Let's put the grumps in their place right away: yes, the game is currently buggy... and that's completely normal! The developers have announced that Early Access will last at least a year, which therefore brings us to the end of 2021, or even 2022, for a real full-fledged release. This leaves a lot of time for the studio to refine the experience thanks, precisely, to current feedback from players. In short, it is as inappropriate to complain about bugs in an unfinished game as it would be to regret the lack of aesthetic qualities of a painting in progress. Especially since the current "build" remains perfectly playable. This first act naturally begins with a very rich character creation phase, which allows you to choose and customize many parameters (name, gender, origin, history, race, class, subclass, skills, characteristics, etc.). It is not yet possible to select predefined heroes, but this will indeed be the case in the final version, as evidenced by the gray tabs evoking Astarion, Lae'zel, Gayle, Shadowheart or Wyll.
We can still get to know them already during our journey, since they act as companions to recruit. The player can control up to four characters at the same time (against six in previous episodes, we will come back to this), the presence of such and such opening the way to different dialogues, romances, choices and branches. By the way, many quests can be solved in several ways. Stealth or combative approach, dialectical cunning or expeditious frankness, the options are numerous. This point is all the more pleasant as the game regularly uses dice rolls. Some are invisible and performed automatically according to your characteristics, but others, more important, are represented graphically on the screen and require you to "really" roll a dice. On the program: a thrill worthy of opening a lootbox, but without having to spend anything! Most impressively, failure can sometimes be just as gratifying as success, since it then opens the way to an unexpected resolution of the current objective.
DIVINE DUNGEONS
As for the clashes, Larian Studios takes advantage of the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, as well as the work carried out for eighteen years on the Divinity series, to offer us chiseled mechanics. The fights abandon the real-time system with active pause of previous Baldur's Gate, which is sure to make some nostalgic people complain. Especially since this is perhaps the reason for the limitation to four heroes mentioned above! But don't panic, yours truly may be an old-timer, he quickly got used to the new combat mechanics. It must be said that the turn-based clashes offered here work very well, especially since they have already proven themselves in Divinity. Thus, they give pride of place to verticality (with big bonuses granted to archers placed in height) as well as to environmental effects. Plunging his sword into the flames allows for example to add fire damage to our attacks, while we will not hesitate to trigger a rain spell to appease heroes who inadvertently find themselves on fire.
As for interactions with NPCs, there is also plenty to enjoy. For starters, some skills allow us to actually talk to animals or corpses, which is necessarily extremely pleasant. Especially since, in general, the writing is very neat. The aesthetic aspect is not left out since the dialogue sequences benefit from a staging that was technically not possible at the time of the first two Baldur's Gate. Now, we are entitled to close-ups of faces and detailed facial animations. There remains the question of the scenario, which we will only briefly mention here since the game is still far from over. With only one act accessible for the moment, out of three or four, all surprises are still possible. While waiting to learn more, we can already tell you that the story that serves as a starting point for the adventure holds up perfectly. As a reminder, it puts you in the shoes of a victim of mind flayers, while these slimy and tentacular creatures have introduced one of their larvae into your brain. The same goes for your companions who, after escaping from the flayers' ship, begin their journey not far... from Baldur's Gate!
