My gaming history has plenty of gaps when it comes to the CRPG. Seeing that I am mostly a console gamer and an action game fan, I never played the Baldur's Gate series, the old Fallout, or Neverwinter Knights. My one attempt at BG2 ended in frustration when a bat murdered my entire party 10 minutes in. My CRPG fix came from the Bioware school of make it palatable for console folks and boy did I love it; the choices, the branching stories, but those games still felt there was a layer of complexity missing. Divinity Original Sin 2 was the one that opened my eyes to what a more traditional CRPG should be like, and I adore that game but there were some things that I wish it expanded upon, mainly a larger party with better storylines. Enter Baldur's Gate 3, the latest Larian studio masterpiece, they heard me, they gave me almost everything I could want in an RPG. This game is simply put the best RPG I have ever played, and it seems many others who have played far more RPGs than I agree.



The most important aspect for me with when a game is PC centric is if I can play it like a console game, please give me a controller. Yes, I know many of you will throw up in disgust but hey I feel comfortable with a controller, I don’t want to be tied to a table with keyboard and mouse, I just want to relax and play. You can't do that with any of the older CRPGs, it's a big barrier to me as those games don't introduce its concepts in a way that is natural, instead it expects the player to read a 100 page instruction manual, no thanks. Teach me piece by piece how to play naturally, that doesn't mean dumb it down, I can explore the depths as we go along, and BG3 does this masterfully. Fully playable with a controller (yeah some menu navigation is annoying, but I chose this so whatever) and a game with gameplay systems that are presented logically and at a good pace.



Unlike DoS2, this game uses the Dungeons and Dragons license, it's my first foray into that fantasy world and its rule sets. Dice rolls used to scare me, now I learned to love the dice roll. There is quite a bit to learn but the in-game tutorials give you most of the basics. Everything is governed by the dice, sometimes it's in the background like during combat, but for world actions a big dice will appear on screen so you can have the feel of that tabletop experience. I went from not understanding how D&D works at all to looking up play sessions online, to see how it compares to the tabletop experience and wow they really nailed it about as best they can. The key to the D&D experience is that freedom of choice and adventure, where you can do almost anything and the dungeon master (in this case the devs) must accommodate those actions and boy does this game do that.



It's funny how in the same year two games that allow some of the most free-from gameplay ever, Zelda in the gameplay physics side and BG3 with story choices. I cannot fathom the web of different scenarios the devs had to create. It starts off simple like most games, pick one choice and maybe one character lives or dies and you will find them later on. Ok but then compound that with a whole group of them, decide to aid in genocide of an entire group of people, what happens to all those potential allies not just now but 100 hours into the game. What happens when choices upon choices continually create ripple effects, how does a game keep track of everyone. And these are not simple choices, these are deciding who your enemy will be, where you are allowed to even set foot, your party members might disown you, anyone can die. By the third chapter I was overwhelmed with the possibilities, I have to believe someone else is playing a totally different version of this story. I did perform a few experiments of my own to see different outcomes of major events and I was blown away at how different the mission plays out and what occurs immediately after, I have no clue how that affects what comes 70 hours later. Even the miniscule choices are all kept track of, NPCs I forgot about many hours ago will show up and thank me leaving me asking "wait who are you again?" I have never felt more in control over the direction of a story than I have in this game, I am in awe of the possibilities.



All the choices in the world don't matter if I don't care about the story or the characters in it, in this aspect BG3 is once again top of its class. Not since Mass Effect have I had a party of characters I grew so fondly of, characters that feel like family who I want to protect. They also feel alive, independent, they will chastise me when they don't like my decisions. They will bicker with one another, form rivalries and bonds between themselves. Pretty much all of them are extremely horny and all want to sleep with me regardless of gender or even species, that aspect felt a bit much as one night at the campfire I had four party members try to get me to sleep with them and I had to make a choice. That's an area that can use work, I get romance options are fun but when every party member is basically open to everything they seem to lose an aspect that can make them unique, also lose the whole hard to get part when they all line up like a deli market to take a number to try to bang you.



I like my RPG parties to be mixed with all kinds of weirdos and different creatures. DoS2 had four party members, it was way too basic and lacked that party management aspect I love. Here the cast is massive, 10 potential characters, many optional, one I missed out on entirely (I murdered her before I knew I could recruit her, that's the freedom the game gives you). Most of the focus is given to the main 6 companions you get in the first chapter. All of them are so well developed even though they might seem like standard fantasy tropes. Each has such a rich backstory which gives them all incredible depth. Shadowheart is the quintennial female lead, a high elf cleric who worships the god of darkness, she is no nonsense but noble. I thought she is going to be somewhat of a pain most of this game, and she starts off like that but as she confronts her religion and her repressed feelings those defensive layers peel away to a much more interesting character. All the party members are like this, from the witty mage Gale to the devilish snark of the vampire rogue Astarion, or the sweet innocence of the murdering barbarian Karlack; all these characters are so much fun to talk to and play with. As the game goes on you can recruit the optional characters and these mostly have ties to past BG games. I only wish the fan favorite Minsc came sooner, he shows up VERY LATE in the game which doesn't allow him any real chance to grow as a character. This is one of the greatest RPG casts ever, it is Bioware in quality and as fun and quirky as the best JRPG parties.



The main plot itself is standard fantasy fare, there is some world ending threat and a team of heroes must band together to stop it. Coming from D&D enriches the storylines as they have such deep history to pick from, not just from the previous Baldur's Gate games but from 50 years of D&D. This game does a great job introducing you to who and what you need to know for this specific story. I learned about the mind flayers and their war against the Githyanki. I learned about different levels of hells, about how different gods and religions operate, how magic fits into the world and so on. I found all of this so interesting, which led me down a whole D&D rabbit hole reading about different Dragons, different famous campaigns, famous heroes and villains, different worlds and dimensions. There is so much material to take from and every bit of it is handled with such care in this game, as I started to learn more of the lore of D&D my appreciation of all the small details grew. Every inch of this game is filled with stories whether it's told through the environment, dialogue or notes.



Like many of the best RPGs it is not even the main quest that delivers the best stories, though compared to most RPGs this one has one of the better main quests I've played, the side stories are so memorable especially when they are tied to your party members. I have battled demonic hags who have tried to use a small girl to transfer their mind into her as a new host. I have made deals with literal devils and paid the price of trying to break those deals. I've discovered trap filled tombs which hold ancient curses and of course great loot. The more complex ones branch off of the main quest giving you so many options, entire communities can live or be destroyed by your actions. The final act in particular puts so many compounding decisions one after another, I was feeling the pressure of so many factions and characters I care about pulling me in different directions, to give the player choice is one thing its making it feel like it really matters that is the key and not many games achieve that. I loved all the twists and turns of the main quests and the wild shocking moments of side quests. There are moments of humor, love sadness, grief, wonder, awe, it spans all emotions while telling great stories that never feel too stoic, never too comical, it walks this fine line of a world that has a sense of humor but can still be taken seriously. It's a masterclass in storytelling for video games.



Story and choice are top notch, but that is just one half of the equation, the other is the most important to me, how it plays. The only reason I can play this game is because its turn based, I can't do real time CRPGs. Turn based allows the combat and scenarios to play out like a strategy game with loads of crazy powers and emergent gameplay. Divinity 2 had this in spades, incredible reactivity to the game world, that returns with even more options.



This game makes other games seem basic in comparison. It's funny at first I wasn't too enamored with the way magic and combat was playing out in act one. D&D rules have stringent action and magic rules which limit the actions a character can take to just a primary action and a secondary one. If you use magic you lose a magic point for that level which at the start might just be two or three points, those aren't coming back until you long rest. Long rest isn't something to take lightly, you can't do it in a dungeon and when you do the story advances and certain situations might play out without you. I felt my beginning teams were so limited, fights were feeling basic because of them. Divinity 2 introduced environmental interactions relatively early and often, I feel they were a huge part of the combat scenarios. In BG3 the spells and skills you gain as you play let you create the environments and combos; yes plenty of locations still have objects you can use like of course an explosive barrel. The game doesn't overly rely on those scenarios so it doesn't feel like there is one correct way to play out the fights, I saw the beauty in this the further i went along the game. The combat keeps evolving to the point where it's laughable that I thought it wasn't as interesting as Divinity 2, this game is magnitudes more complex.



To fully describe the breadth of options for the player one just has to read the class listings, of which there are twelve. As you level up those 12 they each split into three different sub classes. On top of that you can take on multiple classes, as many as you like, you can mix and match all classes and create some wild hybrid that might be OP or useless. I can make a warrior that dabbles in wizardry specializing in enhancing spells. I can be rouge monk, sneak up to enemies and then punch them to death. In this game every character can only reach level 12 which sounds low but every level is such an improvement. You know the game will change with each level increase, it's not some random number that just goes up and leaves no impact on the game. Here you will gain multiple new skills, new spells, new spell slots, new spell levels, perks and more. What starts off very limited in the actions you can do expands in so many various ways. Many classes have the ability to attack multiple times per turn, on top of the ability to gain a full action letting you hit again, well what if you have haste on as well that's a third attack, now I can hit an enemy about 6 times in a row. New ways to regain spell slots emerge, never enough to make spell casting wasteful, you better save those high-level spells for the right time in the fight, but at least you can be casting spells constantly during a fight and not run out. On top of all your skills there are a plethora of items that can enhance your character. I suffered from the usual item paralysis many do where you never use your items cause you want to save them for when you need them, which means it's the final boss and now you have 100000 buff potions... I actually had to use them all throughout the third act, especially haste potions. There are also spell scrolls which let you cast a spell with any action, and anyone can use it, that's a huge game changer to have.



Options, options, options, it is the name of the game, you decide how you want to fight, what strategies to implement, its pure gameplay freedom. This is one of those games where you just try things to see if it works and holy shit it does! Have a barbarian, odds are they can throw enemies around or objects. I was on a bridge once and this big armored dude was coming at me, has lots of health, well I just picked him up and chucked him off the bridge. Mages can create ice walls trap hordes of enemies behind it while another can set a blade tornado spell constantly damaging those trapped enemies. There are plenty of skills that let you manipulate enemies, you can create illusions to have them inspect a certain area perfect for traps, or just take over their brain if you are powerful enough. So much can be done even before battle has started using invisibility spells or morphing into different animals as a druid, sneaking into areas with only one enemy around to thin the numbers before the fight even begins. It's not just environmental combos that can work beautifully but the gear and perks of your character which can create wild synergies to make you an unstoppable killing machine. Loot in so many RPGs feel so useless, while there is a lot to collect here, you will still throw away a bunch of gear but only because it doesn't fit for your current play style, each gear has a use if you were going for that skill. I turned my Gale into Raiden god of lightning by giving him gear which charged him with lighting charges with every action, allowed him to be immune to all lightning damage and letting him turn all water electrified by just standing in it. I always had a constant charge and was blasting enemies with chain lighting. I had my other characters use spells to move enemies into position and Gale light a whole row of them up into a crisp. There is an absurd amount of skills and actions you can do, this feels like the X-Men game I always wanted, at some point you can learn to fly so I'm hovering around the battle field creating lighting and tornados like Storm, others are taking over enemies minds like Prof X, I'm launching objects at enemies with my mind like Magneto.



Now a game can give you all this freedom and have repetitive boring fights forcing the player to "make their own fun", thankfully they don't do that. Every single encounter, every location, every NPC, it seems like every single moment of this game is hand crafted to give the player a new situation to work through. There are no junk mobs, no copy pasted activities all over the map, it is all curated and it is HUGE. How?! How can I be 200 hours in, and I am in a wild dungeon playing a deadly game of chess for a puzzle which uses my spells to move the pieces and that is unlike anything else in the game before it. The game world isn't close to the size of these massive open world games, this game is broken into smaller areas but every 30 steps there is something of note and not a fetch quest, if there is a quest it's going to be good. If it's a battle it is going to be interesting whether its stumbling into a spider's nest and babies sprouting from eggs all around you or accidentally triggering a curse in a graveyard and hordes of zombies burst out, every situation is so well done. Oh and the dungeons! A bunch of games are fine with loads of hallways and enemy encounters, here there are multiple ways to approach a dungeon, sometimes you can skip huge chunks of them.



One of the early ones that I had no business being in at such a low level was this lair of a hag. You have to overcome an illusion to gain entry and then descend a trap invested lair which goes down down down. I used certain spells to let me bypass many of the traps like feather fall and super jumping which let me land from great heights and not take damage, so instead of going through the traps I just leaped down into the chasm. The problem was my whole team couldn't use those spells, so some had to go the long way, I used my advance team to find ways to disarm some of the traps and clear the way; then all kinds of ambushes happened which took a bunch of my spell slots to deal with. I reached the boss not at full strength, like many bosses in the game this had all kinds of unique elements to it, for this one a maiden trapped in a cell hanging over a pit, its being held by a rope that gets on fire and has two turns before it snaps. This hag can make fake versions of herself all over the map, I need to use a water spell to shut down the fire, let's just say the first go didn't go well for me. So I reloaded and now I had a gameplan, I snuck around the area before the hag was aware of my presence and set my team up so when the fight started every one had a clear goal, one to save the maiden, one to immediately dispatch the clones and another to stun the hag, plan worked to perfection. That entire section had me problem solving step by step, it was not some mindless location, the entire game is like this.



There are thrilling moments where entire structures are going to collapse, and your entire team only has a few moments to escape. Prison escapes where you can only save so many people in so many turns, trying to save everyone is like a gigantic logistics puzzle. Dungeons filled with trials that test all kinds of skills from stealth to knowledge, to brute strength. And again, I cannot stress how many options you have, not just in the free form gameplay which lets you approach and handle any situation in a variety of ways, but simply talking to NPC characters can drastically change the outcome of any situation. I managed to convince an entire kitchen staff of werewolf creatures to turn on their masters because they were actually being used, so when the revolt started, I had a werewolf army burst out of the kitchen. There are so many amazing situations, memorable encounters and deeply unsettling choices to be made all the time.



I must talk about the boss battles, many devs will just pump some enemy up with a huge health bar and big damage and call it a day, not Larian. Like the aforementioned hag battle, these fights have layers to them, they have different variables which test your teams in various ways. In the great forge there is this massive iron golem that comes alive to protect it. This area was circular with a gigantic hammer in the middle that would crash down to forge an item, around the circle the area would constantly fill with lava. This golem was immune to almost all attacks but blunt damage, so I got my barbarian, gave her a hammer and used my teammates to buff the shit out of her and have her attack nonstop, literally brute force it. It worked for me but then I thought, wait a minute that seemed messy, there must be something else I could do. Turns out I could have activated the giant hammer lured the golem into it and let it come crashing down for an instant kill. There are bosses where certain party members are about to be scarified or need to be saved or lost forever creating complex scenarios where you need to keep the enemies at bay while doing the actions that need to be done to save your compatriot. From gigantic undead dragons to powerful vampires and all kinds of wild things in between the games bosses always surprised me and tested me in the best ways.



I am going to cop out and not give the game a perfect 10 but a 9.9 and I guess i should explain why. When I think of my 10s they are my absolute favorite games ever and this game is near that list, but I don't think it surpasses any of my all-time favorites and part of that could absolutely be genre bias. The few negatives I can think involve the presentation and scope of the game. While graphically this game is really good looking for a Larian game, it's a huge step up from Divinity 2, with better models and environments that are detailed enough to be played from a near behind the back camera rather than top down. Every character is now fully voiced, they went above and beyond to make this world feel alive. That said when the cutscenes happen and it's supposed to be a big action moment it feels like I am watching a bad school play. The animations are extremely stiff, camera work and cuts are almost nonexistent. I love to be wowed by spectacle, its why I love Final Fantasy so much, that gives me the HOLY SHIT setpieces. If this game had those moments, even just like two of them, in the way that gets me excited it probably pushes it over the edge for me. Sadly I was always reminded that this is a lower budget game in graphics and presentation. The next issue I had is the scope of the adventure felt limited to a small region. This is the same structure as Divinity 2, three acts, each act is one location, and they are all sort of close to one another and you basically don't ever go back and forth between them. On one hand this keeps the game focused, that's great, but I feel I lose the sense of a globetrotting RPG adventure. Coming from a JRPG background those are my favorite kinds of quests, when the whole world opens up and I am on an airship exploring a magical new world for secrets. This never feels like exploration, the area is small and so dense with things every few steps, I didn't find that on my own, I was always going to see it on my way to my next objective. There is a lot that you can miss in BG3 for sure, tons of it is optional but I wouldn't call it exploring or finding secrets and I like that in my RPGS.



I have read online that many people criticize the third act for being rushed and not as well made as the first two. I don't get that complaint; I think the third act is the strongest of the three with by far the most intense consequential choices to be made. The final dungeons are also very well done, it has the strongest boss battles of the game. The city itself is amazing to behold, they pack it with things to do and explore. Yes, I could see sections where something more was clearly supposed to be there, but the game is huge already, a few missing quests is ok.



I already mentioned the graphics, a huge step up for Larian and for games like these which usually don't get the AAA treatment. I love the new camera system, not always being isometric view really allows for immersion. I want to give massive praise to the music which has a very beautiful recognizable theme that has many variations to it as you play. Fully voiced songs appear, and they are well done, some are soothing, and some are surprising. The best one happens during a boss fight where out of nowhere the boss has a whole Disney style bad guy song during the fight, I was overjoyed. The voice cast is tremendous, I feel bad for the amount of dialogue they had to speak, I hope they were paid well. Oh, glitches or lack thereof. Games this complex always come with issues, it's natural, that said compared to most other games of its kind and other games by much bigger studios which I won't name names, this game is relatively bug free and functions so well considering there are like a million ways it could break. Now I did play it a few months after release, maybe some big bugs were ironed out, who knows, for me it was relatively smooth. Yes I had multiple crashes, once maybe every 60 hours, ohhh I restarted from my recent save no big deal. If there was ever an argument for early access this game is it, I am almost certain that the years of testing early access gave this team allowed them to make such a relatively glitch free game that has all its complicated game systems working in perfect harmony.



Baldur's Gate 3 is a masterpiece of the highest level, top of the genre, a new standard by which every other RPG will be judged by. The freedom of its gameplay is breathtaking, its level design is top notch and the storytelling pushes player choices and consequences to its limit. I feel I can play this game again and see 50% of new scenarios and having alternate storylines playing out. I missed out on an entire party member because she didn't align with my good guy run, that is waiting for me. Oh I didn't even touch multiplayer, yes you can play this entire game with friends, it's crazy! I am the type of player that loves to play a game and move on, 100 hour games test my patience, and this one never did. I played for about 3 months straight, took a small FF break, but went right back to it. Night in and night out waiting for my chance to jump back into the world of D&D, never bored, always surprised at what I was playing. There isn't any more I can say, it is a must play and the best game to come out in over a decade.

Score: 9.9

Eins vorneweg: Ich habe dieses Spiel mit einer Gruppe von 3 Freunden gespielt, wobei jeder von uns einen selbsterstellten Charakter gespielt hat. Dadurch wird sich meine Erfahrung wohl maßgeblich von den meisten anderen Spielern unterscheiden. Teilweise zum Guten, größtenteils wohl aber eher zum Schlechten. Denn mit den hochgelobten Begleitern wie Karlach und Astarion hatten wir in unserem Spiel fast gar keinen Kontakt. Wenn kein Platz in der Gruppe ist, dann wirken diese Charaktere eher wie Fremdkörper, deren Geschichten irgendwie am Rande noch mitlaufen, aber ohne dass man irgendwie darin eingebunden wird. Diesen sehr wichtigen Aspekt des Spiels kann ich also aktuell überhaupt nicht bewerten bis ich irgendwann mal einen zweiten Playtrough wage. Dann alleine oder maximal zu zweit.

So, nun da das aus dem Weg wäre... was halte ich von diesem hochgelobten Spiel?

Zu allererst möchte ich lobend erwähnen, dass Baldurs Gate 3 das erste CRPG ist, welches ich überhaupt bis zum Ende durchgesehen habe. Oft verlieren mich diese Spiele schon vorher, da dank Kameraperspektive und steifer (oder sogar komplett unvertonter) Dialoge die Immersion nie so richtig bei mir greift. Hier hat es sich echt gelohnt, dass Larian diesen enormen Aufwand in diesen Titel gesteckt hat um alle Dialoge exzellent zu vertonen und auch noch mit closeups auf die fantastisch animierten Charaktere zu inszinieren.
Damit steht Baldurs Gate immersiveren Rollenspielen wie Mass Effect oder Cyberpunk in Nichts nach.
Die Geschichte an sich hat bei mir allerdings nicht sofort gefruchtet. Über lange Zeit waren wir als Gruppe distanziert gegenüber so ziemlich allen Charakteren. Keine der Fraktionen in den ersten 2 Akten konnten wir wirklich ins Herz schließen und so kämpften wir uns größtenteils überall durch ohne viel zu reden. Das änderte sich ein wenig im dritten Akt zum Besseren. Als die Fäden langsam zusammenliefen und Bündnisse mit den wenig geliebten Verbündeten geschmiedet wurden packte mich die Story dann doch und das großartig inszinierte Finale war ein würdiger Höhepunkt für ein insgesamt beeindruckendes Fantasyspektakel.
Auch hier denke ich, dass das Fehlen der Begleit-Charaktere unsere Erfahrung ein wenig gedämpft hat, da diese fester in der Welt verwurzelt sind und somit als Brücke zwischen Spieler und Geschehen dienen können. Ganz zu schweigen von den Quests, wo das Leben einzelner Begleiter bedroht wird. Diese hatten bei uns gar keine spannende Wirkung, da uns deren Schicksale so ziemlich egal waren.

Kommen wir nun zum Gameplay und hier erstmal zum Kampfsystem: Ich bin mit D&D wenig vertraut, habe aber generell Erfahrung mit anderen Pen & Paper Spielen und habe ebenso Divnity 1 & 2 angespielt. Mein Eindruck ist, dass man hier ein mittelmäßiges System so gut wie möglich als Videospiel umgesetzt hat. Die Aktionen sind authentisch umgesetzt und jeder einzelne Zauber ist wirklich beeindruckend animiert, sodass die Kämpfe zumindest optisch eine Wucht sind.
Insgesamt scheinen mir aber viele Aktionen und Nebenaktionen, die man zur Verfügung hat ziemlich nutzlos zu sein und die Cooldowns per langer und kurzer Rast wirken auch irgendwie fehl am Platz, da man größtenteils ohne Konsequenzen immer und immer wieder rasten kann (zumindest haben wir nie irgendwelche Konsequenzen gespürt).
Ich denke man wäre besser bedient gewesen, wenn man sich nicht so streng an der Vorlage orientiert hätte, welche hauptsächlich Einschränkungen bringt. Mit Divnity hat Larian eigentlich auch schon bereits ein besseres Kampfsystem entworfen, welches vor allem mit mehr Umgebungsinteraktion glänzte. Trotzdem machten die Kämpfe eigentlich immer Spaß. Auf der Schwierigkeitsstufe "Taktiker" waren diese anspruchsvoll und wie bereits erwähnt immer schön anzusehen, wodurch sie nie langweilig wurden.

Der andere große Gameplay-Aspekt über den ich reden möchte ist die Entscheidungsfreiheit die Baldurs Gate bietet. Getreu einem richtigen Pen and Paper Abenteuer kann man nämlich viele Situation auf verschiedene Arten und Weisen lösen. Das gelingt wirklich beeindruckend. Wahrscheinlich sogar besser als in den meisten anderen Videospielen. Aber hier hat sich Larian meiner Meinung nach ein wenig übernommen. Sehr häufig gerät man an immersionsbrechende Grenzen dieses komplexen Entscheidungssystems, welche den Zauber verfliegen lassen und einen komplett aus dem "Alles ist möglich" Pen & Paper-Gefühl rausreißen.
Ein Beispiel dafür war bei unserer Gruppe das Goblin-Camp in Akt 1. Wir haben uns relativ schnell dazu entschieden alle Goblins zu erschlagen und so haben wir ein riesiges Goblinmassaker angerichtet. Nach dem Kampf laufen wir wenige Meter weiter in den nächsten Goblintrupp, der Erste-Reihe-Plätze für unser vorheriges Massaker hatte. Dieser Trupp war uns gegenüber allerdings keineswegs aggressiv, sondern spulte seine normalen Dialoge ab. Als wir dann diese Goblins auch angriffen, verwickelten sie uns erstmal erneut ins Gespräch und forderten uns auf ins Gefängnis zu gehen... Das hat so überhaupt nicht in unser Narrativ gepasst oder unserer Wahrnehmung dieser Situation entsprochen.
Und solche Momente gab es immer mal wieder. Ich respektiere die Ambitionen von Larian, aber meiner Meinung nach wäre man mit ein paar Leitplanken besser bedient, wenn diese garantieren, dass die Spieler in jeder möglichen Situation eine saubere Erfarung erleben.

Was gibt es ansonsten noch zu sagen? Die Produktionsqualität ist insgesamt einfach unfassbar hoch. Neben Grafik und Voice Acting glänzt Baldurs Gate auch noch mit einem imposanten Soundtrack. "Down by the River" und "Raphaels Final Act" werde ich mir noch viele Jahre lang anhören.

Alles in allem hat auch mich Larians Magnum Opus zutiefst beeindruckt, auch wenn meine Erfahrung in einer 4-Spieler-Gruppe immer wieder getrübt wurde.
Trotzdem ist dieses Spiel unverkennbar eines der beeindruckendsten Werke in diesem Medium und ich kann mir gut vorstellen, dass mein Ansehen mit einem weiteren Playthrough indem ich auch die Geschichten von Karlach, Astarion und Co erlebe, weiter steigen wird.

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

It's funny to review such an unanimously praised game almost a year after the fact, as if you haven't heard or read about how good it is. So instead I'll focus on what not to do - careful with decision ansiety.

I personally struggle with games with multiple outcomes like BG3, even though I love them and play them a ton. I can't help but search every single consequence to every decision, because I don't want to miss out on cool things or end up with bad endings. Combo that with doing every single side quest in the game and BG3 will be a very, veeery loong and dragging experience.

Yes, I've gotten my preferred outcome for every single thing and got to experience everything in the game, but at the cost of wanting the game to just end already because it was feeling like work to play it sometimes. Also, my "victories" felt less impactful because they weren't truly "earned".

I truly think you should play this as blindly as you can. You'll still have some of the greatest gaming experiences of your life even if you miss half of the content this game has to offer, and I'm being serious. There's enough youtube content of this game that there are short videos of nearly every scene and dialogue option - you can simply watch what would've happened if you had done something else later.

Tantos méritos por traz desse jogo, uma revolução no gênero dos jogos de turno e escolha...

Não é meu primeiro contanto com a saga de jogos Baldur's Gate, mas de longe é a mais satisfatória, o mundo BG3 é massivo, vivo, cheio de mistérios e histórias paralelas a principal que nem eu com 99 horas pude experenciar tudo.

Tantas escolhas em sua trama, com diversos caminhos que apesar de no final se interligarem a um linear, nem de longe o jogador sente que suas escolhas são meramente uma máscara para a trama, até porque não é mesmo.

O combate de turno segue já o padrão da larian, mas aqui está bem mais refinado e não tenho muito o que dizer dele, no geral o gameplay é perfeito.

Truly an achievement in gaming, and worthy of its many accolades. Baldur's Gate 3 provides a robust experience with good storytelling and gameplay, and it offers many choices that feel more influential on the story than they might in other RPGs. I do have some qualms with the game--mostly some quibbles with frustrating mechanics and a bloated final act--but even after a long 130+ hours of playing, I was ultimately satisfied by the end. It's not flawless, but I don't think I ever got bored with it. It is also the kind of game that (hopefully) sets a good example for those to come.

Baldur's Gate 3 is not the most tactically satisfying CRPG I've ever played, it doesn't have the best writing, other games have more interesting stories and do certain mechanics like exploration to a far more interesting degree. But what makes Baldur's Gate 3 so great is that while it doesn't do any of those to an A+ level, it does just about everything to the level of a B+. Most of the games which do certain aspects better than BG3, have big deficits in return (Planescape Torment has incredible writing in exchange for weak gameplay) but nothing in BG3 is sacrificed. And it has an A+ area of its own, which is the companions.

If the individual aspects of BG3 are analyzed you find a bunch of "good but not great" systems. Taken as the sum of its parts however, and Baldur's Gate 3 is truly excellent.

Coming from Divinity 2, with some reservations about it, I could not wait to finally be able to gather my trusty friend and jump into this new adventure now that it was officially released.

We started the game excited about what was to come and it took us a total of two months to the clock to finish it. In our case, we decided to go with two custom characters and build relationships with the various origins characters in the game. We created our characters and thrust ourselves into the new campaign, both completely new to the world of Baldur's Gate, but not new to the work of Larian.

The game's writing is amazing, with every choice having the weight you'd expect if not more. The approach to the narrative, storytelling, and story progression is in your hands completely. From smaller things like specific races and backgrounds having extra options during certain dialogues giving more depth to your story, to annihilating an entire faction. Easily one of the best implementations of DnD to a game.

8h into the game, while exploring, we unlocked a way to reset the levels of our characters. Considering this was a title developed after Divinity 2, I went into it expecting there would be the possibility to change your character's appearance, but that wasn't the case. When the option wasn't available alongside the respec, especially as it has less actual impact on the game, I decided a quick search was mandatory as both me and my friend wanted to change a few things about our characters we were not happy with.
Although a way to change your looks has now been patched into the game, that was not the case more than two months ago and in an attempt at enjoying the many more hours we'd have on the title, we restarted from scratch, recreated our characters and quickly got back to where we were.

After that, it was smooth sailing. We kept exploring every crook and cranny and would never leave a region before making sure all loose ends were close and we had explored everything. The quantity and quality of content the game offers it's magical and calls for multiple playthroughs just to see how much love and attention has been put into it. We took our time - clearly - and made sure to play as meticulously as we would alone not letting the coop get in the way of attention to lore, books or dialogues. We had a wonderful time, really. Great game to play with the right person!

All dialogues have so much depth and have been motion acted! There is a moment in the late game, where one of the dialogues has such amazing voice acting and animation that it has forever engraved itself in my mind. That's how good it was. Another moment that comes to mind is a discovery we made during a mission. Something very unexpected, yet it was the truth and completely changed our objectives going forward, at least for our roleplay whereas for others it might have motivated them even further. This is the beauty of this game, everything you do and every approach is just as valid as the next one. This was not unique in these 160 magical hours. Throughout all of them, me and my friend kept being shocked by the level of detail, interaction, and ramifications of the story. There are so many other examples I could give.

But where there is good, there is bad. During the final Act we did encountered a few bumps. Still god-tier, but it is worth mentioning. Progression in particular felt sluggish, as if at every corner we would meet a wall that would make all our choices and plans crumble somewhere else as a consequence. It took us many hours, with a lot of different approaches to our progress to find the perfect balance for what to do first.

Regardless of our best attempts and careful approach, during our finale, we could not forsee this turn of events. We had to make a really hard choice to get the best outcome and find common ground with my friend, so I was already saddened by that. Right after that, my favorite origin character, my romance and companion through most of the run took a steep turn I didn't expect in their story. I was so confused by this end result considering the path we had both walked on was not the one they were now choosing, even slightly hinting at it being also my idea when it never was. I later learned shortly after seeing the finale that what I thought was an inconsequential choice made during a dialogue - one I would even say was quite neutral - was the dialogue that would permanently determine their story. This was prior to even learning and talking about the potential alternative new objective for this origin character. There is no other dialogue or check of any sort that can change that and, in my experience, nothing in the game made me understand things would have gone this way after I made this choice. Hell, it even sounded like it was still up for debate. 70h after I learned my price.

For the whole game, I have been preaching this, so: I know it's technically the result of my own choices, and since then I accepted the end result and found many ways to level with it when it comes to roleplay. That said, I stand my ground that having the choice to determine which path the character will follow, prior to knowing what are the options, and with a neutral response isn't well done, not when for everyone else it was quite clear. A simple dialogue after the events would have done it.

Add to insult injury, although I was the host, my friend during the whole finale was the only character visible besides the origins, only because he had the character that could defeat the final boss in his group. That was the case even for dialogues with my romance and companion. The coop never had any such issues until now, often having our characters at least in the background during dialogues.

The game is a solid top-down CRPG, and controls very similarly to Divinity 2. I wished for some of the prior games' limitations not to show up again. After all these years of early access and a new camera zoom that can go close to third-person perspective, I was disappointed in not having the choice to bind movement to WASD when that is the default for controller players. Especially in a game that, with all the dev's good intentions, still struggles with camera angles and environment objects at times. Yes, things become transparent when too close to the camera, but are still interactable making your character move in the wrong direction or teleport back to the area you just came from simply cause it's a big door and its hitbox is still in front of your mouse.
As a hoarder, something I also was hoping would have been improved is inventory management. There are plenty of bags in the game to order your items around, although you can't name them. When sorting, identical items will not merge into one stack, making entire lines of the same spell scroll unless you manually stack them, which I obviously did. A small icon next to books to let us know if we had read them would have also been a nice addition, especially with the large amount of literature available.
Other than that, the game plays perfectly fine and it's an extremely polished experience, with almost no gameplay limitations but your imagination.

Still, you know what they say: it's not the destination, but the journey that matters. Although I had wished for a better ending to my adventure, nothing can change our journey. What really matters is how excited, happy, and impatient I was to come home and play this game, and no amount of sour endings could erase that. I made a mark in this world and shared this crazy adventure with a friend, with highlights we'll bring back for likely the rest of our lives as already do with other titles, or until the next Larian game.

I find myself already thinking of what to do on my next run. No matter how hurt I may be from how a part of my story ended this time, it clearly can't keep me away from this game or lower it's magnificence, and that speaks volumes.

10/10.