While it isn't a perfect game, it is the closest I've seen to one in a long time. With wonderfully written characters whose voice acting makes them feel genuine and honest (or dishonest depending on who), and an intriguing story that keeps you asking questions, all while learning about what is really going on behind the scenes. Baldur's Gate 3 has blown away all the competition and even Larian's own past work with DOS. They have truly honed their formula and created a masterpiece, the love, care and effort that Larian put into making BG3 is clear to see, and it is all the better for it.

i can't even really play this for a few more days, and yet i am already losing sleep to swirling thoughts on how to roll my first character... perhaps a seldarine drow cleric of selune (could be interesting for a shadowheart romance, since she's sworn to shar), or an asmodean tiefling warlock in a pact with a fiend (hopefully a succubus?!), or maybe a draconic oath of ancients sorcadin (drow or tiefling are tough for me to resist, though i think a moon elf might be a good fit for this considering ooa paladin is almost more like a druid in that they get the moonbeam spell — and as a bonus they can talk to animals, unlocking a lot of additional rp). dark urge will be saved for later, possibly for the warlock — though i could try and subvert it instead, playing a tragic murder-bard or something. i'll be lucky if i even start the game itself the entire first day of its release (never mind the 122gb download)... my hype for it is almost unbearable!

So there’s been a lot of controversy on the elkmane official discord server about this game. Is it good, is it bad, is it overrated, is it a masterpiece? Everyone on there’s been putting their two cents in and now it’s time for the big dog to put all the arguments to sleep. Let us begin.


As an intellectual, I love thinking. I think very often a lot about the following topics; The weather, society, politics, geopolitics, and gaming. Sometimes I think about myself too. Recently after playing resident evil 4 remake and Zelda tears of the kingdom, both critically acclaimed games that disappointed the ever living shit out of me, I thought my inner hopeful kind soul was dead. I am now a cynic jerk who wants to be a patrician contrarian so I hate popular things subconsciously to look cool online. It made me sad. I don’t like disliking things because it makes me feel left out, and unlike my usual behaviour regarding videogame acquisition I actually spent money on tears of the kingdom and I felt that it had been wasted.


Then when I played Baldur's Gate 3 I came into it with the same resignation. Sigh, I say. I will probably dislike this too. I’m too cool for mainstream popular games. I am very glad to have been wrong. You see, I’m not cynical. I didn’t dislike totk and re4r because they were popular. I disliked them because they sucked! And Baldur's Gate 3 comes along with its above average d*#k swinging all over the place showing that OMG my expectations of big video games aren’t unrealistic! Yippie! The quests are so fun, the combat asks, nay, FORCES you to vary your stratagems and strategies, with differing enemy types and cool encounter designs. And the story was engaging as SHIT. There was like actual moral dilemmas and stuff. Not just the normal formal bethesda quest things but Shakespearean, Aquinas-esque, Agambenian, foucaultian, philosophy. And like I said I LOVE thinking so I was very engaged for like 1 hundred hours.


Any random thing could be the start of a 10 hour side quest or feed into a main quest. For example (this is made up not a spoiler) you talk to some random rat in the middle of nowhere and oh boom turns out he was the final boss spying on you and now you’re in a secret dungeon no one knew existed omg wtf!! Do u remember disco elysium? This game is like that, for sure. It flew by and I played for like 11 hour sessions sometimes. I love all the companions too. Except for wyll he was kind of boring. And shadowheart because I killed her in act 1 cause she was mean to lae’zel and I wanted to impress lae’zel so she would think I’m cool and eventually have sex with me. The player choice was very good. There was some rigidity to the combat, its obviously not as free as tabletop dnd but it is pretty damn close. I never felt like I couldn’t do something storywise tho. I could do anything I wanted with the quests.


The game is so perfectly content with letting you miss entire chunks of content. (You see how I used the words content and content in the same sentence? That was a coincidence but it’s fun) It’s so confident. It insists upon itself because it knows it’s the shit. It’s like asap rocky calling himself that pretty motherfucka. Ya he can say that shit because he’s the most gorgeous man to exist and baldur's gate 3 can let u just walk past a 5 hour dungeon because it has 7 contingency plans in place for players that didn’t do that dungeon. I said bg3 is the asap rocky of games but it’s also the Batman of games. Probably the best case for early access ever…? Up with ultrakill and hades.


now for the bad parts of the game i don't like….



The final act is less polished than the rest of the game and it has way too many encounters with large groups of enemies where it just takes forever and ever. Sometimes they just stand still for their whole turn. TBF it's a lot faster than other crpgs, but i don't wanna see anyone complain about fallout 1 combat if they're sucking off this game. I’m not trying to diss bg3 im saying theyre the same and fallout 1 haters are dumbfucks and wrong

The jump pathfinding is broken dog crap. I jump across a gap, right? And two of my companions follow, one of them stays stuck there. Ok no problem i’ll switch control to the straggler, you know what the outcome’ll be. I’m batting a thousand it got to the point that these companions don’t even like travelling with me. The second I switch control to the straggler, everyone else jumps to the straggler. It’s a frustrating carousel and a whole ordeal everytime. Sometimes I don’t notice and go into a battle with 1 guy missing. It sucks. I think that’s it.

The end. man this review kinda sucks eh? but watevs i do reviews in one take i'm not editing anything. I've fallen off so hard, i'll never make anything as insightful and entertaining as my review for breaking bad criminal elements

This game is everything I love about computer roleplaying games. Deep, meaningful choices, fun characters, good music, crunchy, tactical combat, solid multiplayer if you wish it, and a compelling narrative. While the storytelling is not as interesting, in my opinion, as its predecessor, Baldur's Gate II, or Planescape: Torment, what is? This easily stands as the premiere gold standard for video games going forward. Any bugs and blatantly unfair combat sections that this game might have, I can easily forgive. Because when this game fires on all cylinders, there is nothing else like it. God bless you, Larian Studios. May you build on this into your next game and beyond. I'll be waiting with eager and bated breath.

I don't think anyone expected Larian Studios to take this year by the horns with Baldur's Gate 3. Much less churning remarkable mainstream success and universal critical acclaim to make headlines as GOTY. By the time I'm writing this, it already surpassed Tears of the Kingdom for being the highest rated game of 2023 on Metacritic, maintaining an active player-base which peaked over 875,000 players, became the most pre-ordered game on PSN (beating Insomniac's upcoming Spider-Man 2), and spawning an Elden Ring sized discourse amongst the industry over whether the bar of quality Larian laid down here is economically viable to expect. The Elden Ring comparisons aren't strangely too off-base because just like what Elden Ring had accomplished for open-worlds, Baldur's Gate 3 achieved the same effect for role-playing games moving forward. Larian has done something truly unthinkable with crafting an immensely engaging CRPG with production values comparable to any mainstream AAA video game in the market right now… and making it a colossal commercial success worthy of all the accolades it received.

What we have on our hands here is the western equivalent to Dragon Quest XI. If ya know, ya know. But for the tragically unenlightened, essentially, a grand cohesion of classical genre design sensibilities crossed with the modern technical know-how we’ve become accustomed to nowadays. Marking itself not just a “Greatest Hits Collection RPG”, or y’know, “a game for the older fans”, or, “for people starving a true return to pure BioWare role-playing form”, but a wider encapsulation for what the role-playing genre has accomplished. How far we’ve gone since the archaic days of grid paper and pencils, yet reminding us of the potential still not fully tapped despite what our favorite generational RPGs led us to believe. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a nostalgic celebration of the genre's preexistence but a pushing triumph for role-playing tomorrow. The best response one may think could disprove my notion in a post-New Vegas world is the other role-playing critical darling released in recent years, similarly taking loving homage and inspiration to its CRPG roots -- Disco Elysium. A fair response. I deeply admire and love that game, even with the messy controversy going on behind-the-scenes, but Disco Elysium only captures the specific cerebral aspect of the role-playing experience to reinvent the appeal of the genre. Not to discredit the artistic ambition on display, but I believe that’s still a limited showcase for making a passionate case about the true quality the role-playing genre can offer. Baldur’s Gate III captures something much grander, more all-encompassing, more than the sum of its parts taken all across the RPGverse. Obviously, there are shades of the original Baldur’s Gate games, but there’s also shades of Neverwinter Nights, Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Dragon Age: Origins, Fallout, and unintentionally Deus Ex with how reactive the systems and mechanics are to break them in creatively advantageous ways that made the developers surprised. But the game’s roots travel deeper beyond those role-playing titles making up the genre for the past decades. Thanks to its usage of the Forgotten Realms setting, it reaches the essence for why these games are truly enjoyable experiences.

Dungeons & Dragons is something worth considering whenever we approach the topic for role-playing video games and what’s the unique appeal for them weighed alongside different genres. It’s the origin point for where it all stemmed from; The Dungeon Master creates an elaborate campaign with his merry band of social misfits to play part of, engaging with their own imagination and creativity to battle the imaginative odds thrown at them. That’s the breaking-it-down-to-bare-essentials of the usual D&D experience but it’s the backbone for every RPG since then. Just replace “Dungeon Master” with “[insert name of developer]”, replace “Campaign” with “Story/Main Quest”, and the player is just you, the actual gamer, with his band of party members and companions. I think these are roots we don’t really keep conscious of anymore with newer strings of RPGs, because the execution and quality can be scattershot, but Balder’s Gate 3 is the one I’ve played that feels the most authentic to that original tabletop experience being replicated through this medium. There’s this overwhelming sense of confidence in what it’s doing, how it’s doing it, and the why behind it all that radiates such big dick energy and a sense of liberating player freedom I haven’t encountered since Fallout: New Vegas. The Assault on the Moonrise Towers, breaking into the House of Hope to duking it out with the dastardly devilish Raphael, the hyper intense time sensitive prison breakout of The Iron Throne, and even the final battle are highlights where you can feel this freedom being exercised the most. The combat encounters in this game, rarely, feel just monotonous or unfair. You’re given so much flexibility in how to approach enemies through you and your party members’ unique skill-set or interacting with the environment. It plays like how you probably would ideally think and RPG would in your weird little head. There’s a group of enemies huddled together? Just throw a barrel of oil at them and set the ground before them on fire with an arrow or cast a spell. Having trouble with a really tough individual enemy or boss you have little confidence in whittling down? With enough strength, and passing a dice roll based on that, you can just push them off the ledge nearby and that’ll do it! You can even master the art of prep-time by having your main playable character be in dialogue with an enemy before combat triggers and switch to your other free party members to set up traps around them to get the complete upper-hand in battle. If you’re lucky, it’s even over before your entire turn ends. Outside of combat, you may be banned from a certain Sorcerous Sundries but with the help of a spell that disguises your appearance the NPCs treat you like they’ve never met you before, restarting their dialogue history with you. What I love the most about everything I’ve described you can do in the game is that although some may overshoot what the developers intended as possible creative solutions to certain obstacles, the game is designed so flexible that it never feels like an invalid choice but a testament to your imagination at play in/out of combat.

The overarching grand story of Baldur’s Gate 3 may not be one of the greatest stories ever told or anything like that but it’s such a damn memorable adventure. It’s supported by a cast of party members who embody different but altogether aspects of what makes this game so addicting. It follows the mold of what certain Black Isle/Obsidian games have troped where they’re all a dysfunctional group of outcasts with layers worth peeling to get to the core of what ultimately unites them together -- personal torment -- and how they follow who could be the most tormented of them all, could mend their inner conflicts, or make it worse. I need to give proper applause to the stellar voice cast behind these party members; especially to Neil Newborn as Astarion who put more than 100% of his energy into delivering this assignment, giving life to the fan favorite poster boy of this game. A pedestal which is rightly deserved, much as the rest of the core party. What I love the most about these personal stories each companion has is how integral, through varying degrees, they are to the main plot. They’re not really just awkward non-important side stories that don’t bleed into the main story at all, creating a weird disconnect from how they’ve grown in those personal quests compared to how they act in the main one. That actually goes for so many of the side quests beyond the companions’ for this game, almost none of them feel inconsequential or meaningless detours because they all end up spiraling into each other to some extent. Throughout my playthrough, it surprised me at how my choices for some of these ended up being vital for how some of the bigger, plot important quests were approached. Especially for how it builds an interesting narrative of what’s basically a power struggle between the true masters behind the Absolute, the Harpers, the Guild, the Githyanki, a Vampire Lord, the Shar, high-ranking devils from the Nine Hells, and [spoiler]. There really isn’t any actual politics present in these, at most it’s kinda relegated to the background, but it still works well in presenting a setting like Forgotten Realms as something you’re a mere adventurer of. A sprawling, bustling canvas you’d have to sink so much of not just your time and diligence but your own personality into the mix too.

That’s the underlying quality for what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 not just one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, but one of the very best I’ll ever play. Larian understood the ingredient needed to make a game in a genre like this incredibly special is the attention towards the relationship between the game -- or more aptly, the developer -- and the player themselves. Like in an D&D campaign, tying this back to earlier, the back-and-forth relationship between the Dungeon Master and the player(s). Your experience in this game is going to differ from mine and any other person’s playthrough because of the sheer interactivity woven in the gameplay and how the story is carved by your mindset and choices. It probably doesn’t have the full branching depth as Fallout: New Vegas, nor reaches the passionate deeper narrative thinking of Disco Elysium, but what it has over those two is reminding you why role-playing games, the grand adventure you partake in, resonates within some of us because all it takes for it to come alive is fully trusting the player and their imagination.

Baldur's gate 3 tem uma história épica, onde escolhas morais e caminhos alternativos moldam o destino de personagens complexos e apaixonantes. A trama envolve reinos em guerra, intrigas políticas, amizades profundas e traições devastadoras.
Os jogadores se encontram no centro de uma batalha pelo destino do mundo.
Cada detalhe, desde os cenários exuberantes até os personagens meticulosamente projetados, é uma obra de arte.

O mais louco é a maneira como ele faz os jogadores se sentirem. Você sente a alegria, tristeza e sofrimento de cada pessoa que você encontra pelo seu caminho, você sente o peso de cada ação que toma durante a jornada, tanto nas pessoas, quanto no mundo. Uma gama completa de emoções, desde a empolgação até o desespero. É uma experiência que fica gravada na memória muito depois de o jogo ter sido concluído.

Este jogo redefiniu a frase “Jogue do seu jeito” e fez isso com muito estilo. Você pode passar 100 horas em uma campanha apenas para jogá-la novamente como um personagem diferente e encontrar ainda mais histórias, segredos, itens e conhecimentos reunidos nas mesmas áreas.
Histórias de NPCs com mais profundidade do que a história da sua própria vida.

Baldur's Gate 3 é uma das experiência mais lindas que tive o privilégio de jogar. É uma obra-prima que não só redefine o que os jogos podem ser, mas também deixa uma marca profunda no coração e na mente de quem tem esse privilégio de jogá-lo. Este jogo é, sem dúvida, uma conquista notável na indústria dos videogames.

"Você conquistou seu lugar entre as lendas. Vocês salvaram BALDUR'S GATE."

SE O ASTARION TEM UM MILHÃO DE FÃS, EU SOU UM DELES
SE O ASTARION TEM 1 FÃ, EU SOU ESSE FÃ
SE O ASTARION NÃO TEM FÃS, EU MORRI.
SE O MUNDO É CONTRA O ASTARION, EU SOU CONTRA O MUNDO TODO.

generally i don't review anything based on first impressions but as a series veteran i just gotta say: this sucks, man

it opens on mindflayers on a spaceship fighting undead dragons in the sky or some shit to this effect and i look at it and i just feel nothing. it's so boring. it's so completely unearned.

every previous larian game i've played has just been the epitome of everything that bores me about fantasy rpgs so i guess i'm prejudiced. but this isn't even really baldur's gate 3, this is divinity 3 or whatever number they're on. let me explain.

far be it from me to uphold "brand identity" to the detriment of creativity, but think about what made both baldur's gate games work: they put in the work to situate you in the world, get you acquainted with candlekeep and everyone living there, before pulling the rug from under you, and then doing the same thing again on a much grander and scarier scale at the beginning of 2. they gave you a reason to care. this one just kicks off on epic and fucked up shit happening to you like it's a marvel movie.

i know it's early access and etc etc but you put the stuff that's supposed to hook people in the first hour or two, and that hook was clearly supposed to be a) the combat (about which i have no complaints but also it's unmemorable) and b) how cinematic it is -- which is the exact thing i'm complaining about. baldur's gate had the pace not of a movie, but of a fantasy novel; maybe not the most ambitious or literary one, but 250 pages in you just kind of get attached and keep going. this one has the pace of a youtube video. i don't want this.

EDIT: yeah i eventually finished the game anyway. i wouldn't say ALL my whining was vindicated, i was actually very pleasantly surprised at the quality of some of the character writing. however, overall, i really don't think i was wrong to rate it low. act 2 is a dull slog and act 3 would have been actually pretty sick if not for the ending sequence being so completely out-of-the-ass ridiculous. i can't describe it without spoilers, but if they were trying to replicate the experience of being railroaded by a DM who thinks they've come up with the coolest shit ever, it's a massive success.

also orpheus is not a fucking githyanki name. i'm sorry. the hook on the wall on which i suspend my disbelief is very sturdy, but it didn't survive that one. at least call your half-baked NPC that you had to invent on the spot "steve swordguy" like a real DM would.

I was planning to play through the game 2 more times, once with the Dark Urge Origin and once going the "evil"/absolutist route
But then I saw how much stuff Larian is already announcing to add and idk I am just so fucking tired. Yeah I felt like the ending was a bit lackluster and it's cool that Karlach will be able to get a better ending and all but like.
I would just like to be able to buy a finished game. And then play the game at launch with the knowledge that I'm not missing out on anything by not waiting 5 years until every single patch has dropped. It's so strange to me that there was this huge discussion when this game came out about setting new standards because you can just buy a complete game for 60€ when the game demonstrably wasn't complete.
Of course I like it when things get better over time but I don't have enough time to replay every single game each time it gets a patch so I'd just appreciate it if a game releasing meant it is now as good as it gets. Especially a title that spent 3 years in early access.

Started this way back in August but it took me forever to finally finish it clearly. Over 100 hours poured in puts it among the longest games I’ve played, though I guess I’m kinda glad I went so slowly given Larian would add another new patch whenever I decided to turn it back on

It’s been a while since I’ve played through the Divinity games, but given how great Original Sin 2 was I’m not surprised that this is as highly acclaimed as it is also. BG3’s a very impressive RPG in design and presentation, managing to maintain the level of depth traditional to this style of top-down CRPGs, but with immense AAA production values to match which for the genre sets it apart from everything else in that regard. I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with tabletop D&D and its rules (nor have I played the first two Baldur’s Gate games yet), but as a standalone experience I wasn’t lost and it’s amazing what they pulled off here. The closest I guess I can compare it to is like a more ambitious Dragon Age: Origins, which is awesome

There is just so much here, you’ll probably spend dozens of hours in the first act and its opening areas alone cause of how dense with content it is. Basically all of it (while being mostly optional) is worth doing which made it very easy to sink a lot of time into, and given the game’s many different quest variations and choices you’d likely get a lot of replayability out of it too. Graphically it looks fantastic, but what Larian really shows off is how dialogue is done with unique cutscenes instead of text boxes, using full mocap for literally every single NPC you can talk to. Given how BG3 is no less massive in scale, that’s a pretty remarkable advancement from their previous games

The main story itself is good, and the stakes with trying to remove the tadpoles in your head keeps it compelling. But I will say narratively I think it peaks with Act 2, as Act 3 gets a bit less focused to me and wasn’t really a fan of how rushed parts of the ending felt. I did like the epilogue and how it wraps everything up but as far as I know, that part wasn’t even in the game at launch and had to be added with a patch

The characters and their performances are largely top notch though. Some of your companions are more fleshed out than others (Shadowheart and Astarion were my favorites), but for the most part they’re all memorable and their personal quests do a good job developing them throughout. Personalization for your main character is strong too, though will probably depend on whether you choose a custom background or an origin. I made the perhaps ill advised decision to do my first playthrough as “The Dark Urge” which is considered an evil path, but I found it really interesting to roleplay as someone trying to be good despite that. It adds a very cool amount of connection to your character and the story, and really liked how varied your dialogue options are so you can still shape how you respond to your own actions and past. It seemed to affect quite a lot especially in Act 3 too so can’t say how much is changed without it, but would recommend for sure. Whenever I decide to replay I’ll try going full evil next though >:)

Combat is of course turn based with the standard fantasy classes you’d expect to choose from, and since this is D&D based all actions and skill checks are done with dice rolls. The RNG tied to this can be annoying (will not deny I have a long list of quicksaves), but I enjoyed its usage in gameplay and decision making. Will say combat can get really slow at times though, why they never have a way to speed up turns in these games is beyond me, you’ll frequently fight numerous enemies at once and having to sit through every single move they make gets a bit tedious at times. I also felt like a lot of the loot/equipment you find was a bit unrewarding, I ended up using armor and weapons I found in Act 1 for most of the entire game cause I didn’t really have much reason to switch them out. But that may just be a D&D thing with progression, especially since the level cap is 12

Besides that the only notable problem for me was performance, which could be better… It’s definitely been improved with all the patches, but at release you could tell it still needed much more polish and even now it’s not exactly stable. I’ve actually played this both on PC (Steam Deck) and PS5, though both weren’t ideal for different reasons. On Steam Deck it ran fine for most of Act 1 and Act 2 at 30FPS, and with FSR 2.2 (this wasn’t added til later tbf) it looks pretty great now also. Act 3 really starts to push it though, it’s the most impressive part of the game on a technical level given how packed the area is with so many NPCs, but clearly the least optimized as I had near constant FPS drops and more noticeable bugs like frequent animation lags or quests being easier to sequence break. That said, those with much better hardware for PC probably won’t have as much of an issue

PS5 in comparison runs as it should, even Act 3 mostly holds 60 FPS in performance mode from what I’ve played which is great. This would be the obvious way to play BG3, if not for the insane amount of crashes I’ve had on it that crippled the port for me. I haven’t played something that crashed this often since Cyberpunk at launch, past a point I couldn’t even open my saves anymore without getting kicked off and some of them even started saying they were corrupted somehow, rendering it basically unplayable on there (thankfully there’s cross save support). This is still not fixed in my case and not sure if it’s just my PS5 or something to do with the game on console, but regardless wouldn’t advise buying it on there. Some don’t seem to have as much of a struggle with it though so YMMV on that I suppose

Despite the gripes (and extreme annoyance at the PS5 version), I really enjoyed BG3 and was sad to see it end after all the time I spent on it. More than anything though I’m glad it’s such a massive success for Larian, despite their positives isometric CRPGs are usually seen as having niche appeal so it’s cool to finally have one break out into mainstream like this has. Hopefully bodes well for the genre going forward

kinda hit a wall with this in act 2. jumping from fight to fight is boring and not fun, i never care that much about combat in these games, so ... fuck my drag i guess. The tone is generally so tightly managed that the occasional glimpses behind the curtain (karlach says "body horror" ... Get that dr horribles bullshit OUTTA HERE!!!!!!) to remind u this a game by bisexual musical theater nerds are extra sobering. i HATE games where none of your companions have an actual sexuality and kinda exist for you to pump and dump. it feels like gross, immature wish fulfillment. tell the player "no" sometimes; consequences are good, and i dont just mean “questlines.” is this a brothel w puss for sale or a NARRATIVE ADVENTURE? only lae'zel REALLY compels but she is great

an engaging, very in-depth roleplaying experience that i will probably never play again.

act 1 - 10/10
act 2 - 5/10
act 3 - 8/10

    Baldur's Gate III is the most ambitious, high-production Computer Roleplaying Game since Dragon Age Origins. The degree to which they realize that ambition is astounding, but its scale also amplifies the effect of the many footguns in its design.

Footguns I can talk about with confidence because I put well over 100 hours into the game. That said, the fact I put that much time into it in a month should be seen as a glowing endorsement for the game.

In terms of core gameplay, technical depth, the presentation of the story, and visual aesthetic I can't call BG3 anything less than a superb evolution on what Larian has been building since Divinty Original Sin. It's pretty, it's flashy, it's deep, and it's densely packed with handcrafted encounters for you to discover in ways that will be unique to each player and playthrough.

Almost everything has narrative context. Every character is voice acted and most are motion captured. The writing has many great moments: rich layers of character, surprising plot developments, capturing moments of drama, excitement, intrigue, levity, and—more often than I expected—some rather dark turns.

    | The meat of it |

Exploration is immensely rewarding and varied. Talking to every NPC can lead to unexpected quests and opportunities and sometimes even open new paths on the central narrative. The nooks and cranies of the map hide unique treasures that often have the potential to completely change or enhance your playstyle. And the various fights you'll end up in are almost never repetitive and allow for a great deal of tactical approaches while still being quite challenging.

Compared to its Computer RPG peers—Pillars of Eternity, Dragon Age, and of course its own predecessor the original Baldurs Gate—the game is borderline an "immersive sim" with its mechanics, level design, and quest progression. My greastest point of evidence being how much I relied on my characters being built to abuse stealth and really high jumps.

Locked gate? Jump over it. Blocked Bridge? Jump past it. Running enemy? Jump on it.

Too many enemies? Hide, jump up to a high place, and pick them apart with arrows.

But I've played with alternate builds enough to know that you could have a party of physically inept nerds and still have a rip roaring good time with combat and adventuring.

Its hard for me to say how approachable it is, given my many hours of experience in the Original Sin games carrying over almost completely, but given how many CRPG newcomers I've seen enjoying the game, I wager it does well enough.

Overall, it really is a beautiful digitalization of the tabletop experience it intends to emulate, just as its predecessors were in their time, but perhaps even more dramatically so now. From the on-screen dice rolls to the sense of humor and adventure, its an almost 1:1 emulation of D&D 5e.

What then are these issues I speak of?

    | Inherited flaws |

Firstly—and most cheekily—that tabletop game it's emulating is D&D 5th Edition. 5e has some longstanding design problems as a tabletop ruleset and a few new problems in the context of a video game where there is no human Dungeon Master to fill the holes on the fly. (I'll still take it over 4th Edition every time, though)

For one, class design and scaling is erratic. Some classes, like the Ranger and Barbarian, get left in the dust after a certain point while others (Paladin) rocket up to the moon with all of their damage and utility. A lot of this Larian thankfully smoothed over with some reworking of class progressions and changes to specific class ability rules, but some of its is in the core designs which didn't get changed very dramatically.

    | Illusory viability |

I would even say that 5e is generally not very flexible or experessive in terms of play styles. Or at least not flexible and expressive in the ways it thinks it is. Take for instance Shadowheart's starting class as a "Trickster" subclass Cleric that focuses on Stealth.

If you try to play into that concept, you either lock yourself out of a Cleric's secondary role as a tank by picking armor that doesn't negate your bonuses to stealth, or you're locked to very particular sets of armor that you may or may not find, and to add insult to injury there's not a single useful action a Cleric can do that either maintains or benefits from stealth. Half of their spells are giant glowing AoEs for crying out loud.

Ah, but they could buff your actual stealth character to make them more effective... which is fine until your Rogue gets a few pieces of gear that give the same bonuses with less hassle, and by then their skill is more than high enough for every scenario where stealth is even a viable option in this game.

Oh, and their unique decoy ability takes a full action for a mere 1 HP on it and uses your "concentration," blocking you out of any of your other actually useful spells. By the start of Act 2, enemies will delete it from existence by sneezing in its general direction then proceed to pummel you anyway.

Then on the other end of the spectrum is the "Light" Cleric who gets free explosions on every short rest and the ability to "nope" an arbitrary enemy's attack every round.

If you're playing on Exploration or Balanced modes, none of these class design issues will likely ever matter to you, as they are balanced well enough for casual play. But it's one of the more frustrating parts of the system in how it promises certain combat archetypes and playstyles but doesn't actually support them either through poor decisions on the classes or just by flaws in the fundamental rules.

    | "You notice that you can't see the treasure. Sucks to suck." |

Speaking of: pass/fail dice rolls still don't translate well to computer games. They work on tabletop because tabletop is casual and abstract. A fully realized virtual environment is not so much the latter. Especially one where I can just rewind time with a reload if I can't make it (You call it save scumming; I call it "respawning after a failed attempt."). And this is ultimately just a clumsy attempt to replace the narrative smoothing a good Dungeon Master would be able to do in tabletop.

Sure, all is well in good when your Charisma 8 fighter fails a DC18 Persuasion check to convince the guard to let you off scott free. That's just getting what you paid for and hoping for a rare exception. But try and tell me you won't reload when your master thief character fails a narrative sleight of hand check that you need to save an NPC you like.

If this was a 10 or even 20 hour game, I'd say sure: maybe you will let the dice roll as they do.

This is a 100 hour game and there are hundreds of significant dice rolls with many ways for things to go wrong. Not just a little wrong, like ruin-your-story wrong. Lose-your-spec'd-out-Cleric wrong. You aren't going to wait until a replay you never actually do just to get the sequence of events you actually wanted.

You are going to reload to redo dice rolls.

So why does the game waste so much time on them?

This is why almost every other series in the genre threw out dice rolling for pass/fail conditions. Larian found ways to do it better than its been done before: inspiration, active bonus selections, a cool interface, and plentiful alternate methods if one fails (in most cases). But that doesn't fix the problem, it just makes it more tolerable. The fact that Larian dropped the "Honour Mode" option that both Original Sin games had—limiting you to one save and erasing it on death—is very telling to this fact.

I will say, though, it was refreshing in some ways for a game to try this method again so wholeheartedly. The little dice noises are very satisfying.

    | Fickle People |

Another long standing issue for Western RPGs in general is diplomacy in its many forms. The wider genre is pretty infamous for "No u" style dialogue options to talk your way through "tricky situations." Ideals dismantled, higher reason found, passions cooled (or maybe ignited?) all because a pretty guy said "have you tried X instead?"

That isn't actually that unrealistic on its own (human history is full of a lot of hard to explain decision making) and Baldur's Gate III does a much better job avoiding this tendency than a lot of games. A certain pivotal moment in Shadowheart's storyline stands out to me, as the skill marked options actually made things worse when I tried them. But, despite Larian's immense effort on the writing and motion capture, there's still a few too many important moments where characters change their minds way too quickly and for far too little.

Act 3 in particular suffered this in my experience, with Gale's storyline there being one of the prime examples of that kind of emotional whiplash. One minute he's venting pent up frustrations and resolving to go one way on a decision, then the time comes to choose and he talks like he had always intended to go the other after you say one line of your opinion on the matter.

    | Almost too chaotic for tactics (almost) |

A good amount of my core issues with combat are downstream of the dice rolling problem as well. It's hard to feel tactical and clever in the moment to moment when the deciding factor between your plan handing you a quick victory or a miserable defeat is a mostly arbitrary 30% chance for a spell to either work completely or not at all.

This kind of chaos is fine for a casual tabletop session with the boys where the DM is probably fudging the roles for the most exciting outcome anyway. Or even a faster paced game where the individual chances aggregate more. It's less fine for a game that offers you a "tactical" difficulty, tunes things relatively decisively, and hits you with some pretty insidious encounter designs.

Is it an unmanageable tactical experience then? No. The tools at your disposal are just well enough designed and plentiful enough that there's almost always some way to recover and wrest out a victory. But those recovery options burn a limited pool of resources.

    | Resource management and risk mitigation (the HR way) |

There is almost no item farming in this game: once an area has been looted, it's empty. So, if you rely on chugging potions and burning scrolls on every fight, you will only make future fights more difficult by exhausting most of what's available. Not to mention the rest and recovery mechanics require a steady supply of food and can advance certain time sensitive quests so you have to be mindful there as well.

There are shops that replinish some consumables every day, but that requires gold which you also can't farm. (Those willing to pickpocket, however, bypass this issue entirely)

Where this led me was the practice of intense pre-fight risk mitigation and stingy consumable usage. Most fights ended in 2-3 rounds for me because I had already scoped out the field and used stealth to position myself for the greatest advantage I could, leveraging my power-gamed character builds.

That might sound very enticing to many of you, and it is, in fact, a lot of fun for a while.

But I'm a bit too familiar with Larian's mechanical design at this point and know a lot of really nasty, tension deflating exploits that have ironically been reintroduced from Original Sin 1. Yes, I could just not use them, and I try not to. But when the first two fights of a potentially expansive dungeon drain most of your resources playing the normal way and you don't know what's next, you tend to stop pulling punches.

And the main set piece fights really hammer in the long term immersion issue with this risk averse playstyle as I often ended up reloading after a failed first attempt only for "divine inspiration" to tell my characters exactly where to stand and what pre-fight buffs to use before triggering the cutscene. All because the alternative is risking another 15 minute failed attempt because some bad dice rolls foiled my most important plays of the fight.

Which brings us to another inherited issue.

    | D&D 5e does not scale gracefully |

Both up and out.

As mentioned Larian did tamp down on the worst of the power scaling. They limited player levels to 12 as opposed to the tabletop game's max of 20 and smoothed out some of the class designs. But what I'm actually focusing on here is the "action economy" of the game (how many actions per round each side of a fight has available) and the time scaling of combat.

The further the game goes the more health everything has, the more actions they have, the more effects get layered into fights, and the more enemies there are. In Act 3 especially the combat tracker is frequently overflowed because of how many combatants are actively fighting, and that's before everyone starts summoning more. None of this scaling comes free from a real-time standpoint. The bigger the fight, the slower it goes as a rule. The variables at play, the more you and the AI have to figure out to make good decisions.

Larian did introduce a nice mechanic allowing allied characters with adjacent turns to act together, but that's another thing that gets mangled by dice rolls and class balance. Eventually characters' "initiative" values vary too much even on the same side, causing allies and enemies to get evenly distributed in the order and forcing everything back to one-at-a-time.

By the late game it wasn't uncommon for a single round of combat to last 10-15 minutes. The finale getting the absolute worst of this and unfortunately deflating the rest of any emotional momentum I had at that point.

    | There's no "oil field" moment for me |

Ultimately, I walk away from the combat of Baldur's Gate III a bit disappointed as a fan of Larian's last two games. 5e has some fun stuff, but its ultimately not as interesting of a tactical sandbox compared to Original Sin. Abilties and effects have relatively unintuitive, restrained interactions in general and have to rely too much on special cases and rule exceptions. And the ruleset's general lack of determinism only multiplies that effect.

Most people won't engage in the game to a level where what I've been talking about matters, and there's still plenty of fun to be had even if you do.

I was just hoping the game would eventually give me another moment like I had in Original Sin 2, where a seemingly non-descript fight next to an oil drill organically evolved into a desperate fight for survival on a smoke filled tower amidst a sea of flames—and that was after multiple attempts. But everything in BG3 felt rather tame in comparison. Often creative, surely... but tame.

    | That's enough about 5e |

It feels unfair to critique problems with a ruleset Larian didn't actually design and which the majority of the gaming sphere has determined they are fine with. So I'll focus now on what they are actually responsible for.

    | Scope |

If this was 10 years ago, I would have nothing but praise for their ambitions and be perfectly willing to overlook every rough edge, disappearing player model, out of sequence dialogue, and Vulkan rendering crash. But now we're in a world where Final Fantasy games are considered "shorter" compared to the average AAA release.

The first two acts of Baldur's Gate III were fantastic. Act 2 definitely a bit rougher, but constrained enough that most of the polish of Act 1 still carried through.

Then Act 3 arrives and is both larger and much messier than both. The hard part for me analyzing it, is that it doesn't have any less heart. There's a lot of cool things going on in the Act and clearly the team at Larian was excited to do it all. And a lot of it is good. Like 80%.

But that other 20% is cripplingly problematic: screwed up quest progression; rushed dialogue; pacing sinkholes; immersion killing glitches. The works. I was fortunate enough that none of it broke my solo playthrough entirely, but my co-op partner was not as lucky with his solo games and had two of his playthroughs borked by glitches.

    | Plot juggling |

And by Act 3 there are just too many active plot threads going on in general for me as a player to follow meaningfully. As an example, there was a major companion questline that I let end with the companion's (permanent) death in an unrelated event because I just couldn't spare any more brainpower to figure out how to reconcile it with all of the other threads I was trying to resolve.

In this game, quests do not just automatically resolve because you follow a marker and they often spill into each other in both symbiotic and conflicting ways. That is special and I love that.

But that also limits how many you can actually handle dealing with in a single playthrough.

If this was a 20 hour game like Obsidian's Tyranny, that would be fine. But this is very much not that short and the overwhelming majority of players will not be seeing Act 3 a second time. So it's pretty frustrating when a plotline you were interested in gets borked because of a decision you made 10 hours ago without quite realizing it (sorry, Lae'zel).

Again, that would be exciting in a short game. This is not a short game. So instead I experienced snowballing apathy for the last 20-30 hours of the narrative.

    | Faerun's babysitter |

This apathy I think also really colored my experience with the companion characters and a lot of the supporting cast. I'm not sure if the apathy was the start or the result, but by the end of Act 2 I began to feel less like my character was a "budding hero with his band of troubled but ultimately dependable allies," and more like I was "the designated driver after a particularly bad bender and we have a group assignment due tomorrow."

That example is maybe a bit too hyperbolic. The character storylines are quite interesting in their own rights. The issue is that once you mix in the rest of the supporting cast failing miserably to resolve their own issues without killing someone, themselves, or selling their souls to the devil (literally) you start to have flashbacks to your college days. Or at least my college days.

I did not get any sense of reward or accomplishment when the other characters showered mine with praise as a hero. All I heard were the desperate pleas of my fellow back row sitters looking for someone to tell them what to do.

In one sense, that made one particular villain character's offer very compelling near the end, but I can't abide ends-above-the-means logic so I had to refuse it and trudge on as the reluctant babysitter.

I would perhaps recommend to other to pick one of the origin characters instead of a custom. The story might work better when your character is also damaged. My great weapon fighter and his pristine moustache were simply too untainted, reliable, and self-sufficient for what the story was trying to do, I think.

Off the top of my head, the only characters I can think of that got by fine without your handholding were an 8-year-old orphan, a strange ox, the literal devil, and the final boss. The last two of which I killed, so...

I understand that it being an RPG means the story is geared to give the player as many important things to help with as possible, but there's a point where you compromise the believability of the world. The investigators are incompetent. The guards are useless. The freedom fighters are outmatched. The gods are impotent. Their champions are failures. The "good guys" are all wearing red shirts under their armor. The defenseless civilians emulate deer on the road. The villains are self destructive. And even the thieves guild is outdone.

Your character is not just a "factor" to tip the scales of the conflicts in the story, they are the single, final brick holding up an entire collapsing building.

    | The exploration really is quite excellent, though |

Despite all of the critiquing (or perhaps complaining) prior to this paragraph, I still hold this game in rather high regard. That's because as an immersive sim experience it's so intricate, varied, and reactive that my disappointments about the narrative couldn't spoil my whole experience. Even if I no longer really had much emotional investment in the proceedings, I was still really curious to see what routes and outcomes were possible.

    | What about co-op? |

I had fun with it, but this is going to be so heavily dependent on who you're playing with that I can't comment much, other than to say that it's the most properly accomodating co-op CRPG I've played, just as Original Sin was before it.

Actually, it shouldn't be understated how well it works. You can even properly quick save and load safely while one player is mid conversation and the other is in combat on the other side of the map.

Any other game I've played, that scenario would be unthinkable. But it's effortless here. So major props to Larian on that.

That might sound small, but multiplayer in CRPGs is usually tacked on at best so everytime its good I'll celebrate.

    | Not the crowning achievement I thought it'd be, but an achievement nonetheless |

Between great art direction, a rich world to traipse through, plentiful moments of genuinely entertaining dialogue and action, and a wide array of possible playstyles, Baldur's Gate III is a very impressive game and Larian should be proud of their work so far and enjoy its great opening sales and acclaim. But it's a shame that so many of the fibers of the game are left loose at the end and easily frayed.

I recommend anyone interested in RPGs and especially D&D to give it a go, but I also think most people could probably wait a bit longer for the first few big post-launch patches before they get deep enough to hit Act 3. My reaction actually seems to be a minority view on the story as well, so maybe you'll fare much better than me.

In any case. Cool game but glad to be done. I will probably not finish my co-op games anytime soon.

Well, here we are. For so long I was apprehensive of playing this game. Not because I wasn't confident it would be as good as everyone said it was, but because I was afraid I'd have a hard time getting into something with this much depth (same reason that RDR2 was overwhelming). But I gotta say, after my first 80 hour campaign... I get it now. It's as good as everyone says and it many ways even exceeded my high expectations.

The biggest compliment I can give to this game is that it may be the most ambitious video game ever created. I love Dungeons and Dragons, and no video game can ever replicate what a TTRPG can do... but this game gets pretty damn close. The loosey goosey style of the story feels like D&D and the sheer volume of branching narritive options are impossible to comprehend from a logistics standpoint. The weird shenanigans you and your companions get into feel like D&D. The fact that you really can roleplay any type of character you want feels like D&D. The combat literally just is D&D 5e and is an overall amazing port (I am personally not a fan of combat when playing D&D5e because of the monotony of dice rolling, but the system translates so well to a video game). Other games dream of having this much depth but very few can stand up to even one of these pillars of BG3's design. As a lover of both D&D and video games, this game was a perfect marriage of strengths between both of these styles of storytelling.

Few video game stories, really few stories in general, can affect me like this one did. The story, the world, and, most importantly, the characters were all so enchanting that by the end I got emotional when I had to say goodbye to it all. I think part of what it made so special was that it was my story that was naturally crafted through my choices. Most games will give you different roads that lead to the same destination in a deceptive attempt to make you feel like you're playing an RPG, but BG3 actually does live up to its promise that your story will be different than everyone else's. I had a lot of fun chatting with my friends and roommates about how much our stories differed from one another.

Like I mentioned briefly earlier, this game is logistically impossible for me to comprehend and is one of the most ambitious games ever made, but.... at times it also falls victim to its own ambition. This is where I list my criticisms of the game, which are mostly in the technical category. When you have a game with this much gameplay depth, there's no way you can foresee every possible encounter and how niche mechanics work with each other, so I don't fault Larian too much for any of these. I had my fair share glitches and frustrations in this game; poorly optimized camera controls (at least on the PS5), my companions constantly got left behind or stuck, game crashes, asset loading errors, combat inconsistencies, there were a few quests that glitched out and I couldn't complete, and a few more smaller things that irked me and took me out of the immersion. While these are (mostly) just minor inconveniences, they do add up and keep this game from perfection. However, its sins are heavily outweighed by its virtues, and despite all these issues I still respect this game from a technical standpoint.

Another small complaint I have, and this may be a hot take for some people: I don't think the co-op is very fun. I actually started a co-op campaign with experienced players first and did the tutorial with them before starting my own game, and I think that was a mistake. When I play a game like this I like to take my time with everything and engulf as much of it as I can, which is to say I think I play games like this slower than most people. Usually this isn't a problem in a fast paced game like Helldivers 2, but for a game like this with so much depth I much more enjoyed my time playing solo. Though this is mainly a personal preference as I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with how the co-op structure was built, so I don't knock any points off for it.

I feel like I've wrote more about what I don't like about the game, which isn't how I wanted this to go, but if you've played this game you know why it's as amazing as it is and I don't need to reiterate all the glories of the game that have been said in 10,000 other online reviews. This review is getting long, so here's a few other things I really liked before I wrap it up:
- The voice acting was top-tier, from the legacy PCs with thousands of recorded lines to the niche NPC encounters that most players won't experience. Bonus points for J.K. Simmons.
- The gear system wasn't overcomplicated, but was still comprehensive. A lot of lesser games struggle with this balance.
- Beautiful lighting and sound design.
- The musical themes were both beautiful and provocative, and the main theme will live in my head for a long time.
- Character creation was amazing for facial customization (though, admittedly, lacked in the body adjustment department).

If I can end the review on one last anecdote; this game in 2023 feels like what Skyrim felt like in 2011 and, before even that, KOTOR did in 2005 and, even though it was a little before my time, Chrono Trigger in 1995. These are three pinnacles of the RPG genre and I think they walked so the next one could run. I remember when Skyrim came out and every friend I had was skipping school and talking about how it offers "unlimited" freedom in its fantasy setting and these same talks happening with BG3 made me feel nostalgic for that. I'm excited to see what game takes what BG3 did and somehow improves on it.

This is a game I don't think I'll ever forget. Although it's flaws hold it back from a seal of Masterpiece, I still believe this is one of the most innovative, impressive, groundbreaking games ever made. I'm so happy for Larian Studios and the video game fandom in general for this games commercial success. It deserves every penny and shows the world what kind of games we really want. This game had passion poured into every crack and corner of it; you could tell lovers of games made this.

96/100

Swen entered the boardroom & said: “Let’s get something going”

Having played DOS1 & 2 i can tell you I was AFRAID
DOS1 is something so sentimental to me & Soooo close to being a perfect game
DOS2 took that game, tried to hammer out the parts of it that held it back and they created a Monster. Despicable armour systems that removed the validity of a dynamic party of mages and boots-on-the-ground slappin' & slammin' tough guy types. Terrible initiative rolls. Self serious writing for a story that really truly & respectfully went…. Nowhere. And the list goes on my friends
I will say DOS2 is the only game I have called in fake sick to work for…. shhhh but that has to count for something

And now we enter Baldur’s Gate!!
Game of year!!!!!! Wooo wooooo yipeeee wahoooooo!!!!
After years of Larian asking nicely to work with the IP, Wizards of the Coast gave in and gave us the RPG we have been waiting for
Larian now the developer for hire. Proving that this is the team best kept on a leash. Additional bondage always optional but heavily encouraged
On a whim sweet @curse and i picked BG3 up and tried to keep our expectations LOW. Lower than low. And here we are today 1 1/2 playthroughs down, countless to go. We love this game. I LOOOVE this game and I’m having so much fun

If you want more in depth gameplay etc reviews please see the ones written by my partner @curse and our best friend @moschidae

NOW let me introduce you to the girlies and tell you their stories:
literally clearing my throat so hard right now aheheheeeeemmmmmhmhmm

Siobhan (spent the whole game as ‘Sioban’ because i forgot how to spell it when we made characters & then could never be bothered to correct it)
Githyanki Bard
Loves her friends, just wants to sing them songs. Hypeman.
Shitty at arrows, less shitty but still not great at armed or unarmed melee combat
Kinda pretty ok at spells just doesn’t have good ones up often because too busy casting weak heals. Master of the Knock when Goma (Orc Paladin) failed [nearly] every lockpick check [late game…] [i’m just lying]
Banned from that Baldurs Gate cemetery for grave digging/robbing at the behest of a thief... I swear i thought it’d turned out okay. I had his consent to steal his stolen goods officer ……
Had to kill all her allies at Last Light after seeing Shadowheart’s quest through to what I thought would be most accurate for the character. I said LET ME AT ‘ER the rest of the fucking game……… reader beware….
Abandoned Gale for out-hamming her. Would die for Karlach. Hunky Halsin could almost get it. Joking… mostly…
I will say (serious tone) the romance still being a big part of this game had me so scared so much all of the time. DOS2’s aggressive horniness ruined our experience and made me feel like I couldn’t even be nice to any other character without them promptly needing to get in bed together. It seems a bit better in this game but I still don’t want to touch any of it and I would echo others suggestions for future games that there be options for choosing romantic partner preference and imo the option for turning off the romance prompts entirely. If you like it, I love that for you but it just ain’t for me

Renata
Half-Drow Cleric (not finished playthrough yet, so much to learn)
House of Ilmater
xXPunishedxPrincessXx
Dies for her friends often. Can’t save everybody. I didn’t make a bad character it’s just all part of her lore u see. She is getting better with age and experience and potions and haste spells
Still would die for Karlach but now she is in fact my stay-at-camp wife, I neeeeed Gale going crazy with his wizard rizz this time ‘round. Doesnt drink which was NOT received well by my very favourite Thorm at ALL :c
But she will continue to do good things I’m sure. We are cruisin’ and goozin’ through this playthrough here I tell you what


RE: Epilogue Update
I cried the whole time looking for my best friend and grew increasingly surlier talking to every other companion in my camp until we talked to Withers. Sioban played Old Battles for Karlach on her spider lyre and the crowd went wild. Thank you Withers and thank you Larian. We all needed that

xoxo
brute <3

I just finished my 110 hour playthrough of this game and it's occupying a cavity in my brain that has transformed into a battleground between all of the positive and negative criticisms I have for it.

I've never participated in a full D&D campaign due to the few attempts I've tried fizzling out after a session or two. So, I don't have any knowledge on the elements of this game that were pulled from actual DnD lore and manuals or what was changed/simplified. The only dungeon I've ever been in is the public restroom of my local Walmart, so this is purely a review coming from a person who just enjoys playing a variety of wildly different games.

My first initial thought was to create a Tav that was some replication of a character I created who never saw the light of day from one of those previous DnD attempts. Enter in my Half-Orc Bard, primarily meant to cast debuffs as some sort of unga bunga saboteur to anyone who dared step to my party. Turns out, that idea was atrocious and it resulted in my first 15 or so hours getting absolutely nothing done and everyone getting absolutely raw dogged by every fight we came across. Fine. My saviour Withers came to town and the game allowed me to change things up, thank god. You can do this with any of your characters at literally any time and I can't thank them enough for including it because after this, we cruised through Act 1 like it was nothing. My character was now a dual wielding Bard with the occasional healing buffs instead. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't necessarily craft the character I thought up in my mind, but I just attributed that to me not understanding DnD classes or mechanics, so it's whatever.

As for someone who has never played a game like this before, it was slightly overwhelming at first. By the end of it, I was glad to see a multitude of giga spells and attacks at my disposal, but to say that it wasn't confusing at first would be a huge lie. The game just kind of assumes that you'd be aware what every little dice roll means, or what concentration even is in the first place. I originally thought that buffs could stack similar to JRPGs, but it took time for me to realize that's nowhere near the case because it isn't really explained. There's some fights in the game where misclicking or getting your concentration immediately broken is very bad, so I imagine that first 15 hours would have been more manageable if it was a bit clearer. Nevertheless, we persevered.

The combat in this game has highs and lows for me. Once I finally grappled the mechanics and shifted my spells around, it started to become a lot more fun. It became pretty clear to me that pre-emptively making my life less miserable for the future was the best strategy to getting through some boring as shit fights. My character looked like a dumpster, yet had such high charisma that it meant fighting 20 less enemies in some scenarios. So, I don't even want to imagine what playing this game without it is like. The persuasion rolls were some of the funniest moments in the game for me and it actively changed the outcomes of some battles. The worst fights in this game are the ones where it's 50 vs. 4. It's incredibly tedious and the difficulty of them are purely based on the map layout and initiative roll of your characters. Act 3 has some of the most horrendous fights I've ever seen in my life. They basically boiled down to just forcing the enemies to walk through a meat grinder of AoE spells, which was incredibly unfun.

I persevered through all of that because I was genuinely intrigued in the story and characters. I was the most invested in my party of Gale/Shadowheart/Karlach, but the other characters chilling back at camp had compelling weight to them as well. There are definitely some characters who were treated with more care than others. Astarion and Shadowheart's plotlines are like 3 novels of writing in comparison to someone like Karlach, which I found pretty disappointing. I wish that the other characters interacted with each other a bit more because it kind of feels like they just are friends by default after a certain point despite never seeing them together in any capacity whatsoever.

Playing this game as an asexual person is a wild ride. Everyone wants to eat your ass in this game. I tried to make the ugliest character I could and yet, she was still a super model. You do not understand how badly I wanted to play as a goblin freak, only to realize that if I got my wish, the characters would still cry for my grubby goblin hands. I see why this is the way it is, so that everyone has an option, but they didn't need to give Wyll such a sad puppy dog face after I rejected him. I'm not complaining too much about it because it's optional content, it just took me out a bit because it continued to be the funniest thing ever. You know I still gave in and got that fire engine hot rod pussy though.

The level of pseudo-sandbox this game gives you to play in is tremendous. I've found myself getting pretty exhausted with open-world games lately, but it's mostly because those games don't seem to offer really anything in their worlds for me to stay interested. Here, there's side quests and interesting lore bits crammed into just about every crevice. It helped really sell the world building for me, as someone with zero experience with DnD. I found myself investigating through most conversations and genuinely wanting to absorb the information as much as possible because it was actually interesting, for once, and delivered by actors that were giving it their all. If I could complain a little bit though, I wish the journal was handled a bit better, especially with the time sensitive sounding nature of the events taking place. Some quests are written with such mixed signals and given deceptive waypoints, that it literally caused me anxiety. It would result in me running around looking for the way to go for way too long sometimes.

This game was great. It was great for the first 2 Acts, it was even awesome. Then I beat Act 2. Oof. Act 3? Oof. Pretty much all of my criticisms revolve around this section of the game, just like most others who have beaten it. I actually find the sheer amount of people who are saying this is a 5 Star masterpiece while also openly admitting that they still haven't even set foot past Act 1 in the same sentence is insane.

I'm gonna vaguely mention some things that happen in Act 3 without directly spoiling them, but if you want to know literally nothing about Act 3 before going into it, this is your stopping point of my review.

I personally think that the pacing in Act 3 from start to finish is paced very weirdly in comparison to the first two acts. Before, I really felt as though the side quests and every little battle or tribulation weaved together very nicely no matter which scenario you went to first. Pretty much as soon as I entered the city in Act 3, the city that the characters have been talking about the entire game, the city that my character is literally from, a certain character decided "Hey. You stepped foot in my area so I'm now going to railroad you into doing my very important quest. :)" WHY? A scenario that was only triggered because I was exploring in a game meant to be heavily explored. I thought that was a very odd choice, and I didn't like it. Not to mention that most of Act 3, all of the character trauma companion quests are backloaded in this section. It made the game start to feel like a big checklist, "Ope- I did Shadowheart's therapy session, so now I gotta do Gale's." Of course, I wanted to do these quests because I cared about the plotlines that were hanging open, but I feel like they just could have been wrapped up a bit better while also intertwining themselves with the important plotlines as well. It just made Act 3 a bit of a slog to get through, especially with a certain grief fueled fight that might as well have run me over with a car. I also didn't really care for the introduction of Spoiler, Spoiler, and Spoiler. It just felt goofy the way that it was done at the end of Act 2.

And for my last trick, this section of the game is still atrociously buggy. As my playthrough went along, it ran mostly fine up until the final battles of Act 2, where I noticed some graphical bugs beginning to show up more often with every session. Once I got to Act 3 though, Jesus Christ. Baldur's Gate was supposed to be this beautiful city no one would shut up about, but all I saw was endless planes of grass with invisible walls and people floating around while the game chugged to load everything. It messed with the cutscenes endlessly. I had some weirdo conversations with some companions who were suddenly addressing me as one of the Origin characters instead of my Tav. I couldn't finish some side quests because they just simply wouldn't work. It made every session closer to the end even more painful than the last.

My last grievance: The Ending. I will not spoil, but holy shit did it give me the biggest course of blue balls I have ever been given. I spent 110 hours with my party, suffering through some grueling, endless fights, the game shitting itself to death, and the emotional weight of every character piled on top of my back, just for the ending to feel so incredibly rushed with basically zero closure to any of the characters, including mine. Some companions weren't even present. It felt like such a massive wet fart to the face, I questioned if the game bugged out and missed some scenes and it turns out that, no, it did not. This was what I was left with. The final cutscene did not load a single building or object and the final dialogue scene kept freezing because it couldn't load the transitions. That was... a way to end my playthrough, for sure.

I am happy having played this game, but it did not come without it's problems. It's definitely a unique playstyle that I had to seriously commit to learning and I am seriously glad that I did. But, this game does not stick it's landing and that's really unfortunate. The plot threads were what inspired me to keep surviving every battle despite how hard they were getting, so to see the final 25 or so hours to end up like this, really threw me off and kind of offended me.

I really do want to give this game a lot of the credit it deserves though, but it's a weird one to think about. Acts 1 and 2 are basically entire seperate RPGs worth of content and length alone, with so many diverging paths to make the adventure you want while never feeling like they're overstaying their welcome. That alone warrants this game to being fantastic. It's been a while since I truly gave a shit about such a large cast of characters. But, I cannot hand wave how salty everything in the last act made me. I still had fun though, and I'll be remembering this playthrough for a long time.