I'm very happy to have finished it. Firstly, because I'd had enough some time ago and secondly because it makes a nice change to finish a game at all, these days. Also I think it means I've played all three Baldur's Gates through to the credits, although I can't be absolutely sure I got right to the end of the second one. Pretty sure I did, though...
Two questions remain, I guess:
- Was it any good?
- How satisfying was the ending?
As to the first, yes, obviously it was good. It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise. Clearly, this was a massive technical achievement on Larian's part and a very worthy addition to the celebrated series. It was also fun, enjoyable, entertaining and addictive in the best "just one more try" way. Not much more you could ask of a video game, really.
That said, I didn't exactly love it. As previously discussed, it went on far too long. Having finished it, I'm even more of the opinion it would have been better split into at least two separate games or even a trilogy. So much happens that it's very hard to remember it all, far less appreciate it. As a studio, Larian always seems to want to take the maximalist approach and it's not my preference at all.
Leaving aside the whole "too much of a good thing" problem, though, I don't have anything other than praise for the quality of the writing or the voice acting. One of the reasons it took me as long as it did was that I had to hear every word spoken out loud and I had to find and read every book on every shelf. It wasn't until the epilogue that I finally decided I could just glance at the subtitles and skip ahead rather than listen to Wyll droning on - but then he was by a wide margin the least interesting character. I never skipped on anyone else.
Visually, the game looks amazing. The level of detail is overwhelming. I spent a lot of time just wandering about, looking at stuff. I wasn't entirely happy with the way the camera worked but it wasn't terrible. Most of the time, anyway.
The tactical gameplay was everything I could have asked for. I found the fights perhaps the most addictive part of the whole game although it was the ones I managed to avoid by dint of persuasion that felt, ironically, like the most satisfying of victories. I played the entire campaign on the default setting and it seemed just about right. I can only remember giving up altogether on one fight but several came right down to the last person standing, which felt pretty good, at least when that person was one of my party.
The story was OK. I find it hard to get emotionally involved in narratives that include gods and archdevils as active participants. The whole thing began to feel a bit above my pay-grade by about halfway through and by the end it was so far removed from anything I could associate with it ceased to feel like any choices I made had any relevance at all.
But that's the generic problem with D&D. You start out worrying whether two goblins might be one too many for the party and end up riding on an Ancient Red Dragon as you head into a battle with a demi-god.
So, I'd say Baldur's Gate 3 is a good game despite the IP, not because of it. I'd honestly have preferred to stay in Act I in terms of both the narrative and the gameplay. The problems there seemed a lot more approachable and the tactics more comprehensible. Then again, the higher level spells are certainly a lot more spectacular, so there's that.
Speaking of spells and abilities, there are far, far too many of them and the mechanics of preparing them are far too abstruse. I found it verging on impossible to know what to pick on Level-Up and in the entire 155 hours I never figured out how to change prepared spells efficiently. I either forgot about it altogether or when I remembered and tried to swap spells out it didn't work for some reason I couldn't grasp.
By the final battle my bags were bursting with those potions that add or restore spell slots but I never did manage to get one to work, which was how I ended up with so many unused ones in the first place. I don't enjoy fiddling about with builds or specs or anything of the kind so for the entire game I had the exact same party - my character, Shadowheart, Lae`zel and Gale and they all used pretty much the same set of spells and abilities for the whole run.
Frequently, that meant I didn't have what I needed to get a fight done efficiently but I almost always just muddled through as best I could. I did make extensive use of scrolls, because those I could understand and I always had stacks of them, but it seemed very odd that my magic-users were so limited by what they could remember, while anyone at all could cast any spell, providing they had a bit of paper in their hand.
The worst example of these self-inflicted limitations in the whole game came right at the end, when Tipa tipped me to the fact that you can skip the entire penultimate set-piece battle simply by making all your characters invisible. It was a great tip but by then I had precisely no characters who could cast any form of invisibility and exactly two invisibility potions between five of them (Orpheus, the tag-along, being the one who needed invisibility most of all.)
The mechanics of the game at that point precluded a trip back to a vendor or my camp stash to restock. I would have had to go back to a very much older save for that. Instead I ended up spending several hours working on a strategy to get Orpheus and my character to the Crown unseen, so my character could read from a scroll of Globe of Invulnerability and keep them both safe while Orpheus cast Karsus' Compulsion and maintained it for long enough to trigger the cut scene.
And now we're sliding into that second question: how satisfying was the ending? Hmm. There's no easy answer to that one.
For a start, it depends what you mean by "ending". The final fight is a huge anti-climax, especially if you've just taken three days and about eight or nine hours getting through the one before, not to mention almost as long on the one before that.
In the event, I went into the last fight with just Orpheus and my character. I'd ungrouped for tactical reasons in the penultimate battle and at least one of those characters was dead anyway so I saved at the zone-in, then went in with just the two of us, intending to see how it went and then try again, with the full group if necessary.
It was not. Two of us were more than enough to subdue the Netherbrain. I absolutely am not complaining about it being too easy. As I said, I'd been itching to get the game over with for a long time by then so the easier the better. It still seemed like a weird design choice, all the same.
Speaking of difficulty, in typical fashion, I neglected to use two of the biggest boosts available. After all that work in Act III, gathering a bunch of allies to call on for help in the final battle, I never even saw them. I managed to kill the entire horde of enemies in the stages leading up to the final confrontation with the Netherbrain without any help from outside the party and when I wanted to bring in my allies for the difficult second-to-last fight, the button to call them had disappeared! Apparently I'd missed my chance and they'd all gone off to do something else.
I think it's fair to say that if I'd had to rely on my wits and skill, I would never have finished the game at all, or not yet, anyway. A significant proportion of the big fights can be rendered almost trivial by certain strategies or tactics and once I started looking those up whenever I ran into trouble, things got a great deal easier. That and save-scumming, of course.
That said, I never felt like I was actually cheating - just not coming up with all the ideas on my own. But then, there were three other people in the party so I really shouldn't have needed to, should I?
So much for the final fights. What about the narrative conclusion?
Bleh! This is where I think Larian really dropped the ball. There's a long epilogue, all cut scenes and talking, which is clearly supposed to tie up all the loose ends and give all the characters a nice, tidy ending. Unfortunately, it just makes things worse.
For one thing, several hanging swords never fall. My plan was always to give the Crown to the devil I'd contracted with to do so but that option simply never appeared. Instead, I got a cut-scene late on, when he complained about my not having fulfilled the contract but declined to do anything much to punish me. Apparently he was content to just watch, as everything would inevitably go wrong for me from then on without any further intervention on his part.
That made no sense at all but it was in good company. There were many examples of things not making any sense, not least all the supposedly deep and meaningful conversations with "companions" about the amazing times we'd had together, when about the only thing we'd ever done together was hang around in camp. Since I'd avoided any kind of romance and we had never fought alongside each other, the supposed bonds we'd formed seemed delusional.
The single, worst example, though, was Jaheira. I got her killed in a fight in Act II. I know for certain she was dead because if Jaheira is dead, it's impossible to calm Minsc down when you fight him later and you have no option but to kill him. Which I did. I read the strats and the only dialog option that works is not present if Jaheira is dead. That dialog option was not present for me plus I saw her die. Ergo, Jaheira is dead.
Except she turns up in the Epilogue, chatty as anything, apparently remembering nothing about her demise. Yes, it's D&D so maybe somehow she got resurrected but if so you'd think she might have mentioned it. The game just doesn't keep tabs accurately on what you've done, something I found a problem right from the start.
More annoying than that, though, were two things that happened - or didn't happen - at the reunion party six months after the destruction of the Netherbrain. Everyone comes back for a catch-up and I talked to them all - except for the very two I most wanted to see. One of those couldn't talk to me and the other wasn't even there.
The mute companion was Scratch, the dog. I always talked to him by using a Potion of Animal Speaking, several of which I had on me at all times. Except when I opened my inventory to drink one, I found it completely empty. Apparently, having spent moths carrying the contents of a medium-sized store around with me, I'd suddenly decided to throw it all away and go around with nothing but the clothes on my back.
That was very annoying but Scratch could still bark and I could rub his ears. That gave me some closure, at least. What I really wanted to know - and still do - is what happened to the girl, Yenna, who I rescued twice, once from a life on the streets and once from a psychopathic killer, and who was last seen relatively happily employed as camp cook.
Apparently no-one at Larian thought to write a farewell script from her so she just vanishes. Meanwhile, all those layabouts she spent her time feeding get to stuff themselves while button-holing me to yak on about the great times we never had.
As I said, bleh! Not impressed at all with the wrap-up. Also, I have one final complaint. The ending comes with several obvious set-ups for a sequel, some just hinted at in a line or two of dialog, a couple with their own full cut-scenes. That would be fine if there was going to be a sequel but Larian has made it abundantly clear they aren't going within a thousand miles of one. They're done with the franchise for good.
Whether it gets handed on to another studio remains to be seen but even if it does, I very much doubt that studio will want to start from where Larian left off, so all those teasers are more like taunts, now. Still, if someone does ever make a Baldur's Gate 4, I guess I'll play it. And it'll have to go some to beat this one, for all its many flaws.
As for a replay of BG3, I wouldn't say never but I'm really not feeling it right now. Time for something new. Past time, truly.