What are we thinking about this one KIA2?
After sometime with it. Regardless of if/if not you believe it's woke trash I will absolutely hand them credit for not having MTX and having a (mostly) complete game at launch.
Now on to the other shit...
Wokeness - Honestly? Sure there's a bit of it sprinkled on (Pronouns) but I can confidently say at this point that it never felt like it was forced down my throat or that woke topics were an inherently "positive" thing to witness. Even the flamboyant gay characters like Astarion seem to be there for comedic release and "playersexual" has been a thing since Dragon Age: Origins.
It appears to me that the dev's cared a little less about pushing a message and more of: "I'm going to just throw my hands up, do what you want!" All of the interactions in the game seem less set to follow "ThE MeSsAgE" and more to allow the player to "Have at it!". I mean hell, if I see some faggots or some niggers I can straight up delete em cause Paladin go brrrrrr.
All in all, I've been enjoying it. More than Armored Core and Starfield thus far.
(Armored Core VI fucking blows donkey dick also. Not a bad game, but sure as fuck isn't AC.)
I felt a bunch of it felt forced, especially around the voice acting part of it. They wanted to go down the full dialogue route (Excluding the main character) so they needed a large amount of recorded dialogue, thus alot of va's. But I couldn't help but notice that pretty much all (80% at least I'd say) of the characters which you end up interacting with are Female, in some cases with absolutely terrible voice acting. The big bad of act 2's second in command is a female orc, who talks to you in a voice which has no voice modulation on it at all, its the least threatening lieutenant i have ever encountered in a video game.
I have just met the cringeworthy drag queen (as someone mentioned in a different comment), it's in the circus in act 3. It's dialogue made my skin crawl as it tries to flirt with your character, i'm going to do its quest then probably drop a fireball on it.
The story is exceptionally mid, the first act starts off interesting. A huge world that I wanted to explore, which came with somewhat limited choices regarding how to handle the region and to progress; There are actions which follow you throughout the entire game which I thought was pretty neat, but this added to one of my biggest gripes. I finished Act 2 thinking I could do what I wanted after the big finale for it was over, I wanted to do a bunch of quests in the area and clear up a bit. But nope, you do the finale and you're basically forced into going straight into Act 3. To which it then guilts you for not doing certain things, to which I thought were resolved as part of the big finale.
The gameplay is fun, currently rocking wizard, cleric, fighter and barbarian. Even in the hardest difficulty I can steamroll most fights now. Can even 1-turn some boss fights if I get into a good enough position. Some things are annoyingly locked off unless you have a specific class or a character which can do special things.. For example (at least in act 1) theres a bunch of little mouse hole things where with the right spells or abilities you can get through. My wizard has only just unlocked the spell to at level 9-ish.. And I haven't seen one since.
I haven't finished act 3, but this just feels like a Divinity original sin game but wearing a Baldurs Gate skin suit, doesn't have good dialogue nor a well written story. The only memorable bad guy isn't even in it for very long and it feels like the two characters they've brought in from the older games are somewhat shoehorned in before you can do anything significant with them.
(Spoilers ahead) As above I mentioned that the story is mid, there's no huge plot twists, no huge revelations, the character development outside of the companions is pretty limited. I kind of wish the big bad of act 2 was the actual main bad guy; He had a purpose to his actions but going into act 3... The entire plot is basically Baldurs gate 1 but with additional steps.
(Major Spoilers ahead) BG1: Sarevok the big bad poisons an iron mine and taints all of the metal coming out of it whilst he floods the market with his own to make an absolute fortune and to destabilize the country; he then attempts to get the ruler of the city assassinated so he can step in and take control with the iron throne. All of this is to aid in his ultimate goal of becoming 'the one'
BG3: The plot so far: The big bad, to who I can't actually remember the name of because he looks like a 00's emo kid who didn't grow up; teams up with two other 'chosen' of the three gods of chaos. They then control a big ole brain to make an army of undead to assault the city- Then emo kid will jump in and save the day thus becoming a hero and taking over the city...
And that's it. I'm waiting on the whole bhaalspawn plot to show up at some point soon, but now i'm in act 3 I just want to finish the game. I can't be arsed clearing areas any more after the dirty it did to me in Act 2. And, I wouldn't load a save as the finale had some 5 epic yet very difficult fights in to which two were close calls.