Once again, I’m trying to get into the habit of updating the site and doing reviews. Often, I’ll write down most of my thoughts on games I’m playing and take lots of screenshots, but I never actually do anything with them. This is me trying to put a stop to that! And what better way to kick off the reviews than with the big game everyone’s playing, Baldurs Gate 3. I was continually impressed at how it repeatedly went beyond my expectations and found new ways to shock and delight until the very end. Not too long ago I played through the entire Dragon Age trilogy, and I would have never thought we’d get what’s essentially a spiritual successor to Dragon Age Origins, one which in many ways surpasses it.
I’m getting this out of the way first because it’s the thing I want to talk the least about. The story is very good, and it’s worth just experiencing for yourself. It really digs into a lot of interesting and weird sides of D&D that I (and I’m sure many others) didn’t know existed. It also got me to really care about the world and even to some degree the lore, which especially surprised me. While the main objective of “remove the tadpole” is ever present, the actual current goal changes quite a bit. Each act almost feels like it could be its own game, each one with a totally different objective and tone, and each one fantastic. The story never stagnates, and is always throwing crazy wrenches in the works, and if you decide you want to side with the evil bad guy, you usually can.
Picking back up on the Bioware comparisons, the companion’s function just like Mass Effect or Dragon age. Something that’s missing however is a “weak link”. There was no Jacob equivalent, and I really liked every companion. Each one is unique and very well written. I’d be amiss if I didn’t mention that you can actually play the entire game as one of these “origin characters”; Which, Is way more fleshed out than id imagined. Theres a lot of unique dialogue for playing as that character, and you’ll get to see sides of the character and their story you wouldn’t otherwise. An example I encountered; I took control of Shadowheart to have her interact with something in a completely optional hidden location. Not only did she have special options and dialogue for it since it had to do with her backstory, but it was different because of something that had happened during the main story (which could also have not happened). Really opened my eyes to how interesting playing the whole game as one of these origin characters could be.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of turn based games. I can enjoy almost any kind of game, but turn based isn’t exactly my forte. So, I think it says a lot that I adore the combat in BG3. By the end of my 70ish hours of playing, I was still loving it and considered immediately playing it again. I think this is the case for a few different reasons. One is that D&D combat is just inherently pretty fun. I realized the few times I played D&D that I had enjoyed combat, but the problem was just the agonizingly slow pace. Having to manually crunch a million numbers and measure everything is a chore, especially since many of us were new and didn’t know how it all works by heart. Being able to take your turn in less than a minute and immediately see the effect is immensely satisfying (This is aided by some great sound and visuals, but I’ll touch more on that later). And like the tabletop there’s tons of different attacks, spells, items, potions, scrolls, and other mechanics to keep it fresh. There’s a huge variety of different ways to tackle fights, and I feel like I didn’t even touch half of them. Of course, none of this would matter if the game didn’t have some great encounter design. I never had a DA:O encounter where the game said “haha here’s 36 wolves in a hallway”. Pretty much every fight feels very different, and when I’d have some huge encounter with a bunch of enemies, I didn’t feel discouraged or exhausted (like in DA:O), but instead excited to think of how I’d overcome the challenge. The game also utilizes a big element of Divinity Original Sin 2, which is the emphasis on the elements. Coat the floor in ice so the enemies slip, then melt the ice to electrocute the water. The opportunities for tense epic battles and wacky shenanigans are endless.
The other major aspect the game gets right is the way the gameplay reflects what your character is supposed to be, or the class fantasy. For example, the fantasy/concept of playing a bard involves fooling people, spinning tall tales, manipulating people, and influencing them through the power of song. This is reflected not only in the dialogue and skill checks, but also the combat. As a bard I’d play a song on my violin to hypnotize an entire room of bandits, or make a boss dance uncontrollably. Every action you take in the game has a great flavor to it.
It’s incredible seeing these well voice acted and written Bioware style conversations and cutscenes, but with the number of choices and roleplaying opportunities of an older crpg. The amount of skill checks is staggering, and you’re constantly getting special dialogue options for your class, and sometimes even race. I convinced 3 different bosses to kill themselves (one way or another), and I was constantly fooling people by overselling myself or convincing them of something ludicrous. Of course, a lot of this is because of being a bard, and while there’s a lot of bard dialogue choices, there’s sometimes even options for being a certain type of bard; such as choosing to compliment someone’s lute playing or insult it. Most other classes will have similar opportunities. Your character is also mostly silent, outside of little confirmation lines while exploring. HOWEVER, they make many silly faces, which amuses me to no end, and helps make conversations less awkward.
Just to round everything out I’ll talk a bit about the presentation. The fact that BG3 retains this level of fidelity and detail while still having all these crazy dynamic systems is incredible, and of course the animation work and designs are superb. The game also has a great sense of scale, especially when you’re actually in Baldurs Gate proper. To compliment the visuals, the soundtrack is ridiculous, there’s around 5 original songs with lyrics, which actually play in game, and each one is fantastic. Some of the best music in the game is in completely optional encounters/boss battles. Of course, I highly recommend you don’t listen to any of the soundtrack until you’ve beaten the game. It’s a real treat hearing these tracks for the first time in game, and you wouldn’t want to spoil it. It also consistently does this really cool thing where you'll hear the same song throughout the game, but performed differently with a different context (Such as hearing a song played purely with instruments, with lyrics, or by a choir).
To come somewhat full circle, the great presentation really aids in the feel of the combat. As an example, there are 5 instruments for the bard. Bards cast spells using their instrument. This means, for all 5 instruments, there are 2 different casting animations, and a slew of different sound effects depending on the type of spell cast. And this kind of thing isn’t exclusive to bard, there’s a lot of unique animations, sounds, and visuals depending on the class played. For classes like the monk, all the spells are even renamed to be more monk-y (haha monkey). BG3 manages to nail everything visually from big picture stuff to the little details.
Honestly after writing all this, I don’t think BG3 was the best choice for my first full review, since there’s so much to talk about, and as you can see I haven’t exactly mastered my formatting and writing yet. Hopefully I got my point across, that being the game is damn near a masterpiece, and I highly recommend it if you like video games at all. I’m of the opinion most games aren’t truly worth their 60-dollar price tag, but I have to say that I think Baldurs Gate 3 actually deserves it, for both quality and quantity. As a bonus, if Larian follows the release pattern of their previous 2 games, we will most likely get some hefty content updates, possibly adding cut content (but that’s pure speculation).
Thanks to anyone who actually read all this; and look forward to more (hopefully better) ramblings in the near future! I’m not sure if all reviews will be this segmented, but it’ll probably depend on the games size. These reviews will also usually contain more images, but seeing as I had so much to say and the visuals weren’t terribly important to get my point across, I omitted them. Very boring, I know! As a reward for reading all this, here’s some png, just for you! Some of the silly faces my character made (couldn’t capture the silliest like I wanted), and a very tasty looking mushroom (my head canon is that it tastes like that lemon jelly donut filling).
