Recent reviews by MihailM

I like the worldbuilding and the overall main quest line.
And the ironman-by-default approach is really intriguing, because it had me be a lot more careful about what I do.
It's on the jankier side, but in a lovable way.

I kept asking for more alien fantasy worlds, akin to Morrowind. Well, I eventually got something great in Dread Delusion!
A short (under 20 hours) experience, but packed with intriguing characters, brilliantly designed world, alien aesthetics and a cohesive plot.
I was hooked from the first hour.

Short, but with a great art style and entertaining story.

Very tightly designed game with a lot of variance. Very fun if you enjoy rogue-likes.
Game of the Year 2024 for sure.

Lovely world building, interesting and believable characters. Simple gameplay, but enjoyable.

I enjoy it quite a bit.
It has both a similar vibe to Age of Decadence, yet it iterates positively on many fronts.
While I enjoyed the bronze-agey setting of AoD more, I do like CS quite a bit as well.

Definitely appreciate the more diverse difficulty options, as I like the writing and exploration more than the challenging fights.

Great movie. Can recommend.

A very enjoyable sequel. Fun puzzles, great new mechanics, interesting overarching narrative.
If you liked the first game, you'll thoroughly enjoy this.
If you never played the first game, play at least one of these 2, but both are wonderful.

First half will be spoiler free. Second half will be very spoilery.

Spoiler-free zone.

The good:
- Amazing voice acting.
- Enjoyable epic soundtrack.
- High production values for cinematic moments.
- Decent graphics.
- Interesting premise, with many side quests to distract you from / influence the main questline.
- A good first CRPG for people to play. People coming from Divinity will also be in for a treat.
- Many quests and many hours of content.

The bad:
- Pathfinding is atrocious and frustrating.
- There are still many bugs in the game, especially in act 3.
- AI stops and does nothing for many seconds in bigger fights, prolonging some fights to unbearable waits.
- The inventory is atrocious. There are tons of trash items. The layout is horrible. Finding items is a chore.
- D&D 5e does not lend itself to interesting choices when levelling a character up.
- Fights are very long even if they're 'easy' random encounters. This is because the game emulates the tabletop game, however when playing with friends, you are ok with downtime due to the social nature of the game. When playing a single-player video game, this downtime is frustrating and not welcome.
- Loading times are massive even on an SSD.
- Camera controls are atrocious. On multi-level areas it becomes very hard to navigate or even target opponents on different floors.
- Corpses taking priority in targeting over actual enemies.
- Rolling for every little thing became absolutely tedious and a chore. And frustrating.

Spoiler zone.


The good:
- Gortash was interesting.
- Ketheric was cool.
- Act 1 had some interesting choices to be made, though with little impact on the story.

The bad:
- They absolutely butcher the lore of the previous 2 games and the returning NPCs. It's as if they wanted to trample the legacy of the games for fans of the series.
- A lot of 'important' characters that show up are as if someone read the wiki for BG 1 and 2 and decided to shoehorn them in, past events be damned. Similar to Palpatine in recent Star Wars movies. Why is Balduran back?
- The way Viconia is treated is criminal.
- If Jaheira dies in act 2, in my playthrough, nobody acknowledged it. I didn't even realise it happened until much later.
- ...which meant I could not save Minsc, which was a real kick in the heart and groin. Making me make Boo angry and crying is a sin.
- WTF why is Sarevok in the game? He is no longer Bhaalspawn, he should be dead *even* if resurrected by the canonical BG2 character due to him being a human.
- Why are there more Bhaalspawn to begin with? BG2: ToB makes it quite clear that the essence of Bhaal in people is gone.
- Romance is a bit weird. It is very linear, very simple and, often, despite virtually no interactions with some companions, shoe-horned in. I barely spoke to Wyll and he tried to flirt twice, despite saying no both times. Same with other characters.
- The (very few) companions are very one-dimensional. Dramatic past with parent issues and an unwillingness to trust (Shadowheart, Wyll, Astarion, Lae'zel, Karlach). Or just dramatic past with mysterious underpinnings (Gale). Their quest-lines are kinda interesting, but very little character growth that is relevant.
- The writing is very poor in many areas. For example: "This coin is the most important thing for me, you'll never have it. Oh, your story is pretty cool, here, have my coin." (no persuasion checks of any kind). Or, worse, Shadowheart threatens to kill Lae'zel in a cinematic, by actually trying to murder her in her sleep. No consequences, best friends next morning.
- Also, many issues with the few character interactions. I didn't actually pick up Gale in my playthrough, yet several times companions said stuff along the lines of "Gale would really like it here".
- We never got to see Dribbles reanimated again. Boo.
- The city of Baldur's Gate was not segmented into sensible parts. Each part that was available was too big and frustrating to navigate.
- Virtually no consequences for murdering half the Flaming Fist in the middle of the city. The other half couldn't care less.
- Just because it's based on D&D 5e doesn't mean you can't take advantage of modern technology, like the computer. Build on years of technical innovations in RPGs to make a better *game*.

Final grade 7/10. As a big fan of Larian's previous games, this is definitely their crown achievement. As a big fan of Baldur's Gate and CRPGs in general, this was a massive disappointment. This insults the memory of the previous 2 games.

Disclaimer: I had to mod the game a wee bit to make it slightly easier, as it is quite unforgiving in some places.
Trust the game when it tells you things. (see other reviews for an idea of the sort of unforgiving I mean)

However, I really enjoyed the world, the character building, the very relevant choices and the paths it puts you on, as well as the overall story.

I will elaborate on the choices a bit more: I really really enjoyed how, by using simple numbers (Word of Honour, Loyalty, Peacemaker, Reputation, etc), the game really makes you think about how you roleplay your character. And each choice could open (or close) very big doors.

As a massive fan of CRPGs, I am very happy to have played this game.