The "Romance" feature was poorly done, imo.

[srfrogg23]

I don't think having the ability to "romance" any of these characters added anything of value to this game. Just as a comparison, I thought they did well with the Mass Effect trilogy, but none of the romance in Baldurs Gate 3 seemed like a normal or natural relationship progression, except maybe Shadowheart's. I think that's only because she required some kind of in-game event before the "hey, wanna ♥♥♥♥?" option came up in the dialogue.

It made me less interested in talking to my party members. Like, why did Larian want me to have sex with Gale so bad? That one in particular just kept coming up. Which Larian team member's ♥♥♥♥ fantasy involved bears, vampires, hentai monsters, and stubbly wizards?

The female characters were a little more reserved, sure, but the male characters were downright cringe to talk to. It got to a point where I literally stopped talking to my party members because they inevitably cornered me with "the talk" if I made the mistake of asking them about their history while progressing their questlines. It was also immediately clear that Larian expected us to want to have sex with every male character based on how they formulated the dialogue responses because it all boiled down to:

"1. Let's have a relationship and play hide-the-pickle."
"2. Sure, I'll swipe right. Let's just go suck each other off but keep I want to keep it casual."
"3. Ew! You're disgusting! I hate you!"

I don't know why Larian thinks normal people want to act like porn actors, but can say 100% accuracy that I do not proposition every one of my coworkers for sex on our 2nd or 3rd conversation; and they certainly don't do that to me, either. Why was Halsin professing his undying love for me on the 3rd time I talked to him? I don't know. Even if I was gay, that would still be weird and cringe. Nobody does that because people can generally read the room, so to speak.

This includes 99% of the gay coworkers I've worked with. They were able to understand that heterosexual coworkers wouldn't suddenly turn gay for them, so they kept the conversations friendly and professional. So, there wasn't any of this nonsense going on in the workplace or outside of it.

All in all, I really just think that the "romance" stuff in this game was poorly done and just detracted from my experience with the game. I think they could have spent their time and energy on more important things instead, like optimizing the performance in Acts 2 and 3.

[Metallicus]

Larian makes great games, but has no idea how to implement ‘romance’. Romances are buggy garbage the way Larian has implemented them and actually detract from the game. There needs to be a way to turn off t]romances and all the creepy comments.

[Beytran70]

I can't think of an RPG game that has full on romance that has done it in a way I'd consider "good" except for maybe actual dating sim type games.

[Necroth]

just kill everybody (gale you have to f*ck up while he is in the portal) and be done with that sh*t

[Ranpo]

Go play a dating sim.

[victorvnv]

I agree that the romance part did nothing to add value for the game for me.

I played many hours and the game is addictive but due to all the class options, multiclassing and the different ways to do things.

As far as romance goes I only ever cared about Shadowheart and couldn’t care less about even looking at the other options .

They may have as well just put one female romance option with shadowhearth and one male with say Astarion and it would have made no difference.

Hell they could have got rid of romance all together and just replaced with with better quest storylines for all companions and I would still have been ok with it.

Diversity for no other reason but just the sake of diversity doesn’t cut it for me but again, at least shadowhearth romance was an Ace for me

[smellibear]

This game was too horny for its own good. From the very beginning it was horny and it only got worse through years of development. I feel like Larian needs to cut loose and make a AAA XXX game and get it out of their system.

This game was clumsy as hell with the romance but it also wanted to start fast. I mean, you get through the nautiloid and then meet all the origin characters within a short distance. Usually there's more of a process or journey to pick people up here and there. BG3 starts like it was already telling the story and you have all the background info needed, plops the player in situ without a proper villain for focus and launches you headlong into the plot

Take that approach to romance, and... well. It was a bigger mess than it needed to be and gave lots of bigots fuel which overrode legitimate criticisms like OPs

[victorvnv]

Originally posted by Beytran70:

I can't think of an RPG game that has full on romance that has done it in a way I'd consider "good" except for maybe actual dating sim type games.

The Witcher Wild hunt comes to mind for me, every single romance there was memorable, all the romance girls were absolutely beautiful while still different, and every sex scene was usually in the end of a long memorable quest line and didn’t feel forced , it felt like the natural way to end the said quests

[Beytran70]

Originally posted by victorvnv:

Originally posted by Beytran70:

I can't think of an RPG game that has full on romance that has done it in a way I'd consider "good" except for maybe actual dating sim type games.

The Witcher Wild hunt comes to mind for me, every single romance there was memorable, all the romance girls were absolutely beautiful while still different, and every sex scene was usually in the end of a long memorable quest line and didn’t feel forced , it felt like the natural way to end the said quests

I don't know if that quite counts, really you only have your two romance choices, the others have about as much depth as the random characters you bang in this game. And Witcher has the advantage of the primary romance candidates being characters with interactions across one or more games plus extended universe lore. Quality is definitely better than quantity in that regard, though, I can agree on that.

[Ranix]

yeah it was bad, I would rather turn it off than get unprompted comments from lae'zel about how she wants to taste my elf ♥♥♥♥♥ every time I go to sleep

[Necroth]

Originally posted by Ranix:

yeah it was bad, I would rather turn it off than get unprompted comments from lae'zel about how she wants to taste my elf ♥♥♥♥♥ every time I go to sleep

just kill her, problem solved

[victorvnv]

Originally posted by Beytran70:

Originally posted by victorvnv:

The Witcher Wild hunt comes to mind for me, every single romance there was memorable, all the romance girls were absolutely beautiful while still different, and every sex scene was usually in the end of a long memorable quest line and didn’t feel forced , it felt like the natural way to end the said quests

I don't know if that quite counts, really you only have your two romance choices, the others have about as much depth as the random characters you bang in this game. And Witcher has the advantage of the primary romance candidates being characters with interactions across one or more games plus extended universe lore. Quality is definitely better than quantity in that regard, though, I can agree on that.

I will never forget the Keira questline where she used me to get information , hooked up with me and then sneaked after to go steal a scroll from the cursed tower. And how I had the option to kill her for that or talk her out.

Or the card tournament where I sided with that hot chick to make a haist that went sideways but eventually we made it so before she left we hooked up.

Or the final DLC where I hooked up with the chick who ended up being responsible for everything and was in a way a main villian etc.

Sure you had 2 main options but both of them were smoking hot, yet very different , and in between you had some amazing choises who weren’t forced and were all different.

Now imagine if for the sake of “diversity “ they removed the Triss option and instead inserted Dandelion as a romance/ hookup option.

Or in the DLC where you had O Dimm , instead of hooking up with Shany, in the end you and O Dimm offering you “another way” to end the issue with giving him the soul of that guy the other way being for him to bang Geralt.

Or replace Keira as a romance option with Radovid etc.

How much more different would the perception of the game and romance would have been…