Review: Baldur’s Gate 3 — A Crowning Achievement for Video Games
2023 has been a great year for video gaming, with a staggering amount of not just good, but incredible games. However, out of all the masterpieces that have released this year, there is one particular outlier that has especially been making waves, and that is Baldur’s Gate 3 by Larian Studios. I am not familiar with the previous two games aside from knowing they exist, and I am not particularly knowledgeable about the Dungeons & Dragons universe that it is based off of, but I am very familiar with Larian Studios’ work; the Divinity: Original Sin titles (both 1 and 2) are some of my favorite video games ever, so I was very hyped to play another CRPG that features Larian’s signature recipe for creating incredible sandboxes that reward out-of-the-box thinking. Needless to say, the hype is well and truly deserved, as Baldur’s Gate 3 is probably my favorite game this year so far (which is impressive considering how tough the competition is), and probably one of my favorite games of all time.
Baldur’s Gate 3 takes place in the same universe as the first two games, roughly a century or so after the events of the second game. However, playing the first two games is not actually required to understand the narrative and the central characters. There are easter eggs and references, and those familiar with the universe will have more background knowledge on the different races that inhabit the world, but the game makes no assumptions that the player will have any pre-existing knowledge. The premise follows the player (who can be a custom-made character or a pre-made origin character) as they are captured on a Illithid (mind flayer) ship and are forcibly given a mind tadpole. The story starts out with the goal of curing that particular affliction, but in classic RPG fashion, eventually expands greatly in scope as the narrative progresses.
Gameplay:
The best way to describe Baldur’s Gate 3 gameplay is basically Divinity: Original Sin but with dice. The heavy usage of dice comes from its inspiration from the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop games which are originally dice-based. Dice rolls are used in basically everything, from combat mechanics like attacking/dodging to skill checks in dialogue or lockpicking chests and doors. I am normally not super crazy about using dice rolls to influence outcomes since I generally do not like having luck influence things that happen in a game, but dice rolls can be influenced via outside factors, and if a roll goes south there’s nothing stopping a save-scum reload. Outside of the dice, the gameplay is very reminiscent of the Divinity: Original Sin games, featuring turn-based combat and sandbox-y elements. One of the biggest strengths of the Divinity games were how they gave a ton of freedom to the player to basically exploit the system, and often heavily rewarded players for thinking outside of the box, and Baldur’s Gate 3 keeps that exact same nature. Entering dialogue with someone expecting a combat encounter? Position the rest of the squad into advantageous positions and pre-cast buffs to maximize chances of prevailing, and that is just the bare minimum. Abuse the terrain; if an opportunity to shove someone off a cliff presents itself feel free to do so for an easy kill (albeit at the cost of looting their corpse), and that is just but one example of the crazy things that can be done in the game.
The RPG-side of the game in character progression also offers a lot of freedom; there are plenty of classes and sub-classes to specialize characters into, and there is an NPC at camp that allows for unlimited re-specs at the cheap price of only 100 gold, so there’s a lot of freedom for experimentation. While there is plenty of freedom to choose how to exactly progress a specific character, I did not find the system to be particularly overwhelming, and on standard difficulty levels, the game is not hard enough to require a Ph.D. understanding of the class/sub-class mechanics. I also liked how the gear system was changed from Divinity: Original Sin 2 (the last game Larian Studios made), where weapons and armor are not rendered obsolete very quickly with level ups, so good gear can last quite a while, and that makes the reward of finding a rare new weapon or armor piece that much more satisfying.
I think the gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 3 is borderline perfect, but I do have a few minor gripes with it. One, I think the inventory management UI can use some improvement, as it is annoying to manage inventories of my companions. The game by default only allows up to four party members in a squad (three if excluding the player character), and one can only access the inventories of whoever is currently in the party. If I wanted something from a companion that was not currently in my party, I would have to dismiss one of my companions back to camp, recruit that companion to be able to access their items, as opposed to just being able to look at all my companions’ inventories. My other gripe is that party members sometimes have issues with pathing or following the lead character, especially when jumping is involved; sometimes I can jump to another section of the map but my companions will not always follow, which forces me to manually take control of them to get them where I want them to be. Fairly minor gripes in the grand scheme of things, but they do get a bit tedious to deal with over the course of a game that can easily stretch past 50 hours.
Writing:
The gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 3 alone is probably sufficient to mark it as a banger of a release, but it is the writing that places it above its peers. The combat encounters, puzzle solving, and wacky game interactions make for an engaging gameplay loop, but the narrative and characters are ultimately what kept me drawn in. The main companions are all compellingly written; all share the same immediate goal to get rid of the tadpoles in their heads before turning into mind flayers, but their wildly different backgrounds, personalities, and personal quests are all engaging (and backed by a stellar voice cast), which made me pretty disappointed that I was only allowed to bring up to three other companions at any given moment (I know a popular mod exists to expand the party size limit, which I plan on taking advantage of the next time I decide to run through the game). The best part is that the game integrates their stories/personalities well into gameplay, and its through player actions that ultimately determine their relationship with the player; companions will often either approve or disapprove of the player’s actions in a way that is consistent with their personalities (e.g. Karlach likes it whenever actions of kindness are performed, and Lae’zel despises anything that can be interpreted as showing weakness/mercy). A lot of times, player decisions can also have long-lasting consequences on the narrative; the game offers incredible freedom to play however one wishes, but if one decides to be a massive dickhead the companions will often react appropriately. This is actually where I think the game truly shines; the sheer freedom to play an adventure any way possible is all there, but there are consequences for decisions. Sure, one can be evil and malicious, but the game will absolutely make the player feel the ramifications of their actions; there were a couple of points in the game where I saved and tried going the asshole route, and the game did an excellent job of driving home the guilt I felt after seeing the choices play out.
My main complaint with the writing is probably the pacing of the narrative, especially in the final act of the game. Act 3 is the final act of the game, but unfortunately it is also the same act where most companion questlines resolve, along with a ton of extra side content. While I am never one to complain about additional content (especially quality content), condensing the main story, companion quests, and other side content all into a single act really throws off the pacing of the narrative. Without going into spoilers, Act 3 is supposed to be a time of urgency to solve the big story problems due to events in Act 2, but given the sheer amount of content to do it kind of throws the pacing out of whack. It probably would have been better to split the main story components into two separate acts as well as some of the companion questlines. I was also somewhat surprised at the ending as there were no “epilogues” summarizing the post-story events of the different characters of the world, that was present in Divinity: Original Sin 2, which would have felt like a nice way to cap off the long journey, so in some ways the ending can feel slightly abrupt. Overall, the writing is still awesome, and I do plan on revisiting the game for another run to experience more of the companions that I was not able to dedicate a ton of time to the first time around due to party size constraints.
Ending/Misc. Thoughts:
For the most part, Baldur’s Gate 3 is also a very polished game. The game looks gorgeous and runs well on both my desktop and laptop, and considering the sheer amount of potential mechanics and their possible interactions with each other, the game is surprisingly very good on the bug side. The only major bugs I could really point out are the pathing bugs I mentioned in the gameplay section, a couple of bugs with companion romances that made my companions a little more flirty with me than they were supposed to be (which frankly made for rather hilarious interactions), and a few minor quest bugs in Act 3. The polish does fall off a tad in the last act and with a few of the post-release updates seemed to indicate a slightly rushed release, but for the most part I did not encounter anything super game-breaking by the time I reached that point of the game. Larian Studios is also continuing to release patches to improve the performance of the game, and I hope they will eventually release a “definitive” edition like they have done for the Divinity: Original Sin titles. I also wanted to give a short shout-out to the game’s soundtrack, which is composed by Borislav Slavov (the same person behind Divinity: Original Sin 2’s soundtrack). All of the major themes sound amazing, and there are a few standout tracks that I found myself addicted to listening to.
Overall, Baldur’s Gate 3 is nothing short of a masterpiece, regardless of one’s prior experience with the series (or lack thereof), and I am eagerly keeping my eye on its future development as I am very excited to play it again, which is very impressive considering it took me over 70 hours just to clear through it the first time. Unless I end up being surprised by anything released towards the end of the year, I think it is a pretty easy lock for my choice of 2023, despite the incredible year it has been.
Rating: This game is one of the best games I have played in recent history. It is easily worth its retail price tag and them some.
