I enjoyed my time with this game greatly, I have put in over 120 hours combined in my own single player story and ongoing coop game with my friends. It is packed with content, and I have only scratched the surface when it comes to the amount of playthroughs and things I can experience and see.

The full voice acting and mo capping of characters during dialogue, made me fall in love with the characters and kept me wanting to progress the game so I could spend time with them at camp and see how their stories unfolded. The romances are some of the best I have seen in gaming, fully utilizing mo-cap and voice acting to make their writing shine, and they actually are weaved into the entire length of the game, instead of the usual one and done or side quest chain that is the norm.

The best part about this game for me was the fact that it really made CRPGs finally make sense to me. I had played Divinity 2 and some others before this one, I never finished or even gotten close to finishing one before. Usually being thrown off by the gameplay or the lower amount of hand holding than I was used to. But through this game, I developed a love for the genre and have played quite a few more since. While I did not finish this game I love this game for the fact that it showed me how much fun CRPGs are.

Após 100 horas só na primeira run, devo admitir que a experiência que Baldur's Gate 3 me deu foi simplesmente única em todos os seus pontos. A emoção de descobrir cada detalhe do mundo, se envolver na história, é algo simplesmente ímpar comparado a qualquer outro jogo. Quando eu comprei Baldur's, minha avó tinha falecido, e ele me ajudou muito a lidar com tudo isso. Mas quando finalizei a campanha principal, e aquela grande homenagem nos créditos para entes queridos dos funcionários da Larian que se foram durante a produção do game, algo ali me tocou muito. Me senti como se fosse uma grande família que eu nunca conheci, e mesmo assim, me senti acolhido.

Muito obrigado a todos que colocaram esse jogo neste mundo, pela dedicação de criar um universo, personagens e histórias que para sempre serão inesquecíveis. Se você ainda está na dúvida de jogar ou não essa obra prima, faça o favor a si mesmo e viva ao lado de seus companheiros até vivarem canções lendárias para futuras gerações!

(PS: LAE'ZEL É A MELHOR PERSONAGEM DESSE JOGO)

There's nothing I can say about this game that hasn't already been said 1000 times over. So I'm not even going to try, it's easily the best game of 2023 and one of the best games of all time. It will forever be remembered as a pinnacle of gaming made with an unmatched amount of love and passion that is visible in every last aspect of this masterpiece. Games like this are why I'm studying game design, games like this are why people love video games so much, games like this are the reason people create. Thank you everyone who worked on this phenomenal game, I'm gonna go play my fifth playthrough now.

It's a weird game for me to rate. Everything about this game feels good, it is wonderfully made and you can clearly see the passion behind it.

But for some reason, nothing really clicks with me. Every quest is so cool unique and weird, yet none of them seem special; every character is so quirky and has lots of content, yet they don't feel believable; there's so much cool abilities, yet level-up doesn't feel like a progress;

I've spent 100+ hours on this game, yet it didn't feel like an adventure.

I have really enjoyed my time with it, but... Nothing has sticked with me. This game just... Didn't end up being all that special to me.

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

My friends who’ve heard me talk about this game are going to think this score is nuts. I’ve told everyone how much I love this game. I’ve gushed about this game. I’ve made gifsets and fanart. I’m going to replay it 500 times and make a gazillion player characters. I really, truly love it, and there’s so MUCH to love. The scope, the ambition, the responsiveness of the world and the characters. I love the world and the stories, the way nearly every quest has a million ways you can sneak through or around it. I love the breadth of characters and all of their arcs. I love the recurring theme of how revenge rarely feels as liberatory as you want it to and yet sometimes it still has to be done. I love the themes of autonomy and losing it and taking it back. I love how the characters can grow and change even when you don’t outright convince them. I love how the game looks and the art direction and the lighting. It also drives me fucking nuts. And it’s not even (entirely) the game’s fault.

To be clear, there are, genuinely, things wrong with the game in and of itself. It’s buggy in places — Act 3 especially — and every fix or patch adds three new bugs for every one it removes. Wyll’s arc is short-changed in a way that’s hard not to see as antiblackness. The turn-based combat means that every encounter with more than five or so enemies ends up being slow as sin, and there’s no meaningful attempt by the game to circumvent this issue. Moving through the world out of combat never feels bad, but it never feels awesome, either. Some of the side characters who are from older games are characterized completely differently and often contradictoraly from their old appearances, which is bound to piss off old fans. But, honestly, all of these issues on their own would still have me slapping a 4.5 or even a 5 on this game and moving along, because it really is still GREAT.

No, the real issue is the fandom. They’re insufferable. When they’re not making petitions to add new romances (always with men, incidentally!) or having meltdowns because a writer dared to say that continuing the cycle of abuse was a bad end, they’re trying to dox the devs so they can get new Rolan (another man!) content added. “Rain,” I hear you say, “That’s not fair. You can’t punish the game for the fandom.” That’s true! I’m not out here badly rating Sonic or Dragon Age games just because those fandoms need to be nuked from orbit. The problem here is that Larian fucking worships the fandom. They’re making changes to arcs and endings and characters on patch 900-whatever to appease the fandom! Lae’zel is too mean? Oh, okay, we’ll make her nicer! This ending is too sad? Oh, okay, we’ll soften it! You think Gortash is really sexy? We’ll borrow fan conent to add new stuff for him! (Were those fans PAID? CREDITED?) To be clear, on an objective level I LIKE some of the changes they’ve made. But I don’t WANT to play “Larian’s game but filtered through the lens of what I personally like,” I want to play “Larian’s game and Larian’s story.”

The lack of willingness in the gaming world right now to create games that don’t cater to the player, where the devs and the writers tell the story they aim to tell and build the mechanics they want to use and STICK TO THAT VISION, even if it adds friction or some gamers won’t like it or some fans complain drives me insane. I don’t want something that appeals to everyone, I want something specific and real. The idea that some fucker got mad because Larian dared to make a character that didn’t worship the player immediately and Larian bowed down and caved to the shit makes me want to blow up. STICK TO YOUR VISION AND YOUR STORY, PUSSIES! I’m about to get mad about the ME3 ending shit again good god.

It’s just such a frustrating encapsulation of everything wrong with gaming right now and how fandoms have too much power and too little imagination, and it breaks my heart how much it’s soured my stomach on a game I do genuinely adore. It’s so good where it’s good! It’s goddamn perfect! The love from the team is dripping out of every pore. But it’s impossible to look past the fact that the game that exists now is a different game than the one that was initially released, with different characters, because some people on the team felt that compromising their artistic vision was worth it if it’d make some fandom rando happier.

I still adore this game and, seriously, if you love RPGs or the like this really should be a must-play. It’s a joy. Its scope and ambition are second to none, and I have to cheer that on (particularly given how every other big studio is playing shit so safe right now) even when it doesn’t stick the landing. I love my gang of bisexual war criminals. Despite the tone of this review, I even love Larian; the next Big Game I plan on starting is Divinity: Original Sin 2 entirely because I love this game and Larian’s work on it so much. It’s such a wonderful piece of art. I hope the next one they make will be one with choices they have the guts to stick to.

Tempo de jogo: 110h ( Provavelmente irei adicionar muitas horas nisso, esse foi o tempo apenas da primeira vez que finalizei o game)

Simplesmente uma das melhores experiencias que ja vivi em um game, absolutamente incrível, é ate difícil escrever sobre esse jogo de tão massivo e gigantesco que ele é.

A historia é profunda e imersiva, os personagens são apaixonantes e o combate viciante. Se tiver a oportunidade se entregue de cabeça e mergulhe fundo nessa viagem.

Probably my last log on this, put another 20 hours or so and got fairly deep into Act II and I just can't with this fucking game anymore. I genuinely love the core cast of characters (especially Shadowheart and Gale my queens) but everytime I have to play the videogame I end up wanting to throw my controller at the wall. There are just so many needless barriers to fun and enjoyment that I truly cannot fathom the purpose of. The rules don't ever seem consistent, and the game tries to bend to your will but mostly fails in my experience. I feel like the combat expects you to Stealth in, surprise the enemy, and then get high ground, otherwise you're just putting yourself through a worse and more gruelling encounter. In a game that's so lauded for its reactivity, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I've tried lowering the difficulty, but that doesn't change some of the fundamental design choices (that apparently are ripped straight from DnD, which I have no prior experience with). I dunno, man. I really wish I could get through the game in order to get to the character stuff but I just don't like playing it most of the time, so it feels kinda pointless to continue on. Too much jank (on a controller), too many bugs, too much tedious waiting for 50 enemies to all have their boring-ass turns one after the other while I sit there trying not to fall asleep, too much reliance on long resting to be able to actually play the game properly. I could go on and on and on. I'm also so tired of videogames that supposedly focus on narrative having half-baked, poorly lip synced character animations, especially at this scale and budget. Could you not have just made a smaller game that actually focuses some of those resources on making sure your characters are believable and... human? I dunno! But I sure as shit would've liked this a lot more if they had!

Baldurs Gate 3 Review: A Love Letter

I went through two playthroughs of Baldurs Gate 3. My first run, was “Let’s be the charismatic hero and do every quest” I went ahead and did everything I possibly could. I tried my best to see every little detail I could and I honestly thought I had.
However, during my dark urge (very murderous character) playthrough, I realised how wrong I was in every way and my realisation of just how big this game was really came into light. The amount of “I didn’t know you could do that!” was beyond anything I have ever experienced before.
So with that being said, what are my thoughts on the game as a whole?

Baldurs Gate 3 shines at it’s highest when we talk about gameplay as well as it’s freedom of gameplay. An RPG that grabs its series roots and turns the turn based gameplay of Dungeons and Dragons to a visual height. My first playthrough was as a multiclassed Paladin/Warlock Elf. Naturally, charisma in all RPG games is exactly what I am after. I talked my way through so many combat encounters as the D20 rolled across my screen to almost always successful persuasion checks.
However when it all went soured and that glorious natural 1 hit my dice, I knew I had to prepare for a fight.
My knowledge in Dungeons and Dragons helped immeasurably in this game (I mean, it is the same rules). I knew what a Tarsha’s Hideous Laughter was, I knew why Guiding Bolt slapped and I could not believe how Speak with Dead worked in this game.
Much like the game and rules it is all based on, the game itself can be tackled in so many ways as discussed. You move your character and 3 party members around great landscapes, running into numerous NPC’s good or bad, finding wells you can dive into, doors you can lockpick or smash open, trolls you can persuade or kill, goblins in castles, druids in groves. There is an infinite amount of possibilities and the game really does allow for all infinite options.
An alcoholic barrel in the distance, light it on fire to explode, telekinesis to pick it up and drop it, throw it to coat your enemies in alcohol, have your rouge hide behind it, pick it up in your inventory and use it destroy a boss.
I found myself at first being very simple with my logic. Fire barrel? Throw fire at it, boom. As you go through the game, you realise exactly what is possible as the game spreads across its 3 acts.
If you have played a game of Dungeons and Dragons or Dragon Age, you will feel right at home with how much variety there is in the game play and this isn’t even getting into the fact there are 12 classes, which you can multiclass and you can reset your levels to try out new classes……

So, the gameplay is vast, you can be different classes, you can kill or persuade, you can have sex with like everyone.
How are the characters, how is the narrative? What about side quests?
My friends, it has been hard for a game to defeat the Dragon Age companions for me. The OG Dragon Age companions are some of the best party members you will find in a video game and Baldurs Gate 3 has damn well topped it. All of them are missable and do not even need to join you by the way. Obviously, I would not recommend skipping past them but that is just how much option you are given in this narrative. I could probably spend a whole bible length going through each companion, why they are important and why I love them but I will just say that my party in both playthroughs consisted of Astarion, Shadowheart (My wife) and Karlach. Not having Gale in my party is still one of the hardest pains of my life but I just needed to know how they all reacted when I was being a bit of a murderous bastard in my second playthrough.

What the hell is a Shadowheart, I hear you ask. It is a question, that I just can’t answer. Uncovering these characters is what made Baldurs Gate 3 so fun for me. Seeing how they only trusted me to get what they wanted, to then becoming best friends, lovers, sometimes tense enemies. Watching their interactions in major cutscenes, seeing how your party had travelling dialogue unique to their locations and who they were with. Digging up their backstories, finding items that triggered scenes you wouldn’t expect.
This game does one thing perfect above all else, it RESPECTS what you have done even if the sequence doesn’t line up. Killed a character because you knew from your first run who it was? The game will not lock you out. The game will update and now run with your punches.
It will always keep up with you. Which leads into the narrative.

Each character has their own substory, including your own. As you go through the game, you discover more and more about yourself, the world and your companions quests. The game is littered with side quests as any RPG is and they ALL are amazing. I would never skip over any single one. I was so compelled in my second run to do them all again, seeing them in different lights or seeing them the same way. As I played on the hardest difficulty on the my second run, there were some fights I had to do differently or couldn’t cheese my way through.
There is one enemy south of the first act in a little hut. There is a lot of ways you can deal with this boss. My first run, I killed it before it could escape from me and the entire dungeon respected that. NPC’s wouldn’t attack me because the boss didn’t get the chance to make them.
My second run, however, she did escape and it became a whole different dungeon.
That is a side quest! Multiply that by hundreds and you have side quests that really don’t even feel like side quests. They affect so many main parts of the story.
One of the hardest bosses in the game is tied to an optional area of the game that requires you to not only distrust multiple important characters but also opens up a whole new damn ending for you.

The main narrative, you will hear a lot of people say loses its charm in the final act. I disagree heavily and think it is the most D&D type of finale you can get. I won’t go into spoilers but there is a lot of people out there who respectfully do not enjoy act 3. A lot of heart is found in act 1, as it is new, there is a lot to discover but I fully believe act 3 closes out every characters story perfectly and the final boss makes sense and honestly, can go so many ways due to your choices, no matter how small.
The ending I got made me so happy and it wasn’t even the ending I would have wanted but it made sense for my character.
What you need to bring to Baldurs Gate 3 is head cannon. It is easy to look at your companions and think the main character is empty compared but not if you play it like a session of D&D.
I made this choice, so WHY would my character make that choice. This game more than anything is about creating your own fun, your own enjoyment from every angle. Some characters will not get the wrap up you want them to but they do in other runs, so take the ending you got and work that in your head cannon.

Moving onto the music and voice acting because I am a sucker for both in any given media especially video games. I fully commend BG3 for having some of the best voice acting you will ever find in a video game with a cast that have mostly their first roles dedicated to this game. Shoutouts to Jennifer English as Shadowheart and Neil Newborn for Astarion being some of my favourite voice works of the year. I cannot express enough how every single actor in this game makes every character feel alive with raw emotion at that. Some lines are delivered with such intensity that I lose all words to begin how I felt (Looking at you Karlach when you confront you know who in Act 3)

The music OH MY GOD. Just give it in my veins. From bard songs to epic boss music to an opening theme that slaps to songs that make me cry. The composer Borislav Slavov of Divinity strikes again with this score and it needs it’s own special mention.

All of this barely scratches the surface. This doesn’t even go into my feelings on spoiler topics like bosses, character stories in depth and gods there are probably 50 things I haven’t even mentioned at all writing this.
I do want to give Larian Studios the biggest shoutout for making patches to this game the size of this review/discussion/ramble/love letter and then some. They have updated the game visually, fixed numerous bugs and provided much need quality of life changes all within months of it being released and still continue to patch it. The amount of dedication to the community they and the actors have shown, has been inspiring.

I love Baldurs Gate 3. I think it is one of the best video games of all time and it blends a strong narrative with a huge creative freedom that almost seems limitless.
It isn’t for everyone, a lot of people don’t get into CRPG’s or tactical games but I personally believe this is the best of its genre and the technical accomplishment of this game makes it a beautiful playground of role playing goodness.

Baldurs Gate 3 is my official 4th favourite game of all time and stands above so many that I have experienced.


Please play one of my my favourite video games.