D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 Early Access

Baldur's Gate III is now available for early access on Steam and on Stadia.

I couldn't get the Steam version working on my Mac, but the Stadia version works just fine. The opening tutorial level is pretty gruesome (at one point I had to squish somebody's brain) and the mind flayer airship you're trying to escape from beings to mind the movie Aliens a lot.

Character creation is quick and easy, although options in the early access are limited. The gameplay is like Divinity Original Sin 2 with the 5E rules layered over it. I've only played an hour or so of the game, and as an early access game, it is occasionally a bit buggy, but nothing showstopping (yet).

This isn't a review (I haven't played enough of it to do that, and I don't think it's fair to review an early access version anyway); it's mainly just an alert to the few people who don't already know it's available. If any such person exists!

 

[Azzy]

well, turn base in real D&D(or any tabletop) is necessary evil, as otherwise it would be chaos.
But when AI is working many things in background and you could pause if you want to execute complicated orders, then turning Baldur's Gate to turn based game is lazy design.

Stay salty, my dude.

 

[Morrus]

well, turn base in real D&D(or any tabletop) is necessary evil, as otherwise it would be chaos.
But when AI is working many things in background and you could pause if you want to execute complicated orders, then turning Baldur's Gate to turn based game is lazy design.

I'm sure the developers of BG3 are many things. 'Lazy' is not high on that list of things.

 

[cmad1977]

My multiplayer experience with the game has been quite positive. There are absolutely bugs in multi but they’re already getting ironed out and seem fairly easily fixed with a reload(save your game!!!).
I find the look and movement of the characters to be quite good and the spell and ability effects look solid.

I certainly can’t complain about the quality of a game that’s not even actually finished and still performs so well.

I suppose YMMV.

 

[Oofta]

well, turn base in real D&D(or any tabletop) is necessary evil, as otherwise it would be chaos.
But when AI is working many things in background and you could pause if you want to execute complicated orders, then turning Baldur's Gate to turn based game is lazy design.

Always amazes me when people disagree with a design decision just dismiss it as "lazy". Really?

Don't like how the game plays? Spend years building a gaming studio to prove your worth and after a couple of successful products see if you can get a licensing deal with WOTC. Then spend thousands man hours on development. Only someone truly lazy would do all of that.

 

[MarkB]

Always amazes me when people disagree with a design decision just dismiss it as "lazy". Really?

Don't like how the game plays? Spend years building a gaming studio to prove your worth and after a couple of successful products see if you can get a licensing deal with WOTC. Then spend thousands man hours on development. Only someone truly lazy would do all of that.

That, and the implication that they've somehow settled for the lesser option, just because it's not to someone's taste. I love the tactical depth and flexibility that turn-based combat provides, and would like this game far less if it were not built as a dedicated turn-based game.

 

[Horwath]

Always amazes me when people disagree with a design decision just dismiss it as "lazy". Really?

Don't like how the game plays? Spend years building a gaming studio to prove your worth and after a couple of successful products see if you can get a licensing deal with WOTC. Then spend thousands man hours on development. Only someone truly lazy would do all of that.

no one said that they didn't put huge amount of hours into the game, and I hope for BG as a franchise that this game will be a hit, but do not say that is not easier to code turn base combat than real-time.

It might be their design choice, it might be that they had huge success with DOS, so they kept to their recipe and didn't want to take a chance on different design.

 

[Gradine]

Real Time with Pause is garbage and we only put up with it in the late 90's because we didn't know any better, as a people. I'd much rather play out encounters in Torment: Tides of Numenera than Baldur's Gate II. Honestly.

Frankly, when it comes to D&D games I'm much more interested in playing an RPG than an RTS

 

[Nymrod]

My only issue so far is how hard it is to get peaceful resolutions without save scumming. But that's part and parcel with 5E's bounded accuracy. Quite a few of the situations qualify as hard or very hard after all and you cannot focus your build well at low levels.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Real Time with Pause is garbage and we only put up with it in the late 90's because we didn't know any better, as a people. I'd much rather play out encounters in Torment: Tides of Numenera than Baldur's Gate II. Honestly.

Frankly, when it comes to D&D games I'm much more interested in playing an RPG than an RTS

It really took me a while that tge real time modus of BG 1 was just a fake. I tried dodging arrows and so on until I realised that it is just turn based and if you didn't issue commands fast enough, you just skip your turn. I think there was the autopause function which I probably used.
Actually I didn't play BG 3 myself too much, because I didn't like the combat modus.
I rather played betrayal at krondor, which was turn based in battle or al quadim which was real time.

That does not automatically mean I will like BG 3 however.

 

[Demetrios1453]

My only issue so far is how hard it is to get peaceful resolutions without save scumming. But that's part and parcel with 5E's bounded accuracy. Quite a few of the situations qualify as hard or very hard after all and you cannot focus your build well at low levels.

With it still in early access, they'll are probably still fine-tuning charisma based encounters and checks like that...