Finished first playthrough. Review/opinions (many)

Finished my first playthrough. Here are my too many opinions. (crossposted from Steam, apologies if you've already seen this)

First, I don't think I've ever played a game more harmed by its hype. I waited a year for the buzz to die down (and for bugs to be theoretically fixed) before playing it, but I still think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I'd come in blind than with the expectation of "one of the best RPGs ever."

Ultimately it's a game I liked but didn't love, but underneath that verdict it's more complex. There were certainly elements I loved, but also elements I hated, it just netted out to being a firm but unremarkable thumbs up, for me.

What follows is probably too many of those things I loved, liked, didn't care about, or hated.

What I Loved

  • Build-crafting and flexibility was spectacular.
  • Combat was great and full of options.
  • Most non-core quests have multiple valid approaches/solutions/outcomes.
  • The stories around The Emperor and Ketheric were both exceptionally well done, not just in the stories themselves but in the ways and pace at which information was parsed out.
  • As a longtime planar nerd, having a game so heavily based around the Githyanki was just delightful.
  • Of the companions, Jaheira was the one who stood out to me. I'll talk about the others as I go, but she was the one who felt like she had the most layers/opinions/identity beyond her core "thing." Probably helped by having two previous games of history behind her.

What I Liked a Lot

  • Shadowheart had a pretty great storyline, and was the only companion who felt like she really had something worthwhile going on in all three acts, even if I liked the personalities on some of the others more. As a character she's kind of only got the one thing (this is a common issue), but at least that one thing is handled super well.
  • Some standout quests: most of the Thorne stuff in Act 2, the Ansur quest, most of House of Hell (more on that later), infiltrating the Goblin camp, and especially the Githyanki Creche.
  • Karlach is a really fun character concept, and I enjoyed her a lot in Act 1. She doesn't really get much/any development after, which is a shame, but still fun.
  • Lae'zel also a very fun character whose arc kinda immediately stagnates after the Creche, but as with Karlach, I like the character a lot.
  • Minthara, third verse same as the first and second. Fun character, gets very little actual development or progression once recruited, but good lines and voice acting.
  • Some standout NPCs: Barcus, Aylin (wish they'd done more with her obvious dark side, but still), Alfira, Mizora, Sazza, Voss, Ansur, and the Strange Ox. Was always happy and/or intrigued whenever one of those characters would pop up.
  • The world-building was great. Helped no doubt by Faerun having such a rich pre-existing history, but the result is still fantastic.

What I Liked a Little

  • Wyll's ok. Another character who's really only the got the one thing (well, two I guess, but they're pretty intertwined), but at least does stuff with said thing. Little flat and generic on the personality front, but it's nice to have a traditional swashbuckler type with a little darkness to him.
  • The Iron Throne is a really cool mission idea and if there were a version of it that weren't a buggy mess it'd be one of the best quests in the game. Unfortunately my gnomes liked to run past the ladder and charge into other hallways for reasons unclear.

What I Neutraled

-Halsin's fine. Factory settings Druid plus muscles. Ok.

What I Disliked a Little

  • Gortash and Orin are both pretty flat and one-note for the characters who are responsible for driving most of Act 3. They're at least well-performed, but coming after Ketheric they feel like a letdown.
  • Minsc is fine in a vacuum but he feels out of tone with most of the rest of the game.
  • I know it's a 5e carryover and I don't like it there either, but I dislike feats being tied to class level rather than character level. Just discourages multiclassing without adding much.
  • Gale grated on me from go, and his quest I found very dull and self-involved, but he did win me over a little at the very end. He and another companion I wasn't wild about I let make up their own minds, but Gale actually, all by himself, turned down godhood and became a better person. Good job Gale. I still don't want to hang out with you much, but good job.
  • Touched on above, but Karlach/Minthara/Lae'zel being such fun characters and yet being given so relatively little to do/having pretty minmal development. More true of Karlach and Minthara, but I wanted more of all three, and more than that I wanted them to have to make more than one choice apiece at some point during a 100 hour game.
  • Everybody's horny, but it's more irritating internet horny than actual people who fuck horny. Rang false to me.
  • Structurally, the game feels off. In retrospect Act 2 probably should have been Act 3 and vice versa, or Act 3 should have been split into two acts with the stupid fillery stuff coming before the Shadowlands and the actual high-stakes stuff like Ansur and Raphael coming after. But it's wild to go from unkillable deathgod JK Simmons choking the land in shadowy blight for tragic character reasons to Orin's little make-believe routines and clown body scavenger hunt.
  • Five of your first six companions' basic hook is "I have an unwanted curse screwing up my life due to my complicated relationship with an immortal being and I'm angsty about it." Lae'zel almost makes six, minus the curse. I'm sure it's an attempt at a theme, but the game doesn't really go anywhere with it, so it just ends up feeling samey and redundant. Especially noticeable with the first three guys, who all also present with kind of a snarky bravado to mask their angst.
  • I was expecting more depth from the companions as a general rule, but in general they felt a lot closer to the Fire Emblem "here's my one thing that defines me! I'll change it if you don't like it senpai!" model than the more complicated riffs you get in something like Dragon Age.
  • Related to the above, wish the companions interacted with each other more, had more development/dynamics/relationships between them. Mostly you just get a few lines of banter.
  • As a longtime planar nerd, disappointed the Githzerai weren't more involved.
  • It's nice that they give you shape-shifting but the downside is that like 95% of the time people just recognize you anyway. Fun when it works, but it almost never does.
  • You have all these fun Faerunian races at your disposal and all but one of your companions are at least half Elven or Human. Missed opportunity. Perfect world the evil choices would let you replace the five heroes you lose with like an orc, a bugbear, a duergar, a drider, and a minotaur or something, but c'est la vie.

What I Disliked a Lot

  • Inventory system is a nightmare for reasons not clear to me. The cynical view is it's intentionally crap to pad runtime.
  • Fast travel points, particularly in Act 2, are awfully scarce for a game with no random encounters and tons of backtracking. Again, feels like padding with no upside.
  • Camera and UI generally are pretty frustrating.
  • Ridiculous they can't figure out how to make Warlock multiclassing work as intended a year plus after release.
  • Awful lot of bugs still for a game with this much post-release support. None were save-destroying, but could-be-fun missions were turned into chores, theoretically impactful scenes were marred by graphical errors, cutscenes would trigger that referenced either things I hadn't done yet or had pointedly refused to do, etc.
  • I did four of the romances and they were all pretty crap. Very Ao3/Tumblr-esque self-insert writing where the romances feel out of character and your character/choices/personality feels irrelevant. It's tricky to write a romance for a player generated character, for sure, but it's been done well elsewhere (Dragon Age probably the best at it).
  • Tonal issues. I mentioned Minsc and the romances above, which also feel out of place, but there's a bunch more. One of the coolest quests in the game (House of Hope) ending with a fourth wall shattering Disney villain song really soured it for me, characters quoting Shakespeare in a universe he doesn't exist in, and especially Astarion feeling like he wandered in from a Venture Bros spoof on Anne Rice doing a shitty Tim Curry impression. There are others, but those are the most egregious that leapt to mind.
  • In some ways the game feels unfinished. A plane-hopping fourth act dealing with Vlaakith/Zariel/The Dead 3/etc. would have made a lot of sense and let a lot of the characters who feel like they get short shrift more satisfyingly and organically complete their arcs to the point I have to assume something like that was originally intended, but in its current form the finish feels incomplete to me.

What I Hated

  • Slanted/false choices are a real issue. You usually technically have a choice, but too frequently the game really prefers you make it one specific way. You can side with the Goblins, but the payoff is one unique camp event in exchange for 3 companions and like a dozen quests. You can temporarily side with Moonrise, but the payoff is one unique scene with Ketheric in exchange for 2 (or 3, if you hadn't already lost Halsin) companions, a lot fewer quests, and you still end up having to kill Ketheric/Z'rell/etc. anyway. You can be a Githyanki but the game will frequently forget you are or pretend you're not (and a lot of the romance scenes will be unintentionally hilarious because they didn't model them with the skinnier Gith, turning your characters into fuck-mimes just kinda erotically groping or kissing the air near each other). You can try to free Orpheus the first chance you get but you just get a non-standard game over. You can choose not to eat tadpoles but the game just sorta pretends you did anyway and there's no extra content or payoff for resisting, etc. etc. There's only a few big choices in the game that feel like both options have real pros and cons vs. one being the choice you're supposed to make and the other being the one they put in the game so they can say you have choices.
  • There's also a lot of choices you may want to make, but can't. Siding with the Creche, for instance, or redeeming Ketheric, etc. etc. These are things presented as options that aren't actually options which is fine for storytelling but disappointing in a game that's advertised partly on being able to make those kind of calls.
  • Astarion generally was a total whiff for me. Didn't think he fit the tone, didn't like his character, didn't like his performance, didn't like his quest, found him somehow simultaneously boring and obnoxious. He's a collection of familiar vampire tropes dialed up to 11 but robbed of most of what usually makes them interesting, just an absolute dud of a character. To the game's credit, they do give you a lot of chances to kill him off narratively, and near the end I finally did.

Tl:DR; Great game in concept marred somewhat in execution by bugs, shitty UI, and incomplete storytelling, but still easily a net-positive experience. Doesn't live up to the "greatest RPG ever" hype at all, but I'm still glad I played it.