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Disclaimer: I played the game in Co-op mode so in a sense I did not play through the same game many other people did.
Being the second game I played from Larian studios, the Divinity comparisons were fairly present in my mind through most of my time with this game. In a sense it could be seen as a gigantic step up for the studio. Its more voice acted, has more content, and has better presentation with fully animated cutscenes. Despite all this though, I feel that it falls flat in comparison to Divinity 2.
Most of it is in due to its connection with Dungeons and Dragons. I'm an avid DND player, and I know full well how the DND 5E system is not really well suited for a full fledged game like this. In DND, the combat is a way to solidify imagination into rules while still having a large leeway for creativity. 5E in particular is fairly combat rules lite in order to give space for the bending of those selfsame rules. While you can be very creative in BG3, it doesn't even come close to what you can do in 5E and it leads to combat feeling one note or aimless depending on the encounter. Larian added a lot in order to make the transition from tabletop to video game smoother, such as environmental reactions from Divinity or adding more actions for martials to do, but I still feel that it does not overcome the weaknesses inherent to the system. The final nail in the coffin for me, is that Divinity 2 already did really well in fostering that tabletop combat creativity while also tightly designing it to be played in a video game space. I know due to the nature of what Larian had to do, using this system was unavoidable, but it really does feel like a step back to me.
The story of Baldur's Gate was fairly engaging, but also felt aimless at times. There's so much to do but a lot of the time it really feels like things just 'happen'. It was a problem I also had in Divinity 2, but it felt more pronounced here. Divinity 2 at least had the tight design of Fort Joy with having to escape it, even if it got a lot more muddied as the game went on. A lot of BG3 felt like late Divinity 2 in terms of that to me. I already felt like Divinity 2 was longer than it needed to be, and with BG3 I feel that doubly so.
Overall I enjoyed my time with this game a fair amount, but was just a little disappointed with the cracks in design it would show.
Being the second game I played from Larian studios, the Divinity comparisons were fairly present in my mind through most of my time with this game. In a sense it could be seen as a gigantic step up for the studio. Its more voice acted, has more content, and has better presentation with fully animated cutscenes. Despite all this though, I feel that it falls flat in comparison to Divinity 2.
Most of it is in due to its connection with Dungeons and Dragons. I'm an avid DND player, and I know full well how the DND 5E system is not really well suited for a full fledged game like this. In DND, the combat is a way to solidify imagination into rules while still having a large leeway for creativity. 5E in particular is fairly combat rules lite in order to give space for the bending of those selfsame rules. While you can be very creative in BG3, it doesn't even come close to what you can do in 5E and it leads to combat feeling one note or aimless depending on the encounter. Larian added a lot in order to make the transition from tabletop to video game smoother, such as environmental reactions from Divinity or adding more actions for martials to do, but I still feel that it does not overcome the weaknesses inherent to the system. The final nail in the coffin for me, is that Divinity 2 already did really well in fostering that tabletop combat creativity while also tightly designing it to be played in a video game space. I know due to the nature of what Larian had to do, using this system was unavoidable, but it really does feel like a step back to me.
The story of Baldur's Gate was fairly engaging, but also felt aimless at times. There's so much to do but a lot of the time it really feels like things just 'happen'. It was a problem I also had in Divinity 2, but it felt more pronounced here. Divinity 2 at least had the tight design of Fort Joy with having to escape it, even if it got a lot more muddied as the game went on. A lot of BG3 felt like late Divinity 2 in terms of that to me. I already felt like Divinity 2 was longer than it needed to be, and with BG3 I feel that doubly so.
Overall I enjoyed my time with this game a fair amount, but was just a little disappointed with the cracks in design it would show.