Bleh. This is the most bleh crpg I've bothered to finish. Crazy production values it might have, but to what end?

The implementation of 5th edition here is slow and clunky, and incredibly unforgiving, even on the lowest difficulty. Sure, it's tactically interesting, but combat takes forever and is filled with tons of tiny little annoyances, and honestly far too swingy for a modern AAA game. Even Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil, which sports a very similar combat system (though it's 3.5 instead of 5) feels faster, though it suffers from many of the same issues regarding clunk. Even rolling skills in dialogue is slow as hell, even when you skip the main part of the animation it's just leagues slower than any other game I've played. The dice rolling animation is cute the first time but my god does it drag on the 500th time.

One thing ToEE didn't suffer from that this does, though, is camera issues! The camera's kinda goofy. When you zoom in, it tries to pull behind your character a bit (or just provide a cinematic viewpoint), but when you zoom out it angles flatter, to be a tactical camera. It only zooms out so far though, and just loves to get stuck on the multileveled terrain battlefields, which are a good idea in concept but really just feel annoying, partially because of this camera.

The world is beautifully realized, but feels a bit off, at least from my idea of the forgotten realms. It's been Larianized, I guess? No matter how serious things got, there was just this undercurrent of lightheartedness. Not as bad as their other games, but still not great. The maps don't really draw you in any direction, which made my pass through the underdark feel pretty aimless. It's got a bit of that quest-marker driven map design in it, I guess.

Finally, the story is interesting. Not as a narrative, it's pretty weak, but as an exercise in making a story that adapts to your players. That's the real strength here, right? The game lets you take many different paths through the story, and even story-critical moments are wildly variable. That's a lot of work to build, and it worked out, but not really to the benefit of the story. Player agency is crazy high, but as such the story feels meaningless, just a set of events you go through. The companion stories are a bit better, their issue is kind of a Marvelly quippy writing style (though again, less so than previous games of Larian's).

I've probably been a bit over-mean in this review, so lemme list some things I liked: Being able to go into turn based mode at any time, following multiple sidequest threads in Baldur's Gate (the city), the Gauntlet of Shar dungeon (minus the trials), most of the story beats around ketheric thorm. It's a well made game, it's just horribly uneven and imo hampered by some large issues

It just felt like an exercise in recreating the experience of playing 5e at the table, with a little bit less math and a story that, while free, still can't match the adaptability of a GM or something. It's a frustrating, often unbalanced game, and although it occasionally falls into stride (the city of baldur's gate was fun, though not really well split up) I finished the game glad it was over, with the feeling that nothing here really meant anything, no matter how pretty it looked or free it felt.

Just play fucking 5e

Note: This review hasn't aged well because I decided to do a re-review to reassess the game, so I no longer stand by much of the praise given here.

Two disclaimers before I continue this review

1) I am going to compare this to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous an incredible amount, as they’re both CRPG adapting a TTRPG that share similarities but also core differences worth discussing. If this grates on you, quit now. Divinity: Original Sin 2 will also come up with regularity.

2) This game is VERY buggy and VERY unfinished. A lot of what I say here may end up ageing like shit. Honestly, I don’t normally bring up technical issues when reviewing newer games, but BG3’s are BAD and notable.

It is a shame that Backloggd does not have two separate entries for ‘Baldur’s Gate 3: The Game’ and ‘Baldur’s Gate 3: The Story’. Meaning that I, unfortunately, have to do two fundamentally different reviews. I wish this weren’t the case, that there wasn’t such a canyon-wide gap between the two halves of this game. It’d be easier if they were both good, or both bad.

I’ll get the good out of the way first.

On the gameplay front, BG3 is a masterpiece. Its immediate competition is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (which I also reviewed), both of them being adaptations of a popular TTRPG format that opt for accuracy over simplification. Whereas WOTR went for an all-in approach, BG3 is far more conservative with its choices. In lieu of adding the kitchen sink, it merely yoinks things it considers meaningful or useful.
This is most obvious in how it approaches buff spells. WOTR simply added nearly everything a class had in terms of spellbook, which meant some classes often ended up with an obscene amount of buff spells that were all but mandatory later on. BG3, however, only adapts some buff spells, which is impressive given 5E already cut down on them. The few buff spells that remain are primarily ‘Concentration’ spells - meaning you can only have one at a time.

This is a twofold benefit: Combat stats are scaled back and more manageable, lacking WOTR’s insane 40 AC demon enemies, and buffs are no longer mandatory - just useful. Similarly, it’s infinitely harder to make a non-starter build; with less overall buffs and a fair allocation of prepared spells/spell slots, there’s always something to cast. The same applies to non-magical classes and their unique resources.

If you’ve come here from DOS2, it’s worth stating: The armour system and action points are gone. Here, we use armour class (a stat that influences dice rolls to hit you) and actions (main, bonus, movement).

And I gotta say, the action economy is excellent. It was far, far too common for characters - martial ones especially - to have turns where all they did was move in both DOS2 and WOTR. BG3 heaps options on you, which primarily benefit martial characters. Throwing things is now a viable option, and the entire class of Thrown weapons scales obscenely well, preventing ‘dead’ turns.

Hell, just the sheer presence of the Throw, Improvised Weapon and Shove actions add so much depth to the combat’s tactical layer.

Throwing a bottle of water and shocking it is a great idea for AoE damage, using someone as a melee weapon to force them prone will open them up to devastating attacks from your party rogue, shoving enemies to their death is a strategy that works right up until the end of the game. Really, this game’s combat excels precisely because it allows for the kind of off-the-wall scrabbling actions that occurs in real tabletop RPGs. Sure, you can minmax, but it’s much more fun to kill an enemy by repeatedly batista bombing them through furniture. It helps that the game is rife with grenade-type items to throw at enemies.

Lastly, levels feel meaningful in this game. Even something as simple as ONE level 2/3/4/5/6 slot feels like a significant option, and feats especially can drag some builds into relevancy - especially for Barbarians. Well… This one isn’t so cut and dry. Progression feels great until levels 11 and 12. The original level cap in early access was 10, and it really shows here. For most classes/subclasses, it’s better to just take a two level dip into something else unless you’re HELLBENT on seeing your main class to 12. For melee classes especially, there’s little reason to go beyond level 10 since a two level dip into Fighter gives you an entire extra action.

And… The no-catch good is over. Let’s start complaining.

The actual actions one can take are exciting, but the source of them - the classes - aren’t. This is mostly on the developers, as they insisted that the game would only adapt things from DnD 5E’s base. So no sourcebooks or modules, all vanilla. Now, I’m no DnD guru, but even to me it’s obvious that Warlock and Bard suffer from not having access to Tasha's Cauldron of Everything or Xanathar’s Guide to Everything stuff.

The companion Wyll shows up really early. He’s a warlock brandishing a rapier and the title ‘Blade of Frontiers’. So you might think he’s a Hexblade, right?

Nope. No melee cantrips like Booming Blade, and Hexblade isn’t even implemented. He’s a Fiend Warlock, and like all Warlocks his endgame in this game is spamming Eldritch Blast.

Classes in BG3 aren’t mechanically interesting, they’re just picking a variation on the same flavour. Sure, there’s some class-unique mechanics but the vast majority of them are, again, variations on a theme. Sure, Monk doesn’t have spell slots and instead has ‘ki points’ but for all intents and purposes you’re just casting spells. Most casters draw from the same spellbook with a few differences, Bard/Ranger/Rogue are essentially the same class with some minor variations, and all martial classes except Fighter are ‘gimped Fighter’ once their resource runs out.

In the end, you’re honestly just picking one of three categories or Monk, and which roleplay flavour you want. We’ll get to that can of worms when I discuss the story, however.

Hell, even character customization feels barebones. There’s a total lack of eye shape/nose/eyebrow/whatever options. There are only preset faces you slap makeup/hair/extras on and then adjust the colours of.
Last little note, but the Feat selection is AWFUL. A lot of them are entirely near-entirely useless, while others are so strong that not taking them is stupid even if you’re a hardcore roleplayer. Seriously, the +2 to any stat from Ability Improvement is MONUMENTAL.
As a bridge between story and gameplay, though, we have to talk about ability checks, and two specific spells.

When faced with a dialogue or thieving check in this game, you roll a dice. It’s meant to mimic the tabletop, that good ol ‘roll charisma to fuck the dragon’ shit.

There’s just one problem. One teensy tiny problem.

These rolls are completely superfluous.

Early on, Shadowheart and some of your other companions can learn Guidance, which is a 1d4 bonus to a roll. You also start getting Inspirations, which let you reroll a failed check. On top of this, spells like Charm Person and Thaumaturgy start popping up, allowing you to stack an obscene amount of bonuses to rolls. Barring a Nat 1 crit fail, past a certain point in Act 1 it was obscenely rare for me to fail a check.

And… That didn’t matter either. Many checks will either let you progress normally, or not matter anyway. Taking some cues from immersive sims, a lot of quests can be advanced by just snooping around and clicking everything that the Highlight key… well, highlights. I don’t inherently hate ‘failure as progression’, it’s something I think Disco Elysium nailed, but this game? Nah, it just doesn’t hit.

Compounding this are three spells: Speak with Dead, Detect Thoughts and Speak with Animals. Narratively, they are cheat codes. All three allow you to gleam vital information for progression and the overall story, and carry no downsides beyond Speak With Dead having a strict requirement on corpse integrity. Sure, some of the dialogues are funny, but they’re so straightforward that it’s honestly kind of sad. Granted, the real downside is that Speak With Dead has a cutscene involved even if the corpse has nothing to say, which is AGONIZING when you’re probing corpses after a long and intense fight.

As for the actual story… First, let’s talk about TTRPGs. While some minmaxing nerds like to view TTRPGs as the ultimate evolution of combat systems where they can grind their players down unless the players are hardcore munchkins, the actual point of the medium is to make a character - good at some things, bad at others, potentially with baggage that colours how they interact with the world and other players - and roleplay them in a party setting.

And… You just can’t do this unless you pick an Origin character, with a decidedly preset class and appearance - except the Dark Urge. Custom characters can be fully customized, sure, and even have a Background option! But unlike other games, your background is pretty much irrelevant. If it confers any new dialogue, I haven’t found it. You have no chance to define a character background, and all your dialogue ignores the topic entirely. Sure, there are class and racial options, but many of these are just diversionary set dressing and they also stop appearing as much outside of Act 1 - which is a problem we REALLY have to talk about later.

The potential for roleplay as a custom character just isn’t there, a problem shared by its predecessor. You can try to stick to an alignment or ideals (though the alignment system was nuked) but you’re not really a character, you’re a class.
You may be thinking ‘Well, at least picking a custom character will let me get lots of companion NPC dialogue, right?’

And the answer is… Yesn’t. Yes, you’ll have the full suite of companions available in camp without occupying one of them yourself, but if you expect them to chime in with the frequency of Bioware companions then you have another thing coming. It’s rare for even one Origin character to chime in during a topic, having two or three would be beyond belief had I not seen it - once. I can’t help but wonder if the game is bugged, and only allowing one character to chime in even when others feasibly should. The end result is that adventuring with a party of Origins and a party of Hirelings (mute NPCs meant to fill a slot) doesn’t feel all that different besides some on-field quips.

This specific gripe might seem like a strange thing to open with, but I promise you it’s a canary in the coal mine.

Let’s talk about Act 1, IMO the game’s best act and also the setting for the entire Early Access period.

Act 1 has had YEARS of polish, and it shows. It is the only time where the game is what it pretends to be. It is incredibly reactive, possessing dialogue and outcomes for so many possibilities. The Druids who’re racist against Tieflings have dialogue for being a Druid, being a Tiefling and being both, as do other NPCs. Every little thing you can be or do has an appropriate reaction, from the obvious (Goblins afraid of Drow will let a Drow player character walk by without the need to roll a dice) to the outlandish (Killing Astarion, resurrecting him and then trying to fuck him or killing and reviving Gale three times). There’s still enough mystery to be enticing, and your companions’ stories are just opening up.

It’s great!

I love it!

It’s also rife with obvious cuts from Early Access!

This is an odd thing to bring up, because… Hey, they could fix it in the inevitable Definitive Edition, right? And most of the playerbase won’t even know because they didn’t play the EA version. But… It’s jarring. It’s really really jarring.

In Early Access, the tone of this game was decidedly dark. You had a tadpole in your head that was actively egging you to use it, using a seductive form to coo suggestions into your ear. Your companions were at odds with one another, you, and their own tadpole which was influencing them in different ways. That tadpole in your head would grow stronger, more dangerous and more assertive if you used it. Companions would castigate you for feeding it, and even using it to subjugate some goblins fed it.

Even Wyll from before was a different character; a folk hero struggling with the rage he feels towards goblins for slaughtering his village and the unfortunate love he felt towards his abuser.

In the full game, this is all gone. The tadpole is a relative non-entity, used only for telepathy. Using it is consequence free, and there’s a standard Videogame Skill Tree to upgrade it - which also has no consequences. All the strife and struggle is omitted, Wyll is just a nice guy struggling because his patron is a dick, and the entire tone is very… Bioware.

Especially with regards to morality. ‘Evil’ in this game is laughable, just an utter joke. Being good rewards you with a mountain of tadpole upgrades, loot, allies, money and opportunities to make things easier. Being evil uh… Sometimes gives you rewards, most of which are infinitely worse than being good. Perhaps the reason Larian omitted a morality meter is because your only options are “lawful good”, “chaotic good”, “true neutral” and “chaotic evil”. Stupid evil, more like. At least WOTR had the sense to include stupid good options. Every ‘evil’ choice is petty, spiteful, and needlessly dickish. There aren’t even any flavourful dialogue options to justify it as, say, you being desperate to get the tadpole out. You’re just being a cunt.

Act 1, again, emphasises this. The ‘good’ path is to expel an invading force, convince a shadowy cabal to leave innocents in peace, and rescue a spiritual leader from captivity.

The evil path involves killing refugees, children and natives of the land. And then having to kill the invading force anyway. But hey, at least you get an unfinished and buggy companion who kinda sucks by virtue of being a gimped Fighter (Paladin)! Except she’s not even ‘the evil companion’ while in your recruitment she’s simply pragmatic and understanding of extreme actions. They do try to explain it, but the explanation exists in a vacuum using a mechanic that other characters are party to, and contrasts pretty heavily with them.

It’s very Bioware. I bring Bioware up a lot because the original BG games were made by them, and they’d go on to make works rife with obnoxious tropes, shit politics, tonal disconnect and blatant character/route select forcing. BG3, unfortunately, only omits the shit politics. This is a Dragon Age game through and through, with the fascist-leanings and antisemitism filed off. It even has that brief pause in dialogue while the game scans your save for event flags. ‘Dragon Age without the awful American-centric politics’ is an easy sell for some, but not for me.

There’s a quest in Act 1, near the end, about a minute’s walk from the gate to Act 2. You approach a burning town, and are told that some people are inside. If you rush in and brave the fire, one of the people you just saved offers you a quest.

If you stand still and let her die, another NPC walks up to you and goes “Oh, that sucks. Anyway, here’s a quest for you.”

This is a minor thing to fixate on, but it’s emblematic of the wider problem:

Consequences don’t exist in this game.

You may think I’m being excessively mean, considering I’m only discussing Act 1, but this is a game wide problem. Baldur’s Gate 3 seems to believe that ‘consequences’ means ‘characters bring up your actions in dialogue’. Which is neat, but there’s problems here:

Obviously, these are not actual consequences. Actual consequences in BG3 tend to be immediate, and cleanly marked. Tellingly, most negative consequences come from picking dialogue lower on the list, with the good/safe options being up at the top. Not how I thought top/bottom discourse would manifest in 2023, but alas. Jokes aside, there aren’t really any long-lasting consequences.

You can straight up murder an NPC in Act 1, and when they return in Act 3 they’re merely a little irritated with you before starting a fight. If you don’t, they’re not irritated with you.

They then start a fight.

Even the tadpole is of no consequence, as using it religiously only elicits approving or disapproving dialogue from certain NPCs. Your skill tree is locked off early on, but you can still acquire that juicy upgrade in Act 3 even if you’ve spent the entire game calling the NPC who offers it a soyboy beta cuck. As you might have guessed it, all that changes is dialogue. Not even taking that super upgrade invokes any meaningful consequences beyond making you look like shit.

Now, looping back: Here’s the thing about Act 1, right. It’s still good, it’s the peak of this game. Even with all the obvious cuts and rewrites and shitty morality and blah blah blah. It’s good, okay?

But Act 2 isn’t. It’s really not. It nearly made me quit, in fact.

Pathfinder WOTR and DOS2 both excelled here, having Act 2 be the point where the game truly opens up and its scale becomes readily apparent. BG3, however, crushes the scale. It primarily takes place in a blighted hellscape, where the player is required to carry a light at all times for fear of being subs- Haha no just kidding, this only applies for like five minutes before you get a magic lantern that nullifies the mechanic.

With the mechanical despair nullified, you’re now free to walk through, uh… A blighted hellscape with barely any NPCs to interact with, the same 3-4 enemy types, a crushing lack of landmarks and barely any content. Or you can go to the mountain pass, which serves no purpose other than to progress someone’s questline and foreshadow a sidequest in an Act 1 area that you can revisit. It’s so empty that I actually assumed I’d just missed stuff, but no. It really is tiny.

So in the main area, all you can do is wander around and gorge yourself on like… An hour or two’s worth of content? The bulk of the area is made up of a dungeon that would be fine at the endgame but is FAR too lengthy for the halfway point and especially in relation to how utterly barren the rest of the act is. Act 2’s actual climax is shorter than that dungeon, for reference, despite containing its own dungeon. That certain events can make the finale go even faster does not help.

Perhaps what makes Act 2 feel duller than the rest is that there’s very little going on with your companions for the most part. Shadowheart’s questline occupies the bulk of the companion screentime, with Lae’zel getting a brief but missable dungeon at the very start and Gale’s storyline making a modicum of progress after a camp event. Other than that, though, everyone is… Static? It’s strange. Characters like Wyll, Astarion and Karlach will hit you with some sense of urgency, a goal that needs tending to now, only to kind of just sit there while you meander about the miserylands.

And, on the topic of Lae’zel’s dungeon, it very clearly illustrates this game’s relationship to both consequences and player choice.

Immediately, Lae’zel is placed in a situation where the game will tell you repeatedly that she’s going to die. You can make a choice here, but it impacts neither your relation with NPCs in the dungeon, or Lae’zel herself. She cannot die. You’re just picking flavour again. The road is linear, and you will walk it the way Larian demanded.

Following this, you’re placed in a meeting with a leading member of the Githyanki species. Here, the game compounds my complaints about the consequences only being ‘instant’, alongside a healthy dosage of linearity.

You can mouth off to this character and immediately die for pissing them off. Or… You can pick any of the other options. I’m gonna get into some light spoilers here, but the character demands you kill your dream guardian.

You can agree, carry it out, and the guardian will live anyway. You and the party then become enemies of the Githyanki people.You can agree, back out, and the guardian lives. You then become an enemy of the Githyanki people. You can disagree, and become an enemy of the Githyanki people. You can refuse to even start dialogue, then turn around and leave. At which point… You become an enemy of the Githyanki people.

This isn’t the first time this issue pops up, it’s just the most indicative of how this game feels about letting the player meaningfully influence the narrative. As early as Act 1, you’re offered an incredible amount of ‘options’ that don’t actually matter what, you will never remove the tadpole and you will always make an enemy of the goblins. In Act 2, you will always be an enemy of both the Githyanki and the Cult. You can make other, more minor choices, but these are ultimately just for roleplay flavour. It doesn’t actually matter whether you scorn certain deities, leave the miseryland coated in misery, genocide the few allies you have available or just murderhobo everyone in Act 1 and 2.

Why?

Because Act 3 is basically a different game entirely.

Well, I’ll admit I’m being slightly unfair to it. Act 3 is where a lot of companion quest lines actually climax, where a lot of side quests you’ve been doing all game show off and help you out. It’s the point where you arrive in the titular city, and get embroiled in the local politics that will help end the game.

But there is a disconnect between it and the rest of the game, even when it’s deliberately calling back to itself.

For starters, regardless of how you treat your companions, their quests will pop up so long as they’re present. This isn’t too jarring for characters like Karlach or Wyll, but even more guarded characters like Shadowheart and Astarion will urge you to push on with their quest - potentially ignoring that you’ve spent the entire game either neglecting them or outright bullying them.

Within these quests lies yet more of the game’s problems with morality. In fact, Act 3 is rife with it.

Your choices are, in the end, do something that’s a common sense good option or be a petty and spiteful chaotic evil asshole who does bad things with all the same forethought of a cat slapping a cup off of a counter. There’s surprisingly little room for nuance, you either do the good thing or the terrible no-good thing. This is particularly apparent in Astarion’s questline, where you can either convince him to do the thing he’s spent all game craving OR you can turn him into what Twitter and Tumblr thought he would be in pre-release.

If you’ve ever played Dragon Age: Inquisition, the companion quests are much the same here. You get a nice, good option that is never a challenge because if it has a skill check it’s very low (barring one exception), plus it’s at the top where all the good is. Or you can just be a dick and make things worse for everyone by picking the bottom option. Do you remember Iron Bull’s quest, where you can either convince him to be a free man or have him continue to serve a quasi-Spartan fascist empire? This game pulls the same shit.

Secondly, you may recall that I gassed up Act 1 for having lots of reactive dialogue and race/class/subclass specific dialogue. Well, it begins to slowly dry up in Acts 2 and 3. Basically nobody gave a shit that I was a drow or a Paladin after leaving Act 1, and I got more options for my Fighter subclass than I did Paladin. It’s so strange, to see the game’s multiple creation options just cease to matter entirely.

For a moment, though, let’s focus on the sidequests.

Because they also don’t mean shit.

My go-to example for this is a questline I’m going to call ‘The Race War’. The Race War is mentioned early on, and you can save a few key players involved in it. If you save them all, The Race War begins in earnest. BUT, because you saved a specific gnome, you can avert the worst outcome and mend the ideological differences, while still getting your objective cleared.

One problem, though.

You don’t actually have to do any of this. Mending the difference is possible no matter what, and the overarching goal of The Race War is achievable even if everyone from Act 1 and 2 fell to your Eldritch Blast spam. Sure, doing it the ‘right’ way is easier and has less punishing checks (or checks hands down), but this is redundant due to how obscene the bonuses to checks become later on.

You might be looking at my gripes and scowling, thinking ‘Mira, this is a roleplaying game. It’s wrong to approach it from a minmax angle’.

And you’re right. Truth be told, I approached the game from a roleplay angle, at first. With games like these I typically prefer to roleplay even if it hurts me. My Paladin did not allow Astarion to pickpocket, did their best to save innocents, refused the tadpole, obeyed the law and all that jazz. I even gave them a little Oathbreaker arc in Act 2.

The problem, at least for me, is how the game felt as though it was going out of its way to laugh at me for doing this. Abstaining from a lot of what the game dangles in front of you feels like self-gimping, because there are no consequences for engaging with it. Pickpocketing is easy gold, not a soul gives a shit if you let unnamed civilians die, the tadpole is just a skill tree with little bearing on the outcome of the story, and the law is easily supplanted. I managed to avoid truly min maxing on my first run, but I’m not sure I’ll resist the second time. Coupled with how difficult it is to actually roleplay narratively unless you pick an Origin character, and it’s kind of maddening to consider how this game was marketed.

Now, to tie the last few complaints together, let’s talk about the word ‘arbitrary’. To be arbitrary is to defy any system, rule or reasoning in favour of personal whims and impulses. In law, this would manifest as a judge making a decision in the moment rather than basing it off of legal precedent, past cases or the jury’s counsel.

In BG3, it manifests as morality-based dialogue options being available no matter what.

I never thought I would ever say this, but this game needed an alignment system or alignment locks. WOTR having it and locking dialogue off that would be ‘out of character’ was a genius idea.

It is so utterly jarring that, even when a game lets me console someone and be their confidant as they talk about their emotional & abuse AND lets me be a holy god-fearing Paladin, it still gives me the option to make them suffer. There are so, so, so many opportunities for even good characters to backstab people for no reason, with no option to justify it. Even to characters you’re romancing. Perhaps these were added to sell you the illusion of choice, but they just seem ridiculous. There’s one in particularly that you can only get by picking the goody two-shoes path in the first place!

Romances… God, I didn’t want to talk about them but I think I have to at this point.

A pretty common criticism of Bioware romances is that they essentially boil down to you sexually harassing someone until they give in and fall for you. Cullen’s in DA:I stands out; for as much as I hate the character, his romance is you harassing a drug addict until he becomes dependent on you.

BG3 decides to be forward-thinking by having some characters sexually harass you instead. Lae’zel and Gale especially.


I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t mind Lae’zel coming onto me because I wanted her anyway, but it doesn’t take much brainstorming to understand how someone might see her dialogue as either a thinly veiled rape threat or just deeply uncomfortable. If you don’t find her sexual aggression - or her - endearing then it must come off as being cornered. Though, mercifully, she does back off.

And Gale… At first, I thought Gale being a clingy ‘nice guy’ with a penchant for emotional manipulation and compliment bombing was a deliberate commentary on how the leading white men in Bioware games tend to act. But as time went on, and he got a bit more incel-y, I noticed that my dialogue options for dealing with him were either “Yes, we are bonded for life, you are the best person ever” OR telling him to kill himself. I realised that even if his horrible elements are intended, the developers certainly want you to like him.

Both of these characters are very easy to earn the love of, even if you laugh at their plights. The romances in general aren’t great, mostly just you treating people with decency until they fall in love with you. These aren’t really romances, they’re trauma bonds. You can’t even buy your beloved flowers or something, and this is one thing Dragon Age got right! If you’ve ever been around trans puppygirls it’s like corralling a party of them.

It’s really weird coming from Pathfinder WOTR, and I think it’s a problem of timescale. BG3 takes place over a nebulous time period, like a few weeks at least, whereas WOTR takes place over a potentially years-long crusade. So while WOTR allows romances to slowly bloom and take form, in BG3 they kinda just spring up. Hell, even Dragon Age 2 averted this by having it take place over years.

Romance is a little obnoxious, but few things are as bad as the polyamory ‘representation’.

So, I’m gonna bitch at length about how the game made me feel as both a trans person and a polyamorous person. You can scroll down, it’s just pure vitriolic kvetching.

Ahem.

Holy fuck. What is wrong with the writers?

Marketing the game and going ‘hee ho some party members will be poly :)’ only to offer utterly dogshit options is such a kick in the gut. And in terms of sheer offensiveness, this game made me feel worse about being poly than DA:I made me feel about being a lesbian or another thing I won’t mention here.

You can only be poly with Halsin and one other party member. Halsin explicitly states that he’s poly because he’s spent so much time in the animal world that he’s given up on monogamy. Whether it’s intended or not, the message here is “Halsin is poly because he’s an alien”. And the two party members he’s compatible with - Shadowheart and Astarion - are both explicitly and implicitly stated to be ‘super kinky’, with the further implication that polyamory is a kink to them.
Every other party member reacts viscerally to the idea of polyamory, browbeating you into picking ‘them or me’ or in some extreme cases just dumping you outright. It felt terrible, emotionally impactful for all the wrong reasons. Either the writers were using them as a mouthpiece to yell at poly people, or they didn’t consult any poly people at all and thought this was okay. The end result is awful all the same, and it actually soured my opinion of every character involved out of spite. That many party members consider engaging in an incestuous threesome to be less abhorrent than loving two people just compounds it. Truly, this is the worst poly rep I’ve ever seen in my life.

As for trans rep… Eesh. On the sexuality front the game is great, every romance is bi and same-sex couples appear with regularity, either mentioned in passing or shown outright. It’s great, gold star, no complaints. But when it comes to transness, there’s a pretty big problem. There are no trans companions, and barely any trans NPCs. So far, in my 105~ hours of playtime, I’ve ran into two NPCs who might’ve been trans (as they used ‘male’ voices on the ‘femme’ body). One of them was a minor NPC standing in a bank that I only knew of via posts from friends, and another was a shapeshifting doppelganger that tries to slaughter you.

Sure, the player can be trans in any flavour, or nonbinary, but in light of how scarce trans people are… This doesn’t feel like representation, it feels like fetishization. While bodies are not labelled ‘male’ or ‘female’, the ‘masc’ and ‘femme’ bodies have entirely different faces available. Femme bodies struggle to be distinctly masculine or even just butch, while masculine bodies are perhaps excessively masc unless you pick the slightly androgynous elves. More focus seems to have been placed on letting you be a “chick with a dick” or a “boy with a pussy”, which is only further compounded by a startling lack of body options. ‘Tis incredibly telling that all the femme bodies have decently-sized tits that you cannot adjust at all, and even the twinkiest masc body has some musculature.

It sucks. It is entirely possible to play the game as the only trans person in Faerun. One of the Hirelings is non-binary, I suppose, but an entirely mute doll meant to fill a party slot for murderhobos is hardly a character let alone representation. There was a drag queen coded character, I guess…? Alas, while the game is delightfully not heteronormative, it’s so cisnormative it hurts.

Back to the story, and specifically my criticism of Act 3 feeling disconnected. A pretty significant part of this is that, for all intents and purposes, the plot ends up being hijacked by two new characters. One of whom had token references in prior arcs, and one functionally appears out of nowhere. Some argue that the presence of these characters was foreshadowed, and I can’t really agree. A loading screen tooltip and one optional scene having some barely noticeable Bhaal iconography don’t really constitute foreshadowing. Sure, Big Bad 1 is mentioned a few times by a companion, but Big Bad 2 feels like… I don’t know. As if the devs looked at the first two games and inserted something familiar. Or they were just THAT hype to work with Lady Dimitrescu.

But just in terms of tone Act 3 feels like a whole other game. It is obnoxiously in love with its own sense of humour, with many of the opening diversions being near-entirely comedic in nature. The interesting elements, like the titular city struggling with a refugee crisis, are instead put on hold for a carnival, bad and kinda insensitive jokes about sex workers, having sex with twins and other such tripe. It tapers off once you’re in the actual city, but it’s incredibly jarring given how hard the stakes are in this Act.

Which is, in all hilarity, the same issue that befell DOS2. Like that game, BG3 does not respect its own stakes. Act 3 is a slower paced, almost casual experience where you jaunt between landmarks in the city for Designated Stuff Happening moments and probe NPCs who either have nothing to say or are throwing another quest in your journal. Most of these quests, too, are just kinda worthless. Acts 1 and 2 are far more reticent and creative with their sidequests, less-is-more and all that. 3 has… A lot, and they’re not very good. Calling half of them fetch quests would not be unwarranted.

The other half are, essentially, main quests in disguise. You’re given a few broad goals and these side quests guide you towards them. This isn’t bad, most of my favourite CRPGs do this. It’s literally the entire first half of New Vegas, for instance. But man, this game’s not-side quests are kind of exhausting, with a lot of them being either fetch quests with lots of dialogue (summoning horrific memories of FFXIV) or long dungeons that get tiring as you approach later levels. That it’s impossible to tell whether they’re truly optional or whether they’re your only option doesn’t help.

This is also where the cuts start being obvious. Like, glaringly. Larian showed off the city’s Upper City district as late as June but it’s just gone. A plot-important confrontation happens within an hour of the act starting, in a location deeply unfitting for what’s actually occurring. It’s even sequestered off in a separate, unoptimized cell. You’re then half-heartedly shunted out into the Lower City, which is expansive yes but nowhere near as big or ‘living and breathing’ as Larian made it out to be.

Characters sometimes appear and talk as if they lived through a quest that does not exist, which makes some plotlines feel like watching a film with some chapters cut, really apparent when Lae’zel is around. Astarion’s personal plot progresses way too fast and gets too much faux-gravitas, which in turn betrays the cut content associated with the other NPC involved in the story. I’ll admit, it’s strange that Astarion’s constantly-mentioned big bad is less important to the story than a guy Karlach mentions a couple times in Act 1. But again, story cuts. Hell, the game’s only true late-game companion will dump about two acts worth of chats on you, as if he was meant to appear earlier.
If you dig deep into companion chats, a lot of them mention either a history with Baldur’s Gate or people they know/knew there, but most of this comes to nothing. This is especially prominent with Wyll, a character who absolutely should have more of a connection to the city but barely says anything.

But most importantly, the titular city just feels kinda barren. It’s really obvious where Stuff will happen despite the density, and the size feels like it serves no purpose other than to tank my framerate due to all the moving NPCs. Act 1 and 2 were mostly empty spaces with designated event areas to poke around, and 3 is no different. It just pretends it isn’t. Act 3 makes it apparent that the game just isn’t finished, because if the Lower City feels so empty then how bad was the Upper City going to be?

And, in terms of the main plot… It honestly kind of stalls here? It boils down to little more than two questlines to get macguffin and then a confrontation with the Big Bad. There’s not much of an investigation because important characters will just exposit anything you might be missing to you, and the prior act answered a lot of things definitively - too definitively, one could say.
In particular, a lot of plot points are just painfully obvious if you’re familiar with either DnD fluff or you’re keenly attuned to how adaptations tend to present information from the source material. It does not take a great, keen mind to understand what the true big bad actually is, given that the game all but beats you over the head with certain imagery. I unfortunately had the plot clocked by the middle of Act 2, but I was still insistent that Larian would surprise me.

They did not.

There wasn’t much catharsis in pushing through BG3’s third act. I wish I could say more, but I don’t want to spoil this entire game. Honestly? It was mostly frustration. Frustration at the game for pulling the ol’ Larian upscale and making some fights a slog, frustration at the story for running out of steam, frustration at the writers for half-assing so much but keeping tons of comedic diversions, frustration at how the romance was handled, frustration at how little consequences there actually were, and…

Frustration with the Origin companions.

Yeah. Sorry, I’m just not that invested in these people. They’re way, way too Bioware for me. Besides Karlach (a very obviously late addition), they kind of exist just to Have A Point about something. Like the natural conclusion of “remove everything that’s just artistic flair” discourse. While they do comment on things in line with their alleged alignment, it’s rare to talk to them about things that aren’t story-relevant. Fuck sake, even Cullen was willing to talk to you about how he got cucked. And he sucks!

In place of broad personalities, they exist to ruminate on radicalization, self-determination, cycles of abuse, the price of altruism, the hubris of academics, and the pitfalls of religious zealotry. Beyond that though, they’re very one-dimensional. Being funny and having fetishes is nice, but the mere fact it’s obscenely difficult to get party members to leave of their own accord (barring three instant losses in Act 1 - hey, there’s those instant consequences again). Even DOS2’s companions had more depth than this, and character writing was not that game’s strong point. Hell, I’m gonna be extreme here: The Witcher 3 was better about this, and I fucking hate that game.

Also, as an aside: Astarion’s quest is neat but as a character he’s just R18 Sebille from DOS2. It’s really obvious in the resolutions.

Karlach is the exception, but for as much as I like her she does feel as though she was added as a reaction to people complaining about how evil-aligned the party was in early access. She is just a golden retriever in a tiefling body, and yet she was added even after they made everyone more polite and less contentious.

That’s kind of this game’s core issue, actually. It is obvious, at least from my point of view, that Larian tapered down a lot of this game’s darker and more contentious elements for fear of alienating people - yet I STILL see people bitch that Shadowheart, the adorable puppy girl, is too mean for them. I can’t help but wonder why they did it: Was it truly to avoid alienating normals? Were the rewrites that massive? Did they have a change of direction? I don’t know.

But, I don’t know. I like them despite everything - except Gale. They’re frustratingly shallow, but the points they exist to serve are where this game’s writing shines on the intended path. They’re all excellently voiced too, everyone in the game is yeah but the companions put their everything into it. I can’t fucking believe the guy who voiced Zeon - the worst Xenoblade 3 guest party member - is voicing a character like Astarion. I’ll give them sincere credit, they nailed it. This game’s acting in general is very theater, which is a nice break from the grim mumbled boredom that most western games have fallen into, or the clarity-first-personality-second acting that’s made a lot of contemporary animanga adaptations feel stilted and wooden. A lot of major side characters - Raphael and Mizora especially - are just treasures. Some of the best in class. Even when this game was boring, I sat through the dialogue for entertainment value.

Except in one instance, where the game doubled down on something I hate.

Look, I’ll just say it outright: This game kinda hates the original games even though it’s eager to retread old ground. Returning characters have a horrible time, with some of the best character writing from Throne of Bhaal getting mercilessly stepped on. Without spoiling it too deep, ToB’s best companion has their arc belittled and made fun of to the viewer, for no other reason than to force a connection between BG2 and BG3. Larian promised that the game would have ‘connections’ to justify this game being called BG3 and the game genuinely would’ve been better off without them. They are hamfisted, unwanted and needlessly spiteful towards the source material.

In the instance I alluded to, BG3 took such a steaming dump on Throne of Bhaal that I actually mashed through the dialogue out of sheer disgust. It’s bad, so bad. Bringing along a certain companion hangs a lampshade on how bad it is, but it’s fleeting. I hate saying this, but that scene well and truly should not have been in the game.

Sigh, look. I know I’ve been harsh on the game for the entire duration of this review so far, but I really did enjoy it in Act 1 and most of 2, plus the gameplay is a treasure. There’s a reason the score isn’t as low as you’d think. It’s a blast in multiplayer too, particularly if your party members - and you - are stupid as fuck.

It’s just such a mess. I didn’t even get into the lackluster ending, unfinished epilogue, my gripes with how loot works, the bad economy, or the BUGS! Copious bugs! Softlocks, quests not progressing, crashes, freezes, missing NPCs, rolls not applying bonuses, bugs bugs BUGS.

I hope this review ages like shit. I really do. I hope Larian release a Definitive Edition or something that makes most of this moot, but I think some of my complaints will always exist.

This is a game people gassed up for not being ‘like other AAA games’. And yet, it is incomplete on release, is a technical mess, has lots of unfinished/dead end content, and the devs have promised to fix/add to it later.

It is, unfortunately, not special as far as modern AAA games go. It’s not special as far as CRPGs go either.

It's just another in a long line of Bioware games.

it has come to my attention that Astarion is basically a tumblr sexyman who women think is very hot but i'd like to clarify: i am NOT like the other girls. Astarion should NOT be dominant, dangerous, or powerfully sexy. Astarion, to me, isn't a character whose appeal is having a really cut physique and an overwhelmingly domineering presence - he SHOULD be reading Garfield comics in the dentist's waiting room because he forgot to charge his phone the night before, he should be doing sketch comedy that never takes off, he should be saving memes of Spongebob being 'cunty' onto his phone, he should be begging to eat pussy politely, and he should be singing along to broadway musicals in the shower.

    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.

Expressiveness is the quality that defines roleplaying games: they’re judged by how freely players can assert themselves in a reactive space. Players want to convey their personality and make choices, but while these are the obvious core concepts of the genre, Baldur’s Gate 3 has proven to me that they’re not what makes an RPG great. Having the capacity to make decisions is certainly a necessity, but decisions only matter when players care about the outcomes. Choices surround us in every moment of our lives, but most vanish from our minds within seconds for that very reason; they’re so emotionally inconsequential as to be hardly worthy of notice. So, more fundamental than allowing for choice is providing a real adventure in which to make those choices, and defining a journey which has players encountering challenges, learning, changing, and overcoming. This is the critical component which Baldur’s Gate fails to establish, most glaringly from its narrative structure.

(Minor spoilers through act 2)
In the opening cutscene, your character has a mindflayer tadpole inserted into their head, so your call to adventure is getting it out. This is fine in itself, but the game is quick to tell you that there’s no urgency to this task, relieving you of the burden of care. Every quest you receive to accomplish this goal, across the first ~22 hours of gameplay, results in failure where your party just sorta gives up. It takes another ten hours before the main villains are established, a stale group of evil zealots of evil gods who just love being evil, pursuing an agenda which players can't feel meaningfully aligned against. The simplicity of the central narrative gives the impression it’s just supposed to be a foundation for a character-driven story, but the interpersonal aspect is similarly lacking. In what feels like a symptom of the game's long stay in early-access, your companions put their love and trust in you in act 1, before anyone’s had the chance to organically develop relationships or encounter life-changing struggles. Characters don’t have the time and space to have an arc, and you don’t get the chance to express yourself alongside them, you simply skip to the end for an immediate and vacuous payoff. There’s no journey here, you’re simply being presented with scenes from an adventure without actually going on one.

The same can be said for the mechanics, even when they’re lifted from the tabletop game, thanks to a design philosophy where every playstyle is thoroughly accommodated. This seems like a good strategy in a genre where players want to assert themselves, but the refusal to challenge players leaves unique approaches feeling irrelevant. Even with a party led by a Githyanki barbarian, with very little in the way of charisma, intelligence, or skill, there was never a time I couldn’t overcome a situation in an optimal way. I could pick whatever locks I wanted, disarm whatever traps I wanted, circumvent any barrier I wanted; the game never asked me to think ahead or prepare. I didn’t have to be ready with certain spells or proficiencies, it never demanded more than following a clear path. Even if it did, the cheap respecs mean that you’re a maximum of 400 gold away from having a team perfectly suited to the task at hand, and even if you don’t end up using that option, knowing that your choices are so impermanent is a detriment to any feeling of growth.

That’s the key here: growth. My characters leveled up, but I don't feel like they grew. I traveled, but I don’t feel like I went on a journey. I made choices, but I don’t feel like I went in new directions. After a fifty-hour playthrough, all I remember was that I chilled out, ran around some nice maps, and managed my inventory. I spent all that time relaxing well enough, but I didn’t overcome challenge, feel much, or learn anything. All I could confidently state that the game did for me is live up to its basic selling point, of being an adventure I could take at home, a journey where I go nowhere.

I don't think I'm going to forget this game for a very long time. If at all.

As someone who's never really played CRPGs this game was barely on my radar right up to its release. I kept forgetting what it was and innately rejecting it as something that would be too hard to get into and demand so much time that I'd never get around to finishing it. I don't remember exactly what it was that finally sold me on trying it, but once my interest was piqued I was thoroughly "in" - (honestly, might've been an interview with the Larian head in the FPS Podcast)

I want to keep this one "short" so I won't be going into much detail, but this game is insane. The fact every conversation is mocapped adds so much to the immersion, and the writing and performances are thoroughly excellent to boot. The world designs and mechanics allow for heaps of creative freedom, so much so that the previous "obvious" GOTY contender for this year has (imo) been given a run for its money. Tears of the Kingdom looked to have it on lock, in large part due to it's player freedom... I can't believe Larian came along in the same year to one-up them in this regard, but perhaps the coveted title isn't as in-the-bag as once thought. [Especially considering the slew of flaws TOTK brought with it from BOTW... hell I still haven't finished it lol]

Anyway! I adore this game, it's been forever since I got so lost that 12-15 hours could pass without me noticing, and that's what this game has been giving me almost every day for around a month now. I'm already excited to replay it and take different paths because - while I did follow every quest as far as I could without committing to conflicting ones - I know damn well there are countless hours of content, encounters and characters that I didn't see. I'm also eager to play with a controller and see how different the third person perspective is.

To include a gripe, the biggest downside of the game is either the combat being pretty brutal at times if you're not prepared or familiar with strategies that can be game-changing (protip: you can heal multiple people with splashed potions, and if you stand on fire all you have to do is drop the pot, it's free!) In spite of this, the combat was still one of my favourite parts because there's always so much you can do and once you find your method, it's amazing.

Second point: Silent protagonist.. The narrator is amazing and I love her, and the custom MC's voicelines for certain things are a nice touch, but there are some conversations that feel kinda weird having your response just be clicking the line without audio, or watching yourself pull a face instead of saying anything. Small issue that I got used to quickly but yeah, kinda weird. I wonder if playing as the Legacy characters negates this 🤔

That's it! I've rambled enough, if you're interested please give this game a shot, yes it's long but the majority of it is also optional and you could always do things the quick and easy way if you prefer. If you can't tell this is my current GOTY, which is insane because I'll have gotten a Final Fantasy, a Resident Evil and Alan Wake 2 this year (jury's still out on that last one 👀)

Hope you've all been well, quick shoutout to Paranormasight while I'm here. Idk if I'll bother reviewing but play it blind, it's really good! Have a good September folks, next review will be God knows what. I'm onto Sea of Stars and Starfield next. Thanks for reading!😌


P.S. Quick addendum I've heard people say Act 3 is bloated but I think it's just more dense and has a lot of quest conclusions and bigger encounters and all that. Also heard people say the ending is sudden but they must've gotten less satisfying ones because mine felt very well paced. The only things it didn't immediately address either aren't important or could easily be DLC follow-ups.

the games master (or dungeon master) has long been one of the most fascinating roles one can play in any game - be it video, table, or sport. a blend of one-person theatre, moderation, improvisational comedy, and game design, with the emphasis on these roles and others besides shifting from person to person, from table to table, it's a truly unique position, and it's perhaps the key thing that makes computer role-playing fundamentally different from tabletop role-playing, even if you're still playing with friends. when a game is your dungeon master, it becomes non-negotiable, unwavering, utterly fastidious, and miserly in its rule-keeping. this is not always a problem if the rules are strong enough - i'm not especially interested in playing a game of Go with a referee who's cool with me eating the opponent's pieces when they aren't looking, except maybe as a one-off - but when the rules are not strong enough, it leaves me craving the human hand of a DM who will gently massage the systems behind the scenes to ensure everyone involved is having fun. and in Fifth Edition, the rules are, assuredly, not Strong Enough.

Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons is, bluntly, a poor TTRPG that demands a level of simulationist interest that would bore a 40K player (quick question, has anyone who has ever played 5E ever gave a shit about the carry weight of currency? did you even know that the gold you're carrying around has a weight that you're supposed to manage?) as support to a tactical game that is as shallow as it is torturously prolonged, capped by a social game that is functionally nonexistent. D&D is content to coast by on its cultural ubiquity and the fact that almost all of its player base barely even really knows that other TTRPGs exist, sailing the seas of mediocrity on a boat that starts to sink if you set foot in it for more than a few minutes. it is possible to play wonderful games in D&D, but I have yet to hear of - or be part of - one that was wonderful because it was D&D - rather, they are invariably good in spite of D&D, and always require some degree of selective memory or active rejection over many of the game's outrageously numerous rules.

given this perspective, it's perhaps not surprising that i am not enormously enthused by larian studios' Baldur's Gate III, a game that attempts to faithfully adapt the 5E rules to the broad framework of the studio's last game, Divinity: Original Sin II. but even with that in mind, i find myself genuinely shocked at how unbelievably boring BG3 is.

as the soothsayers on the mount foretold would occur the instant Larian proudly announced their design intentions, marrying 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons to Divinity Original Sin 2's combat completely hamstrings the latter: the genuinely expressive and reactive toolkit of that game is filtered through a dull interpretation of the most stock spells of 5E, making this less a game of setting up a simple rube goldberg machine to defeat an encounter, and more about tediously playing out the motions of early-game dnd in a world your imagination cannot penetrate.

here's the trick to being a DM: let the players do the hard work. if they come up with a crazy scheme that you never imagined that just might work... who's to say it can't? you and the players are telling this story together, after all. if they want to say what happens next, let them. if they ask if there is a chandelier to swing on, say yes. constraining yourself to a number of set solutions you devise and hope the players find is only making the game less interesting for everyone involved. when the world exists only in your heads, it expands at the speed of thought. anything is possible.

while baldur's gate 3 is a more permissible dungeon master than some games, it remains a prisoner of the imaginations of it's designer. and this is hardly a fair critique to make of a video game, i know...except when it's playing with a ruleset explicitly designed with a lackadaisical, easygoing dungeon master in mind. damning as it might be to say, the easiest way to see the failings of 5E as a set of rules is to play by them, and BG3 offers you no choice but to do so, but without even some crucial features like Ready Actions that narrow it's tactical space even more. original sin 2 nobly wrestled with this thanks to an expansive spell set mostly based on reactions and creating situations, and one wherein you could be doing powerful things very quickly. 5E has so little of this, by comparison, especially in the miserable early levels. all you have is some of the weakest tactical combat in table gaming. and explosive red barrels, of course.

the designers are clearly aware of the reduced capability for the player to interact with the environment, and have accordingly given most major encounters one big object to interact with and defeat enemies with, be it one of the aforementioned red barrels, or a giant rock suspended by a rope above where two men are standing, etcetera. this is, definitionally, reactivity in action, i suppose, but is about as intellectually engaging as putting square pegs in square holes: there's a reason we don't hold a party for every first-person shooter with an explosive barrel in it, why are we holding a party for this one?

it certainly can't be the early-game writing. while certainly I'm gratified that BG3 is less outwardly annoying and in-poor-taste as Divinity 2's edgelord parade, it's seemingly forgotten to replace it with much of anything. BG3's player character must surely be one of the most boring in the entire genre, with nary a hint of personality escaping their suffocatingly matter-of-fact dialogue options, that only on occasion dare to be so bold as to allow the player to be...slightly rude or sarcastic. there's never going to be a CRPG that allows for as much reactivity and input as a dungeon master of flesh and blood, but even within those expectations, BG3 falls utterly flat. so much of the appeal of this genre, to me, is in creating a guy that you can rotate around in your head. but baldur's gate 3 is the kind of DM that is only interested in a PC for the Numbers on their character sheet: the actual Character of the Player Character ceases to be once you complete their creation, and let them loose from your imagination into the confining reality of BG3's world.

(incidentally, BG3 joins CyberPunk 2077 in the prestigious world of 'Games With Character Creators That Give Me Chaser Vibes' with their insistence on embodying transness exclusively via mixing-and-matching voice and genitals on a series of binary traditionally attractive male or female body types. i genuinely appreciate the ability to play as a non-binary character: i don't appreciate the unavoidably fetishistic nature of prioritizing genital customization over any actual input on everyday trans presentation, like binders, top surgery, or even an androgynous voice or two)

with only a solid day's of gameplay under my belt, i can't in good conscience claim to have the full scope of the game's companions, i can at least say that the first impressions they make fall within tiresome cliches we've all had our fill of, i think. or have we? have you?

this is my conundrum with baldur's gate 3. i truly do not think the game is remarkable in any meaningful way: it is not awful but it is a very bog-standard CRPG with a little more messing with the set dressing than is typical for the genre. it is narratively, and mechanically, rote. i have only spent a few hours with it, and already, i am tired of it. just as i am tired of dungeons & dragons.

but maybe you aren't. maybe you haven't played baldur's gate 1 or 2, maybe you haven't played darklands or torment, maybe you haven't played arcanum or underrail. maybe you haven't played pillars of eternity or tyranny. maybe you're someone who got into D&D via Critical Role's explosion, someone who has never played a CRPG quite like this before, and are being introduced to an entire sub-genre with the first true 5E-based CRPG. maybe you still think jokes about Bards fucking Dragons are really funny. i say this with true sincerity (well, maybe not the last one, which was a little mean, and for which i apologize): i am genuinely delighted, on some level, to see a CRPG get this popular. while i truly cannot explain the swathes of industry veterans giving into astonishment on a scale undreamed of with this game, i also know that d&d is much, much bigger than it was when i was first enthralled by dragon age: origins, a game with a similarly rote plot, and still captured by heart and imagination, and that if this is your introduction to the magic of CRPGs, i can see why you give into astonishment. because crpgs can be astonishing.

but i would like for it, and D&D as a whole, to remain an introduction, to not consume the entire conception of the hobby, as D&D has. i am sincerely and genuinely disappointed with the total lack of apprehension the wider critical scene of games has for BG3, given its connection to Wizards of the Coast, a deeply evil company that, just today, admitted to using AI art in the latest D&D sourcebook. i am uninterested in contributing to the breathless hype of an IP owned by a company uninterested in the basic humanity of art and it's creation. not when there are so many other games out there.

you can stay in plato's cave, for a while. you can stay there forever if you want, dungeon crawling up and down the sword coast. but you can also leave that cave, and come into my other cave, slightly next door, where i can tell you about blades in the dark and pentiment. they're really very very cool.

as for me? i turned the game off when i reached a point whereupon, after noticing an obvious trap, i snuck around the skeletons lying in wait to attack and reached the treasure...whereupon the treasure chest spoke to me and told me to fuck off until i had killed the skeletons. fuck off, BG3. why should i bother trying to navigate your encounters creatively when you're going to just say that it doesn't work like that? I've played with dungeon masters like this before, and they aren't good ones. they're the kind of ones who wonder why they can't seem to hold a group together for more than a couple of sessions.

maybe i'll return to BG3, but if i do, it'll only be in multiplayer. with friends, and possibly a drink or two. but if me and three friends are committing to a possible 120-hour RPG...why not just take it a little bit further and just play some actual Tabletop? Why not play something that isn't Dungeons & Dragons? Why not play with a dungeon master that won't be such a spoilsport?

I could talk about the almost frightening freedom.
I could talk about the way he's reactive to the point of blowing your mind.
I couk talk about the roleplay, combat system and the masterful game design.
And I could talk about the amazing exploration and the unparalled sense of adventure.

(I could even talk about act 3 which is almost broken, sorry guys, just telling the truth )

But you know what?
Forget all this. The game Isn't awesome because of all that.

Above all else, Baldur's Gate 3 is the fruit of the passion and love of an entire team that has dedicated body and soul to successifully capture the magic of video games. A milestone that deserves to be celebrated for years to come. Thank you, Larian.