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Would I enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 if I hate D&D?
I'm just wondering how much of a D&D fan you need to be to enjoy the game. I have several friends who like the game but they're all D&D fans to some degree. I am not, and never got into it. Roleplaying is something I've done for years but it was just playing characters without any sort of systems or numbers involved. From doing some reading, I get the impression if you aren't a D&D enthusiast, you won't get much out of the game and won't understand much if anything that's going on. The game has good reviews so I'm torn.
There are mechanisms in place to make playing the game a lot easier for people who are new to D&D. When you make a character, it will suggest stats to you. The combat is very straightforward, turn based but with clear steps to how that works/players move, the tutorials are very explanatory and, if played on easy, gives you a lot of time to 'ramp up'.
The overworld plays a lot like any RPG - run around, talk to people, loot, etc.
The dice rolls are mostly automatic, the only ones I've encountered are in dialogue choices which have a prefix, e.g. '[CHARISMA] Explain your way out of it'. You come to learn your characters strengths fairly quickly which guides which conversation choices you'll try.
I've played some D&D with friends but never fully understood it and I'm enjoying it, and to be honest learning a lot about how the game works!
This is cool to read. I haven't played BG1/2 because I bounced (very softly) off Planescape: Torment due to how how clunky it felt. I understand that BG is less of a visual novel & more of a straightforward CRPG than PS:T, but I didn't enjoy Planescape enough to want to plunk money down on the remasters.
And I bounced (less softly) off Divinity: Original Sin 2 because I found all the characters a little goofy, but I was impressed by what Larian is doing with its updated CRPG format.
Maybe BG3 will be the sweet spot that lets me finally get into the genre. I've always had a mild interest in D&D, but have never come closer to connecting with a CRPG than the Elder Scrolls series.
I didn't like Divinity either, I felt like I spent most of the time clicking through menus. Gave up on it after a few hours because it didn't grab me. Elder Scrolls, on the other hand (except Skyrim) I've put hundreds of hours into.
Based on this and other comments you've made, I think BG3 might not be the game for you.
There are still plenty of menus and the inventory management is... A little clunky. Furthermore, your characters end up accumulating a lot of different abilities depending on their class and equipment, usually only 1 or 2 of which you can use per turn in combat, and some of which are limited use.
I'd say it's worth grabbing on Steam to try out for an hour and a half, but don't waste your time in the character creator. Just grab a default character and hop in to start getting an idea of the mechanics, but set yourself a timer to be sure you can still return it with less than 2 hours of gameplay!
TBH I'd estimate that a full 2000 of my 2200 hours in Skryim has just been spent modding/breaking the game. I've never gotten further than Paarthurnax in the actual campaign.
To be honest you're not missing much. The game is pretty boring without mods. You really have to make your own fun to fill in the blanks.
fwiw, Planescape: Torment in particular is very frequently criticized for this aspect, even in comparison to others in this genre afaik. The only reason it's remotely relevant or brought up is its writing, and even fans usually acknowledge that you have to power through the clunky combat mechanics.
I've never played a CRPG before myself tbh, the closest I've come is Disco Elysium (though Planescape: Torment is on my list due to the comparisons so many people make between the two). But I'm eye-ing BG3 as potentially being worth it and reading the comments in this thread with interest.
I've never played D&D but picked up BG3 last night. It definitely leans more heavily into the tabletop element of an RPG compared to every other RPG I've played. There's a narrator that summarizes your situation/inner monologue; there are literal dice rolls to determine if something occurs; there are monsters and races and classes that clearly have deep D&D lore that I know nothing about.
I'm enjoying it so far and haven't felt too out of the loop on anything yet.
I mean that depends on what you want out of the game. I'm not really sure why you'd have to be a "D&D enthusiast". I think knowledge of forgotten realms lore will help your experience, but FR != DnD, and at this point I'd bet a minority of campaigns are in FR. DnD is a ruleset, not a setting.
In terms of the ruleset, which BG3 fairly uniquely is faithful to (BG1 and BG2 drastically differed from AD&D) is there something in particular about 5e that you don't like?
I don't even know what 5e means, sorry.
I just don't enjoy tabletop/pen-and-paper games. I've always been a gamer and prefer my game to keep track of stuff on its own. That and I'm not thrilled about the idea of a dungeon master making decisions, I'd much rather it was done by an impartial third-party (i.e. a video game). It's just not something that interests me.
Neither of those elements will be present, since it is a video game.
I mean, that's kind of obvious.
Have you ever actually played? That sounds like you've got some weird ideas about what D&D is actually like that don't really line up to what it is.
OP said up front that they have never played and didn't seem particularly interested in playing.
Which makes me wonder why OP posed an innocent-sounding question as if they wanted an answer, and then wrote hundreds of comments telling everyone that they will, in fact, hate the game (why even pretend to ask the question?)
They mention Skyrim as a game that they like, and something like that is probably what they were looking for, since even though it's not D&D its still Swords and Sorcery type stuff that has RPG leveling and skill based mechanics. So it seems like they were asking if BG3 was like that game.
I've seen enough of my friends playing it and trying to drag me in that I wasn't interested. I don't know what else to tell you. Sometimes people don't enjoy things.
Oh, it not being for you isn't my issue. That's absolutely reasonable. It's more that a lot of your specific complaints are more like false assumptions you have about what the game is like than complaints about the game itself. Here's a few specifics that had me scratching my head:
The DM's partiality depends on the playstyle, but unless you're at a really toxic table, they're either going to stay completely impartial (if you're playing a version of the game from the 80s or early 90s or one of the old school revival homages to that playstyle), or they're going to be biased in favor of keeping things fun and challenging without being an absolute dick out to shit on you. A DM is more like the guy hosting the party than the adversary you seem to think of them as. They're there to set the stage and keep things moving along, not to lord over the players.
That's down to the character sheets you use. Personally I never use paper character sheets because I'm the same way. I have an android app that autocalculates all of the boring bookkeeping stuff for me. And it's just one of several options for that.
For that matter, depending on how elaborate your DM gets with it, there's digital tabletop tools that almost literally turn it into a video game. There's a really wide spectrum here.
D&D is the other way around. Your skills and the time you put into your character mitigate the random chance. And to the extent that it comes in, it's a way of introducing an element of chaos to the storytelling that creates more interesting situations than what you're likely to come up with on your own. Which applies on both sides of the DM screen -- sometimes your players pull something off and just bypass an entire encounter, and it's usually absolutely friggin' hilarious when it happens.
The whole reason to have rules is the limitations force creativity in a way that the freeform roleplaying you mentioned doesn't. If the first attempt at a solution doesn't work, that's not the end of the game, it's a challenge that your characters have to overcome. And conversely, sometimes some crazy, off the wall idea that the DM didn't consider actually works, and that's okay, too. It keeps everyone on their toes and really does serve to make things more interesting.
TL;DR: I'm not saying you have to like the game. But I think you had a kneejerk reaction to it that isn't actually based in reality. You might want to take up your friends on their offer of joining them, just for a session. I'm sure they'll be happy to have you, and that they'll understand even if you decide after that that it's not for you.
Edit: An addition about the random chance thing: only in combat are critical hits and automatic failures a thing, and there only on attack rolls. That's designed to allow for situations where even a peasant can get a lucky hit in on a dragon before he gets roasted, and even an ancient dragon can screw up in the heat of the moment and miss, and not as statistically problematic as you might think, because damage is a separate roll moderated by separate stats, and even if a peasant manages to hurt a dragon, it's not going to be a serious wound.
For every other situation, it really is down to how skilled your character is. Going by the rules, the only thing that matters on a skill check is whether the roll plus your bonus matches or beats the DC (difficulty class, the number that represents how hard the task is). That means a skilled enough character could roll a 1 on something and still pass the check, while a character that has no business trying something could roll a 20 and still fail. Character ability, and the way the player goes about using it, really do matter a whole lot more than you seem to think.
5e refers to the 5th edition rules of DnD. If you like story telling, turn based combat, multitudes of choices, and interesting characters and environment you will probably like Baldurs Gate 3. However since it is dice based there is always a chance of failure. So while a lot of the game is skill and tactical based, it can come down to luck sometimes. However good tactics can beat out luck most of the time. Or just talking gyiur way out with persuasion. That tends to work too.
I'll have to think on it because I'm not a fan of turn-based games or dice rolls. I don't like skills and things I spent time working on being invalidated by random chance.
If you’re not a fan of turn based games or dice rolls I would recommend you stay away from this game. Nearly everything is resolved through dice rolls and the combat is of course 100% turn based.
Who’s gone a tell them that RNG is how a lot of video games work under the hood?
Yes and no. While nearly all RPGs have some element of RNG, they very rarely flat out miss/roll a 1 these days. The RNG will be around whether or not a critical hit lands and if it doesn't they still actually hit. Very few games have a failure mode that isn't death these days.
It's really not. And when it is, it's rarely the same sort of blatant coin flip.
You really seem to hate most of the mechanics in this type of game? Why are you interested? The game reviews are good because the reviewers like this type of game. Understanding that context is key to reading any type of media critique.
D&D doesn't work off blatant coin flips. You seem to have made up your mind on D&D and that's fine I'm not going to convince you otherwise. But your understanding of these types of games is incorrect.
Yes a lot of games do. Subvocal didn't say all or most games do this. they said a lot do.
But to answer your question, the game is not a "twitch" skill based game but more a skill of managing to mitigate the RNG.
And reading your replies trough this thread I don't think you'll be having a good time.
If you're really curious go watch a stream or two, if it doesn't seem like a fun then just skip it :)
Any game that has a chance to do something is just a dice roll under the hood. Loot drops, chance to miss an attack or hit, chance of failing a craft etc. The only difference is that in baldur's gate the game shows you the die rolling.
There is actually a non-turn-based combat mode in the settings, but I’ve not tried it myself so can’t comment on how it plays.
I'd say probably not. Especially if you don't care for turn based combat (if you don't like turn based combat you really are not going to enjoy this game even if you like other aspects, sorry). If you like Turn based combat you might still enjoy it if you like a roleplaying game that really lets you try to do different things as solutions and has a lot of skill checks/ consequences.
But it does feel like a tabletop dice game (which is partly why I like it honestly) complete with dice rolling for those skill checks (they don't even try to hide it, they show you the dice rolling) and a narrater that acts kinda like a dungeon master (narrating parts of the story and sometimes even your thoughts if you are playing an origin character). They do all the math for you and figuring out what bonuses you have with dice rolling though. You don't have to remember which skills you have that will add to the dice roll or do the adding like you would in a real life tabletop game).
What puts you off from Dungeons & Dragons specifically?
I don't enjoy tabletop games in general. I just want to do my own thing on my own time.
I think what you are describing is determinism vs random variables.
Like, there are elements of this in all games, but Halo and Dark Souls have a well known skill aspect. There's precision controls and timing and stuff.
The far end of determinism is probably something like Street fighter that's about combos and reactions.
A more random variable game would be something more like some turn based RPGs where the damage of a given attack has some variance, and there's critical hits and stuff.
I think if I'm understanding your question correctly then Baldurs Gate 3 is probably not what you are looking for. Dice rolls being part of determining your success or failure is pretty important. You'll have stats and equipment and special abilities that can tip the odds in your favor, but there will be times in D&D where you just get a natural 1 roll and fail at something you were pretty sure your character could do. If that frustrates you it might be an issue playing this game.
Does that help at all?
D&D is the inspiration behind BG3 (along with the other Baldr's Gate games, I suppose). D&D is also the "engine" underneath the hood that it runs on (with some tweaks here and there, as far as I can tell). I think the better question to ask is...do you like RPG video games and do you like turn-based gameplay? If you do, that's what BG3 is. Plenty of other games in this genre are inspired by D&D or use similar systems behind the scenes (dice rolling, etc.). It's true that BG3 exposes you to those mechanics more than other RPGs may, but they do it in a very simplistic and easy-to-understand way.
I do occasionally play D&D. I have a friend who never has. We play together at times, and he's had no difficulty understanding how things work. Sometimes he needs to read the provided description to understand what a property means (for instance, "Athletics"). But the game always provides those explanations right there in an easy way to understand. It holds your hand quite a bit in that regard.