Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t the first successful attempt to marry cinematic aspirations with the traditional branching narratives and simulationist world-building of CRPGs. 2009’s Dragon Age: Origins had a very similar mission statement, offering a spiritual successor to BioWare’s earlier Baldur’s Gate titles long before Larian took us back to the titular city (and its surrounding areas).
It was just very combat-heavy and very challenging, and not in a very fun way. Also I remember going through a period of finding combat just to get XP to be able to get gear to upgrade to or something like that, which prolonged the dragging. Overall it was a slog, which I carried through to see if I got some payoff. Looking back the payoff for me was “Avoid Larian games”.
Fair. I was playing a warrior so combat wasn’t as much an issue for me. Tbh when we were starting, someone told us to play DOS 2 instead of 1 since it’s a better gameplay experience and I wonder if all these rough edges have been fixed.
I think I had a warrior-type too? You get to pick two characters, I recall.