Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a good game. But I’m not sure it deserves all the hype it got last year.
It does some very clever stuff in terms of gameplay, with each character having their own unique battle system that synergise with the others.
And yes, the soundtrack is incredible.
In terms of the story, whilst it was interesting, the way the game drip-feeds you knowledge in the first two acts quickly became frustrating. There were multiple cutscenes where characters speak in such a vague, superficially poetic way. In reality it just felt pretentious.
Major story spoilers:
spoiler
The overall metaphor for grief is unique. I liked the concept of the characters being creations in this painting, and how that layer of reality feeds into the one you begin the game in. But it felt like everything was revealed all at once in Act 3. The game gives you very little up to that point, so it’s hard to emphasize with many of the characters. Perhaps replaying the game knowing what you know changes the perspective of it, but for a new player I’m not sure it’s the best way to tell a story.
Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion but I found the game aesthetically quite ugly. Many landscapes had a feeling of copy pasted Unreal assets that looked so same-y at points they became confusing to navigate (especially given the lack of a mini-map). The characters had these blank, uncanny stares half the time and the designs for some of them (Esquie in particular) just didn’t look good to me.
Oh and I’m really not sure why the devs decided to add entirely unnecessary platforming elements!
I found certain enemy attacks to be inconsistent and not well telegraphed, leading to some frustrating encounters were you had to memorise the parry timings rather than learn them from a valid cue.
I think the game deserves good reviews, but I’m not quite sure how it won so many GOTY awards. Perhaps it just wasn’t the game for me.
I actually played this just after finishing BG3, which I thought was an incredible game and perhaps one of the best I’ve ever played.
Perhaps it’s just that no RPG is going to quite live up to that experience, so E33 in comparison I couldn’t help but criticize a little harshly in my mind.
But even now, BG3 feels like a 10/10 game to me, whereas E33 is perhaps a 8 at best.
Funny that I had it the other way around. First I played E33 and liked it a lot (maybe not as a best game, but rather as a relatively “fresh” experience). Then I started playing BG3 and it somehow didn’t click. It took me probably 2 months to get through 1st act and then I simply dropped it, because I didn’t want to continue at all. And at some point I considered BG2 as one of my most favorite games of all times, so I really wanted to like BG3.
Yeah stiff competition for sure. It’s unfortunate that it feels like big scale games of that quality are so few and far in between and much of the AAA size games end up being garbage. I’m somewhat hopeful for Witcher 4 despite being burned by cyberpunk, but we shall see. And divinity will be exciting whenever that releases im sure.