Recent reviews by scisssssssors

Dark Souls 4 was not worth my time: absolutely unneeded stealth and crafting mechanics, unengaging, poorly connected map (see teleports to seemingly unrelated locations for example) with a little to no reward for exploration, mediocre bosses, strange difficulty balance (due to the game being open world) and many, many more smaller issues. It took me 3 years to complete the game: I had to take 2 long breaks from it because of how boring it is. Overall, it's a huge step back from Dark Souls 1 and Sekiro (even though it's not entirely correct to compare the two)

TL;DR: This game makes me appreciate Skyrim and it's the worst possible offense I can give to an RPG.

For the context I'm going to give a list of (C)RPGs that I love and that can act as counterexamples to the points below: Planescape Torment, Arcanum, Fallout: New Vegas, Disco Elysium. If you are after a good story and well written characters then you are better off playing these games instead of Baldur's Gate 3.

1) The plot is trivial and unengaging. The main conflict is the basic "good VS evil" type. Sometimes this kind of conflict works but not in this game because it just feels like the game was written by a 9 year old. The game is very incosistent tonally: someone described Baldur's Gate 3 as Disney version of the Saw films which is an obvious exaggeration but still it somewhat clicks with me. Also its pacing is incoherent as well: first act is somewhat eventful, then comes the second act in which bugger all happens (until the end at least) and then the third act distastefully dumps all the remaining plot leaving you with a bitter taste for the overall narrative in general.

2) Still, plot is not why I play RPGs. I'm usually looking for well-written, believable characters in this genre of games. And of course Baldur's Gate 3 fails miserably in this aspect too. The characters lack any nuance, there's no one to sympathize with really. Their backstories are a set of cliches, their current decisions are nonsensical and their reasons for these decisions are always not exposed and explained enough. The only exception is Layzel but then again: she's still somewhat boring to listen to when she has something to say. Overall when you see a character in Baldur's Gate 3 you understand who it is immediately because you saw them a million times already in other games or kinds of media. It also applies to the villains so progressing the plot is even more uninspiring. Further, voice acting is weak at best.

3) On paper, gameplay wise Baldur's Gate 3 is OK. DnD mechanics are interesting despite them not being introduced properly to inexperienced players. I would even say it's somewhat exciting to deduce the rules and interface by yourself. Thanks to that fights feel meaningful at first since you don't really have many action points to spend and you have to think carefully about how you want to act. But after the first act the game gets into a terrible habbit of putting 15+ enemies against your party and this is when you understand that fighting mechanics do not really scale that well. Wait time for your turn can sometimes reach a minute which doesn't sound a lot but it just feels like an eternity. I wish there was a "skip enemy turn, i REALLY don't care" button. Because of that at some point the game just starts to feel like a drag, a miserable work that you have to do in order to finish the plot. And oh I HATE the third act battles with silly challenges (♥♥♥♥ whoever though that "run for the teleporing guy" challenge in undercity is a fun idea), timers and puzzles. These elements are not helping in diversifying the combat, they are just cheap and annoying.

4) Music in this game is very boring, dull and uninspiring. If you want to have a better immersion try turning it off since ambient sounds are actually good. Or better yet turn on a podcast or whatever.

5) And finally: technical execution of Baldur's Gate 3 is a mess. Load times are miserable, perfomance is terrible, it's has got plenty of bugs. The game crashed on me at least 5-6 times. I had all models disappear until full restart twice during my playthrough. Enemies sometimes do not know what to do in a battle so they just stay idle until timeout is due. Pathfinding is annoying and almost always routes my party members through all kinds of traps, poison clouds so usually you have to take control and micromanage your every companion. Sometimes your party members get stuck and will not jump over some obstacle (and it's not about jump length/height constraint, I checked), then you switch to that character only to find all your remaining party jumping back to that stupid idiot so you have to do it all again. Inventory managment is the worst kind of chore (doubly so with a gamepad). And etc, and etc.

Load times are the worst offender for me personally since I dislike the mechanic of rolling dices on reply choices in dialogues so I sometimes had to reload this game 3-4 time in a row sitting there and doing nothing for 3-4 minutes straight. It adds a lot to the overall frustration from the game.

Also it runs poorly on Steam Deck so be aware of that.

All in all, honestly I just don't understand the hype. To me this game feels like a DnD session with 9 year old dungeon master who likes The Avengers films too much. A total waste of time.

Game is great, buy and play it

*BUT* if you are a Linux user be aware that around 25% of the game won't be available to you since final parts require launching a "helper" program that I could not get to run on Steam Deck

Great writing and humor wrapped in a nice and simple RPG

- cliche and overly manipulative writing
- cliche story
- cliche characters
- cliche music
- nondescriptive dialogue options
- socials/political themes that are touched but never explored enough
- nonfunctional and unneeded setting: try to replace androids with people of colored skin, nothing changes. this is especially aggravating as there are so many topics that could be discovered through this setting
- uncanny facial animation
- bad camera work
- character relationship levels (hostile/neutral/close) seem to not matter much

+ choices seem to actually affect the story: i wouldn't say that they "matter" though as the story is equally boring regardless of a path it takes. overall interactivity is the only reason i finished the game -- at least this way i could connect with the characters on the screen and involve myself in the story
+ replayable. albeit i dislike this game a lot i have a small itch to replay it and try different dialogue options
+ graphics are okay
+ game gives you an opportunity to shoot menu android in the face

all in all this is your typical blockbuster melodrama: no depth, no creativity, no nothing except for branching uninspiring story

First 3 hours are very good and the rest is not enjoyable at all

While core gameplay is fun and addicting, technical implementation of the game is far from perfect. Sound engine, game optimization and netcode are bad and they haven't significantly improved since closed beta. You'll need a decent PC to have stable 120 fps, which is basic requirement for a comfortable play. You'll need good headphones to actually understand where your enemy is just by sound cues. And you'll need good nerves to bear all the imperfections of the game, especially netcode.

Despite of that, I give a thumb up to this game in hopes that QC will succeed (and therefore improve) as a game. I believe that technical problems are solvable and it's just a question of developer's interest that may increase with the playerbase gain