Every cell in my brain – all two of them – told me that I would not like Baldur's Gate 3. I've never played D&D, a Baldur's Gate game, or a hardcore CRPG. I'm not a creative or creatively motivated person, and I've never been one to seriously role-play in RPGs. I do like turn-based combat, but I know in my heart that I'm an action junkie. How the hell am I going to get into an RPG that is explicitly built around all of these off-putting and unfamiliar things?
There was a point around 30 hours in where I was convinced that I would never 'get' Baldur's Gate 3. It was all so overwhelming – the D&D rules, the sprawling magic, the branching paths. My perfectionism worked against me; I became frustrated with the fiddliness of the game and constantly worried I was doing everything wrong, or at least sub-optimally – a fate worse than death. I ended up reloading some saves upwards of 10 times each trying to get exactly the outcome I wanted in a few Act 1 encounters – not even save-scumming a dice roll, just trying to pass my imagined grading system.
