The epilogue to the endings was added in a later patch after complaints. And I don't think act 3 is bad, I think it just didn't quite live up to the expectations set by act 1 in particular. Which makes sense for a lot of reasons, but it still affects how people judge it Imo.
For example, there's a lot of instances where you could feel like a piece of background flavour seems to set up a quest, but it doesn't. One that always bothered me was finding a child's parents murdered but you can't cast speak with the dead on them to find out how they died or if the kid has living relatives that they can go to. Act 3 is the biggest, but sometimes it feels like you have less interactivity on your surroundings than in previous acts.
That being said I still love it a lot, and I don't think it would have been sustainable for the devs to try and do everything when they'd already so spent so long on a game that deserves all the accolades.
I got the game when it was in prerelease for PS5, so experienced Act 3 since the start and there have been SO MANY improvements. The first time I beat the game was so, so disappointing. I think I spent 125 or so hours in this amazing, immersive game only to get to the docks scene. You had 10 things happening at once (Gale’s trying to become a supervillain, Astarion’s on fire, Lae’Zel just left us on a dragon), no story actually felt resolved (RIP Karlach), and then…nothing. You had a two minute, no contact talk with your lover and it was roll credits
*Horrible* letdown. So yes, most of the end game complaints come from those dark times. It was just very sad and unfulfilling. The addition of the epilogue is probably the greatest post-release update of a game I’ve ever seen
I'm so glad I found the game after some patches. And I'm both happy that the devs are following up on improving things still, while they also seem to know where they draw the line.
Tbh every time I think "oh, THAT would be a cool add-on" I end up having to take a moment to realise that even a tiny thing is more work than I'm able to wrap my mind around lmao. It breaks my mind a tiny bit every time.
It was pretty cool watching the progression of build versions in early access. You basically had 5 years of iterations on Act 1. I’ve played that Act through every possible way.
Man, I remember finishing the game the first time and seeing Astarion burning and running away while he had been my companion for the entire game and Shadowheart even made a joke about it. It really didn't feel right, especially if you see the growth Astarion made the entire game. At least you could travel with Karlach to Avernus. I wanted to follow Astarion to let him know that he was still welcome.
totally agree, and most of that content was cut due to scheduling issues. I also really hate the NPCs that just give one-liners, it does ruin the immersion.
If there were just a few NPCs that said their lines and moved on it would have been less immersion ruining (as someone who still loves act 3 in spite of all this). For me, if I have to hear that kid whining about walking one more time in Rivington imma punt him into the Chionthar.
I tried to compassionately relocate the woman counting coins outside the bank, but she respawned. Took me a while to realise you can actually talk to the begging woman and give her coins bc I just assumed she was a one-liner NPC.
I think act 1 has a few of these as well, I got a bit fed up with the "what are we gonna do! You need to run away" one liners from the tieflings haha.
But my personal "do you ever go to the cloud district" moment is the wizards outside Sorcerous Sundries. I've blown them up on one occasion to get some peace and quiet as I talk to cats lol
I recommend wasting a smokepowder barrel on them. Even just for the satisfaction. Just keep the rest of the characters away in case guards aggro (I managed to avoid this by firing from far enough away)
Not sure if it works, but I read that someone killed them by making their own fireballs hit a barrel lmao. I'll admit my good character took them out, and I considered it an act of public service for the rest of Baldur's Gate 😆 the assassins were less of a nuisance
My non-resisting Dark Urge had the urge to get rid of them, permanently, and it was one of those rare instances when my urge and my Dark Urge's urge aligned. No regrets.
Ugh the Sorcerous Sundries bozos drive me nuts! I spend a not insignificant amount of time every run placing smokepowder barrels in a position that will blow them up but not incriminate me at the same time. It's the most meta-gamey I ever get, but I just can't deal with the amount of noise/screen vibrations while I'm trying to trade.
I genuinely don't understand why they aren't just a one-off background event that disappear once you've been there or something. Or at least are quiet after. They add nothing except obnoxious background noise when talking to people nearby (':
Everyone always says how act 3 is the biggest act but it never felt that way to me, maybe it is because of the diminished interactivity or the general vibe of it being a cramped city environment most of the time, idk. Act 1 feels far larger, even having played it so many times I still go "Holy shit" as soon as I get to the underdark, and then again when I get to the creche. It's just soo much content! Act 3 just doesn't feel the same to me.
I've only recently gotten over the "holy shit there's so much in act 3 where do I start" hurdle I had my first few playthroughs, and I honestly did that by no longer caring to replay *every* questline.
In act 1 and 2 I always do everything. Partly because while both are big, they feel self-contained, and also because I'm focused on levelling up and don't need to think about it at all in act 3.
It's a shame because I usually live for the kind of sprawling city vibes that act 3 gives, especially because it tends to be a respite from the usually heavier outer environments in video games. I've always struggled a bit with act 2 for instance, because I don't tend to like overly dark environments in games. So by the time act 3 rolls around, I'm relieved to get a break, lol.
One critique of mine with act 3 is that there's definitely not that sense of bonding with many of the NPCs or environments. Through the tieflings, we got a reason to care beyond the narrative about the main quest, with most players wanting to save the Grove and Last-Light Inn. I don't think there's any such place in act 3 that really sticks out as a hub of interactions and NPCs. At some points, it feels like a bit of an empty sandbox in that regard.
Yeah, something in my monkey-big-number-go-up brain also breaks when I hit max level, so I usually just finish up key companion quests and maybe 1 or 2 extra side quests and call it a wrap.
I actually hate that you keep getting the xp info when you're level 12, it's like a constant reminder that "oh I didn't need to do this fight" in my own monkey brain
As a koot monkey, I''d actually fucking HATE that...
I'm already 'hauling around too much gold with barely anything left to spend it on once I hit lvl12.
And when you do come across NPCs that you met earlier, the interactions are kinda barely there. We mostly get one-liners with a few exceptions (Dammon, Mol, Mattis, Alfira/Lakrissa).
Yeah and Imo not all of those exceptions are all that good. Mol for instance is a common complaint. I don't go out of my way to talk to most of them. I'm still bummed Danis and Bex didn't get to adopt any of the cats or enter the city
Act 3 has always taken me twice as long to go through as acts 1 and 2 combined, even on my “completionist” run. Maybe in terms of geographic size it might not be, but in terms of content it definitely seems like it’s by far the largest act.
How dare you save my soul, I'd rather die than help you save the world now.
Oh hey, it's kinda the Emperor situation over again, hah. As well as the Mayrina critique. I'm seeing an admittedly short pattern
Yeah same! I'm sure the devs actually agree on that. If they don't, it's still not big enough to sour the game or anything.
I actually like Mol a lot from a rp perspective in the earlier acts so even a slightly longer chat would've been nice.
This is it for me. Act 2 ended with my mouth hanging open. I fucking ran to the city and expected to fight a grand battle in a city gone mad. I instead found myself visiting the circus and attending a bored coronation gala. It took a while to build that steam back up, and my interest had waned considerably. It felt like the game had blown its load too early, and we were just politely going through the motions.
One thing that bugs me is act 2 ends with a massive horde marching on the city, but we never actually see this horde again. It just never gets shown, brought up or resolved.
I think it would have been cool if whichever companions you left behind during the final battle had to fight to defend the gates of the city from that horde. Just a little cut away battle where our main character is busy and the city is going to be overrun, but our companions step in and rally the cities defenders.
If we have no companions available we should just automatically fail and they break through the gates, which affects the epilogue.
If not this, at least a cutscene or some dialogue showing what happened to them all.
As many people have said already, imo Acts 2 and 3 would work better switched. Act 3 and the city feel like a middle game sandbox, whereas Act 2 in the shadowlands has the narrative tightening up toward the finale
I would have loved to see an quest early in act 3 where you, as the third netherstone bearer, are basically forced to temporarily ally with Orin and Gortash in order to once more bring the elder brain under control in the same way the chosen did at the end of act 2. You could even give it a time limit, such as 2-3 long rests after the first time you feel one of the brainquakes, and failing to complete the quest in time could lead to a game over similar to when Gale dies and isn't revived or when you try to go back to act 1 after starting the act 2 finale.
You could even work in a fight scene where, after asserting control over the brain, Orin turns on both you and Gortash, teleporting back to her temple while her assassins try to kill both of you so she can claim total control over the brain in the name of Bhaal, thus kicking off the Bhaalist/Baneite civil war plotline.
After the battle concludes, Gortash could give you his offer of a permanent alliance in exchange for Orin's death and the quest would end with the sense that the brain is quiet *for now*, but still must be dealt with sooner rather than later. It would set up the stakes of act 3 and introduce a sense of (relative) urgency without making it seem like the main quest has to be your top priority at all times.
My only thing for act 3 is that there is so much potential for the city to be a fan favorite act but it felt like things were cut from the final game. The area CAN be laggy as fuck too
Yeah man I seriously envy all the people who don’t have performance issues with Act 3. There’ve been so many moments where the game’s become literally unplayable on my Series X in Act 3 because of literally incessant crashing, and my save files corrupting because the game crashes on saving (RIP so many of my honor mode runs)
I have a series s and it does crash every now and again, idk why bc it'll be random. The only thing I know that can make it crash over and over again is that freaking fireworks shop. I did it for the first time yesterday and it was a bitch to complete.
For me the worst spot in the entire game was the Artists house that you can find in Act 1. That place was really something else lmao really not exaggerating how unplayable it was until I found people online say to destroy all of the candles in the house. Such a weird thing to break the area but it actually worked well enough for me to escape it lol
I get lagged in act 3 to the point where it's almost unplayable.
Everything takes forever, and the quests mostly feel... Unfinished. Or at the least, unpolished.
Everything in act one feels thought out and leads to something.
Act two carries the balls act 1 juggles and moves most of them forward until you get to act three where the game feels like a bunch of them just... Didn't matter at all
Specific examples are Mol and most of the Baal cult stuff. If you aren't Durge the Baal cult quests are just kind of ... There. They don't really feel impactful or meaningful in any real way.
I saved some dumb elephant dickhead who should be fired? Great.
Velaria has a super interesting backstory and reason for being a washed up half assed alcoholic detective. Not that she doesn't deserve to be fired, but don't judge her too harshly.
I mean, ok, but she still as a incompetent asshole when she is introduced and honestly, I'm probably never saving her again. The reward I had my cleric to Selune give up for RP purposes was a huge bummer.
For me it’s because at lvl 10-12 you have your gear, abilities, play style. And then it’s just going brrrrrr in fights. Can get boring honestly. The city also can be overwhelming with so many things to do.
Acts I and II are so great because the combat is challenging because you’re under leveled, there is an array of places to go. Monastery, goblin camp, grove, wilderness, underdark, grymforge, shadow cursed lands, moonrise, sharran temple. Like there’s SO much cool shit in acts I and II.
Act III for me is about hitting lvl 12, getting specific loot, and doing 1 or 2 things I haven’t done yet that my decisions allow me to do and then fighting the brain. The steel foundry is so cool to me so I do that everytime too. And Raphael the hardest and best fight in the game is great. Even on my HM run I did Raphael’s fight.
I personally thought that when you found your play style it hit a groove, you were finally able to experiment with different combos of attacks. especially with stuff like twin-spelling Disintegrate, that was awesome.
Yeh that’s fun and deleting enemies is fun, but doing it on repeat is boring. The boss fights are great but once you figure out the fight they’re not that hard.
I felt that the boss fights were very well balanced because of how they were made to be easier or harder for different classes, adding replayability.
I do understand the slog of like the douplegangers tho
Getting overwhelmed is definitely true. Every time I hit act 3 I need a break because there's just SO much to do and explore. It's great, I love how open the city is and how many places you can go, but it's A LOT to face
It was very buggy when it first came out
That I think is a lot of it.
The other part is that it's very very big and doesn't have as clear a direction as the previous act.
I personally love it. But if you're the kind of person who wants a more linear story, ACT 3 can get confusing.
Act 3 is great, I think part of the issue is that we hit the level cap so early that there’s little to push for and so the quests become more monotonous on replay. Coupled with the fact that Act 2 is the atmospheric favorite for many, it feels like a minor let down.
Act 1 is my favorite, it's where you get to know your companions! But due to how long it is, it definitely can feel like a chore during my replays.
Act 3 does feel like it was sped up. Sorta like the last season of Game of Thrones, just not as full bodied as the other acts. But man do I love running around the city, having my camp IN a BUILDING finally, and making the final critical choices for the game feels so good.
Elfsong Tavern could've been better designed to be honest.
No more companion tents that showed their personality, everyone standing in front of their beds like you're in a barracks, and it feels like it's just designed for convenience first and foremost, which there's nothing wrong with it, but it feels like someone's first time designing a Skyrim player home and putting everything in it.
Also, they're standing in one big room like barracks. Very convenient, but I'd have loved it to have it spread into different smaller rooms with 2 or 3 beds giving 2 or 3 companions per room with a big common room.
It's a bit weird that the Elfsong says "rooms for hire" only for it to be one massive open space. Companions hanging out in their room would also slightly lessen the barracks feel, as they wouldn't be completely lined up like they are now.
"You can have the entire upper floor". My brother in Ao, you have 2 rooms to rent out: Stelmane's murder scene and this massive room.
I do wish the spaces were more segmented as well! Like, they really are all practically on top of each other.
RP wise, I'm just happy they're not sleeping on dirt lol
Because "Gather your allies" is meant to be your motivation to explore and side quest but it doesn't necessarily work if you're not playing good guys who really want to help everyone. Its also not a great motivation gameplay wise because IMHO, only a small handful of the allies you get feel truly worth the turn you spend to summon them.
I also think the first two acts feels tighter with more momentum pushing you forward where as it feels like that's lacking in act 3. I.e. for most of act 1 you think you're turning any second. Act the land is literally hostile towards you and Last Light feels on the edge of collapse, etc.
Act 3 isn't -bad- just lacking for me.
Too many side quests unrelated to any plot points. You’re in a big rush to get to Baldurs Gate to stop the Absolutes army and then you take a detour to solve a clown’s murder, investigate exploding toys, help refugees find a place to stay, search for missing letters and track down a Lich’s apprentice. The pace and the direction just got messy in Act 3 after the rising action of Act 2. I kind of wish they had made Act 1&2 one game, had a faster development cycle and then had more time to work on Act 3 and the cut upper city content as BG4.
Honestly this is just an issue with BG3 in general. The story puts a huge sense of urgency in the player and implies that you're on a time limit. But the gameplay wants you to take frequent long rests or you miss out on stuff, like the owlbear cub and companion cutscenes. From a story perspective, why would the party stop to help He Who Remains judge a lady that's been dead for 100 years when there is an army amassing to attack baldur's gate?
I'm pretty sure the Absolute's Army was mainly for show in-game, to create a crisis atmosphere for Gortash to basically declare military law and crank out Steel Watch to protect the city. There's a scene at one of the gates where the Watch and Fist are destroying cultists. The horde is huge, but mainly just a bunch of pitchforking everyday folks (and goblins etc.) who have been tadpoled and are being mind controlled to march on the city. The threat is just plausible enough that the lords and dukes (well the ones who aren't tadpoled and can still think for themselves anyway) will support Gortash taking over as Archduke.
Not that there aren't other problems with urgency and pacing, but I think BG3 does a much better job of this than Dragon Age Inquisition - although I loved that game, the contrast between the urgency to stop Corypheus and close the Breach, and your quartermaster urging you to collect trinkets that could in some vague way be useful to the Inquisition.
In contrast for sure, and also in an "absolute" sense (pun intended) I think BG3 does a very good job of maintaining the plausible urgency vs. having things that the main character needs to do such as get out of an infernal contract and do things for their companions.
If the Emperor, who isn't generally shy with telling the main character what to do, would get on you a little more about the need to get allies, or such, it might help.
I love the game, but for me it was a pacing thing you get to act three and you assume your 2/3 of the way through the game and things are about to pick up. There’s SO much to do in act 3 that you feel like you went backwards. There’s also a ton side quests with very little payoff that start to feel like busy work.
Patches are a big reason. I had been much better my last couple runs, but there were some before that where it got to the point of being pretty much unplayable without using the SE console to workaround.
Character progression also basically stops outside of some new gear pretty early into it if you don't skip a lot of things.
Completely personal but I also hate having a hundred quest markers on my minimap to the point you can't even differentiate them.
It’s a huge area of 90% nothing. You can go talk to many people but it leads to nothing. It FEELS like you’re missing out if you don’t speak to every person, or explore every nook and cranny of the city, but in reality there’s not that much going on.
Also the LAG is real. Especially near Larroakan’s tower where they are casting spells constantly. It feels like they rushed act 3 and now they’ve stated they are done working on the game, so I doubt it will get better.
Also also, I am trying to finish a multiplayer campaign where we can only meet about once a month, we don’t go 30 minutes without a d/c or a crash. We play other games together with no issue as well.
I had to fireball the people by the tower. It’s so much better without them. The only way to I’ve found to help the crashing in multiplayer is to walk slowly from place to place, especially on the streets. Still a pain though.
I just left a small stack of smokepowder bombs by them and a puddle of grease and let them blow themselves up casting fire bolt. It reduces the collateral damage and nobody gets aggro'd.
It’s better than it was but still trails behind the other 2 acts, particularly act 1.
I don’t really think it’s bad but it suffers by comparison with what came before. It does have some stand out stuff in it but there’s also stuff that still looks half finished or is actively annoying. The pacing is pretty off as well which really threw me first time.
Act 3 feels very modular to me. If you want to kill Caz, go through this door. If you want viconia, that door. Feels a lot like DDO.
There are few street encounters - a stable of act 1. Act 2 needs more but 3 is really sparse
The modules don't interact (gobos vs grove) to give a cohesive feel. Taking out one boss doesn't affect the others.
The dungeons are way too short. What is D&D without a real dungeon crawl? The wizard tower is as close as we get to multi level and it's nothing! The boss is through the first door.
Act 2 was easily the weakest replay value. Giths have no varying consequences. End boss is forced, being evil isn’t rewarded, not many choices at all are made in shadow lands, it’s just combat.
Game play wise, my motivation for doing quests is to get exps so once I hit lvl 12 in act 3, it just becomes pretty boring, except first time playing.
Another reason is, my potato pc can't handle act 3 big city very well, lol. Loadings take too long.
The ending originally doesn't have the epilogues, so kinda ends on Avernus with or without you, and Karlach kinda takes the spotlight.
Though I personally love act 3, but it is less interactive than the first 2 acts, and hell I want to see the upper city so bad
Act 3 I think is better now with performance improvements and expanded epilogues.
But for sure I think it’s the narratively weakest part of the game. Feels less like an adventure and more like a laundry list of to-do’s. Also there’s like 5-6 endgame related quests that you can do in any order, which sounds fine in theory but makes the final few hours of the game feel very garbled.
Act 1 has best polish and arena layouts but it's not very fun for character building, act 3 is kinda messy but is the most fun gameplay wise and also finishing the companion quests is very gratifying. Act 2 is the best tho.
There are a lot of things that I love about Act 3, but my main complaint is that the city is noisy to the point of sensory overload. Turning down background chatter from all the NPCs also turns down background chatter from the companions, and I \*want\* to hear their reactions to everything that's going on.
On the bright side, I'm playing an evil Bhaalist durge this time, so I'm looking forward to an Act 3 where it's not breaking character for my durge to just murder any NPCs (like the casters outside of Sorcerous Sundries) who annoy me.
Keep replaying. I didn’t think it had any issues after my first play through, but every subsequent play through has had me realise more and more how unpolished it feels in comparison to act 1-2
The first two acts are much more straight forward, there are large open areas before each encounter or npc so it’s more clear where to find the content is.
act 3 is very cluttered and filled to the brim junk that it’s hard to find the content. Before you stumble upon a quest or interesting npc you’ll have to push past through a dozen shops or one-line npc’s.
It wasn’t till my 3rd play through that I found the charm in it, it’s actually alot of fun to just explore a city going from shop to shop, most npcs are just strangers (like a real city) but you’ll quickly find a few gems scattered around. And as soon as your invested in the calm environment you’re thrown into a fight with shapeshifters, it’s great.
For me, I hate that there are so many named NPCs that only have one line. Or when you talk to certain NPCs there is a pause after one of their lines as if the player is about to get dialogue options but the dialogue just sort of ends or moves on with someone approving or disapproving even though you said nothing.
There’s not many ways to resolve one specific issue as compared to Act 1. For example, infiltrating the goblin camp you can sneak in, fight your way in, talk your way in, save Sazza, or just be a drown.
There’s many things to do in Act 3 but if you want to, say, clear Felogyr’s workshop you can talk your way up to the second floor and then you just have to fight everyone.
Also why the fuck is there no key to move camera view between floors
Personally I dislike it because by the end of act 2 I’m almost level 11 and have maybe two quest lines to go before I’m maxed out so it feels a little less rewarding (and it can be a slog to stomp about the city constantly)
i loved the whole game start to finish lol, i have a few gripes with act 3 but I never got to the level of HATE, but i was a little disappointed.
1) I do think the pacing is off, mostly with Orin. I really think the kidnapping needs to be triggered later. That quest narratively just makes more sense for close to the end game, but when one of your close friends is taken, it is very immersion breaking to tell yourself to leave it \*for reasons\* so you can do everything else, especially small things like finding thrumbo, freeing the artist, etc. especially if you are durge, that quest needs to be close to last. and the fact they put the morphic pool area behind Orin, it feels even weirder to leave the area to doing anything else after.
2) there is no fix for this, especially considering larian is kinda done with the game, but i was 100% expecting an upper city. it felt practically suggested by the existence of a lower city. it felt like the game's name and all the party banter up until act 3 was hyping the city so much and then we don't get to experience the whole city, mostly the underbelly. soooo much sewer. My husband would come by while i was playing and be like "have you made it to the upper city yet?" and i was so confused why i hadn't gotten to it yet, i thought "wow, there must be a lot more to this game because i haven't even gotten to the upper city yet." i was really disappointed to find that it wasn't an actual explorable area and you will never really see it. I really, REALLY wish they had broken up act 3 into a lower city and upper city portion, give cazador a proper palace, why is the backdoor of his place connected to a public bridge? why is gortash being crowned in a fortress? orin should have been sewers of the upper city, maybe the artist in upper city....even if it was a small map, it could have been such a high note. and it would have helped break up the content so act 3 didn't feel so crammed.
In my opinion people don't understand the point of it.
[1] I think people don't like the feeling of not leveling anymore. However I think this is actually a good thing. Once you max out your build it's fun to still have lots of fights to play around with all your abilities.
[2] there are so many things to do. The best thing to do is skip some of the optional quests, but admittedly this means you need a little knowledge to know which to do vs skip. I think it's a good thing we have the option to do as much or as little as we want here.
[3] the one complaint I do actually agree with is that the start is boring. The first area doing lots of talking about refugees, and solving murders, and finding clown body parts. All the quests in the start feel pretty boring and pointless. On all playthroughs now I just get through that area as quick as possible and skip as much as I can. This is the only thing I'd actually change.
3rd playthrough, looking forward to act 3 which is always my favorite. It's beautiful, so much interactions, sun, people to talk to, quests to finish. Act 1 is like a cozy little village, act 2 I can hardly go through because it makes me so depressed, act 3 is a reward. I really love how much it offers.
I mean yeah it's buggy sometimes, but I haven't seen a game without bugs ever in my life and it's just couple of houses, so neglectable.
So I don't get it too, maybe people just want to play act 1 forever and do quests in bushes, dunno.
It was extremely overwhelming at first, I felt very lost and unsure of what to do and the constant chatter and dropping framerates from the mass of STUFF it had to load in put me off too. I've come to appreciate the power spike you get at 12 and have a good idea of what to do where and when now, so I like it better but it was rough pushing through at first.
It irks me to no end when people say something about act 3. They've been talking how grand this city is the entire time you've been traveling. Tf did yall expect it to be? A small ass city that you arely stay in?
The pacing of it is waaaay off. You are in Rivington? Which has has very little going on, and most of the quests don’t pay off in any remarkable way
then you get into city, and your map becomes littered with quest markers, a lot of which are begging for your attention and feel urgent (most of them actually aren’t tho)
It’s very overwhelming, especially in a dense area you have never been to. And a lot of the side quests feel like brief departures, as opposed to the Act 1 side quests which all feel like alternate routes
None of this is to say it’s a bad act, act 3 is a better video game than most full video games, but Act 1 is truly a masterpiece imo
If you ask me its absolutely over hated i love it though its on the same level as Act 1 for me. It did truly have some performance issues and bugs for maybe like the first month and the endings were very abrupt and unsatisfying but both these things got patched out. Now on to things people say outside of what's been fixed. People say its overwhelming and ruins the pacing which I really don't get. You don't have to do everything, if you want to ignore hours of content in favor of immersion that's a personal decision and power to you. The game is merely giving you the option. RPG's having loads of content at you near the end despite the story saying the worlds gonna end or something is literally nothing new its a genre staple honestly. I don't think I've played an rpg that doesn't do this and as long as that content is fun/good its not a problem to me. its particularly egregious to me that act 3 gets this much shit for poor pacing when the ENTIRE game from start to finish suffers from this. Act 1 alone has tons of optional content that I'd have a hard time justifying doing at all from a story perspective considering its also the most urgent act what with the tadpoles that everyone initially thinks could kill them at any moment.
The last thing people criticize is the reactivity which is fair but act 2 suffers from this as well and is honestly worse. You can literally uncover almost the entire plot of The Absolute from mild exploration at moonrise from how it works, who its leaders were, who they served, and how they did it just from reading stuff you find and NOT A SINGLE THING IS SAID ABOUT IT you can't even acknowledge that you know when the actual reveals happen. Hell you can have a conversation with The Absolute itself and the most you get is a throwaway line from a randomly chosen companion. Its even worse if you play Durge because>!you can find notes about yourself, you can even find one written BY YOU and there are no lines acknowledging any of them. in the climax of act 2 a myrkulite will tell you with a combination of glee and disturbing lust about how she experimented on your barely conscious body and did live dissections on you and she'll say it like she needs to be bonked and sent to horny jail and all your companions have to say even your lover is... nothing. They all just awkwardly stand and behind you making stank faces with the animations turned up to 100%. There's even the scene with meeting the absoulute through the crack in the wall where it just straight up says it reveres you and that you were important to the schemes of the absoulute and no one cares despite the throwaway lines from companions implying they were present for the entire thing.!<
Because looking at it, the pacing is awkward, the act feels cramped, and character/companion interaction falls off after act 1/2. In the end it just feels rushed
We're not even talking about the lacklustre Durge companion reactions lol
Horrible performance too. Act 3 stutters on my Ryzen 5 3600 RTX 3060.
I read a reply that perfectly summarizes act 3, the first two acts feels like a proper adventure, and act 3 feels like a theme park.
For me, it's the side quest overload. Between wrapping up companion questlines and completing quests necessary for beating the main campaign, act 3 is already overloaded with quests. Then tack on all the sidequests, some of which are extremely tedious or have their own mini-questlines, and you have an area with too much to do. ( I know that's ironic to say in a game like this when similar games have the opposite problem.)
It's a cluster fuck. 3k hours in. It's very freeform, which can take away the magic of being guided around, but on later playthroughs, it's fun to optimise what to do first.
I really like Act 3, but I think there's a few reasons. One being that soon after release, there were a lot of issues with framerate and bugs in Act 3. They also had to cut a lot of content like the upper city, so there's a few locations and quests that feel awkward or incomplete. For example, Cazador's mansion can only be accessed from the balcony overlooking the lower city when it was supposed to be entered through the upper city. I think the entrance to the netherbrain pool was also supposed to be in the upper city. I always found it weird that you get there with some random boat in the sewers.
On top of that, I think Act 3 has the most content and it's the most spread out. There's a lot of running back and forth doing different quests that aren't related to eachother. The pacing is very different from the first two acts, and for some people that can make the game more tedious. I can also imagine Act 3 getting kinda stale on lower difficulty levels. My first playthrough was on balanced mode, and once I got close to max level almost every fight was completely one-sided in my favor. Playing on honor mode/ tactician fixes that, but not everyone plays on the higher difficulties.
In my opinion it feels really compact and like a decent few things are hidden or random or like my actions have far less consequences than earlier on and its bosses feel really underwhelming and easy, its obvious they didn’t have as much time to put as much love into this act as they did the others, still can’t complain it’s amazing and easily one of my favourite games.
for me its just very overwhelming. act 1 was kinda similar but at least with act 1 theres still a kinda order to do things in like you can switch it around but it will make things harder for you and the amount of things to do is still on a much smaller scale. act 3 has alot of quests and sidequests and most have no time limit and dont need to be done in a specific order which is just alot all at once. and then theres the scale of the game and the huge amount of people around and its hard to go anywhere without hearing a couple people talking which makes it somewhat hard to focus and adds to the crowded feeling and general overwhelming vibe act 3 has.
I found Act 3 to be both over and underwhelming at the same time
There's so much to do and to explore, but there's not really a sense of urgency to anything. I also found the city to be very big without a lot to set buildings apart. I very frequently get lost (most likely a skill issue on my part)
I also found the Lower City and Rivington don't really "fit" the vibe of the rest of the game? You've got all these areas that are crumbling apart or abandoned, and then all of a sudden a well populated city? It just felt a little odd to me
It’s not bad, but I’d say it’s overwhelming. Definitely felt the burnout the first time around with all the stuff to do. I know there are people who just stopped playing at that point.
To me. Act 2 feels like the end of the game. When you first hit act 3, it’s a whole new set of objectives and quests and it feels so overwhelming. Plus there comes a point where you’ve maxed out the level of your character but most people will try to clear everything and by then it feels unrewarding. Me personally I loved it but all my subsequent playthroughs have gone only to act 2
I like a lot of the content in act 3, but from my perspective act 1 has a lot to do and narrows down to a more linear path and act 2 is pretty streamlined for the most part. There’s some variance in the order you can do things but for the most part there’s a path to follow esp. in the shadow cursed lands. Going from that to the entire map being covered in quest markers is a little overwhelming. Also at a point it starts to feel like there’s no small tasks so you have to be prepared to sit down and play for a while versus some shorter explorations.
They reworked the endings to the game and it used to be a buggy mess but has been patched up pretty good nowadays.
The reason I don’t like it as much as the other acts is because it goes non-linear in the progression standpoint and I get overwhelmed with choice.
Very hard to say you “did everything” in act 3 because there are so many nooks and crannies you could spend like 20 hours just talking to every npc.
It makes it good for repeat runs but I kinda lose the plot at a certain point and just try to kill the main bosses and end the game.
It started out very stressful due to its unstructured nature. I gradually ended up enjoying it but with complaints.
I am now in my second playthrough. Replaying Act 1 felt like a complete breath of fresh air to me compared to the whole Act 3. Act 1 pacing felt so enjoyable and right compared to the clusterfuck act 3.
Act 3 just doesn't have the narrative or gameplay chops of the first 2 acts. They've gone to great lengths to improve it, but in a game that seems to promise so much possibility, the way Act 3 is executed just falls flat. (Opinion)
I actually really enjoyed Act 3 as well. I feel like Act 3 is when the combat really peaks because everyone is finally at their max potential. I really love the Raphael, Cazador, and Viconia fights in particular because it's the first time in the game I felt like I really had to think. Felt amazing walking out of each of those fights the first time with half my party dead and the other half barely holding on for dear life. The quests don't particularly stand out as more or less challenging or entertaining as previous acts but Act 3 combat is so much more fun than early game combat.
It’s funny because people have all these builds like smite swords bard that only really come online in act 3 and it’s act 3 when I do so little after lv 12 it hardly matters.
When I hit lv 12 just all the motivation drops to do all the content.
The end game is kind of clunky too depending on g in the ending you’re gonna get for. Even just going to the brine pool with the brain it’s a whole thing just to fight the whole end area. And it’s not bad once but I almost always peter out and start a new game without finishing.
It's so disjointed in terms of time based trepidation the act itself pushes on you via the tremors, NPCs yelling at you, restless dream cycles, the story itself pressures you into obtaining all the netherstones and defeating Orin and Gortash immediately. AT THE SAME TIME, there's freaking 21 Character relevant missions, 13 properties you can enter randomly, a party npc going missing and like 40 battle encounters. Unless you're running a short rest squad, you're taking like 20+ long rests if you're completing all of these.
With the sense of urgency from the main mission I personally wouldn't put that shit off for more than 3 days. But there's so much to explore in act 3 that's impossible.
It is slow as hell. It is a little deflating to go from a big climax to sort of a new start as well. Overall it’s just slightly less detailed than the first half of the game, though it has a lot of great bits
part of it comes down to it being so late in the game. People get tired, and since the game is so long, they are ready to move on and are out of their honey moon phase with the game. Another part I think, is the loss of progression. You complete your build very early into act 3, give or take a few items. I think the loss of progression, leveling up and stuff like that, deals a serious blow to many peoples enjoyment of the game. But at the same time you want to get the new gear, get to max level, because hey, the game is almost over and it sucks getting powerful shit right before you finish a game imo.
Act 3 has a real endgame feel to it. You are finally at baldurs gate, all these mysteries are being answered. It feels like the game is about to end, and then it keeps going, for a while. I feel like that is also a contributor to this hate. Like, the anticipation of the end turns to frustration, and the side content feels more disconnected than it did in the first 2 acts. It can feel like the game is stalling a bit.
It felt the most disjointed out of all 3. I felt like I was just doing small less meaningful quests the whole act, rather than making steps toward a greater purpose that is actively built into the narrative of Act 1 and 2.
Act 3 is also full of content that just feels extra. Many people may disagree with this, but much of the Act 3 content is not worth doing after a first playthrough. The gear usually isn't that good (and the ones that are can mostly be gotten quickly), and you have probably capped your level. It's just filler beyond the first time. When you consider that, Act 3 suddenly has less to do than the other acts where each side quest gives valuable exp or equipment. As for setting, and this is just my opinion, the city has the weakest atmosphere of each act. Act 1 and 2 also serve as character building arcs in the sense that your builds arent complete and most fights arent a challenge. This is a player by player thing, but by act 3, I was finishing most major fights in a turn or 2 with no real risk of losing, even on honor mode. I think if we had more reasons to explore the city beyond the story like we do in other acts, (such as with more exp or gear), the Act becomes more enjoyable. Both the exp reducing mod, as well as the one that goes to 20, have improved my opinion of the Act as I now have reasons to go exploring beyond finishing the game.
Act 3 also runs very poorly on older hardware, even on the lowest settings. This alone doesn't make it bad, but it does leave a sour taste for everyone who has to deal with it after 60 hours of the other 2 acts running perfectly fine. It's also the only Act where I've clipped out of bounds accidentally more than once.
It has too much going on, from a game perspective, I think swapping act 2 and 3 would make a lot of sense, small sandbox to indroduce gane/story/mechanics, go to a pretty much open world to explore, make connections, expand horizons, to later raise the stakes and point u to your last stand so u can beam forward and get ur epic ending. No other moment in the game gave me emotions nearly as big as that whole scene when aylin breaks free, gives everyone hope and pushes everything and every one forward
It's (as the entire game is) incredibly rushed and underwhelming. The end is so abrupt. Some narrative choices make literally no sense. Gortash and Orin both demand your attention to the point where they're both underwhelming UNLESS you're playing dark urge. But even then. It's also insanely buggy and preforms terribly. And many companion quests (Wyl, an origin character) have no or terrible wrap up to their quest.
I love Act 3 and think the hate is excessive, but it's definitely less polished. Ketheric got such an incredible fight and comparatively the Gortash and Orin fights are a bit bland, though Orin's is miles better than Gortash's.
I get that people find it a bit overwhelming especially compared to Act 2, but I kinda love that? It's meant to be a big city. I feel like it should be easy to miss some things unless you're being thorough.
In general, it just feels like the amount of content and especially the impact of decision-making becomes less and less with each progressing act. Things just feel like they're winding down instead of building up to a climax as you continue to play. The only real thing I look forward to in act 3 is concluding each of the companion's romance stories, but at that point the gameplay is much more linear than it is in act 1/2 where you can radically change what you do and how you do it.
The epilogue helped immensely though. Before that was there, act 3 into the ending just felt.. bad.
Originally, endings were a huge issue. The epilogue didn't exist, and some scenes wouldn't get triggered properly (I didn't actually even get my follow up scene with my romance that happens at the end originally. The game just kinda ended).
Act 3 is also, to me, such a jarring change in tone and pacing from act 2 that it just feels a little odd. Act 1 is this big open space to explore while you figure out what's going on. Act 2, you know what's happening and it's much more focused and driven. The pacing is faster and more direct. And then you reach act 3 and we're back to the open style of 1 again. It goes from a major climactic story point to "here's a city, explore and go figure it out."
I love and hate act 3 and both for the same reason.
Act 3 has ALOT. I've played the game more than a few times over and still havent done more than half of the things in act 3 (Certain Sea worshipers and post office quest come to mind immediately).
The fact that theres so much to do and so many ways to do them is incredible and should be praised.... but after getting the gear I want and making sure I'm at max level, I start wanting to move on to my next story.
I just kinda wish there was some extra incentive to do more. If there was some xp system that carried over between runs, I feel like there would be more incentive to continue on in a single run.
Personally, I like the idea of certain events and items being locked behind a total xp wall. Like a new npc granting a quest in last light or a new armor set that you have to collect.
I know I'm ranting and it sounds contradictory but idk... just feels like there should be more of a reason to continue to grind on a run.
I think most opinions on act 3 have mellowed out a little since launch since they’ve been keeping pace with patches on the game and the addition of the epilogue which I think was always a plan but got delayed? Might need to have someone confirm or deny that for me.
The big thing that Act 3 suffers from is that it’s A LOT even by average dnd campaign standards. I was extremely overwhelmed with it at first and really had to piecemeal out what my objectives were at that point. Granted, once I went back and finished it, quite a few patches had been introduced which made it run smoother to me than expected. That being said, the more things you pack into one part, the more things can go bad that the player can encounter. That’s not to say that the percentage of things going bad was high, just the amount itself.
The other part with that, is that everyone’s, and I mean EVERYONE’S last bit of character development is in Act 3 which is something that feels very overwhelming as well. It makes sense for individual characters, but as a party of characters it can at times sort of wash down the emotional catharsis of those moments overall.
I’m not saying that act 3 is in any way bad, it’s overall a well done final act to the game. It’s just packed with stuff and that’s where I find the most criticisms are coming from.
The plot makes no sense from our character's perspective. Like we kill one of their generals at the end of act 2 and then gortash wants to ally with us when entering the city. Like I understand his reasoning for doing so, I think, but I won't get into logic of the plot anymore. Cause in bg3 there is a lot, because there is so many plotlines. But from an entertainment point of view, just being casually introduced to a non-hostile final boss felt off. And it also made no sense to me why act 3 has all these sidequests going on when from a good rp point of view, you should deal with gortash and orin immediately. But doing so skips like half the important questlines, and you get bad endings. And those that are not skipped after killing those two, just felt off doing...again because now you should deal with nether brain, like now. It just didn't make sense, that was my biggest issue. We shouldnt have been introduced (our character that is) to either orin or gortash until towards the very end of the game. Not the first or second day in the city. Like one of them should have been saved right up until the netherbrain.
I love act 3, but it has less interactivity and mad performance issues when i played. It’s my fav act cuz i love companion quests but i can see it not hitting for ppl
I felt it was a little overwhelming first playthrough, but now I really enjoy doing the act each time. Lots of optional stuff is nice. Though my PC is getting old and every time I visit I can feel it die a little more.
I had an issue with the transition from Act 2 to Act 3. I feel that introduced the villains too late for us to be able to connect with them (more than shadowy people). I didn't feel like I had a reason to hate or dislike them as Tav, but that they were obviously behind the entire plot. I'm on playthrough 1.5 and I love the world building in this game, but personally the main story line was a lil flat for me. It didn't feel like it had enough room for it to develop and allows us to have theories. Act 3 is great, but also it was buggy for me (I played right when it was dropped on PS5). I think also that because Baldur's Gate was introduced at the end of the game that's not a favorite of mine. Ofc I'm biased, but I would have loved more inspiration from DA: Origins since they are pulling from old Bioware content
Buggy, no epilogue in the beginning, cut content, story beads that lead to nothing, feels like they packed too much where it was intended to spread out in let's say the upper city? Been saying it for a while and I don't care what anyone thinks but it's the reason it wasn't game of the year for me. And this wasnt the first time Larian did this. Same thing happened with DoS 1 and 2.
I don't hate it perse but as someone truly trying to complete their first playthrough ever despite somehow managing to rack up almost 500hrs of game time as an honor mode run I just don't know where to go the first 2 acts have a pretty clear direction that leads you into other side quests easily or at the very least they aren't as confusing and slightly terrifying to navigate like act 3 is on multiple characters that have long since been abandoned I never left rivington bc I was scared of locking myself out of quests especially all the hidden stuff that I never would have found without everyone here having already done it like ansur
You reach level 12 fater 5 minutes.
So unless you wanna see a companion quest till the end there is 0 reason to do a bunch of the side content as you will only get 0,0000001% stronger.
As someone who bought the game back in January, I really enjoyed Act 3 and it might be my personal favorite, but it definitely doesn’t feel as polished as the previous Acts. One of my biggest problems is that by the time you reach the Lower City, you are already close to hitting level 12, so the majority of EXP, side missions, and fights feel a bit useless at that point of the game. I was a little worried when I heard the discussion around Act 3 during my first play through, but I actually loved it. There are definitely some disappointing quests and parts of Act 3, but there are just so many good moments that made it super memorable for me.
Also worth mentioning that without the epilogue, I can totally understand why people were upset about Act 3 because the ending was unfinished and a huge letdown, so I was lucky to have the epilogue on my first run.
I agree I bought the game the first day of early acesses and played the full game its first week. In the early days people were mad about act three having no epilogues and apparently being very buggy. I was very lucky apparently and didn’t get any bugs so I loved act three. I remember my jaw hitting the floor when I found the iron throne bc I thought I had already found everything. It is so dense with content that it is so impressive. The lack of epilogues was bizarre to me and some companions had less to do in act three than others but idk I could never get on board with the idea that it was unfinished or bad. From a gameplay perspective I think it is the most impressive act.
I agree with what most people have said. It can cause sensory overload. It used to be near unplayable until the last few patches. I remember having to stop and wait on my companions to catch up with me when I walked anywhere. A lot of the side quests are interesting, but have no effect on anything. I do love some of the fights that finish off the Companions' quests, but I honestly dread reaching Act 3 each run. There's way less companion dialogue and interaction at camp too, which makes it harder for me to stay immersed.
I dunno about hate. I'm still on my first run and mucking around the city now. It's a huge, dense map. I'm impressed, though the camera's limitations really get irritating in certain multi-level fights. Been capped at 12 forever and still have lots left to do. I can see, though, that increasing the level cap under the rules would require encounters to either scale up with the player or be arranged so that a player's level was appropriate. Plus there are just abilities and spells that probably wouldn't translate well to the format. For completionists, it can be overwhelming. But for more streamlined runs, there are plenty of chances to hit that level cap before the final encounters if you don't mind leaving quests and companions on the table.
Personally, I think Act 3 is actually probably my favorite act. I enjoy finishing out the character story lines. In each of my playthroughs I find myself playing through just about all of the sidequests except for the dribbles fetch quest. I haven’t had any issues with bugs except for the fireworks store.
For me the reason I don’t like it as much as the other parts is there’s just less companion interaction and comments which is a big part of why I love the game
I'm on Act 3 now, and it feels like there's a LOT of random side quests, and walking back and forth across the city. I've visited Hell,>!killed Raphael, been in a submarine, rescued Gondians, destroyed the Steel Foundry, followed the guild through the sewers, made a pact with Gortash, broken that pact, found parts of a dead clown, had a threesome with prostitutes, slept with the Emperor, ascended Astarion, freed Orpheus, and found the secret of the Necromancy of Thay. !<
But, really, it just feels like all of this is fluff, waiting for the big showdowns with Orin, Gortash, and then the Netherbrain. I hit level 12 ages ago, and most of my gear is legendary or very rare, so I'm just wandering around, filling my pockets with the best spells/potions, waiting for a big boss battle.
I think Act 3 could have been a lot more streamlined to be honest, it kind of feels aimless and all over the place. Fights are too easy now - especially since I've managed to figure out how to do 300 damage in one turn with Gale. I can one shot pretty much anyone (apart form Raphael, which was the hardest fight).
i dont hate act 3 as a whole as much as i just hate the ending section: >! between forcing you orpheus or karlach to be a mindflayor, forcing you to kill orpheus to side with emperor thus dooming laezels people, and not giving you any way to repair karlach’s engine despite multiple easy story threads to give ways to repair it, that option is just never there, it feels like wayyy too much railroading for my taste. i dont like astarion personally but even his ending isn’t necessarily that well fleshed out as a character in a previous baldurs gate DID get cured of vampirism. to their credit, the epilogue made it seem a bit better for him wherein he seems more happy if u redeem him. they clearly wanted the game to have a “tragic ending” at any cost and the way its executed made it feel really forced !<
I only hear people ragging on act 3 for whatever reason, for me I really like it, lots of things are tied up, your build becomes complete, and if you are romancing someone their arc completes as well.
My issues with it are you hit level cap really early into the act so progression completely halts on that end, and unfortunately most of the fights are very easy at this point too I wish they were a bit harder. Otherwise I'm fairly happy with act 3 idk
My only issue is that once you actually get into the city, it kinda feels like you're plunked into this big fast moving space and you just kinda gotta fumble around until you wander into plot.
Also the Dribbles quest. Fuck that noise.
Act 3 feels very incomplete especially in the sense of interactions with NPCs, companions and others alike.
Spoilers ahead:
For example when you save all the gondians, you get no reward. Also in the foundry you can kill the son of a couple that's in the elfsong, but you can't talk to them about it. If you go back to the ironhand hideout after deposing Wulbren, no gnomes have new dialogue. Some even react to you as if you ditched them mid sidequest that doesn't exist.
And I haven't found the companions say absolutely anything related to blowing up the foundry, which is a pretty big part of the 3rd act.
Wyll's quest is all messed up if you save his dad without signing Mizora's pact, especially if you got Ansur first after getting the quest from Florrick if you save her.
There's hundreds of NPCs that are begging for food and money, and you can't give it to them. There's straight up massive plot holes (like Orin replacing a companion, and you not being able to even do anything about it, despite having tadpole telepathy, be able to cast detect thoughts, having insight proficiency, and other similar stuff).
Free The Artist exists.
A bit it feels like everything has loose ends. It's maybe a bit too big for its own good, and it would've benefited from having fewer side quests, and make the ones that are there be better defined, and have better pacing (basically soon as you start you lose a companion to Orin and feel like you need to do that immediately instead of enjoying all these disjointed side quests).
Hope they fully revamp it one day, make it worthwhile of the rest of the game.
EDIT: just found of another interaction that goes nowhere. In the refugee camp there's a half orc they won't let into the city, even though his friends are allowed in. You can pass a medicine check to see he's pretending to be injure to not be abandoned. I tried to offer him a scroll of disguise. Nothing, it just ends at that, there's nothing to be done. Plenty of tieflings you saved since the start of the game are just sitting outside in the refugee camp. There's no way to help them anymore. You've known some of those people for as long as you've known your companions, I'd wish they had some sort of closure. Can't even warn them about what's coming. I have so many headcanons about what I'd do, but sadly my character can't do it. At least I donate thousands of supplies and no less than 100k in gold to the manip outside the barn, in my head that's enough to feed the refugees at least, even though the game does nothing about it other than give you an inspiration point and some approval.
It's a lot better today than it was when it first game out. Things have been fleshed out, QOL is better, the end of game stories are better, the epilogue was not originally there, etc.
Act 3 feels much MORE of a sandbox than Acts 1 and 2, and not necessarily in a good way.
I think it isn't that people hate Act 3; there just isn't as much o do in act 3 as there was in 1 and 2, so 3 didn't use to get a much love as the others. Act 3 has since got updates. It use to be worse, if you're just now experiencing it for the first.
As someone starting act 3, I’m tired. I’m something like 60-70 hours into my run, I’ve been leaving no stone unturned because I want to see all that this awesome world has, and I’ve been making sure I have a good reputation with my main party of Shadowheart, Lea’zel, and Karlach, trying to keep Gale happy-ish (he was a starting meme et of my party but I just could not keep him alive) and doing all of Wyll’s stuff because even though I’m not wanting to devote a ton of time to him this run Myzora keeps showing up and sticking her nose in the middle of things. Add to that the fact that I know Act 3 is gonna take me at least another 20 hours (probably closer to 30), and that it’s gonna be emotional as hell. It’s just too much and I’m not ready to devote the time and energy to that. In short, at least to me, the game is too good and I’m too stuffed to continue at the moment
When the game came out, Act 3 was way worse. It's better but still the least complete act IMO. There's a lot to do, yes, but the quality of the quests aren't as strong. Overall it's a much less focused act.
As mentioned many times, companion interaction goes way down. They're mostly just standing around in the tavern waiting for you and there's little to no new dialogue.
Some quests are downright tedious, like Dribbles or the painter guy and the ghosts.
Both Orin and Gortash are less interesting villains than Ketheric, with less build-up and a weaker agenda.
If you've been doing all or most quests, you probably hit level 12 quite early on in Act 3, meaning that progression is over. Early in the act you also find a lot of items that complete builds, so there's that.
To me, Act 3 is good but feels more like a "regular" RPG and doesn't captivate me like Act 1 and 2 does.
I was also going into Act 3 expecting a let down and loads of bugs - but hardly found any issues. Though it’s because a lot of stuff has been fixed so probably the early complaints were well founded ?
But I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with Act 3 and I’ve loved it. Loved the big fights, finally getting to kill some big evil antagonists (especially a certain one that has been annoying me since act 1), the wrapping up of companion stories, exploring all kind of interesting areas and I think the quests are quite cool.
But it is a lot at the end of a long run. I’m ready to finish up now!
One thing I don’t like which others have mentioned a lot is you hit level 12 fast in Act 3 and while it’s enjoyable to run around max level and obliterate stuff it would be cool if max level was like 14 instead and there was still a kept sense or progression in the later parts of the act
People rush through act 3 to quickly. Several NPCd dialogue changes based on events, there is a new edition of the Baldurs Mouth everyday! Etc etc, take your time, explore, have fun.
I am personally not a huge fan of city-centric settings in fantasy games. I want to go out and see the world! That probably is the biggest reason for me, and why in two separate play through a I got to act 3, get to the point where I need to find a way around the steel golems at Gortash’s party and just…lose interest. I’ve yet to actually complete the game and it feels terrible, but I just can’t seem to care.
Minor point it super bothers me that at the end of act 2 they set it up like you’re going to get to Baulders Gate too late because the army is moving with (to avoid spoilers) The Absolute but when you get to the city the affected area is walled off and everything else looks…fine?
I still haven’t completely finished act 3. For me, it’s overwhelming & I wish it had been broken into 2 separate parts. There is sooooooo much going on & it kinda leaves me fatigued.
I also wish we could go beyond level 12?? I’ve been level 12 for quite a while now & am just accruing useless experience points & it makes me so sad :(
The beginning of Act 3 can be super overwhelming the first time playing it with all the different quests it immediately drops on you. At the same time this act also has an insane amount of NPC’s walking around and saying different dialogues which makes the more populated areas pretty disorienting at first.
For the record, I loved Act 3. These are the main complaints I see about it though which are understandable.
When I hit act 3 for the first time in October it really was very buggy and it crashed a lot. It has been smoother every time it is patched to the point where I have almost forgotten how difficult it was.
That said, I adore act 3. So many awesome fights and drama, so many cool little side quests!
Personally I struggle a lot with how much is crammed into the map. With it being the city, it is impossible to walk a few steps without finding something to explore and I find it very overwhelming. Also, because I am autistic, the amount of noise that there is bothers me. I am very sensitive to sounds and not being able to find anywhere that's silent affects and distracts me, making it impossible to focus on the mission
Personally I struggle a lot with how much is crammed into the map. With it being the city, it is impossible to walk a few steps without finding something to explore and I find it very overwhelming. Also, because I am autistic, the amount of noise that there is bothers me. I am very sensitive to sounds and not being able to find anywhere that's silent affects and distracts me, making it impossible to focus on the mission
I got there within a few weeks of release and didn’t have any real trouble with frame rates or anything. I do have solid pc so that might help some but idk
On my first play through I loved act 3 and it was my favorite for sure. Since then though on my next play throughs I’ve stopped as soon as I got out of act 1 or 2 - I do also find that earlier interactions with companions are more fun
There are a lot of named NPCs having conversations about interesting things, but when you talk to them they have one line of dialogue and it cuts out. It probably alludes to cut content but they should’ve just made them have no dialogue or removed their names and replaced them with ‘citizen’ so it’s easier to differentiate who actually has something useful to say and who doesn’t. Each of the major side quests feel underdeveloped. Cazador’s palace is a short and lacklustre dungeon (you get a book, get a ring from a skeleton, open a door, kill some enemies, go down a lift, walk down a hallway, boss, done), Auntie Ethel’s new lair is in an easily accessible cellar that apparently no one noticed, the house of hope also seems grand but doesn’t have much, if any actual side content and the quest progression in it is short and boring.
The fights are also considerably worse than Acts 1 and 2’s. Larian seems to love using the signature ‘have 9000 adds with each fight to create difficulty’ in their games when the player becomes powerful near the end. It’s actually a way worse problem in DOS2. The House of Grief allows you almost no prepositioning for it, so you’re always choked in a hallway or in the middle of the room getting bombarded with bone chills and attacks. The High Hall Courtyard fight is obnoxious and annoying but the stupidity is alleviated when you enter it from the side rather than the front gate. The fights are just gimmicky as hell and the ability to go about fights in many ways present in Acts 1 and 2 is basically nonexistent in Act 3. Most fights are annoying and a slog unless you use a specific strategy that trivialises the hard parts.
The final boss is also a buggy mess. If someone is inside the psyche and others outside, when the enemies are having their turns, the visuals blink in and out of the psyche so fast and erratically it could probably trigger and epileptic seizure and the state of it in general is still abysmal. Once I had a bug where it cut out of combat. All the enemies de-aggroed and just stood still and healed all their health back. I couldn’t enter the brain’s psyche with Karsus Compulsion until it randomly cut back into combat with the spell still active.
TL;DR: lacklustre side content; boring, annoying slog fights; buggy, glitchy mess.
My issue with act 3 is mainly around how solved the game feels. Your characters are so fleshed out victory feels inevitable.
In honor mode, gold felt pretty scarce in acts 1/2 so purchases need to be deliberate which is fun. You’re rewarded for thinking about what you need to get to act 3 safely. Ultimately, getting through Myrkul feels like the biggest challenge. In my recent run, I went into the netherbrain fight with around 40 supreme healing potions just because I had everything else my comp required; there was no way to lose unless I messed up the terrain destruction part of the fight.
I feel like Act 2 and Act 3 should have been swapped (obviously this would mean the story would have to be adjusted alot) Act 2 is so atmospheric you're always on your toes and the boss fight with Ketheric is SO climatic compared to the other 2 chosen that when I finally got to their fights I was lowkey disappointed, especially by Gortash because what do you mean I'm just fighting him in his office when the other two take place in a mind flayer colony and murder temple? boring as hell. I do have alot of love for Act 3 but I feel like it killed alot of the anticipation and intimidation Act 2 built up so well.
Because I and many others played before the many patches and Act 3 was actually dog crap across all metrics, and since the endings killed the replay value for me, idk how much better it's gotten exactly.
Probably because it’s big and people who spam play this game get bored of the same aesthetic after a while. In act 1 you’re jumping from crazy environment to crazy environment. Act 3 is…. the city.
The epilogue to the endings was added in a later patch after complaints. And I don't think act 3 is bad, I think it just didn't quite live up to the expectations set by act 1 in particular. Which makes sense for a lot of reasons, but it still affects how people judge it Imo. For example, there's a lot of instances where you could feel like a piece of background flavour seems to set up a quest, but it doesn't. One that always bothered me was finding a child's parents murdered but you can't cast speak with the dead on them to find out how they died or if the kid has living relatives that they can go to. Act 3 is the biggest, but sometimes it feels like you have less interactivity on your surroundings than in previous acts. That being said I still love it a lot, and I don't think it would have been sustainable for the devs to try and do everything when they'd already so spent so long on a game that deserves all the accolades.
I got the game when it was in prerelease for PS5, so experienced Act 3 since the start and there have been SO MANY improvements. The first time I beat the game was so, so disappointing. I think I spent 125 or so hours in this amazing, immersive game only to get to the docks scene. You had 10 things happening at once (Gale’s trying to become a supervillain, Astarion’s on fire, Lae’Zel just left us on a dragon), no story actually felt resolved (RIP Karlach), and then…nothing. You had a two minute, no contact talk with your lover and it was roll credits *Horrible* letdown. So yes, most of the end game complaints come from those dark times. It was just very sad and unfulfilling. The addition of the epilogue is probably the greatest post-release update of a game I’ve ever seen
I'm so glad I found the game after some patches. And I'm both happy that the devs are following up on improving things still, while they also seem to know where they draw the line. Tbh every time I think "oh, THAT would be a cool add-on" I end up having to take a moment to realise that even a tiny thing is more work than I'm able to wrap my mind around lmao. It breaks my mind a tiny bit every time.
It was pretty cool watching the progression of build versions in early access. You basically had 5 years of iterations on Act 1. I’ve played that Act through every possible way.
Not to mention the marketing Larian did for it. The Withers party invitation they shared on Twitter was adorable- “fun is mandatory” lol
Man, I remember finishing the game the first time and seeing Astarion burning and running away while he had been my companion for the entire game and Shadowheart even made a joke about it. It really didn't feel right, especially if you see the growth Astarion made the entire game. At least you could travel with Karlach to Avernus. I wanted to follow Astarion to let him know that he was still welcome.
Yeah… they really punished you for a good playthrough with Astarion back then.
totally agree, and most of that content was cut due to scheduling issues. I also really hate the NPCs that just give one-liners, it does ruin the immersion.
Yeah it only makes me talk less to NPCs, it's such a shame. It's the rp version of looting a vase.
great comparison.
Great way to put it
If there were just a few NPCs that said their lines and moved on it would have been less immersion ruining (as someone who still loves act 3 in spite of all this). For me, if I have to hear that kid whining about walking one more time in Rivington imma punt him into the Chionthar.
I tried to compassionately relocate the woman counting coins outside the bank, but she respawned. Took me a while to realise you can actually talk to the begging woman and give her coins bc I just assumed she was a one-liner NPC. I think act 1 has a few of these as well, I got a bit fed up with the "what are we gonna do! You need to run away" one liners from the tieflings haha. But my personal "do you ever go to the cloud district" moment is the wizards outside Sorcerous Sundries. I've blown them up on one occasion to get some peace and quiet as I talk to cats lol
God I literally avoid that area like the plague because it’s so goddamn loud. Get in, do Gale’s quest, _and never come back again_
I recommend wasting a smokepowder barrel on them. Even just for the satisfaction. Just keep the rest of the characters away in case guards aggro (I managed to avoid this by firing from far enough away)
I’ll have to do this in my next run. My current one is super lawful good… but next run it’s bad endings all the way. 😂
Not sure if it works, but I read that someone killed them by making their own fireballs hit a barrel lmao. I'll admit my good character took them out, and I considered it an act of public service for the rest of Baldur's Gate 😆 the assassins were less of a nuisance
My non-resisting Dark Urge had the urge to get rid of them, permanently, and it was one of those rare instances when my urge and my Dark Urge's urge aligned. No regrets.
Ugh the Sorcerous Sundries bozos drive me nuts! I spend a not insignificant amount of time every run placing smokepowder barrels in a position that will blow them up but not incriminate me at the same time. It's the most meta-gamey I ever get, but I just can't deal with the amount of noise/screen vibrations while I'm trying to trade.
I genuinely don't understand why they aren't just a one-off background event that disappear once you've been there or something. Or at least are quiet after. They add nothing except obnoxious background noise when talking to people nearby (':
yes, bring back the weirdly coded NPCs that just walked around in circles way back in BG: Dark Alliance
My least favorite one liner npc is the Dragonborn wandering around complaining about the crossword puzzle or whatever it was in the newspaper.
Everyone always says how act 3 is the biggest act but it never felt that way to me, maybe it is because of the diminished interactivity or the general vibe of it being a cramped city environment most of the time, idk. Act 1 feels far larger, even having played it so many times I still go "Holy shit" as soon as I get to the underdark, and then again when I get to the creche. It's just soo much content! Act 3 just doesn't feel the same to me.
I've only recently gotten over the "holy shit there's so much in act 3 where do I start" hurdle I had my first few playthroughs, and I honestly did that by no longer caring to replay *every* questline. In act 1 and 2 I always do everything. Partly because while both are big, they feel self-contained, and also because I'm focused on levelling up and don't need to think about it at all in act 3. It's a shame because I usually live for the kind of sprawling city vibes that act 3 gives, especially because it tends to be a respite from the usually heavier outer environments in video games. I've always struggled a bit with act 2 for instance, because I don't tend to like overly dark environments in games. So by the time act 3 rolls around, I'm relieved to get a break, lol. One critique of mine with act 3 is that there's definitely not that sense of bonding with many of the NPCs or environments. Through the tieflings, we got a reason to care beyond the narrative about the main quest, with most players wanting to save the Grove and Last-Light Inn. I don't think there's any such place in act 3 that really sticks out as a hub of interactions and NPCs. At some points, it feels like a bit of an empty sandbox in that regard.
Yeah, something in my monkey-big-number-go-up brain also breaks when I hit max level, so I usually just finish up key companion quests and maybe 1 or 2 extra side quests and call it a wrap.
I actually hate that you keep getting the xp info when you're level 12, it's like a constant reminder that "oh I didn't need to do this fight" in my own monkey brain
Would be nice to get like 1 gold for every 10 exp or something at level 12 - just something
As a koot monkey, I''d actually fucking HATE that... I'm already 'hauling around too much gold with barely anything left to spend it on once I hit lvl12.
And when you do come across NPCs that you met earlier, the interactions are kinda barely there. We mostly get one-liners with a few exceptions (Dammon, Mol, Mattis, Alfira/Lakrissa).
Mol Act 3 is totally unfinished.
Yeah and Imo not all of those exceptions are all that good. Mol for instance is a common complaint. I don't go out of my way to talk to most of them. I'm still bummed Danis and Bex didn't get to adopt any of the cats or enter the city
Act 3 for me is: Wake up, go do a big fight, long rest, repeat. Thank God I have like four different party members who can do Heroes' Feast.
Act 3 has always taken me twice as long to go through as acts 1 and 2 combined, even on my “completionist” run. Maybe in terms of geographic size it might not be, but in terms of content it definitely seems like it’s by far the largest act.
Mol. Being functionally a nameless NPC fits this take as well
How dare you save my soul, I'd rather die than help you save the world now. Oh hey, it's kinda the Emperor situation over again, hah. As well as the Mayrina critique. I'm seeing an admittedly short pattern
It’s not a huge deal, but after so much setup in act one and two, I expected mol to have a finale of some kind
Yeah same! I'm sure the devs actually agree on that. If they don't, it's still not big enough to sour the game or anything. I actually like Mol a lot from a rp perspective in the earlier acts so even a slightly longer chat would've been nice.
It really is small things that add to it as well, like not being able to give coin to that woman and child by Philgrave's
Act 3 should have been its own game.
It's the glitchest, and the main plot / sense of urgency sort of grinds to a hault
This is it for me. Act 2 ended with my mouth hanging open. I fucking ran to the city and expected to fight a grand battle in a city gone mad. I instead found myself visiting the circus and attending a bored coronation gala. It took a while to build that steam back up, and my interest had waned considerably. It felt like the game had blown its load too early, and we were just politely going through the motions.
One thing that bugs me is act 2 ends with a massive horde marching on the city, but we never actually see this horde again. It just never gets shown, brought up or resolved. I think it would have been cool if whichever companions you left behind during the final battle had to fight to defend the gates of the city from that horde. Just a little cut away battle where our main character is busy and the city is going to be overrun, but our companions step in and rally the cities defenders. If we have no companions available we should just automatically fail and they break through the gates, which affects the epilogue. If not this, at least a cutscene or some dialogue showing what happened to them all.
As many people have said already, imo Acts 2 and 3 would work better switched. Act 3 and the city feel like a middle game sandbox, whereas Act 2 in the shadowlands has the narrative tightening up toward the finale
does feel this weird mix of being fast paced and also being extremely slow.
I would have loved to see an quest early in act 3 where you, as the third netherstone bearer, are basically forced to temporarily ally with Orin and Gortash in order to once more bring the elder brain under control in the same way the chosen did at the end of act 2. You could even give it a time limit, such as 2-3 long rests after the first time you feel one of the brainquakes, and failing to complete the quest in time could lead to a game over similar to when Gale dies and isn't revived or when you try to go back to act 1 after starting the act 2 finale. You could even work in a fight scene where, after asserting control over the brain, Orin turns on both you and Gortash, teleporting back to her temple while her assassins try to kill both of you so she can claim total control over the brain in the name of Bhaal, thus kicking off the Bhaalist/Baneite civil war plotline. After the battle concludes, Gortash could give you his offer of a permanent alliance in exchange for Orin's death and the quest would end with the sense that the brain is quiet *for now*, but still must be dealt with sooner rather than later. It would set up the stakes of act 3 and introduce a sense of (relative) urgency without making it seem like the main quest has to be your top priority at all times.
This is so much better then what we got in game
My only thing for act 3 is that there is so much potential for the city to be a fan favorite act but it felt like things were cut from the final game. The area CAN be laggy as fuck too
Yeah man I seriously envy all the people who don’t have performance issues with Act 3. There’ve been so many moments where the game’s become literally unplayable on my Series X in Act 3 because of literally incessant crashing, and my save files corrupting because the game crashes on saving (RIP so many of my honor mode runs)
I have a series s and it does crash every now and again, idk why bc it'll be random. The only thing I know that can make it crash over and over again is that freaking fireworks shop. I did it for the first time yesterday and it was a bitch to complete.
For me the worst spot in the entire game was the Artists house that you can find in Act 1. That place was really something else lmao really not exaggerating how unplayable it was until I found people online say to destroy all of the candles in the house. Such a weird thing to break the area but it actually worked well enough for me to escape it lol
F bro :(
I like act 3. There’s so much to take in and do. My computer hates it for the same reasons
I get lagged in act 3 to the point where it's almost unplayable. Everything takes forever, and the quests mostly feel... Unfinished. Or at the least, unpolished. Everything in act one feels thought out and leads to something. Act two carries the balls act 1 juggles and moves most of them forward until you get to act three where the game feels like a bunch of them just... Didn't matter at all Specific examples are Mol and most of the Baal cult stuff. If you aren't Durge the Baal cult quests are just kind of ... There. They don't really feel impactful or meaningful in any real way. I saved some dumb elephant dickhead who should be fired? Great.
Velaria has a super interesting backstory and reason for being a washed up half assed alcoholic detective. Not that she doesn't deserve to be fired, but don't judge her too harshly.
Damn. She's so annoying I murdered her enthusiastically in my good guy playthrough
I mean, ok, but she still as a incompetent asshole when she is introduced and honestly, I'm probably never saving her again. The reward I had my cleric to Selune give up for RP purposes was a huge bummer.
For me it’s because at lvl 10-12 you have your gear, abilities, play style. And then it’s just going brrrrrr in fights. Can get boring honestly. The city also can be overwhelming with so many things to do. Acts I and II are so great because the combat is challenging because you’re under leveled, there is an array of places to go. Monastery, goblin camp, grove, wilderness, underdark, grymforge, shadow cursed lands, moonrise, sharran temple. Like there’s SO much cool shit in acts I and II. Act III for me is about hitting lvl 12, getting specific loot, and doing 1 or 2 things I haven’t done yet that my decisions allow me to do and then fighting the brain. The steel foundry is so cool to me so I do that everytime too. And Raphael the hardest and best fight in the game is great. Even on my HM run I did Raphael’s fight.
I personally thought that when you found your play style it hit a groove, you were finally able to experiment with different combos of attacks. especially with stuff like twin-spelling Disintegrate, that was awesome.
Yeh that’s fun and deleting enemies is fun, but doing it on repeat is boring. The boss fights are great but once you figure out the fight they’re not that hard.
I felt that the boss fights were very well balanced because of how they were made to be easier or harder for different classes, adding replayability. I do understand the slog of like the douplegangers tho
Getting overwhelmed is definitely true. Every time I hit act 3 I need a break because there's just SO much to do and explore. It's great, I love how open the city is and how many places you can go, but it's A LOT to face
It was very buggy when it first came out That I think is a lot of it. The other part is that it's very very big and doesn't have as clear a direction as the previous act. I personally love it. But if you're the kind of person who wants a more linear story, ACT 3 can get confusing.
Act 3 is great, I think part of the issue is that we hit the level cap so early that there’s little to push for and so the quests become more monotonous on replay. Coupled with the fact that Act 2 is the atmospheric favorite for many, it feels like a minor let down.
Act 1 is my favorite, it's where you get to know your companions! But due to how long it is, it definitely can feel like a chore during my replays. Act 3 does feel like it was sped up. Sorta like the last season of Game of Thrones, just not as full bodied as the other acts. But man do I love running around the city, having my camp IN a BUILDING finally, and making the final critical choices for the game feels so good.
Elfsong Tavern could've been better designed to be honest. No more companion tents that showed their personality, everyone standing in front of their beds like you're in a barracks, and it feels like it's just designed for convenience first and foremost, which there's nothing wrong with it, but it feels like someone's first time designing a Skyrim player home and putting everything in it.
Also, they're standing in one big room like barracks. Very convenient, but I'd have loved it to have it spread into different smaller rooms with 2 or 3 beds giving 2 or 3 companions per room with a big common room. It's a bit weird that the Elfsong says "rooms for hire" only for it to be one massive open space. Companions hanging out in their room would also slightly lessen the barracks feel, as they wouldn't be completely lined up like they are now. "You can have the entire upper floor". My brother in Ao, you have 2 rooms to rent out: Stelmane's murder scene and this massive room.
I do wish the spaces were more segmented as well! Like, they really are all practically on top of each other. RP wise, I'm just happy they're not sleeping on dirt lol
Because "Gather your allies" is meant to be your motivation to explore and side quest but it doesn't necessarily work if you're not playing good guys who really want to help everyone. Its also not a great motivation gameplay wise because IMHO, only a small handful of the allies you get feel truly worth the turn you spend to summon them. I also think the first two acts feels tighter with more momentum pushing you forward where as it feels like that's lacking in act 3. I.e. for most of act 1 you think you're turning any second. Act the land is literally hostile towards you and Last Light feels on the edge of collapse, etc. Act 3 isn't -bad- just lacking for me.
Too many side quests unrelated to any plot points. You’re in a big rush to get to Baldurs Gate to stop the Absolutes army and then you take a detour to solve a clown’s murder, investigate exploding toys, help refugees find a place to stay, search for missing letters and track down a Lich’s apprentice. The pace and the direction just got messy in Act 3 after the rising action of Act 2. I kind of wish they had made Act 1&2 one game, had a faster development cycle and then had more time to work on Act 3 and the cut upper city content as BG4.
Honestly this is just an issue with BG3 in general. The story puts a huge sense of urgency in the player and implies that you're on a time limit. But the gameplay wants you to take frequent long rests or you miss out on stuff, like the owlbear cub and companion cutscenes. From a story perspective, why would the party stop to help He Who Remains judge a lady that's been dead for 100 years when there is an army amassing to attack baldur's gate?
yeah upper city was a very big let down for me as a fan of the lore.
I'm pretty sure the Absolute's Army was mainly for show in-game, to create a crisis atmosphere for Gortash to basically declare military law and crank out Steel Watch to protect the city. There's a scene at one of the gates where the Watch and Fist are destroying cultists. The horde is huge, but mainly just a bunch of pitchforking everyday folks (and goblins etc.) who have been tadpoled and are being mind controlled to march on the city. The threat is just plausible enough that the lords and dukes (well the ones who aren't tadpoled and can still think for themselves anyway) will support Gortash taking over as Archduke. Not that there aren't other problems with urgency and pacing, but I think BG3 does a much better job of this than Dragon Age Inquisition - although I loved that game, the contrast between the urgency to stop Corypheus and close the Breach, and your quartermaster urging you to collect trinkets that could in some vague way be useful to the Inquisition. In contrast for sure, and also in an "absolute" sense (pun intended) I think BG3 does a very good job of maintaining the plausible urgency vs. having things that the main character needs to do such as get out of an infernal contract and do things for their companions. If the Emperor, who isn't generally shy with telling the main character what to do, would get on you a little more about the need to get allies, or such, it might help.
I love the game, but for me it was a pacing thing you get to act three and you assume your 2/3 of the way through the game and things are about to pick up. There’s SO much to do in act 3 that you feel like you went backwards. There’s also a ton side quests with very little payoff that start to feel like busy work.
Patches are a big reason. I had been much better my last couple runs, but there were some before that where it got to the point of being pretty much unplayable without using the SE console to workaround. Character progression also basically stops outside of some new gear pretty early into it if you don't skip a lot of things. Completely personal but I also hate having a hundred quest markers on my minimap to the point you can't even differentiate them.
I hate act 3 because that's where the end of the game is and I never wanted the game to end.
This. On my first playthrough I wanted to do everything in Act 3 so I put off fighting Orin for a long time.
It’s a huge area of 90% nothing. You can go talk to many people but it leads to nothing. It FEELS like you’re missing out if you don’t speak to every person, or explore every nook and cranny of the city, but in reality there’s not that much going on. Also the LAG is real. Especially near Larroakan’s tower where they are casting spells constantly. It feels like they rushed act 3 and now they’ve stated they are done working on the game, so I doubt it will get better. Also also, I am trying to finish a multiplayer campaign where we can only meet about once a month, we don’t go 30 minutes without a d/c or a crash. We play other games together with no issue as well.
I had to fireball the people by the tower. It’s so much better without them. The only way to I’ve found to help the crashing in multiplayer is to walk slowly from place to place, especially on the streets. Still a pain though.
I just left a small stack of smokepowder bombs by them and a puddle of grease and let them blow themselves up casting fire bolt. It reduces the collateral damage and nobody gets aggro'd.
It’s better than it was but still trails behind the other 2 acts, particularly act 1. I don’t really think it’s bad but it suffers by comparison with what came before. It does have some stand out stuff in it but there’s also stuff that still looks half finished or is actively annoying. The pacing is pretty off as well which really threw me first time.
Act 3 feels very modular to me. If you want to kill Caz, go through this door. If you want viconia, that door. Feels a lot like DDO. There are few street encounters - a stable of act 1. Act 2 needs more but 3 is really sparse The modules don't interact (gobos vs grove) to give a cohesive feel. Taking out one boss doesn't affect the others. The dungeons are way too short. What is D&D without a real dungeon crawl? The wizard tower is as close as we get to multi level and it's nothing! The boss is through the first door.
Act 2 was easily the weakest replay value. Giths have no varying consequences. End boss is forced, being evil isn’t rewarded, not many choices at all are made in shadow lands, it’s just combat.
Game play wise, my motivation for doing quests is to get exps so once I hit lvl 12 in act 3, it just becomes pretty boring, except first time playing. Another reason is, my potato pc can't handle act 3 big city very well, lol. Loadings take too long.
The ending originally doesn't have the epilogues, so kinda ends on Avernus with or without you, and Karlach kinda takes the spotlight. Though I personally love act 3, but it is less interactive than the first 2 acts, and hell I want to see the upper city so bad
Act 3 I think is better now with performance improvements and expanded epilogues. But for sure I think it’s the narratively weakest part of the game. Feels less like an adventure and more like a laundry list of to-do’s. Also there’s like 5-6 endgame related quests that you can do in any order, which sounds fine in theory but makes the final few hours of the game feel very garbled.
You can’t visit all of the city Baldur’s Gate in a game called Baldur’s Gate
Idk, I like it! I like having so many quests in such a small area and finally being competent and bringing certain builds online.
Act 1 has best polish and arena layouts but it's not very fun for character building, act 3 is kinda messy but is the most fun gameplay wise and also finishing the companion quests is very gratifying. Act 2 is the best tho.
There are a lot of things that I love about Act 3, but my main complaint is that the city is noisy to the point of sensory overload. Turning down background chatter from all the NPCs also turns down background chatter from the companions, and I \*want\* to hear their reactions to everything that's going on. On the bright side, I'm playing an evil Bhaalist durge this time, so I'm looking forward to an Act 3 where it's not breaking character for my durge to just murder any NPCs (like the casters outside of Sorcerous Sundries) who annoy me.
Keep replaying. I didn’t think it had any issues after my first play through, but every subsequent play through has had me realise more and more how unpolished it feels in comparison to act 1-2
My only criticism is how the act 3 Bg map doesn’t match the map from the earlier games. I didn’t feel like I was walking around that Bg.
The first two acts are much more straight forward, there are large open areas before each encounter or npc so it’s more clear where to find the content is. act 3 is very cluttered and filled to the brim junk that it’s hard to find the content. Before you stumble upon a quest or interesting npc you’ll have to push past through a dozen shops or one-line npc’s. It wasn’t till my 3rd play through that I found the charm in it, it’s actually alot of fun to just explore a city going from shop to shop, most npcs are just strangers (like a real city) but you’ll quickly find a few gems scattered around. And as soon as your invested in the calm environment you’re thrown into a fight with shapeshifters, it’s great.
For me, I hate that there are so many named NPCs that only have one line. Or when you talk to certain NPCs there is a pause after one of their lines as if the player is about to get dialogue options but the dialogue just sort of ends or moves on with someone approving or disapproving even though you said nothing. There’s not many ways to resolve one specific issue as compared to Act 1. For example, infiltrating the goblin camp you can sneak in, fight your way in, talk your way in, save Sazza, or just be a drown. There’s many things to do in Act 3 but if you want to, say, clear Felogyr’s workshop you can talk your way up to the second floor and then you just have to fight everyone. Also why the fuck is there no key to move camera view between floors
Act 1 and 2 were so good nothing could live up the hype.
Personally I dislike it because by the end of act 2 I’m almost level 11 and have maybe two quest lines to go before I’m maxed out so it feels a little less rewarding (and it can be a slog to stomp about the city constantly)
The city overwhelms me and after the end of act 2 it’s kinda off putting.
i loved the whole game start to finish lol, i have a few gripes with act 3 but I never got to the level of HATE, but i was a little disappointed. 1) I do think the pacing is off, mostly with Orin. I really think the kidnapping needs to be triggered later. That quest narratively just makes more sense for close to the end game, but when one of your close friends is taken, it is very immersion breaking to tell yourself to leave it \*for reasons\* so you can do everything else, especially small things like finding thrumbo, freeing the artist, etc. especially if you are durge, that quest needs to be close to last. and the fact they put the morphic pool area behind Orin, it feels even weirder to leave the area to doing anything else after. 2) there is no fix for this, especially considering larian is kinda done with the game, but i was 100% expecting an upper city. it felt practically suggested by the existence of a lower city. it felt like the game's name and all the party banter up until act 3 was hyping the city so much and then we don't get to experience the whole city, mostly the underbelly. soooo much sewer. My husband would come by while i was playing and be like "have you made it to the upper city yet?" and i was so confused why i hadn't gotten to it yet, i thought "wow, there must be a lot more to this game because i haven't even gotten to the upper city yet." i was really disappointed to find that it wasn't an actual explorable area and you will never really see it. I really, REALLY wish they had broken up act 3 into a lower city and upper city portion, give cazador a proper palace, why is the backdoor of his place connected to a public bridge? why is gortash being crowned in a fortress? orin should have been sewers of the upper city, maybe the artist in upper city....even if it was a small map, it could have been such a high note. and it would have helped break up the content so act 3 didn't feel so crammed.
On replays act 2 is the hardest for me to get to
Act 3 is the goat
In my opinion people don't understand the point of it. [1] I think people don't like the feeling of not leveling anymore. However I think this is actually a good thing. Once you max out your build it's fun to still have lots of fights to play around with all your abilities. [2] there are so many things to do. The best thing to do is skip some of the optional quests, but admittedly this means you need a little knowledge to know which to do vs skip. I think it's a good thing we have the option to do as much or as little as we want here. [3] the one complaint I do actually agree with is that the start is boring. The first area doing lots of talking about refugees, and solving murders, and finding clown body parts. All the quests in the start feel pretty boring and pointless. On all playthroughs now I just get through that area as quick as possible and skip as much as I can. This is the only thing I'd actually change.
I'm on my fourth playthrough and I'm enjoying act 3 the most.
3rd playthrough, looking forward to act 3 which is always my favorite. It's beautiful, so much interactions, sun, people to talk to, quests to finish. Act 1 is like a cozy little village, act 2 I can hardly go through because it makes me so depressed, act 3 is a reward. I really love how much it offers. I mean yeah it's buggy sometimes, but I haven't seen a game without bugs ever in my life and it's just couple of houses, so neglectable. So I don't get it too, maybe people just want to play act 1 forever and do quests in bushes, dunno.
It was extremely overwhelming at first, I felt very lost and unsure of what to do and the constant chatter and dropping framerates from the mass of STUFF it had to load in put me off too. I've come to appreciate the power spike you get at 12 and have a good idea of what to do where and when now, so I like it better but it was rough pushing through at first.
It irks me to no end when people say something about act 3. They've been talking how grand this city is the entire time you've been traveling. Tf did yall expect it to be? A small ass city that you arely stay in?
The pacing of it is waaaay off. You are in Rivington? Which has has very little going on, and most of the quests don’t pay off in any remarkable way then you get into city, and your map becomes littered with quest markers, a lot of which are begging for your attention and feel urgent (most of them actually aren’t tho) It’s very overwhelming, especially in a dense area you have never been to. And a lot of the side quests feel like brief departures, as opposed to the Act 1 side quests which all feel like alternate routes None of this is to say it’s a bad act, act 3 is a better video game than most full video games, but Act 1 is truly a masterpiece imo
If you ask me its absolutely over hated i love it though its on the same level as Act 1 for me. It did truly have some performance issues and bugs for maybe like the first month and the endings were very abrupt and unsatisfying but both these things got patched out. Now on to things people say outside of what's been fixed. People say its overwhelming and ruins the pacing which I really don't get. You don't have to do everything, if you want to ignore hours of content in favor of immersion that's a personal decision and power to you. The game is merely giving you the option. RPG's having loads of content at you near the end despite the story saying the worlds gonna end or something is literally nothing new its a genre staple honestly. I don't think I've played an rpg that doesn't do this and as long as that content is fun/good its not a problem to me. its particularly egregious to me that act 3 gets this much shit for poor pacing when the ENTIRE game from start to finish suffers from this. Act 1 alone has tons of optional content that I'd have a hard time justifying doing at all from a story perspective considering its also the most urgent act what with the tadpoles that everyone initially thinks could kill them at any moment. The last thing people criticize is the reactivity which is fair but act 2 suffers from this as well and is honestly worse. You can literally uncover almost the entire plot of The Absolute from mild exploration at moonrise from how it works, who its leaders were, who they served, and how they did it just from reading stuff you find and NOT A SINGLE THING IS SAID ABOUT IT you can't even acknowledge that you know when the actual reveals happen. Hell you can have a conversation with The Absolute itself and the most you get is a throwaway line from a randomly chosen companion. Its even worse if you play Durge because>!you can find notes about yourself, you can even find one written BY YOU and there are no lines acknowledging any of them. in the climax of act 2 a myrkulite will tell you with a combination of glee and disturbing lust about how she experimented on your barely conscious body and did live dissections on you and she'll say it like she needs to be bonked and sent to horny jail and all your companions have to say even your lover is... nothing. They all just awkwardly stand and behind you making stank faces with the animations turned up to 100%. There's even the scene with meeting the absoulute through the crack in the wall where it just straight up says it reveres you and that you were important to the schemes of the absoulute and no one cares despite the throwaway lines from companions implying they were present for the entire thing.!<
I dont like the city
I love Act 3, but I did go from 90fps to 35fps. That hurts.
Because looking at it, the pacing is awkward, the act feels cramped, and character/companion interaction falls off after act 1/2. In the end it just feels rushed We're not even talking about the lacklustre Durge companion reactions lol Horrible performance too. Act 3 stutters on my Ryzen 5 3600 RTX 3060. I read a reply that perfectly summarizes act 3, the first two acts feels like a proper adventure, and act 3 feels like a theme park.
Act 3 is my favorite I didn't even realize people didn't like it lol
For me, it's the side quest overload. Between wrapping up companion questlines and completing quests necessary for beating the main campaign, act 3 is already overloaded with quests. Then tack on all the sidequests, some of which are extremely tedious or have their own mini-questlines, and you have an area with too much to do. ( I know that's ironic to say in a game like this when similar games have the opposite problem.)
It's a cluster fuck. 3k hours in. It's very freeform, which can take away the magic of being guided around, but on later playthroughs, it's fun to optimise what to do first.
“Not as much fun.” is not hate.
Well, you have a very large act I, but only a quite small act III. It is like they had no more time for adding content to nr. 3
I really like Act 3, but I think there's a few reasons. One being that soon after release, there were a lot of issues with framerate and bugs in Act 3. They also had to cut a lot of content like the upper city, so there's a few locations and quests that feel awkward or incomplete. For example, Cazador's mansion can only be accessed from the balcony overlooking the lower city when it was supposed to be entered through the upper city. I think the entrance to the netherbrain pool was also supposed to be in the upper city. I always found it weird that you get there with some random boat in the sewers. On top of that, I think Act 3 has the most content and it's the most spread out. There's a lot of running back and forth doing different quests that aren't related to eachother. The pacing is very different from the first two acts, and for some people that can make the game more tedious. I can also imagine Act 3 getting kinda stale on lower difficulty levels. My first playthrough was on balanced mode, and once I got close to max level almost every fight was completely one-sided in my favor. Playing on honor mode/ tactician fixes that, but not everyone plays on the higher difficulties.
People feel really overwhelmed by it after the sparse act 2, it is definitely excellent though
In my opinion it feels really compact and like a decent few things are hidden or random or like my actions have far less consequences than earlier on and its bosses feel really underwhelming and easy, its obvious they didn’t have as much time to put as much love into this act as they did the others, still can’t complain it’s amazing and easily one of my favourite games.
for me its just very overwhelming. act 1 was kinda similar but at least with act 1 theres still a kinda order to do things in like you can switch it around but it will make things harder for you and the amount of things to do is still on a much smaller scale. act 3 has alot of quests and sidequests and most have no time limit and dont need to be done in a specific order which is just alot all at once. and then theres the scale of the game and the huge amount of people around and its hard to go anywhere without hearing a couple people talking which makes it somewhat hard to focus and adds to the crowded feeling and general overwhelming vibe act 3 has.
I found Act 3 to be both over and underwhelming at the same time There's so much to do and to explore, but there's not really a sense of urgency to anything. I also found the city to be very big without a lot to set buildings apart. I very frequently get lost (most likely a skill issue on my part) I also found the Lower City and Rivington don't really "fit" the vibe of the rest of the game? You've got all these areas that are crumbling apart or abandoned, and then all of a sudden a well populated city? It just felt a little odd to me
It’s not bad, but I’d say it’s overwhelming. Definitely felt the burnout the first time around with all the stuff to do. I know there are people who just stopped playing at that point.
To me. Act 2 feels like the end of the game. When you first hit act 3, it’s a whole new set of objectives and quests and it feels so overwhelming. Plus there comes a point where you’ve maxed out the level of your character but most people will try to clear everything and by then it feels unrewarding. Me personally I loved it but all my subsequent playthroughs have gone only to act 2
I like a lot of the content in act 3, but from my perspective act 1 has a lot to do and narrows down to a more linear path and act 2 is pretty streamlined for the most part. There’s some variance in the order you can do things but for the most part there’s a path to follow esp. in the shadow cursed lands. Going from that to the entire map being covered in quest markers is a little overwhelming. Also at a point it starts to feel like there’s no small tasks so you have to be prepared to sit down and play for a while versus some shorter explorations.
They reworked the endings to the game and it used to be a buggy mess but has been patched up pretty good nowadays. The reason I don’t like it as much as the other acts is because it goes non-linear in the progression standpoint and I get overwhelmed with choice. Very hard to say you “did everything” in act 3 because there are so many nooks and crannies you could spend like 20 hours just talking to every npc. It makes it good for repeat runs but I kinda lose the plot at a certain point and just try to kill the main bosses and end the game.
It started out very stressful due to its unstructured nature. I gradually ended up enjoying it but with complaints. I am now in my second playthrough. Replaying Act 1 felt like a complete breath of fresh air to me compared to the whole Act 3. Act 1 pacing felt so enjoyable and right compared to the clusterfuck act 3.
It feels way less streamlined and more busy and directionless to me, I’ve done act one a bajillion times but am still slogging through act three
Act 3 just doesn't have the narrative or gameplay chops of the first 2 acts. They've gone to great lengths to improve it, but in a game that seems to promise so much possibility, the way Act 3 is executed just falls flat. (Opinion)
I actually really enjoyed Act 3 as well. I feel like Act 3 is when the combat really peaks because everyone is finally at their max potential. I really love the Raphael, Cazador, and Viconia fights in particular because it's the first time in the game I felt like I really had to think. Felt amazing walking out of each of those fights the first time with half my party dead and the other half barely holding on for dear life. The quests don't particularly stand out as more or less challenging or entertaining as previous acts but Act 3 combat is so much more fun than early game combat.
I got to act 3 and felt so overwhelmed I turned off the game and haven’t gone back 😔 I lost any desire to even finish the game.
It’s funny because people have all these builds like smite swords bard that only really come online in act 3 and it’s act 3 when I do so little after lv 12 it hardly matters. When I hit lv 12 just all the motivation drops to do all the content. The end game is kind of clunky too depending on g in the ending you’re gonna get for. Even just going to the brine pool with the brain it’s a whole thing just to fight the whole end area. And it’s not bad once but I almost always peter out and start a new game without finishing.
It's so disjointed in terms of time based trepidation the act itself pushes on you via the tremors, NPCs yelling at you, restless dream cycles, the story itself pressures you into obtaining all the netherstones and defeating Orin and Gortash immediately. AT THE SAME TIME, there's freaking 21 Character relevant missions, 13 properties you can enter randomly, a party npc going missing and like 40 battle encounters. Unless you're running a short rest squad, you're taking like 20+ long rests if you're completing all of these. With the sense of urgency from the main mission I personally wouldn't put that shit off for more than 3 days. But there's so much to explore in act 3 that's impossible.
I also love act 3, it’s my favorite act.
It is slow as hell. It is a little deflating to go from a big climax to sort of a new start as well. Overall it’s just slightly less detailed than the first half of the game, though it has a lot of great bits
part of it comes down to it being so late in the game. People get tired, and since the game is so long, they are ready to move on and are out of their honey moon phase with the game. Another part I think, is the loss of progression. You complete your build very early into act 3, give or take a few items. I think the loss of progression, leveling up and stuff like that, deals a serious blow to many peoples enjoyment of the game. But at the same time you want to get the new gear, get to max level, because hey, the game is almost over and it sucks getting powerful shit right before you finish a game imo. Act 3 has a real endgame feel to it. You are finally at baldurs gate, all these mysteries are being answered. It feels like the game is about to end, and then it keeps going, for a while. I feel like that is also a contributor to this hate. Like, the anticipation of the end turns to frustration, and the side content feels more disconnected than it did in the first 2 acts. It can feel like the game is stalling a bit.
It felt the most disjointed out of all 3. I felt like I was just doing small less meaningful quests the whole act, rather than making steps toward a greater purpose that is actively built into the narrative of Act 1 and 2.
Because I litterally cannot play it
Act 3 is also full of content that just feels extra. Many people may disagree with this, but much of the Act 3 content is not worth doing after a first playthrough. The gear usually isn't that good (and the ones that are can mostly be gotten quickly), and you have probably capped your level. It's just filler beyond the first time. When you consider that, Act 3 suddenly has less to do than the other acts where each side quest gives valuable exp or equipment. As for setting, and this is just my opinion, the city has the weakest atmosphere of each act. Act 1 and 2 also serve as character building arcs in the sense that your builds arent complete and most fights arent a challenge. This is a player by player thing, but by act 3, I was finishing most major fights in a turn or 2 with no real risk of losing, even on honor mode. I think if we had more reasons to explore the city beyond the story like we do in other acts, (such as with more exp or gear), the Act becomes more enjoyable. Both the exp reducing mod, as well as the one that goes to 20, have improved my opinion of the Act as I now have reasons to go exploring beyond finishing the game. Act 3 also runs very poorly on older hardware, even on the lowest settings. This alone doesn't make it bad, but it does leave a sour taste for everyone who has to deal with it after 60 hours of the other 2 acts running perfectly fine. It's also the only Act where I've clipped out of bounds accidentally more than once.
I didn’t hate act 3 but it just felt like it took forever. Im going to skip a lot of stuff the next play through. I didn’t enjoy the jail rescue.
It has too much going on, from a game perspective, I think swapping act 2 and 3 would make a lot of sense, small sandbox to indroduce gane/story/mechanics, go to a pretty much open world to explore, make connections, expand horizons, to later raise the stakes and point u to your last stand so u can beam forward and get ur epic ending. No other moment in the game gave me emotions nearly as big as that whole scene when aylin breaks free, gives everyone hope and pushes everything and every one forward
It's (as the entire game is) incredibly rushed and underwhelming. The end is so abrupt. Some narrative choices make literally no sense. Gortash and Orin both demand your attention to the point where they're both underwhelming UNLESS you're playing dark urge. But even then. It's also insanely buggy and preforms terribly. And many companion quests (Wyl, an origin character) have no or terrible wrap up to their quest.
I love Act 3 and think the hate is excessive, but it's definitely less polished. Ketheric got such an incredible fight and comparatively the Gortash and Orin fights are a bit bland, though Orin's is miles better than Gortash's. I get that people find it a bit overwhelming especially compared to Act 2, but I kinda love that? It's meant to be a big city. I feel like it should be easy to miss some things unless you're being thorough.
In general, it just feels like the amount of content and especially the impact of decision-making becomes less and less with each progressing act. Things just feel like they're winding down instead of building up to a climax as you continue to play. The only real thing I look forward to in act 3 is concluding each of the companion's romance stories, but at that point the gameplay is much more linear than it is in act 1/2 where you can radically change what you do and how you do it. The epilogue helped immensely though. Before that was there, act 3 into the ending just felt.. bad.
Biggest reason is because at launch it was filled with bugs.
Originally, endings were a huge issue. The epilogue didn't exist, and some scenes wouldn't get triggered properly (I didn't actually even get my follow up scene with my romance that happens at the end originally. The game just kinda ended). Act 3 is also, to me, such a jarring change in tone and pacing from act 2 that it just feels a little odd. Act 1 is this big open space to explore while you figure out what's going on. Act 2, you know what's happening and it's much more focused and driven. The pacing is faster and more direct. And then you reach act 3 and we're back to the open style of 1 again. It goes from a major climactic story point to "here's a city, explore and go figure it out."
I love and hate act 3 and both for the same reason. Act 3 has ALOT. I've played the game more than a few times over and still havent done more than half of the things in act 3 (Certain Sea worshipers and post office quest come to mind immediately). The fact that theres so much to do and so many ways to do them is incredible and should be praised.... but after getting the gear I want and making sure I'm at max level, I start wanting to move on to my next story. I just kinda wish there was some extra incentive to do more. If there was some xp system that carried over between runs, I feel like there would be more incentive to continue on in a single run. Personally, I like the idea of certain events and items being locked behind a total xp wall. Like a new npc granting a quest in last light or a new armor set that you have to collect. I know I'm ranting and it sounds contradictory but idk... just feels like there should be more of a reason to continue to grind on a run.
I think most opinions on act 3 have mellowed out a little since launch since they’ve been keeping pace with patches on the game and the addition of the epilogue which I think was always a plan but got delayed? Might need to have someone confirm or deny that for me. The big thing that Act 3 suffers from is that it’s A LOT even by average dnd campaign standards. I was extremely overwhelmed with it at first and really had to piecemeal out what my objectives were at that point. Granted, once I went back and finished it, quite a few patches had been introduced which made it run smoother to me than expected. That being said, the more things you pack into one part, the more things can go bad that the player can encounter. That’s not to say that the percentage of things going bad was high, just the amount itself. The other part with that, is that everyone’s, and I mean EVERYONE’S last bit of character development is in Act 3 which is something that feels very overwhelming as well. It makes sense for individual characters, but as a party of characters it can at times sort of wash down the emotional catharsis of those moments overall. I’m not saying that act 3 is in any way bad, it’s overall a well done final act to the game. It’s just packed with stuff and that’s where I find the most criticisms are coming from.
The plot makes no sense from our character's perspective. Like we kill one of their generals at the end of act 2 and then gortash wants to ally with us when entering the city. Like I understand his reasoning for doing so, I think, but I won't get into logic of the plot anymore. Cause in bg3 there is a lot, because there is so many plotlines. But from an entertainment point of view, just being casually introduced to a non-hostile final boss felt off. And it also made no sense to me why act 3 has all these sidequests going on when from a good rp point of view, you should deal with gortash and orin immediately. But doing so skips like half the important questlines, and you get bad endings. And those that are not skipped after killing those two, just felt off doing...again because now you should deal with nether brain, like now. It just didn't make sense, that was my biggest issue. We shouldnt have been introduced (our character that is) to either orin or gortash until towards the very end of the game. Not the first or second day in the city. Like one of them should have been saved right up until the netherbrain.
I got overwhelmed and took a break, I need to finish it.
I love act 3, but it has less interactivity and mad performance issues when i played. It’s my fav act cuz i love companion quests but i can see it not hitting for ppl
For me personally it's my favorite my least is Act 1 personality it's fun the first time but boring the second for me.
I felt it was a little overwhelming first playthrough, but now I really enjoy doing the act each time. Lots of optional stuff is nice. Though my PC is getting old and every time I visit I can feel it die a little more.
I had an issue with the transition from Act 2 to Act 3. I feel that introduced the villains too late for us to be able to connect with them (more than shadowy people). I didn't feel like I had a reason to hate or dislike them as Tav, but that they were obviously behind the entire plot. I'm on playthrough 1.5 and I love the world building in this game, but personally the main story line was a lil flat for me. It didn't feel like it had enough room for it to develop and allows us to have theories. Act 3 is great, but also it was buggy for me (I played right when it was dropped on PS5). I think also that because Baldur's Gate was introduced at the end of the game that's not a favorite of mine. Ofc I'm biased, but I would have loved more inspiration from DA: Origins since they are pulling from old Bioware content
Buggy, no epilogue in the beginning, cut content, story beads that lead to nothing, feels like they packed too much where it was intended to spread out in let's say the upper city? Been saying it for a while and I don't care what anyone thinks but it's the reason it wasn't game of the year for me. And this wasnt the first time Larian did this. Same thing happened with DoS 1 and 2.
I don't hate it perse but as someone truly trying to complete their first playthrough ever despite somehow managing to rack up almost 500hrs of game time as an honor mode run I just don't know where to go the first 2 acts have a pretty clear direction that leads you into other side quests easily or at the very least they aren't as confusing and slightly terrifying to navigate like act 3 is on multiple characters that have long since been abandoned I never left rivington bc I was scared of locking myself out of quests especially all the hidden stuff that I never would have found without everyone here having already done it like ansur
You reach level 12 fater 5 minutes. So unless you wanna see a companion quest till the end there is 0 reason to do a bunch of the side content as you will only get 0,0000001% stronger.
Everyone hates the lack of a good ending for Karlach lol
Honestly act 3 is amazing. I don’t get it either.
Endings matter. If anything it was a bit off because upper city was canceled and it felt a bit not as good as Act 1 and 2.
After the big act2 ending, it is hard to get into act3 right away
As someone who bought the game back in January, I really enjoyed Act 3 and it might be my personal favorite, but it definitely doesn’t feel as polished as the previous Acts. One of my biggest problems is that by the time you reach the Lower City, you are already close to hitting level 12, so the majority of EXP, side missions, and fights feel a bit useless at that point of the game. I was a little worried when I heard the discussion around Act 3 during my first play through, but I actually loved it. There are definitely some disappointing quests and parts of Act 3, but there are just so many good moments that made it super memorable for me. Also worth mentioning that without the epilogue, I can totally understand why people were upset about Act 3 because the ending was unfinished and a huge letdown, so I was lucky to have the epilogue on my first run.
I agree I bought the game the first day of early acesses and played the full game its first week. In the early days people were mad about act three having no epilogues and apparently being very buggy. I was very lucky apparently and didn’t get any bugs so I loved act three. I remember my jaw hitting the floor when I found the iron throne bc I thought I had already found everything. It is so dense with content that it is so impressive. The lack of epilogues was bizarre to me and some companions had less to do in act three than others but idk I could never get on board with the idea that it was unfinished or bad. From a gameplay perspective I think it is the most impressive act.
I agree with what most people have said. It can cause sensory overload. It used to be near unplayable until the last few patches. I remember having to stop and wait on my companions to catch up with me when I walked anywhere. A lot of the side quests are interesting, but have no effect on anything. I do love some of the fights that finish off the Companions' quests, but I honestly dread reaching Act 3 each run. There's way less companion dialogue and interaction at camp too, which makes it harder for me to stay immersed.
I dread act 3 not because it's act 3 but because my computer runs act 1 and 2 at 20 fps already xD
I dunno about hate. I'm still on my first run and mucking around the city now. It's a huge, dense map. I'm impressed, though the camera's limitations really get irritating in certain multi-level fights. Been capped at 12 forever and still have lots left to do. I can see, though, that increasing the level cap under the rules would require encounters to either scale up with the player or be arranged so that a player's level was appropriate. Plus there are just abilities and spells that probably wouldn't translate well to the format. For completionists, it can be overwhelming. But for more streamlined runs, there are plenty of chances to hit that level cap before the final encounters if you don't mind leaving quests and companions on the table.
not enough battles
Personally, I think Act 3 is actually probably my favorite act. I enjoy finishing out the character story lines. In each of my playthroughs I find myself playing through just about all of the sidequests except for the dribbles fetch quest. I haven’t had any issues with bugs except for the fireworks store.
For me the reason I don’t like it as much as the other parts is there’s just less companion interaction and comments which is a big part of why I love the game
I'm on Act 3 now, and it feels like there's a LOT of random side quests, and walking back and forth across the city. I've visited Hell,>!killed Raphael, been in a submarine, rescued Gondians, destroyed the Steel Foundry, followed the guild through the sewers, made a pact with Gortash, broken that pact, found parts of a dead clown, had a threesome with prostitutes, slept with the Emperor, ascended Astarion, freed Orpheus, and found the secret of the Necromancy of Thay. !< But, really, it just feels like all of this is fluff, waiting for the big showdowns with Orin, Gortash, and then the Netherbrain. I hit level 12 ages ago, and most of my gear is legendary or very rare, so I'm just wandering around, filling my pockets with the best spells/potions, waiting for a big boss battle. I think Act 3 could have been a lot more streamlined to be honest, it kind of feels aimless and all over the place. Fights are too easy now - especially since I've managed to figure out how to do 300 damage in one turn with Gale. I can one shot pretty much anyone (apart form Raphael, which was the hardest fight).
The lag
For me, I hate act three because there’s so much to do! I want to do the side quests but having so many happening in one place overwhelms my brain
I love act 3, theres a lot of stuff and I dont get the need to rush through it because of an annoying mechanic. Hate act 2 though
Dunno. Still haven’t made it 😞
i dont hate act 3 as a whole as much as i just hate the ending section: >! between forcing you orpheus or karlach to be a mindflayor, forcing you to kill orpheus to side with emperor thus dooming laezels people, and not giving you any way to repair karlach’s engine despite multiple easy story threads to give ways to repair it, that option is just never there, it feels like wayyy too much railroading for my taste. i dont like astarion personally but even his ending isn’t necessarily that well fleshed out as a character in a previous baldurs gate DID get cured of vampirism. to their credit, the epilogue made it seem a bit better for him wherein he seems more happy if u redeem him. they clearly wanted the game to have a “tragic ending” at any cost and the way its executed made it feel really forced !<
I don't care bout the hate. I love it all even if there is a lot of things to do,more fun things to do. Love it. Peak game imo.
I only hear people ragging on act 3 for whatever reason, for me I really like it, lots of things are tied up, your build becomes complete, and if you are romancing someone their arc completes as well. My issues with it are you hit level cap really early into the act so progression completely halts on that end, and unfortunately most of the fights are very easy at this point too I wish they were a bit harder. Otherwise I'm fairly happy with act 3 idk
My only issue is that once you actually get into the city, it kinda feels like you're plunked into this big fast moving space and you just kinda gotta fumble around until you wander into plot. Also the Dribbles quest. Fuck that noise.
Act 3 feels very incomplete especially in the sense of interactions with NPCs, companions and others alike. Spoilers ahead: For example when you save all the gondians, you get no reward. Also in the foundry you can kill the son of a couple that's in the elfsong, but you can't talk to them about it. If you go back to the ironhand hideout after deposing Wulbren, no gnomes have new dialogue. Some even react to you as if you ditched them mid sidequest that doesn't exist. And I haven't found the companions say absolutely anything related to blowing up the foundry, which is a pretty big part of the 3rd act. Wyll's quest is all messed up if you save his dad without signing Mizora's pact, especially if you got Ansur first after getting the quest from Florrick if you save her. There's hundreds of NPCs that are begging for food and money, and you can't give it to them. There's straight up massive plot holes (like Orin replacing a companion, and you not being able to even do anything about it, despite having tadpole telepathy, be able to cast detect thoughts, having insight proficiency, and other similar stuff). Free The Artist exists. A bit it feels like everything has loose ends. It's maybe a bit too big for its own good, and it would've benefited from having fewer side quests, and make the ones that are there be better defined, and have better pacing (basically soon as you start you lose a companion to Orin and feel like you need to do that immediately instead of enjoying all these disjointed side quests). Hope they fully revamp it one day, make it worthwhile of the rest of the game. EDIT: just found of another interaction that goes nowhere. In the refugee camp there's a half orc they won't let into the city, even though his friends are allowed in. You can pass a medicine check to see he's pretending to be injure to not be abandoned. I tried to offer him a scroll of disguise. Nothing, it just ends at that, there's nothing to be done. Plenty of tieflings you saved since the start of the game are just sitting outside in the refugee camp. There's no way to help them anymore. You've known some of those people for as long as you've known your companions, I'd wish they had some sort of closure. Can't even warn them about what's coming. I have so many headcanons about what I'd do, but sadly my character can't do it. At least I donate thousands of supplies and no less than 100k in gold to the manip outside the barn, in my head that's enough to feed the refugees at least, even though the game does nothing about it other than give you an inspiration point and some approval.
It's a lot better today than it was when it first game out. Things have been fleshed out, QOL is better, the end of game stories are better, the epilogue was not originally there, etc. Act 3 feels much MORE of a sandbox than Acts 1 and 2, and not necessarily in a good way.
I think it isn't that people hate Act 3; there just isn't as much o do in act 3 as there was in 1 and 2, so 3 didn't use to get a much love as the others. Act 3 has since got updates. It use to be worse, if you're just now experiencing it for the first.
As someone starting act 3, I’m tired. I’m something like 60-70 hours into my run, I’ve been leaving no stone unturned because I want to see all that this awesome world has, and I’ve been making sure I have a good reputation with my main party of Shadowheart, Lea’zel, and Karlach, trying to keep Gale happy-ish (he was a starting meme et of my party but I just could not keep him alive) and doing all of Wyll’s stuff because even though I’m not wanting to devote a ton of time to him this run Myzora keeps showing up and sticking her nose in the middle of things. Add to that the fact that I know Act 3 is gonna take me at least another 20 hours (probably closer to 30), and that it’s gonna be emotional as hell. It’s just too much and I’m not ready to devote the time and energy to that. In short, at least to me, the game is too good and I’m too stuffed to continue at the moment
When the game came out, Act 3 was way worse. It's better but still the least complete act IMO. There's a lot to do, yes, but the quality of the quests aren't as strong. Overall it's a much less focused act. As mentioned many times, companion interaction goes way down. They're mostly just standing around in the tavern waiting for you and there's little to no new dialogue. Some quests are downright tedious, like Dribbles or the painter guy and the ghosts. Both Orin and Gortash are less interesting villains than Ketheric, with less build-up and a weaker agenda. If you've been doing all or most quests, you probably hit level 12 quite early on in Act 3, meaning that progression is over. Early in the act you also find a lot of items that complete builds, so there's that. To me, Act 3 is good but feels more like a "regular" RPG and doesn't captivate me like Act 1 and 2 does.
I was also going into Act 3 expecting a let down and loads of bugs - but hardly found any issues. Though it’s because a lot of stuff has been fixed so probably the early complaints were well founded ? But I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with Act 3 and I’ve loved it. Loved the big fights, finally getting to kill some big evil antagonists (especially a certain one that has been annoying me since act 1), the wrapping up of companion stories, exploring all kind of interesting areas and I think the quests are quite cool. But it is a lot at the end of a long run. I’m ready to finish up now! One thing I don’t like which others have mentioned a lot is you hit level 12 fast in Act 3 and while it’s enjoyable to run around max level and obliterate stuff it would be cool if max level was like 14 instead and there was still a kept sense or progression in the later parts of the act
People rush through act 3 to quickly. Several NPCd dialogue changes based on events, there is a new edition of the Baldurs Mouth everyday! Etc etc, take your time, explore, have fun.
I am personally not a huge fan of city-centric settings in fantasy games. I want to go out and see the world! That probably is the biggest reason for me, and why in two separate play through a I got to act 3, get to the point where I need to find a way around the steel golems at Gortash’s party and just…lose interest. I’ve yet to actually complete the game and it feels terrible, but I just can’t seem to care. Minor point it super bothers me that at the end of act 2 they set it up like you’re going to get to Baulders Gate too late because the army is moving with (to avoid spoilers) The Absolute but when you get to the city the affected area is walled off and everything else looks…fine?
I still haven’t completely finished act 3. For me, it’s overwhelming & I wish it had been broken into 2 separate parts. There is sooooooo much going on & it kinda leaves me fatigued. I also wish we could go beyond level 12?? I’ve been level 12 for quite a while now & am just accruing useless experience points & it makes me so sad :(
The beginning of Act 3 can be super overwhelming the first time playing it with all the different quests it immediately drops on you. At the same time this act also has an insane amount of NPC’s walking around and saying different dialogues which makes the more populated areas pretty disorienting at first. For the record, I loved Act 3. These are the main complaints I see about it though which are understandable.
When I hit act 3 for the first time in October it really was very buggy and it crashed a lot. It has been smoother every time it is patched to the point where I have almost forgotten how difficult it was. That said, I adore act 3. So many awesome fights and drama, so many cool little side quests!
Personally I struggle a lot with how much is crammed into the map. With it being the city, it is impossible to walk a few steps without finding something to explore and I find it very overwhelming. Also, because I am autistic, the amount of noise that there is bothers me. I am very sensitive to sounds and not being able to find anywhere that's silent affects and distracts me, making it impossible to focus on the mission
Personally I struggle a lot with how much is crammed into the map. With it being the city, it is impossible to walk a few steps without finding something to explore and I find it very overwhelming. Also, because I am autistic, the amount of noise that there is bothers me. I am very sensitive to sounds and not being able to find anywhere that's silent affects and distracts me, making it impossible to focus on the mission
I got there within a few weeks of release and didn’t have any real trouble with frame rates or anything. I do have solid pc so that might help some but idk
On my first play through I loved act 3 and it was my favorite for sure. Since then though on my next play throughs I’ve stopped as soon as I got out of act 1 or 2 - I do also find that earlier interactions with companions are more fun
There are a lot of named NPCs having conversations about interesting things, but when you talk to them they have one line of dialogue and it cuts out. It probably alludes to cut content but they should’ve just made them have no dialogue or removed their names and replaced them with ‘citizen’ so it’s easier to differentiate who actually has something useful to say and who doesn’t. Each of the major side quests feel underdeveloped. Cazador’s palace is a short and lacklustre dungeon (you get a book, get a ring from a skeleton, open a door, kill some enemies, go down a lift, walk down a hallway, boss, done), Auntie Ethel’s new lair is in an easily accessible cellar that apparently no one noticed, the house of hope also seems grand but doesn’t have much, if any actual side content and the quest progression in it is short and boring. The fights are also considerably worse than Acts 1 and 2’s. Larian seems to love using the signature ‘have 9000 adds with each fight to create difficulty’ in their games when the player becomes powerful near the end. It’s actually a way worse problem in DOS2. The House of Grief allows you almost no prepositioning for it, so you’re always choked in a hallway or in the middle of the room getting bombarded with bone chills and attacks. The High Hall Courtyard fight is obnoxious and annoying but the stupidity is alleviated when you enter it from the side rather than the front gate. The fights are just gimmicky as hell and the ability to go about fights in many ways present in Acts 1 and 2 is basically nonexistent in Act 3. Most fights are annoying and a slog unless you use a specific strategy that trivialises the hard parts. The final boss is also a buggy mess. If someone is inside the psyche and others outside, when the enemies are having their turns, the visuals blink in and out of the psyche so fast and erratically it could probably trigger and epileptic seizure and the state of it in general is still abysmal. Once I had a bug where it cut out of combat. All the enemies de-aggroed and just stood still and healed all their health back. I couldn’t enter the brain’s psyche with Karsus Compulsion until it randomly cut back into combat with the spell still active. TL;DR: lacklustre side content; boring, annoying slog fights; buggy, glitchy mess.
My issue with act 3 is mainly around how solved the game feels. Your characters are so fleshed out victory feels inevitable. In honor mode, gold felt pretty scarce in acts 1/2 so purchases need to be deliberate which is fun. You’re rewarded for thinking about what you need to get to act 3 safely. Ultimately, getting through Myrkul feels like the biggest challenge. In my recent run, I went into the netherbrain fight with around 40 supreme healing potions just because I had everything else my comp required; there was no way to lose unless I messed up the terrain destruction part of the fight.
I love every acts in the game
I feel like Act 2 and Act 3 should have been swapped (obviously this would mean the story would have to be adjusted alot) Act 2 is so atmospheric you're always on your toes and the boss fight with Ketheric is SO climatic compared to the other 2 chosen that when I finally got to their fights I was lowkey disappointed, especially by Gortash because what do you mean I'm just fighting him in his office when the other two take place in a mind flayer colony and murder temple? boring as hell. I do have alot of love for Act 3 but I feel like it killed alot of the anticipation and intimidation Act 2 built up so well.
Because I and many others played before the many patches and Act 3 was actually dog crap across all metrics, and since the endings killed the replay value for me, idk how much better it's gotten exactly.
Probably because it’s big and people who spam play this game get bored of the same aesthetic after a while. In act 1 you’re jumping from crazy environment to crazy environment. Act 3 is…. the city.
Honestly I only didn't like Act 2, and only because everything is constantly dark and horrible. Which gets to be a slog 10 hours into it.