I’m interested in the game, I guess mostly because of the hype. I enjoyed Skyrim and Diablo 1/2/4, and I suppose they’re somewhat similar to Baldurs Gate. Given that basic knowledge, is there a good change I’d like Baldurs Gate 3? Also, could I just jump into it without playing the first two?
Honestly I’m glad they didn’t go through the rtwp route. I have the suspicion that it’s just really hard and not worth it to balance both playstyles, because it’s often both too easy yet tedious to frequently pause every combat but also too mentally taxing to keep track of the 10-50 person fight in realtime including gear switching, buffs, consumables, cooldowns, etc. Just my experience but I’d rather they just stick to one or the other and design around just that.
I would have thought too, but Owlcat (with Pathfinder) and Obsidian (with Pillars of Eternity II) did it admirably. Both made their game with real time with pause first in mind. I only play turn based (let me target my fireball properly, for crying out loud), and I couldn’t find any fault to those games. It just felt natural.
That being said, I’m glad Larian went all in on turn-based, because it gave us that awesome idea of being able to activate turn-based mode whenever we want. It adds tactics to stealing and infiltrations, that’s awesome.
Some of the fights can have a lot of verticality to them, and using the terrain to your advantage is very helpful. My cleric would let it rain on an enemy group, and my sorcerer would cast a lightning spell, electrocuting the whole bunch. My rogue would sneak in before the fight and get in position to push that archer or caster to their death. Things with so much depth are easier to execute with a round based system. It’s very much a game of chess, where you plan ahead and take advantage of enemy mistakes, and the two examples I just gave are on the level of a peasant like me. You can pull off some crazy shit in this game.