From a technical perspective, this game is astounding. It's extremely difficult to pull off an open world RPG without making every quest and item feel exactly like the one before it (but with slightly higher numbers). But they keep things fresh for the entire journey. Conversation choices and persuasions feel like they matter. The quest log kept things organized without any glitches that I remember. I could stare at the iso-POV graphics forever. Load times were a bear, but after you get your save file going, it doesn't skip a beat.

The battles and gameplay were a joy. This was the first "strip-armor-before-you-can-deal-health-damage-or-status-effects" game for me, which took time to adapt to. But developing strategies that actually worked was extremely rewarding. The game is difficult (even on Normal setting, which I played) but there appear to be lots of viable approaches. Some battles took a few attempts, but I was never stuck.

The game gives you freedom. If you want to kill someone, or an entire city, you can do it if you're tough enough and you can deal with the consequences in terms of quest lines. Steal whatever you want if you don't get caught. If you want to attack something too powerful for you, go for it! There are strategic ways to win these battles sometimes, and it's dopamine city if you do.

The characters are varied and interesting, but nothing that I'd call "deep". The mini- and micro-stories in the world were more compelling than the actual plot, for me. The moderate amount of medieval grit added some spiciness. Battling characters (for example like Kniles and the Witch in the first area) is a blast because of the technical aspects, but never in this game did I really feel any emotional investment, even when it was laid on thick. Not a major issue since the "game" aspects are on point. It's just something that's nice to have in RPGs and story-heavy games.

Bad stuff:
-Inventory and crafting becomes a slog about halfway through, and just gets worse (despite the organization tools).
-Optimizing equipment can be overwhelming (but that just might be my brain, which is susceptible to paralysis through analysis).
-Green tea seems a bit broken, but I didn't find it until the last 3 battles.
-Why can't I haste-run all the time??

Worth the time investment, which is steep.

I don't feel comfortable leaving an actual rating on this one, but I just have to say: this is the game the finally made me realize that traditional CRPGs aren't for me. The crunchy, ultra-tactical combat, the isometric-(ish) perspective, the "BioWare, but actually good" writing, the endless voice acting...these are all things that appeal in theory to me, but every time I sit down to try to play DOS 2, I just get bored and turn it off. Don't get me wrong, this game is a phenomenal example of the genre, and certainly the best one I've ever tried. (I've played the first five hours four times now.) But every time I turn it on, I just want to go run a tabletop game for my friends instead.

The start is always amazing. All those dialogs, gameplay opportunities, burning and blowing shit up, turning Fort Joy into Fort Sad is great.

Alas, for some reason, I lost interest in story around half way through, just like with Original Sin I. I don't know why but one moment I just stopped caring about any character and wanted to eradicate goddamn dwarves.

Nonetheless, the amount of roleplay opportunities is undoubtedly amazing, the race design is just marvelous. But I can't recommend this to anyone as every single fight will be the same, no matter who you are fighting with and the storytelling is dragged-out too much.

I completed the game in duo party, and we both got tired of the game around the end of the second act.

¿Sabéis por qué todos nos alegramos al enterarnos de que Larian se ocupará del desarrollo de Baldur's Gate 3? Porque previamente sacó esta bestialidad de juego. Rol clásico a lo grande, con multitud de ocpiones tanto de diálogo como de desarrollo de personaje, historias interesantes, una banda sonora sin par, un sistema de combate táctico y flexible... ¡Y hasta un modo Dungeon Master para crear tus propias campañas y disfrutar con tus colegas como si de mazmorreo clásico de mesa se tratase! A poco que os gusten los RPG's por turnos, jugadlo, puedo garantizaros que os va a encantar.

LOVED this game for 40 hours, but then stopped playing when I got busy and it's impossible to get back into.

Really hoping I'll pick it up again one day.

Update: tried to pick it up again multiple times. It just gets slow and dull at times. Updated rating 4 --> 3.

its obliqueness is its greatest strength and weakness

70 hours of gameplay and 80 hours of loading

this is a commitment, beware

I played with a mod that allowed permanent running speed and a rebalance to allow 6 characters in (so you can see everyone's story in the same playthrough) and some other small convenience upgrades. With those changes playing was an absolute blast. The writing is so much better than what I'm used to in this genre. Great followup story if you're familiar with the first game, but that knowledge is not necessary to enjoy it (except for a certain npc). Nice art and quite a deep combat system. Great for people that want to try out different things on different party members (especially when you have six members and can try out everything at the same time ^^)

I beat this back when it originally released on PC, but just grabbed the physical re-release on Switch when it came out a couple days ago. I must say, even if isometric real time RPG's aren't something that you're already a fan of you may want to check this one out. Especially on the Switch, because this game runs fantastically on it. I'm honestly impressed. The story is a huge draw for this title, and it's one of the better games I've played in a long time in terms of character development. One thing that has always stood out to me about this game is how the side-quests don't feel directly like side quests. Or maybe a better way of putting it is that they aren't all random fetch fests. It's just a fantastic game and being able to play it on the go while having it still look and play amazing is an absolute treat. This really does qualify as a must play for me if you're into RPG's.

Wish I had the ability to see all my companions in the inventory menu all at once and the ability to multi-select items in the inventory.

Some weird glitch happens where the game skips your character's turn. The game frequently crashes when saving on windows but not Mac.

When the game shuffles characters every turn, it is shit and unbalanced.