I didn't realize how fucked that is in honor mode. I'm out here about to destroy this guy or undead, and I just annihilate the mob. Then all of a sudden my turn just ends and I'm like, wtf? Only to see my guy is dead as well and barely holding on lol.
I can understand some criticisms of the story. It certainly has issues in places. But overall it's very strong (though in saying that I have yet to finish, X-Box player who got right near the end of my first run when my saves got deleted).
It really suffers depending on how you play, if a bunch of reviewers teamed up in multiplayer with 4 tavs rather than bring companions then it becomes imperative you do things in the right order or people will talk about stuff you should know but have never heard (because any companion has dialogue for it except PCs).
A lot of story exposition comes through the lens of the companions.
Eh, that point I can get. I think BG3 has excellent *character dialogue*-writing, but its main story, especially upon launch, withers more as you approach Act III, particularly as the end, without the post-launch epilogue, can feel very anti-climactic. I've seen some people describing it as the worst ending in games since *Mass Effect 3*'s anti-climactic original ending in how it gave no resolution or even epilogue-slides as typical of the cRPG-genre. Like, if you played BG3 upon launch and finished it, you could witness the last scene of Astarion >!as a vampire spawn being just him burning up in the sunlight!<. That is also not including the issues such as the lack of party member reactivity throughout Act III and lack of conclusion regarding Karlach etc.
I actually got the sense of how the ending and approach to the climax felt a bit vapid to me, and while still a good game, due to the finale I still view the game more like an 8/10-experience for me with the epilogue post-launch included. Had I played the game upon launch, it would definitely have scored lower.
I love the writing for the companion quests, but I also felt like the main story lost some steam in Act III, and maybe itâs because they tried to do too much in too little narrative space.
IMO Act II has the best writing, because the in-world lore and minibosses do so much to build up Ketheric as a villain who has completely fucked up his own domain for very human reasons. I liked the main story tie-in to Shadowheartâs personal quest as well.
My main issues with Act III have to do with its villains. Gortash and Orin feel anticlimactic by comparison, when theyâre introduced as Kethericâs peers but wreak havoc on a smaller scale than he does, with more cartoonishly evil motivations. The Netherbrain itself and the cult of the Absolute are a cool fight, but thereâs less emotional weight when youâre fighting this alien embodiment of evil that hasnât had much direct influence on the character stories up to that point. I enjoyed the ending and epilogue, but the most emotionally resonant moments in the game for me were all tied to companion quests I had completed before the final battle.
FWIW I havenât played a full Durge run yet, and Iâve heard Orin and Gortash are more interesting when tied into the Durge lore.
There's an element of fun to it. We all know \~90% of the negative reviews have exactly one problem with the game. But they don't want to say it out loud. So you get to watch them squirm through making up excuses to hate it that don't include the word "gay".
As a person who adores the game and has multiple play throughs, I do think bugs and crashes are a valid criticism. Itâs great that Larian fixes them but some people donât want to have to wait for an update.
But âwon GOTYâ is so salty lmao.
That's weird, I've never crashed there and done about 9 runs. Really strange some bugs hit some and not others. My only bad bug was the act 3 bug after patch 5? Where everything would freeze for several minutes then you could move for 5 seconds then it would freeze again. Made act3 completely unplayable.
Yeah it's weird how things would be running poorly or have crashes for some people, but yet people like me with ~100+ mods have a generally smooth experience. Knock on wood.
I just hit 500 hours today and the only issues I've ever encountered were several performance issues and resulting glitches when I faced the very final boss for the first time like \~10 days after launch. I've done it three more times since then without issue. And I had a single crash while fighting Grymm in my honor run. Which nearly gave me a heartattack but nothing bad happened, a restart worked fine.
Edit: Actually, I lied. I also had an issue with Gale having an endless aura of death. However, killing him proper and withersing him worked to resolve that.
I have yet to experiance a crash in CP2077, or here. Closest I got to a bug was some Astarion doing his best Linda Blair neck turning in a cinematic, and that was like run 3. My PC did crash today, but it was on worms WMD when me and my kid decided "this is where a super banana goes. On top of these 34 worms". So knock on wood, im in the lucky park.
The only recurring crash I got was the >!Cazador!< fight at the end of Astarion's questline. That one thankfully had a straightforward workaround- namely switching between the DX12/Vulkan render options.
Interesting that one of my bigger gripes(inventory management) doesn't even show up.
The it's boring crowd really bugs me cause its usually people who don't like turn based combat which really makes me go "why the fuck did you even buy the game"
Totally. And Act 3 issues is/was valid. And to some degree I think âslowâ is a valid criticism. It is slow, which I enjoy, but I totally see how someone else wouldnât.
I'm not sure if the reviews are only for the pc version, but I'm playing on PS5, a machine marketed as having extremely low loading times and I get 30-40s loading times each time I load a save (and I do it a lot).
I fucking love the game, but it is slow as fuck from this regard on PS5
My husband and I have the same computer and he nonstop crashes and I have zero issues. Act 3 in particular he can play a max of 20 minutes before he crashes normally less. So you're not alone.
I would say that crashes and bugs are a very valid criticism. I played at launch and despite many years of early access I had game breaking bugs. I had to replay hours of content because something broke my save, companions not joining the party anymore, full crashes to desktop, FPS dropping to 15, quests not being finishable, etc... I don't mind graphic bugs or small things but my partner had so many bugs that he couldn't finish the game. To me that was the main issue with my experience.
In my first play though I experienced a bug that made it impossible for me to remove the shadow curse and recruit Halsin. It almost soured my entire experience but I am so glad I kept playing.
For it to be a dealbreaker for other players is understandable.
I just bought bg3 a few weeks ago (late to the party I know) and the number of weird bugs I encountered was both amusing and frustrating. Most of them were just quirky graphic glitches (my favorite was when I went into a new area, every NPC model would spawn in a T pose, and then snap into position when I approached them... Extra funny if they turned out to be corpses) so I pushed through.
A few days later virtually every bug was gone and the game ran smoothly. I don't know what the hell Larian is doing behind the scenes but it seems to be working.
Edit: another one that had me actually laughing out loud... During the cut scene when you encounter the mob of angry Tieflings being blocked off by the druids, one of them turns into a bear to intimidate the mob... Except in my game he just made a bunch of magic particle effects and posed like a bear without actually changing.
"it's woke/political" is also salty and though it's a small sample size of answers (I'm sure more dickheads were brigading at launch) it's heartening to see it's such a small portion of the answers. Those types of people really are a loud minority.
idk if im just lucky, or its because i havent really spent too much time in act 3, despite having 400 hours in the game, but i have crashed exactly 1 time, and have had no other notable bugs or glitches
And I'd accept that some elements of the story are kind of weak. But there is absolutely no way the story is overall bad or poorly written. If you consistently have a problem with the story - the issue is probably how you're playing the game. Because its an RPG and if the story for your character isn't working out, go back and RP someone else.
I was lucky that my game only started crashing in act 3, by which time I was so engrossed by it that I had to see it through (had to do the post high hall fight 5 times because of crashes, house of grief 3 times and house of hope twice). It was definitely annoying, but the nightsong and Ansur scenes more than made up for that. It might be my favorite game of all time despite the bugs.
It's supposed to be the same massive complex. That's why the Nere and the duergar are looking for the Nightsong there. They know she's in the temple, but don't know about the secret passage through the Thorm mausoleum. The broken walls where "something big" entered the Grymforge and attacked the Justiciars? That was Yurgir.
I'm pretty confident it is. Hard to describe "the right angle" but in the back there was a statue and its chamber looking really similar to the one in the Gauntlet.
If you zoom waaaay the fuck out just before triggering it you can see it cross the screen, but that's the only way lol. Otherwise it's ridiculous that everyone is yelling and cowering while you're wondering wtf happened
Yep. I think they wanted to get that âisometric lookâ from the original BG games, but essentially just limited something that didnât need to be limited.
If you happen to have PC theres a nice mod that changes this so you can easily readjust the camera wherever you want, even over the shoulder. Pairs super well with the WASD movement mod
I hate how on console, moving the right stick to move the camera can cause it to both elevate and zoom out at the same time when I only want it to do one of those things. Sometimes I move the camera 90Âş to get a better look at a fight and it zooms to a whole other side of the map and I get a black screen while it repositions itself. 95% of the time it works how you want but that other 5% is kinda rough.
If I had a dollar for every time I got opportunity attacked on my ranger because the camera snapped across the field after my first shot was fired and I tried to click again for a second shot only to click the ground during the camera jerk...
The camera is my biggest issue, and 90% of that is that there's no way to move it up and down. It can be a giant pain in the ass to target enemies above you, or to navigate to a place above you that the camera is intent on peering through.
The complaint is almost ALWAYS a guy complaining about Wyll or Gale scenes.
And theyâll pretend like they just donât like âforced romanceâ or that itâs âunrealisticâ or something.
Yet Curiously. Nobody throws a fit about how unrealistic it is to be hit on by a bunch of hot ladies.
To be fair, Iâm a guy and I hate the Wyll and Gale scenes. Canât I just tell them âsorry not into guysâ instead of âI donât find you attractiveâ? Watching wyll walk away all dejected is always the saddest part of the game.
It seems like an intentional worldbuilding choice that they don't seem to have terminology for "gay" and "straight". Turning down guys just because you're not into guys is like the same as turning them down because you're not into elves or older people or redheads, it's something that doesn't necessarily need to be stated specifically as the reason you've turned someone down because sexual orientation as a core part of one's identity is a non-concept in the setting
Also to be fair, you're not into guys because you don't find them attractive. The rejection is basically the same thing either way, and anyone getting turned down by their crush is gonna feel dejected. It's just literally everyone has a crush on you.
The real issue is that all positive feelings in the game lead to romance. This makes it tough to just be friends with any of the characters, even if you lead the relationship with zero romantic interactions.
This is an issue with many of these types of RPGs, where the ultimate goal is a sexual relationship.
Almost 60 years, actually. Ed Greenwood said on his YouTube channel that Forgotten Realms started in 1965, although not initially as a D&D setting, obviously.
That one makes sense in that if you're brand new to the concept the Underdark isn't explained at all. Neither are the gith or mindflayers. 3 people in my discord killed Lae'zel and all the gith "cause they're rude" and didn't understand that Gods were real in the universe.
âDidnât understand the gods were realâ
Meanwhile:
âHello Iâm Gale of Waterdeep. The most important thing that happened in my life is I slept with a godâ
???
I can sort of understand it if you're coming in with no previous knowledge of anything D&D the game is pretty narrow in what information it gives you about the overall setting and a lot of the extra things that you can find out are easily missed by being out of the way, behind history checks, or are casual one offs in conversations that can also be missed.
I kind of understand that one to an extent. The lore in BG3 really isnât immediate like it might be in other games. It wasnât until making a character after my dumbass bard main character that I realized I basically missed all the lore for History/Arcana checks my entire first playthrough lol.
i disagree. there is a lot you can miss, yes, but it is there. i had not played dnd before at all, so i knew nothing about the setting other than the common fantasy tropes (ex: elves live long and hate orcs) but i still managed to understand what was going on thanks to the lore snips you get from random narrator lines and books you read.
One big part that makes Metacritic less viable than Steam, which shows the hours played. A Steamcritic of someone with 0,1 hours logged is worthless.
Who knows how many of those are salty Zelda or Spider-Man fans who are mad they didnât get GOTY.
There was also a small but vocal minority of lunatics who hate the game cuz it's "too woke" and I wouldn't put it past those people to brigade a game with negative reviews. Like ones claiming bad writing, as is the *top* value on the OPs chart.
yea like it even starts out with a cinematic that literally makes you skin curl. by the time you're off that ship all you wanna do is not be a fucking mindflayer omfg. then you actually get hit with the GOOD writing. anyone claiming that's why they hated bg3, as a #1 concern (over being boring which i could actually see) is probably someone salty over something else. like writing is a problem cause of dame aylin and isobel or something. 'writing.'
yeah it's kinda easy to call anything you don't like 'bad writing'
i think some things in this game are overrated but compared to most other games the writing is quite good
a lot of people will just think anything that isn't their own personal power fantasy is 'bad writing'
>Who knows how many of those are salty Zelda or Spider-Man fans who are mad they didnât get GOTY.
Taking into account the story/writing is the main complaint, it's VERY obvious that most of those are salty fanboys.
I think it's far more likely to be anti-LGBTQ folks who hate the game based on story, or just generally sexually repressed prudes, than salty faboys. Salty fanboys are the "it's boring", "it's turn based", "it won't GOTY" crowd.
Some of these I fully get. Like bugs / crashes suck. Hell that's the reason that, despite all the good parts, I will never touch another Owlcat game after Kingmaker. It was like a 50/50 chance of crashing any time the game loaded.
But "bad voice acting"? "Bad character customization"? "Bad graphics"? What fucking game have THEY been playing? Because it sure as hell wasn't BG3.
In all fairness, I have my fair share of complaints with the character customisation. Almost all the male heads are just "square chin, steely eyes, large-ish nose, big cheek bones". It's kinda irritating that the only races with younger-looking male heads are half-elf and Githyanki
The character customization is super limited compared to the majority of games in the genre. Even older game like Skyrim or Mass Effect gives you better character customization, and don't even get me started on the likes of Dragon's Dogma or Wild Hearts.
Bad character customization is 100% legitimate though honestly. The appearance settings are pretty bad, only 2 body types of either small or bulky and even then the bulky setting causes it to look funny on some races. Voice options are dreadful for anything other than Human/Elf/Half Elf.
I'd actually say that Dragonborn have rhe best customization options since what you can do with their scales and eye color looks visually amazing but then you are stuck with a humans voice so it never feels cohesive
Character customisation (which very likely means appearance customisation) is *very* limited in BG3 compared to many other RPGs. The only things it did well was giving you the vitiligo slider and the number of colour options you had for almost everything. Pretty much everything else is lacking when you compare to other RPGs. The most egregious is how customising all aspects of your face is limited to a handful of heads, whereas in Fallout 4, Starfield, Cyberpunk, et al you get those preset head shapes but can then go on and customise literally everything about them. I genuinely usually spend at least a couple of hours in those character creation screens, but in BG3 I was done in a few minutes because of how limited the face options are.
There's a reason why the majority of the most popular mods on Nexus are new heads, hair, and makeup.
I understand where the reviews are coming from, even though they seem to be on two opposite ends of the spectrum. Low difficulty in terms of the battle. High difficulty as when it comes to the whole setup and steep learning curve, CRPGs are no joke. They're known as the nerdy folks' game, and for good reason.
So, obviously different people making either complaint aside, I kinda get it? Balance was one of the only things I could really complain about in BG3, all the fights were either really easy or just peaked into *much* higher difficulty out of nowhere.
I understand people having issues with the technical aspects of Act 3 and Iâm surprised itâs not on top of the list⌠these, countless sound bugs and major camera issues for a few fights on multiple layers are my only gripes with the game but I can understand that it can seriously sour someoneâs enjoyment!
The fight in the fireworks shop broke my brain it was so poorly optimzied fighting across 3 stories. Arrows shooting through the floor, camera stuck in the invisible ceilings. That was pretty bad.
I personally just opt for standing on the roof across the street and lobbing a fireball through the opening. Usually only leaves me with 2 or 3 stragglers.
I found I couldn't attack goblins at the camp because the game registered the doors as closed. Then when it was the goblins turn I found out it only registered one side as closed and the other as open, so the battle was literally opening and closing the door 12 tunes a turn.
I don't get why some of those people posting negative reviews think being turn-based automatically makes a game bad. I mean, it's not for everyone, but you should at least *know what you're getting into before buying it*, right?
The most charitable guess I can make is that they see it as a departure from the Baldur's Gate tradition, which it is, but to me that's not inherently a bad thing. Sometimes you do that and it works, like in Grand Theft Auto or God of War.
The thing is, the Baldurâs Gate tradition is just how BioWare makes their games. Mass Effect, TOR, etc were all D20 based games but the turns were âhiddenâ since the action didnât stop.
BG3 is how Larian approaches turn based games, and itâs *far* more in line with how D&D is structured. D&D is tactical, and that means taking time to figure out your next move.
Not saying that youâre making a case either way, just pointing out the differences if other folks donât know how they differ.
I feel like the complaint about the story/writing being bad is valid if you consider the main storyline only. In a hypothetical situation where a person would only play the main story and skip everything else, then yeah the story is a bit boring. It's a "zero to hero" story with some (predictable) twists sprinkled all over. This is not counting the lore contradictions or things that wouldn't normally make sense.
Character stories and side quests kind of alleviate this issue, but if you end up being one of the unlucky ones whose favorite character is Wyll or Karlach or Halsin then yeah I don't blame you if you think the story is bad.
Also this is something many people have noticed on twitter but Larian tends to take fandom seriously. Maybe too seriously. There have been many instances where Larian abruptly changed things that didn't need to be changed just because the fandom liked these changes better. Don't get me wrong, listening to the fans is great but devs should also know when to put their foot down and say no.
Third chapter is pretty rushed from a storytelling point. First two chapters were pretty well written, but there's so much missed potential in the 3rd.
Honestly I think story and writing criticism can always be fine. These reviews are based on their experiences and opinions and there's no such thing as a story that everyone will feel is good.Â
Though I do think people probably use it as a shield for less valid criticism like "Too woke"
Iâm finishing up a campaign of 4 Tavs. I have literally ignored or killed every companion to just play as my party of 4 Tavs.
So you only do the Tadpole story. Itâs not bad, but itâs absolutely nothing special. Youâre right.
Iâm now playing with companions and they definitely add a lot of flavor to the main story.
Iâd be interested to know how many of the ânudity/sexâ group were turned off by the lgbt elements vs. how many are just prudish because either the anti-woke crowd is doing more productive things with their lives or theyâre hiding it behind some other thinly veiled excuse
I suspect that it has to do with most of the 'woke' elements of the game being mostly optional and not replacing anything already existing.
Its not like they revealed that Jaheira was a trans woman all along, gave Sarevok his coming out as gay moment, turned Minsc into a black woman and forced Tav to be queer.Â
Yes you can play your Tav with any sex and gender identity you want but its just an option in character creation, it doesn't affect the game on any way.
Its also not a preachy game, save minor references to racism (via the tieflings). In fact a great number of characters are unapologetically selfish and don't give a shit about 'social justice' or any form of justice really ..
Which is why people dont mind. The game really allows you to play however you want.
I think youâre totally right. The game is neither as woke as the haters claim nor as progressive as the stans claim. The âopt inâ model of queer content is a pretty standard approach for RPGs these days specifically because it (at least attempts) to appease everyone and offend no one.
"minor references"
Girl, there's a lot of references to racism lmao. Gnomes, halflings, tieflings, and others all have some rather unsavoury things said and done to them. The anti-refugee stuff was pure xenophobia in Rivington/Lower city.
Playing devils advocate, I can understand why âbad story/writingâ is up at the top, but for me thatâs mainly from some disappointing late game quests. Most of these ppl probably gave up in Act 1 though where the game keeps a lot of stuff hidden from you, so maybe they werenât patient enough for answers.
My biggest beef with the writing is that it's usually painfully obvious when someone is evil or nefarious.  There's not many NPCs with good deception.
There have been several moments so far, I am up into Act 2, where a conclusion by an npc was very hand-wavy.
A quick example is a character just knowing that I am someone they are seeking without any events Iâve witnessed explaining why they may assume I am who they seek. After the fact, I found a note that says I am who they are after. That feels like something was intended to be there, but it was removed and replaced by a note to explain it.
As a whole I canât judge anything since I havenât finished it, but this game definitely feels to me like it fully deserves all of itâs awards.
I think a lot of the 'bad writing' impressions come from the tonal shift between the 'triumphant victory and walk into the sunset' Act II and the 'back to mundane shit until suddenly the city is in ruin' Act III.
The final act of a drama is supposed to be where you tie up the loose ends and wrap up the story. Instead, we lose momentum when we should be gaining it. We can spend days on end doing side content when there is supposed to be an emergency. As of now, Act III feels disjointed and contrived.
-----
There are also gaping plot holes which I believe are due to the late addition of that insufferable meddler, the 'emperor'. Not to mention the weak antagonists we're saddled with in Act III; Gortash could have been more interesting if they had delved deeper into his backstory. But the Bhaal reject? Ye gods what a waste!
I mean it kinda justifies its file size by the fact itâs just a really big game with a lot of high res assets. There are games that do not justify their giant file size but I feel like BG3 does
Many of these are valid cricisim. Bad writing/story is even valid, even if I disagree. Some of these are so funny though. Nobody is forcing you to fuck these characters dawg.
Some of these are simply not valid, âyeah this game that takes place in the dnd 5e world wasnât good bc I donât like dnd 5eâ
Like tell me you didnât play the game and just wanted to be a hater without telling me
Edited to add: âitâs woke/politicalâ oh how dare gay people exist!!!!
And for the record I thought the Sharran and Gith politics were really cool
I disagree with a lot of these and find some other utterly ridiculous but the cake is bad voice acting, wtf. Astarion is my favorite character voice acring-wise across all games.
It's probably not a popular take, but as a pretty casual player, I would like an auto level option for support characters. Mass Effect had this option, and I felt like it allowed me to focus on the build mechanics of a single class type instead of trying to juggle the upgrades of 3 or 4 class types and failing miserably to optimize any of them.
All of your companions are Tav-sexual and you can customize your character to use they/them pronouns and have both breasts and a penis.
These are player choices, mind. You could play He-Man McHetero, the white human male barbarian and turn down every companion except your future farm wife Shadowheart, but some people see allowing a choice at all as a political statement.
Itâs like the people saying that BG3 is bad just because of the romance scene with halsin in bear form. Theyâre only looking for bad excuses to justify disliking the game
Not gonna lie that Halsin scene is the first thing I ever heard about the game. I donât even like Halsin as a companion but I got the game just so I can support such a funny thing. Hell I canât even play it yet because I only have my old computer. I just want the devs to keep on making masterpieces of possibilities that are as cringey funny as this
You're misunderstanding - bigots do not like queer people or intersex people having the choice to be that in-game, that hurts their bigoted feefees.
They literally want intersex and queer people to not exist, period. That's why they hate it being in the game - they don't see us as equals or people, but beings of sin and debauchery who need to be stopped and sealed away into closets.
Queer ppl and PoC exist in the game world. Thats what most ppl mean when they say âwokeâ. Thats literally it, people are offended at seeing the same things that exist in the real world reflected in media.
I saw some man-child on steam complaining about the amount of cats in the game. This allegedly means men are somehow losing to women. People are fucked in the head.
Then they shouldnât play it? But hey, if thatâs their biggest issue then maybe they shouldnât play a game with character appearance customization. Maybe MarioKart, hollow knight, or legend of zelda
That's missing the point of the woke panic.
Going to a different game isn't enough, they need to erase every single reference of queer people/people of color from every single piece of media that exists.
They're already doing the exact same thing with public education and libraries.
UI/UX in this game IS awful. Controls, layouts, interaction scenarios... Like half of it is literal nonsense in this game. I could go over stupid and incompetent choices in this aspect of design in game for hours with examples, better/more sensible ways to do things and all.
I have a ton of hours in the game (well over 1000 hours), beaten it several times (including solo honour mode) and incompetent UX design is the biggest complaint I have about the game, followed by it being buggy mess with a lot of tons and abilities outright not working or being inconsistent with descriptions that are supposed to be informative rule text.
Just as quick examples from top of my head that most of you likely had to deal with:
\- "Sell all wares" button does nothing if vendor has not enough gold for it all. Someone extremely competent, somewhere, decided that it's absolutely a legit scenario that player comes with a lot of stuff to sell and instead of selling as much as possible want to sell nothing if there is not enough gold on vendor. Oh, and don't get me started on inventory jumping while selling stuff from bottom of your inventory one-by-one...
\- Camera centering after every action, and controls being already active while it happens. There are a lot of stupid options for camera, but this specific one can't be disabled. You want to shoot someone twice? Good. You aim, shoot once, wait for animation to be over without moving the mouse, see icon change to attack, click... Oh, in the moment before icon changed and you clicked, camera started centering on you and now you clicked character to move. Same happens with trying to attack after jumping animation ends. You click to attack, but camera centers right before that and now you are running away from enemy you jumped towards, getting an opportunity attack. Just delaying the icon change / enabling controls AFTER camera centers would already make it better, but the toggle for this behavior would be even better.
\- If you are playing versatile caster class (like spore druid) or multiclassing, your options don't fit onto hotbar. Cmon, making it wider or making 5 or 6 lines possible would not kill anyone.
\- For some stupid reason displaying how much character would move when you are aiming was too bright of an idea for devs. They only recently added "provokes an opportunity attack" tip to the cursor, but still often when you aim at something sidtant you can't see your character and whether it would stay in place or step into stupid poison / approach enemy next to it / waste movement otherwise. Just, like, give me "5m" text next to my aiming cursor, and I will know that character is NOT able to shoot/cast from the point where it's standing even if it's not on camera. Is that too much?
\- For bunch of concentration spells (Moonbeam and Cloudkill as obvious examples) there's literally no way to tell how many turns of concentration are left. Every place you can see shows the total duration of a spell. Oh, and "You are already concentrating on X, this action will override your concentration" prompt is too much to ask for it seems.
\- Camera controls and aiming in multi-story buildings. Do I really have to elaborate at all?
This is not "nitpicking", these small thing build up into horrible experience, and most of these things get ESPECIALLY frustating when you are playing challenge runs where simple mistake caused by UI and not your situation assessment/decision making can ruin the run. The working part of the game is insanely good. But working part of the game is not the only part of it. There is a reason there's a ton of UI improvement mods for the game. Most of those should be part of actual game and not something you have to get on the side and pray it does not break with the next patch.
The camera is the only problem. Sucks when youâre in a small room and need to get to an enemy to click on and the camera goes up the wall or some dumb shit.
I love the game to death, but act 3 turned the game from a 10/10, genuinely, to a 4/10. Never have I experienced so many game-breaking, quest-breaking, soft-locking issues.
I didn't mind the poor fps or the graphical glitches, but losing 5 hours because a quest bricked, or doing surgery trying to unfuck some bug was probably one of the worst gaming experienced I've had, especially because act 1 and 2 were so godamned good, it felt like the game had some memory leak that just started melting the game in act 3.
Neither Gale or Astarion's quests were completable, Karlach's romance was broken, several quests (Saving gondorians, going to the factory, dealing with the witch and a few more) would bug out halfway through, forcing me to restart a previous save.
I love the game, I'm currently playing it, replaying it for the 3rd time. But that first time left such an awful taste in my mouth it's not until now I've come back to play it.
I even think I left a negative review on launch, now changed into positive.
the only criticism i have is:
auto save is horrible, you should be able to change the frequency of autosaves.
fights with alot of actors get really boring since you can't skip to your turn.
the problems I've encountered:
My game crashed a total of one time, and it was right after the flight with baltazaar, which was kinda pain.
I got stuck once, simply returned to camp.
first time meeting omeluum(?) The guy in the underdark who offers a cure, he was invisible, which i found kinda funny
>I read 100 negative Metacritic reviews Did you lose a bet with Raphael?
I just like reading them for fun because I find so many of them amusing.
Plot twist OP IS Raphael
Oh shit, I hope they do the claws rap
Hope? Such a tease.
Nah, if OP starts dropping bars, we'll need a Metacritic review for the rap alone.
Radiant retort!
I didn't realize how fucked that is in honor mode. I'm out here about to destroy this guy or undead, and I just annihilate the mob. Then all of a sudden my turn just ends and I'm like, wtf? Only to see my guy is dead as well and barely holding on lol.
This is easy to find out. Just start to sing the female part of his song and if he knows the lyrics to Raphaels parts it is him.
SOULSSSSSSSSS....ALL MORTAL SOULSSSS.....
LIIIIIVES, ALL MORTAL LIIIIIVES
EXPIRE, SOULS GO TO THEIR DOOMS IN FLAME FOREVER MORE
Hell hell, hell has it laws
Hell Hell, Effect and the cause
Curtain falls, but hold your applause
Squirm, squirm, for now down here come the claws !đŚ
HELLS, HELLS, EFFECT AND THE CAUSE
That's a bad twist and I'm voting this a negative review for bad story/writing
True. Sometimes you can see that people are full of shit.
Hell, Hell, a hundred reviews Hell, Hell, I had to peruse
DOWN COMES THE BLOG
Bad story?? I may be new to baldurs gate in general but BG3 has a great story
I can understand some criticisms of the story. It certainly has issues in places. But overall it's very strong (though in saying that I have yet to finish, X-Box player who got right near the end of my first run when my saves got deleted).
It takes a turn for the worse right at the end when Baldur wakes up in bed at home and it turns out the events of the game were all just a dream.
It really suffers depending on how you play, if a bunch of reviewers teamed up in multiplayer with 4 tavs rather than bring companions then it becomes imperative you do things in the right order or people will talk about stuff you should know but have never heard (because any companion has dialogue for it except PCs). A lot of story exposition comes through the lens of the companions.
Eh, that point I can get. I think BG3 has excellent *character dialogue*-writing, but its main story, especially upon launch, withers more as you approach Act III, particularly as the end, without the post-launch epilogue, can feel very anti-climactic. I've seen some people describing it as the worst ending in games since *Mass Effect 3*'s anti-climactic original ending in how it gave no resolution or even epilogue-slides as typical of the cRPG-genre. Like, if you played BG3 upon launch and finished it, you could witness the last scene of Astarion >!as a vampire spawn being just him burning up in the sunlight!<. That is also not including the issues such as the lack of party member reactivity throughout Act III and lack of conclusion regarding Karlach etc. I actually got the sense of how the ending and approach to the climax felt a bit vapid to me, and while still a good game, due to the finale I still view the game more like an 8/10-experience for me with the epilogue post-launch included. Had I played the game upon launch, it would definitely have scored lower.
I love the writing for the companion quests, but I also felt like the main story lost some steam in Act III, and maybe itâs because they tried to do too much in too little narrative space. IMO Act II has the best writing, because the in-world lore and minibosses do so much to build up Ketheric as a villain who has completely fucked up his own domain for very human reasons. I liked the main story tie-in to Shadowheartâs personal quest as well. My main issues with Act III have to do with its villains. Gortash and Orin feel anticlimactic by comparison, when theyâre introduced as Kethericâs peers but wreak havoc on a smaller scale than he does, with more cartoonishly evil motivations. The Netherbrain itself and the cult of the Absolute are a cool fight, but thereâs less emotional weight when youâre fighting this alien embodiment of evil that hasnât had much direct influence on the character stories up to that point. I enjoyed the ending and epilogue, but the most emotionally resonant moments in the game for me were all tied to companion quests I had completed before the final battle. FWIW I havenât played a full Durge run yet, and Iâve heard Orin and Gortash are more interesting when tied into the Durge lore.
There's an element of fun to it. We all know \~90% of the negative reviews have exactly one problem with the game. But they don't want to say it out loud. So you get to watch them squirm through making up excuses to hate it that don't include the word "gay".
I fucked a squid the story is bad! /S
Yeah, like I fucked a squid too, but what's that gotta do with the game?
-Deep Thoughts With The Deep
âDonât forget racist!â - Wyll âYeah, for sure donât forget that. These people can be just fucking deplorable.â - Mizora
As a person who adores the game and has multiple play throughs, I do think bugs and crashes are a valid criticism. Itâs great that Larian fixes them but some people donât want to have to wait for an update. But âwon GOTYâ is so salty lmao.
the one crash i frequently get is the skeleton fight before withers, still don't know what triggers it, but I got like 10 crashes in total there
That's weird, I've never crashed there and done about 9 runs. Really strange some bugs hit some and not others. My only bad bug was the act 3 bug after patch 5? Where everything would freeze for several minutes then you could move for 5 seconds then it would freeze again. Made act3 completely unplayable.
Yeah it's weird how things would be running poorly or have crashes for some people, but yet people like me with ~100+ mods have a generally smooth experience. Knock on wood.
I just hit 500 hours today and the only issues I've ever encountered were several performance issues and resulting glitches when I faced the very final boss for the first time like \~10 days after launch. I've done it three more times since then without issue. And I had a single crash while fighting Grymm in my honor run. Which nearly gave me a heartattack but nothing bad happened, a restart worked fine. Edit: Actually, I lied. I also had an issue with Gale having an endless aura of death. However, killing him proper and withersing him worked to resolve that.
I have yet to experiance a crash in CP2077, or here. Closest I got to a bug was some Astarion doing his best Linda Blair neck turning in a cinematic, and that was like run 3. My PC did crash today, but it was on worms WMD when me and my kid decided "this is where a super banana goes. On top of these 34 worms". So knock on wood, im in the lucky park.
The only recurring crash I got was the >!Cazador!< fight at the end of Astarion's questline. That one thankfully had a straightforward workaround- namely switching between the DX12/Vulkan render options. Interesting that one of my bigger gripes(inventory management) doesn't even show up.
The it's boring crowd really bugs me cause its usually people who don't like turn based combat which really makes me go "why the fuck did you even buy the game"
lol ya same with the âRNG dice roll badâ people What game did you think you were buying
Yeah, the turn based criticism confuses me. It is very up front about being turn basedâŚso donât buy it if you canât cope with that.
I said just yesterday how much I love that it's turn based because I can just get up and pee or eat and come back and not be dead.
Itâs one of those ânot for meâ opinions that is automatically misattributed to âobjectively bad gameâ.
Totally. And Act 3 issues is/was valid. And to some degree I think âslowâ is a valid criticism. It is slow, which I enjoy, but I totally see how someone else wouldnât.
I'm not sure if the reviews are only for the pc version, but I'm playing on PS5, a machine marketed as having extremely low loading times and I get 30-40s loading times each time I load a save (and I do it a lot). I fucking love the game, but it is slow as fuck from this regard on PS5
My wife and I have the same computer. Her game crashes after about 20 minutes in average. Meanwhile I can play endlessly.
She just plays more adventurously than you
My husband and I have the same computer and he nonstop crashes and I have zero issues. Act 3 in particular he can play a max of 20 minutes before he crashes normally less. So you're not alone.
I would say that crashes and bugs are a very valid criticism. I played at launch and despite many years of early access I had game breaking bugs. I had to replay hours of content because something broke my save, companions not joining the party anymore, full crashes to desktop, FPS dropping to 15, quests not being finishable, etc... I don't mind graphic bugs or small things but my partner had so many bugs that he couldn't finish the game. To me that was the main issue with my experience.
In my first play though I experienced a bug that made it impossible for me to remove the shadow curse and recruit Halsin. It almost soured my entire experience but I am so glad I kept playing. For it to be a dealbreaker for other players is understandable.
I couldn't finish my first playthrough for a good time because act 3 lagged so badly it was unplayable. Really glad that's fixed now.
I just bought bg3 a few weeks ago (late to the party I know) and the number of weird bugs I encountered was both amusing and frustrating. Most of them were just quirky graphic glitches (my favorite was when I went into a new area, every NPC model would spawn in a T pose, and then snap into position when I approached them... Extra funny if they turned out to be corpses) so I pushed through. A few days later virtually every bug was gone and the game ran smoothly. I don't know what the hell Larian is doing behind the scenes but it seems to be working. Edit: another one that had me actually laughing out loud... During the cut scene when you encounter the mob of angry Tieflings being blocked off by the druids, one of them turns into a bear to intimidate the mob... Except in my game he just made a bunch of magic particle effects and posed like a bear without actually changing.
Shield bash isn't working since forever xD and the flickering blood is so annoying
"it's woke/political" is also salty and though it's a small sample size of answers (I'm sure more dickheads were brigading at launch) it's heartening to see it's such a small portion of the answers. Those types of people really are a loud minority.
idk if im just lucky, or its because i havent really spent too much time in act 3, despite having 400 hours in the game, but i have crashed exactly 1 time, and have had no other notable bugs or glitches
And I'd accept that some elements of the story are kind of weak. But there is absolutely no way the story is overall bad or poorly written. If you consistently have a problem with the story - the issue is probably how you're playing the game. Because its an RPG and if the story for your character isn't working out, go back and RP someone else.
I was lucky that my game only started crashing in act 3, by which time I was so engrossed by it that I had to see it through (had to do the post high hall fight 5 times because of crashes, house of grief 3 times and house of hope twice). It was definitely annoying, but the nightsong and Ansur scenes more than made up for that. It might be my favorite game of all time despite the bugs.
Yeah, bad camera I can see it, I loved the game but the camera isn't exactly smooth
It feels a bit of a shame that the devs put so much work into the environments just for them to be obscured by bad camera angles.
I would love to be able to look up!
Itd be cool to see the Grymforge from the Gauntlet of Shar. I know you can see the latter from the former in Act 1.
You sure? I wondered but I figured it could be a continuation of the Sharran complex you are in.
It's supposed to be the same massive complex. That's why the Nere and the duergar are looking for the Nightsong there. They know she's in the temple, but don't know about the secret passage through the Thorm mausoleum. The broken walls where "something big" entered the Grymforge and attacked the Justiciars? That was Yurgir.
Which is funny because Yurgir isnât nearly as big as the conversation with that Duergar would lead you to believe. Itâs kind of a letdown.
It made me think he blew 99% of his supplies on that raid and that I was lucky to be fighting him after he had used most of them up.
OHHHhhhhhhh⌠yeah not sure how I didnât put that together, thanks!
I'm pretty confident it is. Hard to describe "the right angle" but in the back there was a statue and its chamber looking really similar to the one in the Gauntlet.
I love the option for "clouds" in video settings. WTF what clouds? I can't even see the fucking dragon flying to the bridge in act 1.
If you zoom waaaay the fuck out just before triggering it you can see it cross the screen, but that's the only way lol. Otherwise it's ridiculous that everyone is yelling and cowering while you're wondering wtf happened
Yep. I think they wanted to get that âisometric lookâ from the original BG games, but essentially just limited something that didnât need to be limited.
If you happen to have PC theres a nice mod that changes this so you can easily readjust the camera wherever you want, even over the shoulder. Pairs super well with the WASD movement mod
Nothing like passing a perception check and not being able to see where or what was discovered
"That looks interesting..." Yeah I bet it does. Sure would be nice if I could say the same.
I hate how on console, moving the right stick to move the camera can cause it to both elevate and zoom out at the same time when I only want it to do one of those things. Sometimes I move the camera 90Âş to get a better look at a fight and it zooms to a whole other side of the map and I get a black screen while it repositions itself. 95% of the time it works how you want but that other 5% is kinda rough.
Or when you perform a kill and rather then show an epic killcam shot you get a zooming of the ground.
If I had a dollar for every time I got opportunity attacked on my ranger because the camera snapped across the field after my first shot was fired and I tried to click again for a second shot only to click the ground during the camera jerk...
I love it when an enemy attacks and, instead of showing it to me, the camera zooms back to a completely random npc 500 metres away.
The native camera tweak and wasd mods are a must for me.
The camera is my biggest issue, and 90% of that is that there's no way to move it up and down. It can be a giant pain in the ass to target enemies above you, or to navigate to a place above you that the camera is intent on peering through.
"These characters have sex. That is extremely unrealistic!" (my favorite complaints)
People keep coming on to me. Extremely unrealistic. 0/10
The complaint is almost ALWAYS a guy complaining about Wyll or Gale scenes. And theyâll pretend like they just donât like âforced romanceâ or that itâs âunrealisticâ or something. Yet Curiously. Nobody throws a fit about how unrealistic it is to be hit on by a bunch of hot ladies.
To be fair, Iâm a guy and I hate the Wyll and Gale scenes. Canât I just tell them âsorry not into guysâ instead of âI donât find you attractiveâ? Watching wyll walk away all dejected is always the saddest part of the game.
It seems like an intentional worldbuilding choice that they don't seem to have terminology for "gay" and "straight". Turning down guys just because you're not into guys is like the same as turning them down because you're not into elves or older people or redheads, it's something that doesn't necessarily need to be stated specifically as the reason you've turned someone down because sexual orientation as a core part of one's identity is a non-concept in the setting
Also to be fair, you're not into guys because you don't find them attractive. The rejection is basically the same thing either way, and anyone getting turned down by their crush is gonna feel dejected. It's just literally everyone has a crush on you.
Telling someone it wont happen because Men are a no go is much less painful than men are on the table, just not you.
"I don't find you attractive" is the same as "I'm not into guys".
The real issue is that all positive feelings in the game lead to romance. This makes it tough to just be friends with any of the characters, even if you lead the relationship with zero romantic interactions. This is an issue with many of these types of RPGs, where the ultimate goal is a sexual relationship.
I meanâ some people just love begging negging themselves? Or are too down on themselves? Not sureâŚ
If having sex is so realistic and normal, then why haven't I had it?
*Sex only happens in works of fiction, like movies and porn. It doesn't belong in a fantasy video game*
Elves are definitely more real than sex for some people.
From that guy's POV, it's probably something totally unrealistic ;).
Also gay people existing is woke/politicalâŚ
As are men with trauma, strong women, or empathy towards refugees I guess
Its ok, I can kill the refugees if I want. Turns out I can also kill the gay characters & strong women. Sometimes even by accident.
"Devs don't answer me on twitter" When the dude is lonely and decides to write a review.
"I wrote you but you still ain't callin..."
lack of lore / worldbuilding this one takes the crown. litterally decades worth of lore
Almost 50 years of lore
Almost 60 years, actually. Ed Greenwood said on his YouTube channel that Forgotten Realms started in 1965, although not initially as a D&D setting, obviously.
WotC also retconned the lore TWICE though to be fair.
That one makes sense in that if you're brand new to the concept the Underdark isn't explained at all. Neither are the gith or mindflayers. 3 people in my discord killed Lae'zel and all the gith "cause they're rude" and didn't understand that Gods were real in the universe.
âDidnât understand the gods were realâ Meanwhile: âHello Iâm Gale of Waterdeep. The most important thing that happened in my life is I slept with a godâ ???
Just a lady in a fancy hat Gale believed a little too hard. She teamed up with an old man in a funny hat to gaslight Gale.
It's a fantasy setting where the second person you meet is a magical priest. How the hell do you NOT think the gods are real in this setting?
Killing someone because they're "rude" is borderline psychopathic xD Also, Devora would be disappointed in your friends.
I can sort of understand it if you're coming in with no previous knowledge of anything D&D the game is pretty narrow in what information it gives you about the overall setting and a lot of the extra things that you can find out are easily missed by being out of the way, behind history checks, or are casual one offs in conversations that can also be missed.
I kind of understand that one to an extent. The lore in BG3 really isnât immediate like it might be in other games. It wasnât until making a character after my dumbass bard main character that I realized I basically missed all the lore for History/Arcana checks my entire first playthrough lol.
i disagree. there is a lot you can miss, yes, but it is there. i had not played dnd before at all, so i knew nothing about the setting other than the common fantasy tropes (ex: elves live long and hate orcs) but i still managed to understand what was going on thanks to the lore snips you get from random narrator lines and books you read.
One big part that makes Metacritic less viable than Steam, which shows the hours played. A Steamcritic of someone with 0,1 hours logged is worthless. Who knows how many of those are salty Zelda or Spider-Man fans who are mad they didnât get GOTY.
Yes, the fact that "it won GOTY" is on this list is very amusing to me. I picture that salty person there!
Spiderman fans who thought it deserved GOTY were truly the most deluded demographic in 2023
There was also a small but vocal minority of lunatics who hate the game cuz it's "too woke" and I wouldn't put it past those people to brigade a game with negative reviews. Like ones claiming bad writing, as is the *top* value on the OPs chart.
yea like it even starts out with a cinematic that literally makes you skin curl. by the time you're off that ship all you wanna do is not be a fucking mindflayer omfg. then you actually get hit with the GOOD writing. anyone claiming that's why they hated bg3, as a #1 concern (over being boring which i could actually see) is probably someone salty over something else. like writing is a problem cause of dame aylin and isobel or something. 'writing.'
yeah it's kinda easy to call anything you don't like 'bad writing' i think some things in this game are overrated but compared to most other games the writing is quite good a lot of people will just think anything that isn't their own personal power fantasy is 'bad writing'
>Who knows how many of those are salty Zelda or Spider-Man fans who are mad they didnât get GOTY. Taking into account the story/writing is the main complaint, it's VERY obvious that most of those are salty fanboys.
I think it's far more likely to be anti-LGBTQ folks who hate the game based on story, or just generally sexually repressed prudes, than salty faboys. Salty fanboys are the "it's boring", "it's turn based", "it won't GOTY" crowd.
Gotta love **1,500hrs played at time of writing. 2,000hrs played currently** "This game is trash. The devs have no idea what they're doing"
Some of these I fully get. Like bugs / crashes suck. Hell that's the reason that, despite all the good parts, I will never touch another Owlcat game after Kingmaker. It was like a 50/50 chance of crashing any time the game loaded. But "bad voice acting"? "Bad character customization"? "Bad graphics"? What fucking game have THEY been playing? Because it sure as hell wasn't BG3.
Bad voice acting is mind blowing
I could listen to the narrator/dm talk all day.
She could make reading the Google EULA interesting
Authority
In all fairness, I have my fair share of complaints with the character customisation. Almost all the male heads are just "square chin, steely eyes, large-ish nose, big cheek bones". It's kinda irritating that the only races with younger-looking male heads are half-elf and Githyanki
Also a very small selection of hair colours, including no pure black. Yet it is available in the larger number of highlight options.
If you want pure black, set the graying color to black and turn it all the way up.
The character customization is super limited compared to the majority of games in the genre. Even older game like Skyrim or Mass Effect gives you better character customization, and don't even get me started on the likes of Dragon's Dogma or Wild Hearts.
âBad character customizationâ When people mention this, most of them talk about the appearance side of it, which i can definitely understand.
Well the character customization was very limiting I had to choose a different race because half elves have much better faces than humans get.
Bad character customization is 100% legitimate though honestly. The appearance settings are pretty bad, only 2 body types of either small or bulky and even then the bulky setting causes it to look funny on some races. Voice options are dreadful for anything other than Human/Elf/Half Elf. I'd actually say that Dragonborn have rhe best customization options since what you can do with their scales and eye color looks visually amazing but then you are stuck with a humans voice so it never feels cohesive
Character customization is way behind many games. And on my series s the graphics are constantly lagging so thatâs a hardware issue
Character customisation (which very likely means appearance customisation) is *very* limited in BG3 compared to many other RPGs. The only things it did well was giving you the vitiligo slider and the number of colour options you had for almost everything. Pretty much everything else is lacking when you compare to other RPGs. The most egregious is how customising all aspects of your face is limited to a handful of heads, whereas in Fallout 4, Starfield, Cyberpunk, et al you get those preset head shapes but can then go on and customise literally everything about them. I genuinely usually spend at least a couple of hours in those character creation screens, but in BG3 I was done in a few minutes because of how limited the face options are. There's a reason why the majority of the most popular mods on Nexus are new heads, hair, and makeup.
âLow difficultyâ âHigh difficultyâ Uhhhhhhhh
I understand where the reviews are coming from, even though they seem to be on two opposite ends of the spectrum. Low difficulty in terms of the battle. High difficulty as when it comes to the whole setup and steep learning curve, CRPGs are no joke. They're known as the nerdy folks' game, and for good reason.
TIL different people have different opinions.
So, obviously different people making either complaint aside, I kinda get it? Balance was one of the only things I could really complain about in BG3, all the fights were either really easy or just peaked into *much* higher difficulty out of nowhere.
Veterans of 5e vs Everyone else. It makes perfect sense.
I understand people having issues with the technical aspects of Act 3 and Iâm surprised itâs not on top of the list⌠these, countless sound bugs and major camera issues for a few fights on multiple layers are my only gripes with the game but I can understand that it can seriously sour someoneâs enjoyment!
The fight in the fireworks shop broke my brain it was so poorly optimzied fighting across 3 stories. Arrows shooting through the floor, camera stuck in the invisible ceilings. That was pretty bad.
I personally just opt for standing on the roof across the street and lobbing a fireball through the opening. Usually only leaves me with 2 or 3 stragglers.
The merchant decided to cast Fireball himself and blew up everyone in the building. I only lived because of the Blood of Lathander.
I found I couldn't attack goblins at the camp because the game registered the doors as closed. Then when it was the goblins turn I found out it only registered one side as closed and the other as open, so the battle was literally opening and closing the door 12 tunes a turn.
Bugs and crashes, I understand. It is kinda crazy. Hopefully, the next few patches will help fix it.
I don't get why some of those people posting negative reviews think being turn-based automatically makes a game bad. I mean, it's not for everyone, but you should at least *know what you're getting into before buying it*, right?
The most charitable guess I can make is that they see it as a departure from the Baldur's Gate tradition, which it is, but to me that's not inherently a bad thing. Sometimes you do that and it works, like in Grand Theft Auto or God of War.
The thing is, the Baldurâs Gate tradition is just how BioWare makes their games. Mass Effect, TOR, etc were all D20 based games but the turns were âhiddenâ since the action didnât stop. BG3 is how Larian approaches turn based games, and itâs *far* more in line with how D&D is structured. D&D is tactical, and that means taking time to figure out your next move. Not saying that youâre making a case either way, just pointing out the differences if other folks donât know how they differ.
They're probably thinking of JRPGs where everyone politely lines up in rows, then you watch your opponent just continuously attack one guy until dead.
I feel like the complaint about the story/writing being bad is valid if you consider the main storyline only. In a hypothetical situation where a person would only play the main story and skip everything else, then yeah the story is a bit boring. It's a "zero to hero" story with some (predictable) twists sprinkled all over. This is not counting the lore contradictions or things that wouldn't normally make sense. Character stories and side quests kind of alleviate this issue, but if you end up being one of the unlucky ones whose favorite character is Wyll or Karlach or Halsin then yeah I don't blame you if you think the story is bad. Also this is something many people have noticed on twitter but Larian tends to take fandom seriously. Maybe too seriously. There have been many instances where Larian abruptly changed things that didn't need to be changed just because the fandom liked these changes better. Don't get me wrong, listening to the fans is great but devs should also know when to put their foot down and say no.
Third chapter is pretty rushed from a storytelling point. First two chapters were pretty well written, but there's so much missed potential in the 3rd.
Agreed. I enjoyed act 1 the most, liked act 2, but act 3 always felt like a chore.
Honestly I think story and writing criticism can always be fine. These reviews are based on their experiences and opinions and there's no such thing as a story that everyone will feel is good. Though I do think people probably use it as a shield for less valid criticism like "Too woke"
Iâm finishing up a campaign of 4 Tavs. I have literally ignored or killed every companion to just play as my party of 4 Tavs. So you only do the Tadpole story. Itâs not bad, but itâs absolutely nothing special. Youâre right. Iâm now playing with companions and they definitely add a lot of flavor to the main story.
oh that's really interesting! I haven't thought about doing a Tav only run!
I'm kinda surprised that "woke" wasn't higher up the list. The anti-woke crowd is small but very vocal.
God said Adam and Eve, not Vampire and Bear /s
Iâd be interested to know how many of the ânudity/sexâ group were turned off by the lgbt elements vs. how many are just prudish because either the anti-woke crowd is doing more productive things with their lives or theyâre hiding it behind some other thinly veiled excuse
That depends how many of them are masked in the Bad character/companions reviews
I suspect that it has to do with most of the 'woke' elements of the game being mostly optional and not replacing anything already existing. Its not like they revealed that Jaheira was a trans woman all along, gave Sarevok his coming out as gay moment, turned Minsc into a black woman and forced Tav to be queer. Yes you can play your Tav with any sex and gender identity you want but its just an option in character creation, it doesn't affect the game on any way. Its also not a preachy game, save minor references to racism (via the tieflings). In fact a great number of characters are unapologetically selfish and don't give a shit about 'social justice' or any form of justice really .. Which is why people dont mind. The game really allows you to play however you want.
I think youâre totally right. The game is neither as woke as the haters claim nor as progressive as the stans claim. The âopt inâ model of queer content is a pretty standard approach for RPGs these days specifically because it (at least attempts) to appease everyone and offend no one.
"minor references" Girl, there's a lot of references to racism lmao. Gnomes, halflings, tieflings, and others all have some rather unsavoury things said and done to them. The anti-refugee stuff was pure xenophobia in Rivington/Lower city.
Playing devils advocate, I can understand why âbad story/writingâ is up at the top, but for me thatâs mainly from some disappointing late game quests. Most of these ppl probably gave up in Act 1 though where the game keeps a lot of stuff hidden from you, so maybe they werenât patient enough for answers.
My biggest beef with the writing is that it's usually painfully obvious when someone is evil or nefarious.  There's not many NPCs with good deception.
There have been several moments so far, I am up into Act 2, where a conclusion by an npc was very hand-wavy. A quick example is a character just knowing that I am someone they are seeking without any events Iâve witnessed explaining why they may assume I am who they seek. After the fact, I found a note that says I am who they are after. That feels like something was intended to be there, but it was removed and replaced by a note to explain it. As a whole I canât judge anything since I havenât finished it, but this game definitely feels to me like it fully deserves all of itâs awards.
the random crashing in act 3 for the first 2-3 months was pretty bad if we're being fair.
I think a lot of the 'bad writing' impressions come from the tonal shift between the 'triumphant victory and walk into the sunset' Act II and the 'back to mundane shit until suddenly the city is in ruin' Act III. The final act of a drama is supposed to be where you tie up the loose ends and wrap up the story. Instead, we lose momentum when we should be gaining it. We can spend days on end doing side content when there is supposed to be an emergency. As of now, Act III feels disjointed and contrived. ----- There are also gaping plot holes which I believe are due to the late addition of that insufferable meddler, the 'emperor'. Not to mention the weak antagonists we're saddled with in Act III; Gortash could have been more interesting if they had delved deeper into his backstory. But the Bhaal reject? Ye gods what a waste!
The most valid critic of the game: the file size - is the least mentioned lmao.
I mean it kinda justifies its file size by the fact itâs just a really big game with a lot of high res assets. There are games that do not justify their giant file size but I feel like BG3 does
Many of these are valid cricisim. Bad writing/story is even valid, even if I disagree. Some of these are so funny though. Nobody is forcing you to fuck these characters dawg.
some of those are at least legit complaints
My favourite is "too much gore" đ 90% of that comes from combat and you can toggle the non-lethal option...
Some of these are simply not valid, âyeah this game that takes place in the dnd 5e world wasnât good bc I donât like dnd 5eâ Like tell me you didnât play the game and just wanted to be a hater without telling me Edited to add: âitâs woke/politicalâ oh how dare gay people exist!!!! And for the record I thought the Sharran and Gith politics were really cool
Devs don't answer me on Twitter lol
I disagree with a lot of these and find some other utterly ridiculous but the cake is bad voice acting, wtf. Astarion is my favorite character voice acring-wise across all games.
It's probably not a popular take, but as a pretty casual player, I would like an auto level option for support characters. Mass Effect had this option, and I felt like it allowed me to focus on the build mechanics of a single class type instead of trying to juggle the upgrades of 3 or 4 class types and failing miserably to optimize any of them.
Itâs a great game and deserved GotY, but it could have been delayed 6-8 months and been better for it.
People have different tastes and preferences. Just because we liked the game, doesn't mean it's for everyone.
Wait how is BG3 woke?
All of your companions are Tav-sexual and you can customize your character to use they/them pronouns and have both breasts and a penis. These are player choices, mind. You could play He-Man McHetero, the white human male barbarian and turn down every companion except your future farm wife Shadowheart, but some people see allowing a choice at all as a political statement.
But itâs just an option, it isnât something forced on the player. Maybe those reviewers are too sensitive
Itâs like the people saying that BG3 is bad just because of the romance scene with halsin in bear form. Theyâre only looking for bad excuses to justify disliking the game
"I chose to fuck the bear and I was NOT turned on! Dogshit game"
Not gonna lie that Halsin scene is the first thing I ever heard about the game. I donât even like Halsin as a companion but I got the game just so I can support such a funny thing. Hell I canât even play it yet because I only have my old computer. I just want the devs to keep on making masterpieces of possibilities that are as cringey funny as this
You're misunderstanding - bigots do not like queer people or intersex people having the choice to be that in-game, that hurts their bigoted feefees. They literally want intersex and queer people to not exist, period. That's why they hate it being in the game - they don't see us as equals or people, but beings of sin and debauchery who need to be stopped and sealed away into closets.
Queer ppl and PoC exist in the game world. Thats what most ppl mean when they say âwokeâ. Thats literally it, people are offended at seeing the same things that exist in the real world reflected in media.
I saw some man-child on steam complaining about the amount of cats in the game. This allegedly means men are somehow losing to women. People are fucked in the head.
That would be some prime r/Persecutionfetish content.
Bro would get a brain aneurysm and die of sheer cat hatred the moment he set foot in a pet store đ
Then they shouldnât play it? But hey, if thatâs their biggest issue then maybe they shouldnât play a game with character appearance customization. Maybe MarioKart, hollow knight, or legend of zelda
That's missing the point of the woke panic. Going to a different game isn't enough, they need to erase every single reference of queer people/people of color from every single piece of media that exists. They're already doing the exact same thing with public education and libraries.
Because you can have a same-sex relationship. Or poly depending on who you romance. Or your Tav can be trans or nonbinary.
What's funny, is that's not even what woke means. Lol. And if woke to these idiots is just being inclusive, I'd rather be woke than ignorant any day.
>if woke to these idiots is just being inclusive Yes, this is the case for the vast majority of the "anti-woke" crowd, inclusivity is "woke."
UI/UX in this game IS awful. Controls, layouts, interaction scenarios... Like half of it is literal nonsense in this game. I could go over stupid and incompetent choices in this aspect of design in game for hours with examples, better/more sensible ways to do things and all. I have a ton of hours in the game (well over 1000 hours), beaten it several times (including solo honour mode) and incompetent UX design is the biggest complaint I have about the game, followed by it being buggy mess with a lot of tons and abilities outright not working or being inconsistent with descriptions that are supposed to be informative rule text. Just as quick examples from top of my head that most of you likely had to deal with: \- "Sell all wares" button does nothing if vendor has not enough gold for it all. Someone extremely competent, somewhere, decided that it's absolutely a legit scenario that player comes with a lot of stuff to sell and instead of selling as much as possible want to sell nothing if there is not enough gold on vendor. Oh, and don't get me started on inventory jumping while selling stuff from bottom of your inventory one-by-one... \- Camera centering after every action, and controls being already active while it happens. There are a lot of stupid options for camera, but this specific one can't be disabled. You want to shoot someone twice? Good. You aim, shoot once, wait for animation to be over without moving the mouse, see icon change to attack, click... Oh, in the moment before icon changed and you clicked, camera started centering on you and now you clicked character to move. Same happens with trying to attack after jumping animation ends. You click to attack, but camera centers right before that and now you are running away from enemy you jumped towards, getting an opportunity attack. Just delaying the icon change / enabling controls AFTER camera centers would already make it better, but the toggle for this behavior would be even better. \- If you are playing versatile caster class (like spore druid) or multiclassing, your options don't fit onto hotbar. Cmon, making it wider or making 5 or 6 lines possible would not kill anyone. \- For some stupid reason displaying how much character would move when you are aiming was too bright of an idea for devs. They only recently added "provokes an opportunity attack" tip to the cursor, but still often when you aim at something sidtant you can't see your character and whether it would stay in place or step into stupid poison / approach enemy next to it / waste movement otherwise. Just, like, give me "5m" text next to my aiming cursor, and I will know that character is NOT able to shoot/cast from the point where it's standing even if it's not on camera. Is that too much? \- For bunch of concentration spells (Moonbeam and Cloudkill as obvious examples) there's literally no way to tell how many turns of concentration are left. Every place you can see shows the total duration of a spell. Oh, and "You are already concentrating on X, this action will override your concentration" prompt is too much to ask for it seems. \- Camera controls and aiming in multi-story buildings. Do I really have to elaborate at all? This is not "nitpicking", these small thing build up into horrible experience, and most of these things get ESPECIALLY frustating when you are playing challenge runs where simple mistake caused by UI and not your situation assessment/decision making can ruin the run. The working part of the game is insanely good. But working part of the game is not the only part of it. There is a reason there's a ton of UI improvement mods for the game. Most of those should be part of actual game and not something you have to get on the side and pray it does not break with the next patch.
The camera is the only problem. Sucks when youâre in a small room and need to get to an enemy to click on and the camera goes up the wall or some dumb shit.
I love the game to death, but act 3 turned the game from a 10/10, genuinely, to a 4/10. Never have I experienced so many game-breaking, quest-breaking, soft-locking issues. I didn't mind the poor fps or the graphical glitches, but losing 5 hours because a quest bricked, or doing surgery trying to unfuck some bug was probably one of the worst gaming experienced I've had, especially because act 1 and 2 were so godamned good, it felt like the game had some memory leak that just started melting the game in act 3. Neither Gale or Astarion's quests were completable, Karlach's romance was broken, several quests (Saving gondorians, going to the factory, dealing with the witch and a few more) would bug out halfway through, forcing me to restart a previous save. I love the game, I'm currently playing it, replaying it for the 3rd time. But that first time left such an awful taste in my mouth it's not until now I've come back to play it. I even think I left a negative review on launch, now changed into positive.
the only criticism i have is: auto save is horrible, you should be able to change the frequency of autosaves. fights with alot of actors get really boring since you can't skip to your turn. the problems I've encountered: My game crashed a total of one time, and it was right after the flight with baltazaar, which was kinda pain. I got stuck once, simply returned to camp. first time meeting omeluum(?) The guy in the underdark who offers a cure, he was invisible, which i found kinda funny
Honestly camera sucks a lot(console version)
Low difficulty... Have we been playing the same game?