[...]
Conclusions
If you're looking for the prettiest, flashiest RPG ever to grace a computer screen,
Baldur's Gate 3 is almost certainly what you're looking for. There are few or no pre-rendered cutscenes, since the real-time engine itself is capable of producing nearly photorealistic scenery and faces.
For the most part, the game's engine also avoids the
uncanny valley of humanoid faces that are almost, but not quite, perfect--it's very easy to watch your characters interact with others and feel like you're watching a movie, with fully rendered faces, bodies, movement, and expressions.
Unfortunately, this greatly magnifies the flaws in the scripting of both language and action. Your character feels
real--but he or she also feels like someone who has only attended a couple of improv classes and has been given vague but very firm instructions on how to react to things.
Beyond the good looks of the graphics, I haven't found much in
Baldur's Gate 3 to recommend it. Your character and party feel like insignificant gnats and are forced by circumstance to do and see awful things that they're not powerful enough to change. This is not a case of "tough moral choices" as seen in
Wasteland 3, or in Obsidian's excellent 2016 RPG
Tyranny--in
Baldur's Gate 3, it feels like you have no agency at all.
The good
- The graphics in this game are incredible--this is easily the best-looking RPG I've ever seen
- Great artwork on top of the excellent engine--moody crypts, savage wildernesses, magical groves all "pop"
- Large worlds, with little or no "zone time" for fast travel
The bad
- Awkward, unsatisfying combat
- Punishing dialog with frequent feat rolls practically demands save-scumming
- Encounters often feel unbalanced and forced
The ugly
- Your party hates you
- All of the factions hate you
- Watching innocent characters get murdered
- Murdering innocent characters yourself
