izigame.me

This review won't actually be as negative as you would think, I wish steam had a "maybe" option.
So, Baldur's Gate, the CRPG - the game that is synonymous with the genre itself for 90% of people, and honestly I can see why, I really can.
It has got charm, it has got soul - it is just a labor of love, and you only need to look at the manual for the game (a 150 page pdf, full color with pictures and all) for that much to be apparent.
I respect this game for everything it did to the RPG genre - its influence is not to be underestimated.
I'm giving it a not recommended simply because it isn't for me, and I think I gave it a fair shot.
Now on to the game itself and why I don't recommend it.
It's pretty, it has that D&D adventure atmosphere and it feels nice to immerse yourself in it...
...But holy hell man this game did not age well at all - now look, I actually love old school games - some of my favorite games (either now or when i was younger) were and will be games such as Doom, Quake 1, Diablo 2, older Total War games etc.
Take Diablo 2 as an example here - it has weak endgame content, it has weak build variety (compared to modern ARPGs such as PoE), it has poor UI and inventory management, it has weak widescreen support etc (all of this is in the context of the remaster not existing) - in other words, the game is archaic, it is old, it doesn't have modern technology and comfort behind it and it is full of design philosophies that make 0 sense in today's world of game design - but it's still so fun to play. It just feels good to play, to listen to that story one more time, to slay monsters and get that random loot, its age aged with it, if you will - it became a part of its soul.
Baldur's Gate on the other hand to me feels like a chore to play :
-the game is just straight up too RNG based - I feel this is much more true in the early game than it is in the late game, but holy shit man the amount of times a random spell just one-shot any of my characters except for the beefiest fighter tank is just stupid, no skill required and no reaction from the player possible.
-the game is pure trial and error sometimes - like the early game Temple zone in the first town (why the fuck are there like 8 vampire wolves and worgs when they're literally immune to the damage low lvl characters can deal, since they don't have magic damage at that stage of the game?) or any encounter where you need to know in advance which spells to prepare or which damage type weapons to have (since some monsters are just immune to some types of damage, but neither the game, its in-game books, tutorials, manual, or the non-existent bestiary will tell you that.
Edit - Pathfinder Kingmaker has an example of how to deal with situations that possibly could be trial and error by giving you a warning using in-game NPCs in a lore-friendly and immersive way - shortly, one of your companions writes a journal, and that journal is your quest log - everything in there is written by her, with her emotions - the quest that could have been trial and error literally has your companion writing a comment on that quest, stating "this seems shady, our hero (you) should probably take some invisibility potions or think of some escape, just in case that this might be a trap" - this is absolutely brilliant and it winks to the player that he will have to fight or flight his way out of that situation - it's 100% the players fault if he doesn't get properly prepared for this after this type of warning.
-the UI is clunky,
-tutorials are sparse,
-the manual is too complicated and yet still doesn't explain all the things a player should know,
-inventory and character management is tiresome and a waste of too much time,
-quest and side-quest directions are not really clear,
On top of all this you have missing basic quality of life features that we've all come to expect in games today (in general, not just CRPGs):
- when i loot something, why doesn't that particular material/gem/arrow/item automatically stack in the inventory of the character that has those items?
-why are there no spell range/AOE indicators (what the fuck does 50 ft. of range mean)?
-why can't i ctrl+click or alt+click items to equip/unequip them faster?
-why can't I speed up the boring walking parts while exploring zones?
-why must I first select a character at a temple and then select the effect i want to apply to them (instead of just selecting an effect from the list and clicking on a character)?
-why must my whole party stop what they were ordered every time I order my party leader to speak with someone/investigate something...
-why doesn't my party walk in unison - instead they all bump into each other and pause every half a second, making my ranged guys walk head-first into an enemy spellcaster or archer?...
...and the list goes on.
Heck, I don't even need quality of life and modern day UI and UX philosophies that much - bro I've played Path of Exile for 1.500 hours and I've played a decent amount of Warframe as well, do you really think I'm not used to an absolute pisspoor user experience - and yet still Baldur's Gate feels even worse when trying to get into it than those games.
One last thing to mention - the story , at least for now, feels somewhat generic, but I actually like that tbh, it's a nice break from Pillars' animancy, watcher and philosophical ancient civilization story lol. It just feels like an adventure that's waiting to happen, with okay writing.
The only problem for me is that it is perhaps too predefined - I actually went through the pains of writing a personal biography for my character (there's an in-game option for that and it is clunky as all hell to write something coherent in that game box)... and then the game shoehorned me into being with Gorion, the guy that adopted me, my whole life... bruh.
Yeah, sue me, I like generic fantasy stories where the main party goes on an epic quest to get treasure/to save the world in a colorful high-fantasy setting.
This game is for people that either played it when it first came out or played other games at that time and are somewhat used to this level of clunkyness and weirdness - I may be playing old school games my whole life, but I was still born in the year 2000 - I've experienced too much quality of life to be comfortable playing this.
Maybe it's just not for me - that is always a possibility, we're all humans, we can't be good at everything and love everything.
Even so, I'll continue playing CRPGs, and will probably play Baldur's Gate 3 some day - it's not the end of the world if I don't like the game that basically spearheaded the genre, but I am kind of sad that that's the case...
I should note that i played games in this genre - I've put 100+ hours in Pillars of Eternity, I'm still planning to pick up the Pathfinder games (and i'll probably do a mini-update here when i do), so it isn't that this genre isn't for me, I don't think so. It's more that this genre got so much better with the advancement of technology , that going back in time with it feels downright painful, even for someone who tolerates weird game design.