I'm...kind of on the fence.
I've had nine hours of play since I bought it this past weekend (daughter pressure, it's her fault, lol). I've played the first two BG games but was going to wait for this one to go on sale. I decided that treat yo'self was the way to go this week.
I started initially with a Human Fighter. The world looks good, the interactions are good, the voice acting is fantastic, and the writing seems to hold up pretty well. The encounters are not scalable, though, meaning if you take a wrong turn you're going to be sorry when you land in a cloud of Goblins or a bunch of giant spiders. I tried on the middle difficulty level and combat can be a pain and unforgiving. So, one needs to save OFTEN, especially as the bloody game loves to put you through checks (Perception, Intimidation, etc.) and when you roll the ol' d20, that damned d20 loves to come up 1 or 2 short each and every time. Saving often helps mitigate this to an extent. One time I had to reload a save just before an advantage roll (where you roll two d20s and take the higher roll to apply to a challenge) EIGHT TIMES. That was sixteen failed rolls in a row. Ninth load was the charm, finally. Granted the difficulty was 15 but sixteen fails with a 25% chance of success each doesn't seem too impossible. It can therefore be very frustrating at times...if you don't save every five minutes.
I didn't like my Human Fighter, so I went with what I really wanted to try, a Tiefling Monk. I'd played one in actual D&D tabletop a few years ago at a game store and loved it. I got a couple of hours in but didn't really enjoy the Monk side of things; his punches are decent but I really just wanted to wield some two-handed monstrosity to flatten things.
I restarted again, creating a Half Orc Paladin. I enjoyed this and he was very awesome at combat, flattening anything that got in his way. I saved the game earlier today. Steam told me it needed to update a small patch (42 MB), which was the second one today, and that hosed my save for my HO Paladin. So I had to restart. Again.
Now I'm on a Human Paladin. I think I'm good here, but we will see. I'm getting tired of the early game already, but that's not surprising since I've done it a few times now.
Overall, aesthetically, it's fantastic. The story is good and the interactions and conversations, interesting. But functionally, I'm not thrilled. It can really be frustrating to flub a roll that hinges on an important plot point and then have to reload and try again, and fail again, and reload and...and...ad nauseum. Because the story seems strong, though, I'll be sticking to it. Hopefully my save games won't get hosed again.
