I'm well aware that this game is near-universally praised, and that the writing is beloved by many. I haven't seen anything really stellar in my time playing, but I have seen plenty good. It is very much possible to get enjoyment out of this game, and I still plan on continuing to play
That said, as a product and complete experience that you are paying for, this thing blows. It crashes constantly. Either due to memory shenanigans or just because it can't handle loading its own maps. I've had to download fan patches, lower settings, look at the amount of CPU cores my computer is using, load earlier saves before loading the save I actually want, etc. etc. I've seen forums where people are swearing that lowering their audio quality somehow helped them as if this is game is a machine spirit they have to gently calm and whisper sweet nothing to. It sucks. Even when it loads, there's a decent chance there will be a purple blob of color where the ground is supposed to be
I also take EXTREME issue with how the DLC content is handled. It's one thing to have a gag DLC with gifts that break (not fast-forward or cheat, I mean actually BREAK) story progression, and it's another to just plop it in game with no indication. I HATE having to weed out DLC garbage from an otherwise ok balanced and functional game. That should not be on me to curate at all. There's enough good stuff in there that I don't necessarily recommend doing just the base game, but the game is certainly made worse by a lack of onboarding or separation
The game is also just full of... I don't want to say bad design. It might be better to call it old-fashioned. It heaps a lot of dungeon crawling on you, even when the unique and interesting parts of the scenarios would work well enough on their own
Enter Mage Tower > Fight up the entire tower > "Oh boy, time to confront the big bad mage!" > Wrong. Fade time. > Do long dungeon crawl through a semi-interesting but mostly boring bizzarro world with a sepia filter > Finally get to an interesting part with your companions > Boss fight > "ok, we're done!" > Wrong. More tower. > Finally get to the actual boss fight > Now you get to do an actual RPG thing and make a choice > Your word is god's will I guess, because apart from a companion making a quip or two, everyone present immediately agrees to your choice and it works out fine. So much fluff can be cut out of this
Enter Redcliff > Town is about to be stormed by undead > Do some sidequesting to make the defense go smoother in tangible ways > Except for the oil. Don't use the oil. Your allies will burn themselves alive > Win the cool defense (if it can load in) > Storm the castle > The castle is a dungeon crawl, but not nearly as long as the other places > Do interesting RPG choice > End of Quest! >Wrong. Ash hunting time. > Go on a wild goose chase for some treasure > Find dungeon > Do a whole ass dungeon of dungeon things > do a way less interesting RPG choice. > End. End this whole quest earlier, man!
It honestly feels lacking in minor choices. You get major choices with companions and questlines, but everything in the middle is either SO minor that it doesn't matter, or it just leads back to the major choice. Downtime between plot beats is spent fighting and fighting
I do like the companions, but sometimes it feels like pulling teeth to get any of them to like you enough to start talking about anything interesting (and thus, giving you more chances for approval). They're all so picky about every little thing and their disapproval is handed out like candy in way their approval simply isn't. Extort a man into giving you his bar? Wynn disapproves, that wasn't very nice of you... Gift the entire bar to the old owner's servant that he would sexually harass and grope every morning? Well she has nothing to say, really. That's just the bare minimum to her. No, she will not take back the previous disapproval. But if you're nice to her and checking up on her whenever she has a fainting spell, she might be so generous as to give you one or two approval back. Not a lot. Alistair is one of the better companions, and he's constantly baiting you into saying something to piss him off. He gets to be a jokester, but all your sassy replies are neutral at best, and if you ever ACTUALLY disagree with him on something, say goodbye to 20-40 approval all at once. I know this is an older game, but all games like this should really make approval somewhat independent of that character's story progress. Or add a forgiveness mechanic or something so you can say the occasional wrong thing for roleplaying's sake without just trashing the relationship. Speaking of, every time a companion disagrees with your major plot choices, you can try and persuade them to not hold it against you. It only lessens the reputation loss... just kinda frustrating
Oh and random encounters are not balanced at all. Some are fine but most are of a different difficulty than the main quests you just did. Don't know what they were thinking there but some of them feel like troll setups. "Have 10 armored skeletons that will beat up your mages before you have the time to do anything. In the back, we'll put a caster who's just gonna chuck a fireball at you. It will barely hurt the skeletons. You want to target fire the mage? Well that's already gonna be tough due to the 10 skeletons chunking away your party health, but I GUESS you can do that... oh but there are invisible traps between you that will also cast fireball if you step on them, forgot to mention that." A lot of the game's tactics are also based on battlefield prep and control too, so I don't know how you're supposed to make use of glyphs and traps and poisons, and all that when the enemies spawn 4 feet from you and outclass you. Not limited to the harder areas of the map either (not that the game will come out and tell you the levels of areas)
So yeah, it's very weird. I'm sure it was great for the time, but I feel like this game is at its best when I'm on normal mode, doing some basic strategies to progress while steadily clearing a dungeon with something else playing in the background. Not really blowing me away with the wealth of cool things I can do or say, and the premise of each story is good but not amazing. I'd find it a perfectly good game to relax with if not for all the technical issues and design quirks, but they make it feel like I have to fight up hill to enjoy a plain bologna sandwich
