Baldur’s Gate 3

After sinking about 282 hours into the game, across 3 playthroughs, trying out everything I wanted to try out, I think it was time for me to express my opinion about this game in a long format. This writing will aim to be as spoiler free as possible, and it should be okay to read for anybody that may wish to consider going into the game blind after reading it.

Nevertheless, my aim is to motivate you into playing it, with the bare minimum being spoiled, so the post is structured in a way that through each section more and more will be revealed. However, these games are best going in blind, so the moment you feel like you got enough, please leave and give it a shot yourself.

This is not a review, just my opinion about something special and a prelude at that really. What I really need to say will come in the second part that will dive deep into the story and the characters.

Orientation

Before we get into the thick of it there are a few things that I wish to point out, so you may orient your interpretation off what you have read here and make a better conclusion based on that. My favorite type of games are RPGs, but it has been so long I have played a good one I almost forgot about this. The Elders Scrolls: Oblivion, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 1 and especially Dragon Age: Origins were games that I remember fondly. Skyrim didn’t grab me nearly like Oblivion did (probably because it simply didn’t change all that much), skipped Mass Effect 3, somehow wasn’t motivated to even try it, played The Witcher 2, but for the life of me can’t remember what even happened there, The Witcher 3 was awesome, but overly long, filled to the brim with garbage fetch/kill quests. A fact that not many are willing to admit as if that would take away from its other qualities. But because of that, even though I have liked the main story very much I am very hesitant to go back into it again. Dragon Age: Origins to me always felt like those eternal stories between light and dark, where power didn’t come cheap and even the heroes, The Grey Wardens were destined to either go completely insane or, as in their tradition, die in a final assault at their world’s gates of hell. Apart from that I think story and well written characters are where a good game shines. For example God of War (2018) is a masterpiece when it comes to storytelling and characters. Following that train of thought, I never really liked the Souls like games, as there is no real story or real characters. Everything is just a husk in a husk of a world. Although while mechanically they are all good, without the story I don’t feel motivated to ever touch them again after an initial first play through. On combat types I don’t really have a preference I don’t think. It can be action, turn based or something other it doesn’t matter, it just needs to be good. For example XCOM 1 and 2 had an almost perfect turned based combat system in my opinion, so much so that even the lack of story made me go back to them. On the other hand I didn’t like Pillar’s of Eternity, and found Divinity Original Sin 1 so dreadfully boring, both in combat and story that I simply couldn’t even finish any of them. For that reason I have never even checked out Pillars of Eternity 2 or Divinity Original Sin 2. They just never felt like they were for me. I am not a Dungeons and Dragons enthusiast, to be honest I simply wasn’t ever exposed to it.

With all that out of the way, let my try and summarize what I think about Baldur’s Gate 3:

Baldur’s Gate 3 is without any question an easy 10/10, a game of the year, nay the CRPG of the last decade for sure and likely in the not so foreseeable future as well. It has a masterfully crafted story with characters fleshed out enough that you can really feel for them, a combat system that is deep enough to engage but not too complex to become tedious, and perhaps most importantly of all, your choices have consequences and thus whatever you do matters. A testament what a group of people can achieve if they like their job. You can really feel the dedication and effort everybody involved has put into this game.

Not to mention that contrary to nowadays trends in the gaming industry of releasing unplayable garbage like Redfall, Battlefield 2042 or just plain soulless garbage like Diablo IV, promising everything then cancelling everything like in Overwatch 2, this game is more or less (ignoring the bugs) actually finished on launch. Huh, how is that possible? A game launches in a playable state, doesn’t cost 70 USD, doesn’t offer 3 Digital Deluxe editions or has an integrated microtransaction shop that is more functional than the game itself? How is that possible? It seems it is very much possible and here is the example.

Pretty high praises right out of the gate, even though the game is buggy as hell, and somehow it seems to be getting buggier with the new Patch 3, that I played my 3rd play through on.

Your first playthrough

This is by far the most important of your playthroughs, because it might just be your only one given the game takes about 80 hours to complete if you already know what you are doing. So if you don’t mind let me give you some guidance so that you may have the best experience and see most of the story.

Play as a character with a good alignment, don’t be evil. I don’t know how an evil session goes to be honest, only that you will lose a lot of the story because many of your companions will either die or leave you. So, good character and make it your own. Don’t choose an origin character from the start. To be able to properly know them, they should be left to their own devices. Don’t play as a paladin. Even if you know what a paladin is in D&D you don’t want to play as one from the start, because their oath system is implemented in such a way that certain actions will break their oath, at which point you become an oathbreaker and lose all your holy power and become something of a necromancer. These breaking actions might not be apparent and might take effect much later than the initial choice was made. For example, you agree to help an NPC, but not in the exact way they want you to, then 10-15 hours later this NPC will demand that you do something vile, to which you will say no, but because you agreed to help long ago now you have broken your oath. There are multiple types of oaths, but they are vague and hard to tell what will have effect and what will not, so on the first run stay away. Technically you can restore your oath with some coin, but this will have an ever-increasing cost and I don’t think you would want to mess around with that.

Then in the first Act, if you potentially want to romance her, pick up Karlach right after you have visited the Druid’s Grove. There is a shortcut by the river, you can jump over some rocks. You want to do this, otherwise you might lock yourself out of romancing her as you can’t build a high enough approval rating with her by the end of Act 1.

You will meet grating/messed up characters like Astarion, Lae’zel and even Shadowheart could be rather annoying. Nevertheless, keep them around. Save them if they need saving and don’t send them away/kill them when they do something messed up (because they will/want to).

Talk to your companions after any bigger event and see what they have to say, and if you are willing, switch your party members when you know you are going to do something that they are very interested in. You will know who goes where because they will be harping about it all the time. You want to do this, because some of them might leave you if you do their missions without them and these are the moments where the story really starts to bloom. In Act 1, there will be a place where you wouldn’t want to go, because it seems like suicide given what you have learned about the world by then. When that happens just try to suspend your disbelief and check it out anyway, things will be all right. If you miss this you may completely miss a huge part of the backstory which admittedly doesn’t much affect gameplay, but it will affect the ending in a bad way, you just won’t know about it.

When you long rest and a special cutscene plays, make sure you long rest again until all such events have all played out. Many character interactions evolve through these and many of them get enabled at once, but only one can occur each night, and if you play efficiently you may miss some, just because you didn’t long rest enough times. You can do these without consuming food, and don’t worry about days passing by, all events will wait for you, with one exception with a certain character called Nere. For some reason that has a time limit of a few days, but apart from that no problem. You will know about this time pressure, because your companions will mention it, you will have visions, so don’t worry can’t miss the signs.

Lastly, pay attention to your companions. They will tell you what they like and don’t like. This may be crucially important for one character in Act 2. If you know them well enough you don’t have to pass any skill checks for the good outcome (which is a marvel of story telling in such games I believe in itself). You don’t have to agree with them all the time (it is impossible) and while the approval system somewhat matters (in a few big choices), it isn’t very important. Some will dislike you and disagree with you if you are good, some good characters will disagree with you if you want to be smart about a combat scenario and not just play the dumb hero. It is all fine, these will never break anything, they just help you understand their personalities better. Think of the approvals/disapproval as indications about their personality. Most of the time approvals have much more value than disapprovals, so you should just focus on what you think is best and unless most of your choices are against a characters’ belief system, by the end of the game you will max out all of your companions approvals.

Apart from all this just play the character you want to play. Whether you have enough Persuasion, Insight etc. in a given situation don’t worry about it. Make your first character your own, don’t worry about min-maxing anything, play on Balanced, pick the base loadout the game gives you for one class and go for it. You can respect later, change class, face, don’t worry about it. All the more important checks are reasonable to pass anyway, and those that aren’t, need specialized characters. One thing you may want to consider is The Dark Urge. Contrary to all other origin characters this is fully customizable and has perhaps the best story in the game by none. It can only be experienced as the player character, there is no equivalent companion in the game. I do recommend playing as The Dark Urge, but be aware in this run you will have a very dark past and some bad choices will be made without your intervention. If you are okay with some bad things happening outside your control and basically being a monster, with The Dark Urge you can find a redemption arc that is quite memorable. Personally, I think it can be a good metaphor for you fighting your own demons as well. Or you can have the most evil playthrough of the game as well.

Oh, and don’t forget to quicksave, before conversations and after battles. Make some bigger save points as well from time to time. Don’t save scum if you can avoid it, but if you have spent ~20 hours playing, and you really don’t want something bad to happen just because your character isn’t suited for that, it will be okay. We have real lives, don’t have the time to replay things over and over to see exactly what we would like to see, so it is okay. But the more unexpected consequences you can live with, the better your game will be. If you can, try to avoid checking what will happen if you do this or that. Don’t rob yourself from consequent playthrough opportunities because you have peeked into everything by the end of your first one.

With all this said, you are armed to have one of the most memorable gaming experiences of your life and I recommend you leave now and claim it.

Thoughts

Graphics, stability, the camera and bugs

The game looks great, but it isn’t a photorealistic, ray-traced bonanza of buzzword supported mess that no machine on the market can run. Rather it is simpler, more stylized with a sense of spirit. It has a generic, semi realistic fantasy look to it, that you will know and love if you like the genre and at many places it reminded me of the visuals from the Lord of The Rings movies. From homely groves, boggy swamps, to the bustling city or the dark depths of underground kingdoms you will see most of it. And I am pretty sure that one stairwell in Act 2 was inspired by one found in Moria.

And if Elminster doesn’t look strikingly similar to Gandalf, then I don’t know who does.

The game runs rather well given the scope and reactivity of many scenes, but as the acts progress and the scope of the environments grows it may start to slow down. Many say that in Act 3, in Baldur’s Gate they will have problems. This may or may not have been fixed by the time you get there, as the time of this writing, there have been 3 major patches, each of which have noticeably improved performance. Nonetheless, the game runs well, because even if you have a half potato machine it will refuse to die. For example on my first run I had an Intel 7600K, an NVIDIA 1060 6GB and 16 GB of RAM. In Act 1 it could just about manage ~35 FPS on Ultra settings, then in Act 2 Medium tops to keep at around 30 FPS and by Act 3 Low was the only choice, so I could hit 25 FPS. All this in 1080p resolution. By this point, most higher definition textures simply would not even bother loading in as there was simply not enough VRAM for it. But to the games credit it refused to crash, it refused to turn into a PowerPoint presentation, it just started to look like a game with textures from the PS2 era and I really had to consider when to save or fast travel because all of these would take around 30 seconds. When I saved the characters would move T posing and no animations would play for a while. Everything would just slide around. On Loading I could literally watch how parts of the environment were loaded in. First some small objects, then some T posing NPCs, then some buildings etc. It was quite comedic to watch the final epic scenes of the game with splotchy, barely textured dragons and characters. Despite all this, the game only crashed once in 270 hours and that is a testament that some developers did some arcane wizardry in the background for sure.

The camera gives you a top-down view of what is happening, and it will angle itself more horizontally the more you zoom in. This is very good if you go into indoor environments, like small houses and cellars or just to observe the view and the road ahead. It changes the feeling of the game, pulling you in even further.

You may zoom out to a completely top-down view, which they call the tactical view. This may help you in some combat situations, but apart from that, and even in those special circumstances it was annoying to use. What you can’t do at all is look up, or easily change elevation. Because the camera tries to be as helpful as it can be, the game will hide all elevation and objects so that the currently selected character may be moved conveniently. About 90& of time this is exactly what you want, but in those 10% when you would like to target an enemy on a higher elevation or simply move there it becomes cumbersome. You may target the enemy with the attack order view on the top, but I couldn’t yet find a way of changing elevation easily. This can become rather annoying if you fight in a house with multiple floors or trying to grab a secret which you can’t reach because of traps, but you could easily teleport to from a lower elevation (if you manage to wrangle the camera in a way that it will show you a surface you can click on).

Apart from this they really used the camera and angles to their advantage. Many scenes will have this downward slope to them, where the player will be able to see that vast vistas they are about to explore.

Combat & Inventory management

The combat is simply really good, not perfect mind you, but very good. Wasn’t familiar with D&D 5E system or D&D system in general, but 5E just seems to be simple enough that you can learn about it without getting overwhelmed, while being complex enough to engage. You can make truly powerful builds if you know what you are doing, that can easily obliterate any opponent even on Tactical difficulty. However, the real value of this system lies in its simplicity. If you are new to these types of games Balanced can be challenging (as it was to me), but not overwhelming. You will never be overloaded with so many spells that you don’t even want to read their descriptions. Some classes like Wizzards and Clerics will get a ton of spells, but only incrementally. So as a player you can comfortably learn what works and what doesn’t in what situations without too much frustration.

The mechanics are turn-based. The game doesn’t even support real-time with pause like some other similar CRPGs. That is okay, because you don’t really have trash enemies that you just want your characters to automatically mow down in real-time and the rounds go by pretty fast. The game may occasionally hang in certain situation, seemingly for no good reason, but in general the opponents take their turns almost immediately. This is further sped up by combining the turn of all assailants that would come after each other anyway into one round of actions. What you don’t get is a convenient way of changing between elevations if you were to inspect the current combat scenario. You will always be locked to the elevation the character with the current turn, which may prove difficult figuring out from which angle you may or may not strike an opponent from.

The combat encounters all feel handcrafted and either tie in to the story of some quest or the area. If you look out for it, you may notice it. For example in Act 1, you are walking down on a road and see a decimated caravan. Mangled humanoid bodies litter the road left and right. You also see a lot of hyena and gnoll carcasses. What do you expect to find up the road? Hyenas and gnolls. What will you find? Hyenas and gnolls. Sounds simple, but it really elevates the immersion. The world draws you in, because the locations are in harmony with the enemies that are placed there and with the story. This is called Ludonarrative harmony if I am not mistaken. A feat that rarely materializes in any game.

The inventory management is crap sadly. Not as bad as in Divinity Original Sin 2, as I heard, but it is bad. You can sort your inventory, by types for example but other similar games like Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous would have tabs for any important type. Potions, scrolls, weapon, armor etc. You don’t have these in Baldur’s Gate 3. Furthermore, each character has their own stash, and you have to move items around so none get encumbered or that the caster carries the spells. It is annoying especially when you are changing party members. If a companion isn’t inside your current party you can’t access their inventory. Where did you put that potion or weapon you may need now? Well, you have to send somebody away from your current party, invite somebody else for inspection until you find it. Very tedious. They tried to “quick-fix” this by forcing all companions stash into your main characters when you were changing them out. Of course this would usually encumber your main character, and you could start inventory management again. Even worse than the prior state. Thankfully they reverted this nonsense quite quickly. Not a game breaker, but when you have to balance out who has how many health potions it will feel annoying. Especially when you need a potion for one character in combat, but you forgot to do this dance before. One baffling bug is when you are taking a Long Rest and click Auto select to pick which food items to use up for resting. For some reason this Auto select is so stupid that if some items were stacked (one icon representing 4 Camp supplies for example) it could only count it as 4. It couldn’t possibly separate into two stacks of 2, and only use one stack of 2, all that you need for resting (on Tactician). This is fun if you don’t notice as it could burn away your camp supplies quite fast.

Music

The music is just absolutely amazing! Can’t tell you why, because I simply lack the appropriate vocabulary or understanding, but I can feel it. Like in the Lord of The Rings trilogy, where there are a number of main themes that are so good, so catchy, so true that they stay with you long, long after you have heard them. For example this track has a few of them: The Road Goes Ever On…, Pt. 1 - Howard Shore. So what it is like in Baldur’s Gate 3? There are a number of themes, but to me, it feels that this is the most prevalent one: Down By The River - Borislav Slavov. This song haunts me. It will just pop into my head during the day and I will hear it and I would see the scenery represented by the game, remember the quests, what we were doing, where we were going. Or you want a little battle preparations, perhaps Main Theme, Part 1 - Borislav Slavov? Need some more: Main Theme, Part 2 - Borislav Slavov? I don’t even know what we are doing but let’s go!

Perhaps it is best if I just refer you to a professional:

Now I don’t exactly know what he is saying, but I do understand the feelings he is expressing. The smile on his face, the light in his eyes. That is how these songs feel to me too. Just watched his reaction again and my oh my, the songs are even better than I remembered! When Nightsong came up, and I remembered the moment when it happens in the game it made me tear up. What he is saying about the song is exactly how it is in the game as well. Absolutely amazing!

Story & Characters

I won’t be talking about the story or characters here in any significant detail, because to properly do so, I wish to heavily spoil everything. However, I can give you a sort of outline, so you may know what will await you. Once again similarly to Lord of The Rings, there is some big evil that must be stopped, but as in every good story you don’t know about anything in detail at the beginning. You just want to survive. All your companions just want to survive, and the game will really make you feel pressured to do so. Oh, oh, if we don’t solve this problem then we die. Then the story progresses, you make choices, characters die and many, many things change. Seemingly innocuous things may change how quests play out later, and you will quickly learn that everything you do matters. Their impact may not be big, but everything does have an impact. One of the random NPCs died in one random battle? Well, they might have been important, and you may not know about this until further down the line. The game will handle it for you. Larian studios put a great deal of effort in seamlessly handling every possibility. Exactly because of this you will not feel like you have failed a quest or that something got locked out from your playthrough because of your choices. Only later when you have observed the effect of you choices may you even realize you have actually made a choice. You may not even observe such effect on the first playthrough. How could you if a questline just appeared while another one may have disappeared? You simply won’t even know about it. Which is perfection! Being unaware of the effect of some mundane choices until you see the other side will give you that little umpf that will keep the subsequent playthroughs fresh. Of course there will be choices that are important and on the nose enough that you will know exactly how your decisions may impact things.

Lastly, I want to point out how many characters if not all of them represent an idea, they stand as a metaphor for something. The whole story is underlined by these archetypical ideas, one of the main ones being the “chance at redemption”. No matter what you did or why, with enough sacrifice you may rise above your failings and put things right. One message that is timeless and true and very important to be reminded about from time to time. Almost all if not all characters have this underlying message.

This can and will be your story if you let it. The game gives you every tool and more than I have seen before in any narrative driven RPG.

On the companions, the one thing I am comfortable saying without spoiling anything is that each one is very well written, and I really mean it. Most of them are better written and have more growth than most blockbuster movie characters. They really carry the game and the narrative, and they are a testament of great writing. Even the non-companion NPCs are very well written. You don’t have these extremely annoying girl-boss characters or feel that the nowadays all to prevalent LGBTQ+ or any other movements message is forced down your throat like in Amazon’s Lord Of The Rings disgrace to Tolkien’s legacy. Or almost any modern day media for that matter. You have powerful women, powerful men and everybody does what they need to do and what they can do. Regardless of their sexual orientation, skin color or race. You will not be bombarded with this message without any substance. The story and writing is so good, so rooted in reality that every character just makes sense. You understand them, can sympathize with them and really feel for them. These characters will make you laugh, angry and often cry. They feel like they could be alive and real if we lived in the universe of Dungeons and Dragons. It really doesn’t matter which one is gay, lesbian or whatever, they are just people, and they just do their thing, they want to survive and that is it. This is exactly how you write characters! Make their personality and everything comes together. They really, truly are exceptionally written!

Lastly, this is the point where I can give the biggest criticisms that I could formulate after 280 hours. The characters and the story feels almost too real. It sounds perhaps weird, but hear me out. There are things you will not do in real life, but you could do in a game just to see what happens, so that things keep being interesting. With this game I have found myself categorically incapable of choosing the evil path and very hard choosing the less correct looking options. There are some points in the game where your characters can just do heinous things. Absolutely vicious things, especially if you play The Dark Urge. And because everything seems so real, you may just not be able to do the evil thing, which is sad in a way, because I know of at least one very interesting character that is locked behind the “evil” path. There will be parts of this game that I may never see, unless Larian hears our cry and somehow sidesteps this hurdle. Or until I manage to role-play, without confusing reality with the game.

An absolutely amazing game. Hope you have the option to experience it at one point! I think I have grown as a person, just because I could play this game, that is how good it is!