Steam review code provided by Larian Studios
Baldur's Gate 3 is an insanely large RPG game published and developed by Larian Studios. After almost 20 years of passing and 6 years of development, we finally have another sequel in the Baldur’s Gate series. This game came promising a lot, almost too much to accept from modern gaming with the recent wave of disappointments from AAA teams. Let’s see if the expectations were met for this game!
Story
Just after Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus and many, many years after the events of Baldur’s Gate: Shadows of Amn the forces of darkness are rising again. Awakening as a captive of the Mind Flayers, you are implanted with a tadpole, a parasite. In due time, the tadpole will enthrall you and transform you into a Mind Flayer yourself. But before the transformation can be complete the Nautilus ship becomes under siege from Githyanki warriors and their dragons. The ship is brought down and you and the others with the parasite all survive, but for what reason?
After a not-so-smooth ride, you encounter the others from the ship and prepare a party of adventurers all seeking the same thing. To rid your mind of the tadpole. On your journey across Faerûn to seek out a powerful cleric to rid you of this parasite, you will meet others that have unfortunately succumbed to the same fate. Finding yourselves with telepathic abilities and a surprisingly slow cere-morphosis, you still better not waste any time.
While this may be the main quest, you will find yourself lost in a sea of whatever you want. There are side quests-o-plenty whether that be stealing a sacred Idol or rescuing a Duke, there is no telling where your story may go. If adventuring is not your thing, and you simply want to remove the parasite, you may also find yourself in a romantic relationship by the end of it. The story truly is a D&D campaign so whatever you and your party decide will be. It feels like there’s a crazy amount of story to uncover because it’s a roleplaying game you get to choose your own adventure.
Gameplay
Baldur’s Gate 3 has some of the most unique gameplay that I’ve ever played in a video game, only really being explored by other titles from Larian Studios like Divinity: Original Sin. Now unique doesn’t always mean fun, but in this case, it does! When you first start the game it puts you into a cutscene setting up the story then you quickly get to create your character. I could spend hours talking about this alone, there is so much to character creation that you might just get lost. There are 11 different races along with 12 different classes. I’m no mathematician but I’m pretty sure there are more than a ton of possibilities there because even within the 11 different races some races have sub-races and it does change things, whether it be abilities or how you’re perceived in the game.
The gameplay is simple to learn but complex to master. It is a tabletop RPG if it were a video game, you'd click where you want to move and you'd move there. When you get into combat everyone rolls for initiative and that determines the play order and then the strategy part comes in. You have your party of up to four people who all will play their own role in battle. Each turn you can move, and depending on your character you made decides how far you can move. You can take an action, this could be anything from attacking to stabilizing a downed companion. Then you can take a bonus action, like heal or if you’re a rogue you can take a cunning action to hide or disengage. Then for spells and attacks, they have damage rolls, if you hit an enemy there is a dice rolled which will determine the damage you deal making it a more random but action-packed battle.
Throughout the game, you will meet plenty of characters, and conversations with characters will change depending again on the character you made or if you’re playing as one of the Origin characters. Certain classes get exclusive dialog options, and the same with races. Making each play through unique! For certain conversation points, for example, if you’re trying to diffuse a fight, you will need to make a dice roll to determine whether you were successful or not, adding bonuses to that roll to hopefully get it higher than the Difficulty Class (DC).
Audio and Visual
I’ve posted a bunch of articles already about the voice-acting crew. There’s a ton of talent and a ton of characters, even the characters that I haven’t credited are phenomenal. You know the main three villains, but the small characters have such great potential too. All the voice actors had to put so much work into this because there are so many dialog options it seems like they planned for every single situation imaginable.
The detail in the graphics is near perfect as well, the character creation is enough I feel that I can see every pore and strand of hair on the character. Then there’s the minimap that looks like an actual tabletop map which is super creative. But that’s not even the least, the environment is huge! The cities are alive, the wilderness is massive, there’s so much to say, it’s beautiful.
Replayability
17,000. That’s all I need to say. There are 17,000 possible different endings. Of course that doesn’t mean individual ways the story ends, it’s just 17,000 different variations of how the game could end for you. Whether it actually be a different ending or if it’s just because of the group of characters you have with you and how they react. Leaving the endings out of it, making another character, and playing through and just experiencing it again is wild. I played a solo game as a Warlock and I’m playing a multiplayer game as a Bard and they are wildly different experiences.
What It Could Have Done Better
I have been struggling to put something together for this section. Instead of trying to find some tiny minute detail that the game could fix, I want to highlight the breath of fresh air that Larian Studios put forward. The game had been in early access for quite some time and you can really feel the work that was put into this game. Being a full game at release with no detrimental bugs that make it unplayable until the first patch releases. For that, I think Larian deserves a big thank you.
Verdict
Baldur’s Gate 3 deserves every bit of praise that it’s receiving! The team at Larian really put their heart into this game. The mechanics are so unique and the customization options you can get really make every version of the game so personal. I have multiple play-throughs going on and I expect there to be more because I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of content. In terms of bang for your buck this game is a 1000% recommend. It’s so refreshing to have a game bring such high expectations and really live up to them, great job Larian.
