Let me start by saying "Buldur's Gate 3 is a great game".
However i have some grief with it. My main problem is its combat system. It feels clunky, stiff and too random. And it is like that, because it is adopted from Dungeons and Dragons (table top pen and paper game) with all it's limitations. I feel like the gaming medium allows for far better systems (developers already made them in previous games).
So let me go through, why dnd combat system makes this game frustrating. When you try to attack an enemy you roll your chance to hit against their defence (or they roll their defence against your static attack value if you cast a spell). These rolls modified by different stats of your character and the enemy, but because enemies get stronger as the game progresses, this hit chance is around the same number, let's say 50%. On top of that, the damage you deal is determined by a dice roll (like 1-6, 1-8, 1-10) before modifiers. So it creates a situation, when you try to attack, your damage is determined by a random number among [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
(all 0's are misses)
So majority of a time you attack does nothing, or very little.
And it would've been fine, if you weren't limited to mostly 1 action per your turn. This means that there is a pretty high probability that your character will make little to nothing impact for multiple times in a row.

If you are playing a caster character the combat is even worse. All your strong spells are limited by number of times you can cast them before you rest and replenish them. (Strong spells still can be dodged by enemies, or do minimum damage). This is just like in dnd, but unlike in dnd, in BD3 you have combat encounters every 10 minutes. This means that, as a caster, most of the time, you do just normal attacks because you run out of spell slots (or trying to conserve them). Resting after every combat encounter or two seems pretty impractical, because resting advances time in a game and can fail some quests for you.

I know that the idea behind this game was to make a dnd game, and dnd fans would love it. But in my expirience, it's not combat that makes dnd fun, but freeform improvise roleplay players and dm do. And dnd's roleplay isn't possible to adapt to videogame (atleast for now).
So in the end, video games that try to stay true to dnd feel off to me.
When you try to adapt dnd, you have this amazing roleplay part that you can't adapt to vidiogame and a below average combat system...

And for Bd3 roleplay, it's just a branching dialogue tree with skill checks. It's great on it's own, but dnd has so much more. Like half of skills in dnd have aplication in roleplay encounters. And in Bd3 you have these skills, but you don't have a use for them.
Like in dnd you have magehand, illusions and others. You have countless ways to use them in dnd, but while playing Bd3, i haven't found a single use for them so far. Didn't have an option in dialogue to use them so far. Maybe you can use "charm friend" in dialogue, but haven't tried it.

I guess, my whole review can be summarised with sentence "I wish, i was playing divinity 3 instead of Buldur's gate 3".
Because this game feels like a downgrade from an amazing divinity 2.

Let me start by saying "Buldur's Gate 3 is a great game". However i have some grief with it. My main problem is its combat system. It feels clunky, stiff and too random. And it is like that, because it is adopted from Dungeons and Dragons (table top pen and paper game) with all it's limitations. I feel like the gaming medium allows for far better systems (developers already made them in previous games). So let me go through, why dnd combat system makes this game frustrating. When you try to attack an enemy you roll your chance to hit against their defence (or they roll their defence against your static attack value if you cast a spell). These rolls modified by different stats of your character and the enemy, but because enemies get stronger as the game progresses, this hit chance is around the same number, let's say 50%. On top of that, the damage you deal is determined by a dice roll (like 1-6, 1-8, 1-10) before modifiers. So it creates a situation, when you try to attack, your damage is determined by a random number among [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11] (all 0's are misses) So majority of a time you attack does nothing, or very little. And it would've been fine, if you weren't limited to mostly 1 action per your turn. This means that there is a pretty high probability that your character will make little to nothing impact for multiple times in a row. If you are playing a caster character the combat is even worse. All your strong spells are limited by number of times you can cast them before you rest and replenish them. (Strong spells still can be dodged by enemies, or do minimum damage). This is just like in dnd, but unlike in dnd, in BD3 you have combat encounters every 10 minutes. This means that, as a caster, most of the time, you do just normal attacks because you run out of spell slots (or trying to conserve them). Resting after every combat encounter or two seems pretty impractical, because resting advances time in a game and can fail some quests for you. I know that the idea behind this game was to make a dnd game, and dnd fans would love it. But in my expirience, it's not combat that makes dnd fun, but freeform improvise roleplay players and dm do. And dnd's roleplay isn't possible to adapt to videogame (atleast for now). So in the end, video games that try to stay true to dnd feel off to me. When you try to adapt dnd, you have this amazing roleplay part that you can't adapt to vidiogame and a below average combat system... And for Bd3 roleplay, it's just a branching dialogue tree with skill checks. It's great on it's own, but dnd has so much more. Like half of skills in dnd have aplication in roleplay encounters. And in Bd3 you have these skills, but you don't have a use for them. Like in dnd you have magehand, illusions and others. You have countless ways to use them in dnd, but while playing Bd3, i haven't found a single use for them so far. Didn't have an option in dialogue to use them so far. Maybe you can use "charm friend" in dialogue, but haven't tried it. I guess, my whole review can be summarised with sentence "I wish, i was playing divinity 3 instead of Buldur's gate 3". Because this game feels like a downgrade from an amazing divinity 2.