Alright finally finished Baldur Gate 3 after like 150 hours.
I gotta say, it really doesn't leave me with the best impression. Two big issues, one the final battle happen over two screen and my game really bugged and would constantly flicker in between the two screen during opponent turn, making it impossible to figure out what was happening.
But the big one was the ending choice with the emperor. There's just no reason why you have to chose between freeing Orpheus or siding with the Emperor, those two are perfectly compatible. The conversation with the emperor around that was just plain weird, he keeps making it about whether or not you trust him, when its really not about that. Worse, there's no way to keep the emperor alive in the end, when, again, it really easily should have been doable, he was literally right next to you in the final moment and once the netherbrain is out, would have been free from its control.
I think there was some disagreement internally over the emperor, with some people of the dev seeing him as some complex grey figure and other just seeing him as a manipulative evil person. It seems like they cut the apple in two by forcing the choice with Orpheus but also making it so he doesn't betray you in the end. Anyway, I really liked the emperor because its rare game try to make true neutral character, so seeing him tossed aside in the end was a big disappointment.
Otherwise, I was kinda pushing myself for the last 30 hours or so, once you reach max level, the gameplay feel more static. Fight are much easier late game (tactician) aside from a couple big spike in difficulty, so most of the fights just felt like cleaning mooks. The UI issue also really started grating me, party member having to be led individually (if I play again I'm installing that mod that let you teleport your party to you at will), and party member getting in the way of object you want to interact with, really wish you could disable being able to talk to them in the field, since there's no reason to. Carrying capacity was also a major pita, I think carry weight can work as a mechanic, but when you can almost always go back to camp to dumb stuff in the chest, it just transform the whole process into tedium.
I think story/character wise, its okay, none of the party member really worked for me (Gale was closest but he's really annoying to use in the first act and wizard are kinda trash then, unless you exploit long rest after every battle, which is a big pita). But what really work is the sheer number of possibility they account for, all the weird combination that are acknoledged by the game is really impressive (except saving the emperor), I can't even imagine how many days worth of text lines there must be.
Gameplay wise, I have quite a few disapoitment, spell slot is a terrible system which makes some sense for table top, but in video game, its just bad. Class balance is also pretty poor honestly, half of them are either worthless or only useful for one or two things (I can't think of any reason why you'd go full rogue, why can't they at least get a 2nd attack naturraly?). It really feel like the best party (outside of exploits) is just 4 paladin. I can't figure out why half the feats exists. I really dislike the short/long rest system, its so generous with supply that you can easily long rest after every fight, which means you can go all out every fight, completely throwing the balance out of wack and cause big ludo narrative dissonance. I tried playing the other way, only resting once I exhaust all short rest (3 with bard) and skipping short rest as much as possible, which is better from an immersion point of view, but meant caster really struggle compare to figther/archer. I also was really baffle by the decision to make only one character able to do check in conversation, I got around it by making my main a bard halfing, so I was able to do almost all check I wanted, but its really bizarre that, say, my cleric would let my character waffle on a religion question instead of just taking over here and there.
Anyway, I sound negative, but ultimately I wouldn't have stuck with it till the end if I didn't enjoy myself overall. But still feel like divinity 2 is better (at least if they really fixed the bizarre scaling issue that existed at game launch).
