Baldur’s Gate 3 - Overwhelmingly Tedious and Boring
I genuinely tried. Seven hours in, multiple sessions. Somewhere around the middle I had a tiny moment of “okay, maybe I’m starting to see it”- that lasted about five minutes.
This is one of the most boring games I have ever played.
BG3 feels like taking every slow, fiddly, overcomplicated part of tabletop RPGs and turning it into a video game - then making every single action take three business days. An Indian drama...
The introduction is atrocious. You are dumped into a wall of classes, races, abilities, resources, dice rolls, actions, bonus actions, movement, spell slots, concentration, inventory, companions and unexplained mechanics with barely any useful explanation. Character creation somehow manages to be both absurdly detailed in places and bizarrely restrictive in others. I spent more time fighting the character creator than creating a character. I eventually made a Wood Half-Elf Ranger because “stealth sniper -> get spotted -> RAAAAAGH” is basically my natural playstyle, but the game certainly didn't make understanding my choices easy.
Then there is the actual gameplay.
Combat is an RNG simulator where my greatest enemy is apparently the number 1.
Miss. Miss. Miss. Critical Miss. Miss. Miss.
Congratulations, you have successfully spent several minutes positioning your character so that a dice roll can tell you to go f*** yourself.
And the damage progression? Incredible.
Hour 1: 1–9 damage
Hour 7: 4-11 damage
Absolutely revolutionary.
The combat is painfully slow. Every movement point matters, every action takes ages, enemies take their turns one by one, animations drag on... Pathfinding is janky and a single misclick can send your character climbing some invisible wall or walking somewhere you absolutely did not intend. I have played games with clunky controls before, but BG3 somehow makes most games' control schemes look like divine intervention.
Exploration isn't any better. You click on a ladder: “You can't go there.”
Click again: suddenly you can. Click beside a doorway: your character attempts to scale the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Himalayas. Try to scout around a corner: congratulations, you've been teleported into combat.
I repeatedly felt like I was fighting the interface rather than the enemies.
The world itself has not grabbed me either. I explored the Grove, picked up a pile of vaguely described errands that they call quests, fought some goblins, got annihilated by an owlbear, got blown up by a statue, stumbled into fights I wasn't prepared for. Spent half my time rummaging through containers for mediocre garbage. The game constantly tries to give the impression that there is supposed to be something fascinating around the next corner, only for the reward to be another conversation, box of junk or fight.
The loot is particularly underwhelming. Forget about finding cool gear and becoming noticeably stronger.
You get another item with slightly different numbers, same ugly piece of armor, pile of useless arrows and another 20 minute inventory-management session.
And yes, I understand that the game is about player choice and role-playing rather than conventional power progression. That doesn't make the gameplay engaging.
The story, after seven hours, is essentially: YOU HAVE A PARASITE. FIX THE PARASITE.
FIX THE PARASITE.
FIX THE PARASITE.
I KNOW. I HAVE BEEN TOLD. PLEASE STOP BEING A BROKEN RECORD.
The characters haven't done anything for me either. The voice acting is generally good but great performances cannot make characters interesting if I don't care about what they're saying.
Shadowheart is probably the closest I've gotten to actually liking a companion. Still not enough.
Astarion is entertaining to listen to but insufferable.
Lae'zel is an aggressive noseless ♥♥♥♥♥, any line coming out of her makes me physically cringe and want to put my hands on somebody (the writer or smth...).
Gale is a parasitic f*** who has 3 moves, then becomes utterly useless until you go rest.
And the whole party has so far felt more like a collection of personalities I am managing than people I actually want to travel with.
The romance system also feels hilariously prominent for a game that otherwise tries to take itself so seriously.
Apparently everyone is horny enough to jump you after approximately three conversations. Fantastic.
I'm sure this has nothing to do with the soulless gooners that actually LARP sh** like this.
The music is underwhelming at best. It's competent but repetitive and generic compared with games whose soundtracks actually stick in my head.
I ended up wanting to turn it off, replace it with actual good OSTs, like The Witcher's or Lies of P's...
And then there's the technical side.
The graphics look MEDIOCRE for a 2023 game, yet the performance is absurd.
My PC gets hotter running this heap of trash than Cyberpunk 2077 on max settings with Ray Tracing.
It's artificially big and visually inconsistent. Manages to make my hardware work overtime while I stare at two people standing in a room talking about a spermatozoid...
The funniest part is that I can understand why people like the freedom. BG3 clearly allows variying approaches to situations. That's the only place I can really see effort put in.
But for me, that is not enough. I need the actual GAMEPLAY to be fun.
Not "options to potentially make gameplay exist are vast"... Empty theatre room.
This feels less like an adventure and more like administrative work with dice. Pick up item. Miss item. Open door. Miss door. Walk somewhere. Accidentally climb something. Sort inventory. Equip slightly better trousers. Start combat. Miss. Miss. Critical Miss. Watch six enemies spend an eternity deciding whether to move three meters. Finally get a turn. Use an ability. Miss. Get one-shot. Rest. Repeat.
I have games sitting in my library that give me more entertainment in six hours than BG3 has given me in seven. The Darkness II's entire amazing campaign is shorter than the amount of time I have spent trying to convince myself this game is going to click.
Maybe it gets better.
Maybe Act 2 is secretly the second coming of gaming
Maybe Act 3 gets you a horned girlfriend IRL
I genuinely do not care enough to find out.
Clearly I'm not the target audience. But after seven hours of giving it a completely fair chance, I don't see a masterpiece hiding underneath the geriatric systems. “Overwhelmingly Positive” is absolute insanity.
Pretentous CRPG buried under a mountain of slow combat, RNG, inventory management, awkward controls, weak progression, tedious traversal and endless dialogue.
I didn't ragequit because the game is difficult - it's just tedious.
I rage-quit because I was bored out of my mind, realizing I'm wasting my precious and finite time doing the paperwork/homework equivalent of a "video game".
And when a game makes me look at my backlog and think, “I could be playing literally anything else right now,” that's the end of the road.
I'd rather chew the 40 euro I gave for this game, that might be more fun too.
3.5/10
