Baldur's Gate III (PC, 2023)

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I am by no means "finished" with the game. I hope these reviews don't imply that I have completed everything. I accept that it is unlikely that I will complete another pre-1990 game in my life. I am 8 hours into Baldur's Gate III.

The game reached the point where it really got fun. I found a fight with what seemed to be a party of evil adventurers. They just attacked on site, but they were the first group to really do that. There's lots of opportunity to talk or fight with other characters in the game. Fallout 4 had the problem of everrrrrrrrrrry rando encounter being immediately antagonistic. That isn't what has been happening here.

The fight was good! I had to think about why I lost, use some tactics and spells, work as a team and use pretty much everything I could to win, and even then, I won with each of my guys having one hit point. I don't think the game intended for me to fight when I did, but it also did not stop me. A weird thing happened when I went to "camp," it's like this portal dimension or something. You go in, rest and come out. We are lucky this is Dungeons and Dragons. It did make me think about how I am going to handle long rest in the game I am making.

I really liked the squad-based tactics of Baldur's Gate I and II and after this battle, my opinion of the game has changed for the better. The part we have to ignore is that I played for 8 hours before the game got to what I considered to be good! This is a crazy thing that games do. Goddamn each turn on a game I make I am PRAYING!!!!! the player doesn't quit. These guys making these things do not give a shit. You could be through most of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in movie form at 8 hours. At 8 hours, ole BG3 here is just getting started and engrossing, it is nuts, I do not understand this hobby.

[Da King]

I just downloaded this on PS5 the night before Shawn came home from school for Xmas, but haven't been able to play because he took the PS5 while he's home. It's the first game I've looked forward to playing on a console in a looong time. I hope it is good!

[Jizaboz]

I am already almost 80 hours into this game only buying it 2 and a half weeks ago. It was my "Christmas game" to myself. To relive the exciting moments of getting Wizardry 7 for Xmas, etc. This game does not disappoint. If you play modern Dungeons N Dragons.. this IS DnD with your friends although with perhaps one of the most robot Dungeon Masters (heh). Nothing beats the experience of real DND with friends.. but man if this doesn't come close. It even allows you to play campaigns WITH your friends on time schedules just like you would do in real life.

A couple of you may recall me showing off my real life DND character "Grimble" on Twitter/X. A "dark/deep chaotic Gnome wizard who loved Spells of Destruction." Being able to play that exact same gnome and seeing his facial expressions as he makes decisions and shit is fucking gaming magic. This is what a computer game should be.

Wonder if TDARCOS has a machine that will play it? It's not exactly hardware-intensive. I'm playing with all the settings wide-ass-open ultra with a 3 year old video card and it doesn't skip a bit.

[Da King]

I cant wait to send my kid back to school so that I can actually play this.

[Jizaboz]

Here's Grimble! (I'm already bangin Shadowheart on the left in this playthru lol) He stands less than 4 feet tall even smaller than a dwarf. Sometimes, I wonder why I find gnome wizards so much fun to play in DnD. I think it's because it forces me to think differently like when my friends tell me they are mounting up on horses I can say something like "Well you assholes didn't buy Grimble a pony, so pick up poor Grimble!". I'm extremely physically handicapped, yet I can do things like crawl into tiny cave crevices. Also, the visuals and audio of a gnome with a kid-voice and blue-glowing eyes past level 5 chanting the power word to cast Fireball (A truely awesome Spell of Destruction) was one of the most bad-ass things I've ever imagined while playing a table-top game.. much more so actually seeing it in a computer game.

[Jizaboz]

My theme music:



Look at the sky. Look at the river isn't it goooood?!

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

This is a good game. This gets the ICJ seal of approval.

As someone who has recently worked on a trading screen, this is all ya need and more:



Being able to trade all the character's stuff to one dude is something I would love to implement, but I can't exactly let players scroll with the mouse in what I am working on.

It's got a good "flow" between town scenes and combat that I like a lot.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I went to play tonight and moved my character around in a town and she fell into an invisible "chasm" and died.

It seems like a bug.

[Jizaboz]

I beat the game on “balanced” last Sunday. Got a rare Steam achievement for it too for the way I did it!

Already started a new game as Laodamas; an evil human warlock and returned to him today. It’s really like playing a new game because of the different things that are happening due to moving different places at different times and making different choices.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

BG3 starts out with what I believe is a fake false timer. It's fake AND false! Unlike Fallout, where if you aren't making progress toward getting that water chip you could lose, the mind flayers at the beginning of BG3 who have infected the party didn't infect them with something that turns the party into mind flayers after 7 days. I know this because if the game DID do that, and caused everyone who dawdled to have to restart, the fact that this game was played by so many people who are not CRPG veterans means that it would be the only topic that could have existed on the internet when these babies realized they had to start over.

Crying online is now part of the computer games platform.

So you have infinite time to solve the initial problem, I am sure of it. But I can't stand not solving that first problem. Maybe that means I miss side quests. I have 20 minutes a day to play games, maybe. I can handle the missing side quests. I want to get the brain worms out of my head. If I don't get them out, some of my party members may leave the fantasy adventure campaign and try running a Presidential one.

It is very frustrating for me when trying to move my party around. There are spots that look like nice grass that I should be able to get to. And I just can't. I will load a screenshot up. I am hot on the trail of the NEW guy who is definitely going to cure the brain worms and definitely WON'T create his own link of this chain quest like the last two people that I had to find did.

I can't get to the area just above my character here:



I went back in to get the screenshot, and I sort of have to click on rocks now to navigate. So the clear areas and trails don't work. What the hell.

Steam's search - which I wanted to use for this - does the very very very stupid thing of not just letting you search for "clicking", it brings up all instances of the word "click." I got so frustrated I just stopped. I may stop with the game. It's too buggy just moving around.

[Jizaboz]

Didn't encounter that bug either! You are having a bad string of luck with this game.

Maybe try to click "o" for overheard view long enough to get them out of that spot?

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I bought Betrayal at Krondor on gog after. I may start a thread about it.

Games in the -- PC games in the 90s. They ask a LOT of us 25 years later, man. Why is it I can hop onto Asteroids and instantly know what to do. Betrayal at Krondor was getting 94% reviews and "game of the year" talk and everything. We'll see, I guess.