So there’s been a lot of controversy on the elkmane official discord server about this game. Is it good, is it bad, is it overrated, is it a masterpiece? Everyone on there’s been putting their two cents in and now it’s time for the big dog to put all the arguments to sleep. Let us begin.
As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.
Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.
Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.
The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.
now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….
The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong
The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.
The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements
As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.
Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.
Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.
The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.
now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….
The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong
The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.
The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements