Review: Baldur's Gate 3: A Legend for the Ages

After six years of development and three years of early access, Baldur's Gate 3 is now available in full. is at last here. And the wait was definitely worth it. Many people loved playing Baldur's Gate 3 during early access, but I chose to hold off and wait for the full release. Since this is my first time playing Baldur's Gate 3, I'm delighted to report that the end result is really entertaining and highly polished. I've only been able to play for about 10 hours, which doesn't put me much further than the individuals who finished Act 1 in early access.

A little backstory beforehand. Baldur's Gate 3 is a fantastic substitute for D&D 5e as it is essentially D&D 5e with a prewritten tale for you to follow. Many people already like D&D, but it's limited by its physical requirements and requires a lot of setup effort. In Baldur's Gate 3, you may play with friends from anywhere in the globe and enjoy the simplicity of loading up a video game, but you lose the unrestricted flexibility in plot and combat encounters seen in D&D. And I have to admit that this game may really take the place of your D&D game evenings after beginning two campaigns: one with my high school pals and the other with my brother and father.

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After about 50 hours of play through a variety of campaigns, I can honestly say that Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible game with a very impressive amount of player freedom. This includes the ability to customize your character and classes, make decisions that change the world, and engage in utterly absurd combat encounters as well as equally absurd ways to avoid starting a fight.

The Customization: Make it Pink! Make it Blue!

The most stunning visuals in Baldur's Gate 3 are shown during the character creation phase in the game's opening minutes. It's amazing how much personalization and detail there is. I like Baldur's Gate 3's sophisticated character design, even if I'm not one for really intricate character customizations that let you choose things like cheek depth and jaw tension. The variety of races is amazing; each one has a striking appearance and is a lot of fun to personalize. I promise you, I've spent hours simply personalizing your character. I also think it's great that trans and non-binary people have alternatives; diversity and representation are greater when they're more prevalent. It's awesome that you can even alter your character's genitalia; it's also awesome that you can disable all nudity.Without several classes, subclasses, and multiclassing, Baldur's Gate 3 would not be a D&D game. There are 12 classes and 46 subclasses available in Baldur's Gate 3 at launch. Once your class has been selected, you may either choose your subclass right away or at level two or three when more possibilities become available. You may start multiclassing into any of the 11 other classes at level two as well. Feats, on the other hand, provide even more granular class customization. In Baldur's Gate 3, you may really create whatever class you like. The balance between the tremendous buildcrafting potential and the freedom to choose whatever race, background, class, and subclass you think is most attractive is crucial.

D&D Simplified... But the gameplay isn't easy.

Yes, solving problems and coming to conclusions is fun, but as we all know, the true action is in the fight. I like Baldur's Gate 3's turn-based combat, which is quite similar to Divinity: Original Sin 2. For those who are accustomed with role-playing games, the abilities, spells, and combat responsibilities that each of your characters brings seem incredibly solid. Another major plus is that I find the hotbar user interface to be quite intuitive and simple to use. The drawback is that I've encountered a few strange mechanisms that somewhat detract from the fun of fighting. For example, you may wish to use a melee attack on someone, but your character moved a few more feet, so you're now just slightly out of reach. For example, when you shoot a spell and have to squirm to get your line of sight to align with the enemy's toe. And while Baldur's Gate 3 has many difficulty levels, fighting is still tough. Think about fleeing when things become too difficult or reloading a save (make short saves regularly!) if a poor roll forces you to face ten opponents who are a level higher than you. is the imageBaldur's Gate 3 has skill checks, much like D&D. These skill tests in discussions are manual dice rolls with possible pluses and minuses according to your spells and proficiencies. In every other area of the game, you just wander about and your skills, such as perception when searching for traps, stealth when slyly avoiding opponents, and survival while searching for riches, are automatically assessed. These skill tests offer that tactile D&D sensation of choice and chance, which makes successes and failures have more weight, which is why I love them so much—especially the manual ones.I would prefer, however, if there was a way to enable all dice rolls for skill checks rather than just the ones that are shown during talks. Though I believe that the automated dice rolls behind the scenes might hinder the player's knowledge of the fundamental combat system, which is both a good and a bad, I guess, I do know that the % by an adversary is all you need to know to swiftly assess the AC check and saving throw probability. The choice would be excellent, in my opinion.Similar: Is Controller Support Available for Baldur's Gate 3?The only issue I have with the gameplay, apart from how excellent the skill checks and battle are, is that there isn't a beginner-friendly tutorial. The game's hour-long introduction introduces you to combat, decision-making, world exploration, and puzzle solving. However, since I played and adored Divinity: Original Sin 2, I was already familiar with Larian Studios' game mechanics, so I doubt I would have found it difficult to pick up the basics during this brief "tutorial," if you can call it that. It's been enjoyable teaching others how to play and appreciate Baldur's Gate 3, but it's unfortunate that there isn't a viable method to learn on your own. To aid those who are unfamiliar with D&D and Larian Studios' games, I wish there was a more thorough walkthrough on how to play Baldur's Gate 3.Of course, romance is also something we cannot overlook. It's no secret that Baldur's Gate 3 offers plenty of fantasy desire fulfillment, like the ability to have sex with a Druid who has shape-shifted into a bear. But what truly caught me off guard was the possibility of developing meaningful love relationships. To be completely honest, my initial motivation for dating Shadowheart was to get the juicy sex scene (for science). However, as our relationship progressed and we went on a nighttime date, I found that I was gradually getting to know her and developing our relationship in a more subtle way. I even ended the night with a kiss. There were many chances for me to jump straight in and have a one-night fling, but I think it's amazing that there might be more to a relationship than that. I was quite aback to discover that Baldur's Gate 3's romance is much more sophisticated than Mass Effect, which has sex as its ultimate objective.

Co-ops: Fun with Friends

Playing Baldur's Gate 3 with pals is highly recommended. Baldur's Gate 3 is far better when you concentrate on playing only one character, much as in tabletop D&D where you can only play one character. When you play alone, you have control over all four party members, which makes roleplaying, choosing the best characters for certain scenarios, and developing the greatest builds difficult.I play Baldur's Gate 3 twice a week: with my brother and father and with my three closest friends from high school. The game's cooperative mode is so fantastic that I've given up on playing it alone so that my group of friends and family may enjoy the whole campaign without being spoilt. Baldur's Gate 3 is fantastic when played alone, but cooperative play is much better.To demonstrate why cooperative play is superior, I insisted on speaking with the individuals ahead of me as a Bard (multiclassing as a Sorcerer) with high charisma and proficiency in all conversational skills after beating the goblins and reaching the tiefling camp at the start of the game. When we got to camp, my Warlock buddy Eldritch Blasted a door because he wanted to pursue a rat, and my Druid companion changed into a spider and began frightening everyone in the settlement. All the while, I was fighting with my Rogue buddy over who was going to sell their extra stuff first. Thank goodness for quicksave.

Think Fun Flayin': The Narrative

As soon as you finish creating your character and choose "Venture Forth," a spectacular cinematic with dragons, mind flayers, and realm hopping appears. Perhaps never before has an action-packed, instantly engaging beginning been given to us as it does in Baldur's Gate 3. From then on, the narrative only keeps getting better. The story's scope expands even further when your Guardian encounters you one night and alludes to a cosmic battle in progress. The primary objective of the game is to deal with the tadpole that was implanted in your brain and was meant to convert you into a mind flayer, but it hasn't. Everything about it is excellent high fantasy, but not in the pompous or fluffy sense.Similar: Is Xbox Getting Baldur's Gate 3?The sidequests and the Origin characters' histories and relationships with one another provide me with just as much, if not more, incentive to keep playing as the main plot, which is an intriguing grand narrative that I want to explore more. For instance, even if I really admire Wyll and Karlach, their mutual assassination is their ultimate life objective. My particular decisions helped Wyll and Karlach get to understand one other and develop a tentative bond. But every decision has an effect; Wyll's magical patron materialized and transformed him into a demon for breaking his agreement. In my campaign, Wyll will always be a demon since it's such an intriguing storyline for him. The connection between Wyll and Karlach has nothing to do with the Tadpool plot, but it's little tales like this that provide the feeling that I'm in command of living out the next major plot point.Baldur's Gate 3 has three Acts, of which I am now in Act 2. In order to provide a comprehensive assessment, I perused Reddit users' opinions about Act 3 to gauge the quality of the experience. During my study, I came across reports that Act 3 has the most issues, the worst performance and optimizations, and some that make advancing almost impossible. However, as Larian Studios is renowned for updating its games and paying attention to user feedback, those issues should be resolved eventually. People claim that Act 3 of Baldur's Gate 3 has some of their best parts, performance issues and all. They also claim that although the conclusion is a little sudden, all of the characters get happy endings that are consistent with your campaign decisions.

Make Wise Decisions: The Options

One of the main features of D&D is its endless option and open-ended gameplay. Even while Baldur's Gate 3 isn't that, and it can't possibly be without the assistance of a really strong AI-run system that doesn't exist (yet), there are a ton of thrilling decisions to be made that have the potential to significantly alter both the course of individual encounters and the plot as a whole. For a ridiculous scenario, you might convince a goblin army to let you pass or summon your previous troll pals to take on the whole army. There are even more grave scenarios, such as whether or not you should support the goblins in order to wipe out a whole tiefling refugee camp. Alternately, you may locate the chief Druid to carry out a spell that will safeguard the tiefling camp until everyone is able to depart for Baldur's Gate. There are always many paths ahead, all of which are guided by you, regardless of how big or tiny the stakes are.

Returning to my Wyll and Karlach example, I had many chances to choose Karlach's side and murder Wyll for being the issue, or I could have sided with Wyll and killed Karlach. By choose to murder Karlach or Wyll, I could have fundamentally altered the tales of my whole party, including myself, but I went with the middle route, and Wyll turned into a demon as a result. To see how far we can push it, I want to play several campaigns with different buddy groupings since every choice I've made thus far has seemed so unique and personal to my campaign.

My Last Remarks

The amazing game Baldur's Gate 3 has expressive combat and player-driven decisions. Baldur's Gate 3 might very well be the Game of the Year for fans of role-playing games, especially those from Larian Studios and D&D. In addition, I believe that players who are not acquainted with D&D or Larian Studios may find it difficult to get into Baldur's Gate and end up giving it a rating of four out of five stars. Weekly game sessions are the ideal way to enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 if you have three close pals. I love playing more Baldur's Gate 3 with my parties every Tuesday and Thursday night since it's so much fun.A few issues, like as a lackluster Act 3 performance and an absent tutorial, prevent Baldur's Gate 3 from being flawless. However, as no game is flawless, Baldur's Gate 3 offers a unique, creative, and very entertaining experience.I'm completely obsessed with Baldur's Gate 3; the more I play, the more engrossed I am. I always wish I was playing Baldur's Gate 3 right now. Let me conclude by suggesting that you play Baldur's Gate 3! It's a seminal role-playing game that skillfully combines everything great about D&D into an equally practical and entertaining video game that's best suited for four enthusiastic explorers.