linux) experience is good.
Here’s a video of the head of Larian Studios talking about how they’re viewing the Steam Deck - https://youtu.be/kzfEkSGa45k
> This is an ambitious device. We love it. We’re going to do everything we can to support it. We’re going to make sure that every single game, Baldur’s Gate III included, is going to play really smoothly on the Steam Deck.
Valve have made adding Linux support easy and desirable (because of the market share of the Deck). And developers are responding. Don’t miss out because you want “native builds”.
I've only played it on Linux. Basically, you can assume any Windows game sold on Steam works on Linux. It's not always true, but it's true often enough that I don't normally check protondb anymore.
Most companies don't ship native Linux builds, it's easier to make sure it works well under Proton. Linux is approximately 2% of Steam users, Deck included.
It does work quite well under Proton, and runs on the Steam Deck.
My guess is it'll never have an official Linux release. Besides, proton is so good at this point that it will usually outshine a cheap Linux port. In fact, due to the lack of backwards compatibility in Linux land, the Windows edition of a game will typically keep working longer on Linux than the native port. It's a really strange situation.
BG3 was "finished" on release. If it never saw a single update after that, I'd have been happy with it anyway. What they're doing is providing excellent ongoing support to an already solid product.
I don't understand which part of releasing patches would not imply it's finished? The campaign is whole, the story is done, the classes are there. There's nothing missing.
For what it's worth I was experiencing crashes on Patch 5. No crashes on the recently released Patch 6 and the performance is better as well. As a Steam Deck gamer, I appreciated Larian adding FSR support as well. It's not an exaggeration to say that people who start playing now are getting a substantially smoother experience than those who played on Day 1.
The game launched yesterday on Xbox and those folks are going to have a blast. :)
It's a very odd definition in the world of software though, even games. Hope they're not holding their breath for World of Warcraft or Factorio to be finished. God forbid they need an operating system. I guess OS/2 would make the cut :-)
I love RPGs but I think this got more praise than it deserved. At its best it is a telltale game. At its worst, it’s a slow walk through bugs, bad dice rolls, save scumming, and watching the developers, fix everything all over again, only to create new bugs every time.
I got through act one and didn’t want to play anymore. There were too many bugs, and the game is an active development as if it were in beta. The game was in beta for years before it got to this state.
Save scumming 75% off the time because almost everything needs a 15 or higher, or spending an hour on a 20 roll treasure chest, or needing so many successful swings to complete a battle is not my idea of fun.
Loading a save took over a minute sometimes
I thought it was sloggy and buggy.
The characters were fawning over me, although I barely talked to them.
>Save scumming 75% off the time because almost everything needs a 15 or higher, or spending an hour on a 20 roll treasure chest,
Then why would you do that? That isn't a feature of the game, that's a feature of the player?
>or needing so many successful swings to complete a battle is not my idea of fun.
You can use tactics waaaayyyyyy beyond "make smash thing with sword."
I'm not trying to be a Dick, but maybe don't focus on 100% completion, and think outside the box. This game has multiple ways to accomplish things. The number of times I avoided fights by using the environment to my advantage is hilarious to me.
> You can use tactics waaaayyyyyy beyond "make smash thing with sword."
While I think the OP is talking out of their butt, I kind of disagree with this. Smash with sword is generally the best strategy. The game is pretty darn easy. Playing with the duds of Wyll and Shadowheart give an early impression of Act 1 perhaps being very hard.
>Then why would you do that? That isn't a feature of the game, that's a feature of the player?
I'd be broke, dead 200 times over, and missing a ton of fun contexts if I didn't savescum. It's a feature of the game. Not a bug of the player.
Even on Explorer mode, the game is laughably stacked against you sometimes. The dice rolls make no sense. I've spent an hour trying to get a D20 on savescumming once.
I like high completion so I don't have to replay games and go through the 80+% of repeatable stuff I already did again.
You seem to misunderstand the purpose of dice rolls. The point is to make the game interesting by potentially giving you different outcomes than you expected.
When you savescum you work against the core feature of the game, of course it's not going to be as fun.
Your experience is your experience. You don't like the game, that's fine.
I will say two things - BG3 today is a substantially better game compared to release day in August. Better performance and fewer bugs. Not perfect, but excellent. I have no doubt they'll keep improving the game so it'll get even better in a couple months.
And second, it's ok not to succeed on dice rolls. It's just a different path you're taking. It may feel like you're losing out on completing the whole game, but you're not. In fact, you're missing out on a path whether you succeed the roll or not.
But if it really matters to you, do what I did. I picked a bard who's excellent at persuasion and lock picking. To top it off I got the amulet that allows the wearer to cast the Guidance cantrip (adds 1d4 to all rolls). I basically never lose a roll and if I do, I usually have Inspirations that allow me to re-roll. That might be closer to the experience you're looking for.
> Save scumming 75% off the time because almost everything needs a 15 or higher
The new honor mode makes savescumming impossible and is still quite possible. Savescumming is optional.
> or spending an hour on a 20 roll treasure chest
A 20 roll treasure chest with only the free guidance bonus gives you a 10-25% chance to open on the first attempt. Alternatively you can just smash the chest, contrary to popular belief it doesn't have any negative consequences like destroyed items.
> The characters were fawning over me, although I barely talked to them.
I finished Act 1, but the game was so unrefined and obviously unfinished. The hotfixes and patches with new content keep coming. The game is still obviously in Beta, but it's just not called Beta.
I'll revisit the game once the patches stop. Too many things changing during playthroughs.
Yes, and the launch was about 4 months ago. Sure it was in Beta for years, that's how game development works.
> I finished Act 1, but the game was so unrefined and obviously unfinished.
I have no idea what you're talking about, honestly. I'd understand if you talked about Act 3 because of the performance, or the inventory management, but aside from that I don't know what you could be referring to. I have seen fewer bugs than in some games with far less content and complexity.
Yeah I really don't get the hype at all. I played through a fair bit of act 1 and dropped it quick. I've played other crpgs without issues but had my ass handed to me pretty quickly in bg3 with the constant ambushes and having to jump between quests constantly just to progress enough to level up.
On a personal note, this was the first time in my life I got to play a game at launch. The hype and excitement of playing alongside everyone who was discovering the game at the same time as me was magical.