#1: Complexity

It can absolutely be overwhelming. The game does an OK job at the very beginning with pop-ups to guide you through the basics. Since we played over a year ago – much of the inventory management has been patched to be easier to navigate and more intuitive. Still, Larian could have built in a Tutorial section you could revisit or a FAQ or something to reference because sure, you remembered how to move a spell in your inventory into a bag where you keep all your spells so it’s not a mess of 200 items in one place, but that was 35 hours of gameplay time and 2 months ago. Where and how was it? I was there too on more than one occasion. Why not suggest I move them all into one bag in the first place while showing me how to do it every time I have over 100 items in my inventory until I choose “stop showing this notification?”

#2: Character Creation

The second major area that Larian could have done better, especially if it wanted to appeal to Bloodbourne-at-hearted gamers like Tommy or even casuals like my wife who was into the story but would have absolutely quit without me explaining things is “Walk me through the freaking character creation!!!” It’s the most crucial decision you’ll make and you’ll be largely tied to it for the next 80 hours. Note: you can change your class and other attributes not too far into the game, but again, it’s not readily apparent unless you play these games like me- phone equipped in my off-hand.

Real-life example:

The first time we played, Tommy jumped into my game midway through Act 2 on Tactician. He had a Druid that looked awesome and I remember he said he does a little bit of this and a little of that. The specifics aren’t as important as the design flaw that he had NO IDEA (because the game doesn’t tell you,) that no matter what type of character you want to build, the subclass and race are critical to maximize your potential. Making it worse, those nuances are not readily apparent. A simple prompt “Offer Suggestions?” series of popups when you select a class could have given players a surface-level understanding to understand the decisions they were making. E.g. when the player chooses Druid, popups suggest the Duergar race because of their Enlarge and Invisibility spells. Each of those could also be clickable to explain what they do, so now, OK I can pick another race, but now I understand what I’m gaining and losing. I’m obsessed with getting the most of out my characters from Baldur’s to Elden Ring, so I lived through this game on deltiasgaming.com, which has amazing character build guides, but I’m not the average gamer. Yes, everything I just wrote is super nerd, but this is a D&D game so you either gotta embrace it or acknowledge it’s not for you.

#3: Difficulty Spikes

The combat is extremely tactical and I was SHOCKED Tommy didn’t enjoy it. At first, I thought he was effing with me. I kept thinking “I KNOW you like this because we’ve played tabletop games before and had a blast!” What in the world went wrong??? Two things.

Reason 1.

If you’re new to D&D, don’t be a hero and try to play on Tactician (hard) mode. Maybe even not on Balanced (normal.) This world is massive and complicated enough to have entertained the nerdiest of nerds for 4 decades. If you’re like me having never rolled a Polyhedral Dice in your life (a term I had to look up just to reference,) strongly recommend setting gamer cred and ego aside and playing on Balanced or even Explorer difficulty. For me, intimidated enough to do my first playthrough on Explorer, my first major battle outside a village gate where I had the high ground, lots of NPC allies, and a party I was feeling pretty darn good about, I somehow got my butt absolutely handed to me. And then again. On the easiest mode in the game. Ouch. But I was into the story and I really kinda wanted to understand and get good at D&D, so similar to Soulslikes, through repetition and semi-cheating via the Internet, I eventually realized what I was doing wrong and learned some valuable lessons. It was MY fault for inviting a buddy who’d played less than 10 hours into an unfamiliar scenario on freaking Tactician difficulty. It’s not my fault Tommy hates this game, but I sure didn’t help.

Reason 2.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of different effects that could happen at a given time in battle. Chilled, confused, poisoned, bleeding, etc. would be a lot less overwhelming if the game gave better indications of what was going on. A poisoned character turning bright green is obvious, but other effects linger and while there is a physical cue or icon indicator, there are so many that it’s tough to remember what’s what. Why not when I hover over a confused enemy for the next 3 turns, give a pop-up so we know this dude isn’t a problem for a bit? In tough fights especially, a few design changes could have removed the frustration of defeat without understanding why or how. These events make players shut the game off instead of understanding where they effed it up, but wanting to do it again… better.

This game is a 10/10, but no game is perfect. I wonder if Larian had done a little better job connecting with noobs like us, most of whom don’t want to use their tablet for reference while gaming, would Tommy have had enough fun to get into the story? The odds are at least 50/50. I play Soulslikes slowly and methodically while Tommy likes to charge ahead with his massive poise and giant bonk weapons so… who knows!

Check out his take on our original Baldur's Gate 3 review here.