this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2025
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your comparison to FF7 isn't really accurate as they're two different types of RPGs
and CRPGs are known for being far more fleshed out than any jrpg, so I'm curious to hear your reasons for saying so. considering FF7 doesn't even allow you to make your own character to roleplay.
BG3, while very fun, is a pretty shallow game. Obviously that's not a popular opinion, but it's unfortunately true. There are far more fleshed out CRPGs out there.
i think you possibly are confusing BG3 for another game. nobody would make a statement like that unless they either hadn't played it or were trying to troll.
I generally agree with his statement, bg3 is very simple in terms of character building and has shallow exploration/questing (particularly after act 1). But then again, that's the case for most AAA games out there - they are made in a way that anyone can play them to the end.
You all keep throwing these big accusations around without actually giving any alternatives for those of us that actually want to play these deeper more complex games that we've somehow never heard of. Why is that? Give us some games to play, please!
The op did give an alternative, I can't speak much for it however.
Baldur's gate 3 barely has any character building after picking a class at the start. It really doesn't feel you're building a character so much as following a template. And worse, the classes are all very vanilla. Pathfinder wotr for example has much better character building, the mythic classes add a ton of depth and interesting interlacing.
The big problem about exploration in bg3 is that there's just not much to do. Most dungeons are like a handful of rooms and that's that. You go in, you talk to a few people, you do 1 combat and rarely 2 and go out. There's no sprawling or sense of discovery. I'll recommend Underrail for exploration.
I see. We just have different opinions on what RPGs should be and that's okay. I prefer a deep lake to a shallow ocean, so to say. I'll take bg3, disco Elysium or mass effect over Skyrim any day of the week.
I've still got 100+ hours in games like that as well.. they're just not as fun or memorable to me and I often end up bored before the end. Had to force myself to ignore a bunch of the map in order to finish Witcher 3 and kingdom come, for example.
Gothic 2 is like the sweet spot, imo. Large enough that you don't feel confined, but not that large that you get bored doing the same stuff over and over again. And while I did say that KC:D had me bored with exploration by the end, I didn't feel bad about skipping parts of it like I did in other games because there the size of the map is just for realism and it's not actually filled with meaningless stuff.
As for character building, I just play path of exile for that. I play RPGs for the stories. If it can have both, great, but I'm not gonna complain about build diversity in a game that I'm not gonna play more than once or twice anyway.
I too. That doesn't mean bg3 is perfect by any stretch, it's the epitome of a theme park crpg, and quite frankly your shallow ocean analogy too. One encounter with harpies, one encounter with owlbears, one encounter with fungi, one random dragon tossed in... Everything starts and ends in a flash.
Never said it was perfect. I'm just saying that op claiming it's shallow is wrong. At least not more shallow than any other rpg out there. And at least by my definition. And I think other people's too, because as of right now, they're at -16.
Just because it doesn't have a huge map with a 1000 pointless quests and bandit camps that add nothing to the game doesn't mean it's shallow. The biggest decision a game like fallout ever gave us was the decision to nuke a town. Beyond that, it was just a kill this guy or convince him to run away. Not sure how that's deep but whatever.
You really shouldn't base your opinion on how other people perceive it, we're in a bg3 thread, most people here see it positively - so do i for that matter, but any criticism here is gonna be met adversarially. It's always weird interacting with a fanbase when 80% of ppl that started bg3 never finished it, most ppl here never really got the full experience.
Act 3 in bg3 is exactly that though. The game has huge pacing issues. The whole tadpole stuff goes completely limp halfway through act 1. Companions interactions die off after act 1. Act 2 is full of rewrites and undercooked content. The emperor was obviously added very late in game development and the story twist as a result is cheap as hell. There's no bad guy path - most of the evil interactions are killing off people and effectively locking yourself out of content. I could go on...
I'm talking about the definition of the words "deep" and "shallow", here. Nobody said bg3 was the best or the worst game. Just that it's shallow. And most people agree that it's not.
And yes, there's issues, but none of the ones you've brought up make it a shallow game. And honestly, outside of act 3, and more specifically the ending, I haven't noticed any of the stuff you're talking about. And what game gives you a more "evil" path than the one where you help the goblins kill a bunch of druids and refugees and get minthara as a companion. You can convince gale to sacrifice himself and blow up the whole party just for lulz. You can become an assassin of bhaal. You can get shadowheart to and astarion to become evil too, since those are choices as well. All the dark urge stuff, there's the kid in the druid grove that stole the idol which you can either save or let the mean druid bitch kill her. You can choose to either save or destroy the last light inn in act 2, bunch of people will die there as well. Remember scratch? You can return him to his abusive owner. You can kill karlach.
You can take over the netherbrain and use the absolute's army to conquer the world, you can wipe out Baldur gate's citizens memory and rule over them or you can make them kill each other. Or you can become a mind flayer and get everyone in BG to do the same and make them serve you
I could go on. But you've obviously made up your mind and I'm probably just wasting my time. We're not arguing opinions here, we're arguing facts. And apparently, for some people, fallout and kingdom come are deeper games even tho your second playthrough will be 90% the same and you only have like 4-5 meaningful decisions to make that only amount to whether you kill or not some guy and whether you side with some guy or another and then you get an either sad or happy or angry or neutral prologue at the end.
Is bg3 he deepest game ever? No, but it's not shallow either. In most RPGs, 1 playthrough or 2 are enough to see everything. Or better yet, 1 playthrough plus a 10 minute YouTube video or one wiki page that explains it in a few lines.
Only other game where the my second playthrough was more different than the first one was disco Elysium and even that wasn't like a whole other game or anything.
Giving you choices does not add depth, it substracts it, the developers have to write twice as much content that you won't see, and because they have to account for each choice the story is much stricter in how it can evolve. Choices and replayability are opposites to story depth.
Anyhow, my argument was more about the fact that they don't delve beyond the surface of things much, even companions barely have a single questline each. It's very much a theme park crpg, everything has to be short lived and interesting lest they bore the audience.
See, we've come full circle back to my previous argument that we're simply disagreeing on the definition of the word deep. For me, a deep game is a game where there's many choices. For you, that's a game with a lot of detail to every bit.
Most people, in my experience, agree with my definition.
What makes deus ex deep? The amount of choices you have. Your choices don't change the plot. The only thing you change is how you finish the game. You still end up in the same place.
Think of it this way: there's a slider for choices and one for story detail and length.
Which one is the deeper game, the one with no choices but with a long and detailed story? Like a really long walking simulator, for example.
Or a game with 10 levels that you can approach in 10 different ways each? Sort of like a hitman game or something?
Pretty+cinematic does not mean better. You need to play more crpgs, my friend.
oh, I'd say ive played quite a few, bud. but the advice is appreciated.
enjoy your generic protagonist with a mysterious dark past. seems like a truly unique concept in RPGs! 🙏
Then i recommend playing more games with unique concepts. DnD is like the most generic concept on the planet.