Baldur’s Gate 3 is everything a Dungeons and Dragons game should be. Rich storytelling combines with clever and creative combat to cast one heck of a charm spell. Stunning visuals and voice acting immerse you in a world where your choices open thousands of possible doors. This is the best a D&D game has felt in decades, and it’s one of the best-looking CRPGs there is (insert joke about critical hit here).
Developed and published by Divinity’s Larian Studios, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a roleplaying game that uses the setting and mechanics of D&D, the world’s oldest tabletop RPG. Despite being a licensed game and the third title in a series, there are no barriers to entry with Baldur’s Gate 3. Everything you need to know about how to play Dungeons and Dragons is explained with ease, and the story isn’t a direct sequel to Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2.
Before we jump in proper, bear in mind this is a review in progress. Even 50 hours with this game isn’t enough to see it all the way to its (one of many) endings. I’ve not yet explored every corner of Baldur’s Gate, and I’ll be returning to give a fuller verdict at a later date.
Baldur’s Gate 3 begins with your player-character escaping a DnD Mind Flayer ship – though not totally unscathed, as the Illithid have inserted a potentially lethal, potentially world-ending tadpole in your brain. That’s pretty much the only part of the game set in stone – everything else is up to you.
The character creator isn’t the most advanced we’ve ever seen, but you can still customize everything from your eye color to your genitals. Your choice of Baldur’s Gate 3 classes and Baldur’s Gate 3 companions can totally change how you approach the tadpole situation.
If you want to lean into your new, tentacled future, you can start leveling up in a dedicated skill tree that gives you interesting new Illithid powers (which increase in cool-ness, but presumably with increasing costs to your mind and body).
If you decide you hate this little thing in your head, you’ve got multiple avenues to explore for removing it. This leads you to a range of locations, filled with healers and helpers of varying skill levels and moral codes. Bear in mind your travelling companions all have their own thoughts and feelings on your choices, which may affect who journeys with you to the end (or offers you the cheeky smooch you’re after).
Even if you turn away from temptation, you’ll still be rewarded with goodies pretty much every time you level up. Each of the game’s classes has a unique list of features to pick up as they progress from levels one to 12, meaning you’ll grow in power – and combat becomes even more satisfying to play out.
The 12 different classes cover a range of playstyle and complexity preferences. Spellcasting classes get plenty more customization options, while martial classes like the Fighter and Barbarian are simpler to pick up (hit hard, do tasty levels of damage).
These days, it feels like every videogame promises a world where your choices matter – with varying degrees of success. But in Baldur’s Gate 3, the pipe dream is real. This is a world of grand adventure where the fates of the smallest creatures and the universe itself are in your hands. So far, we’ve helped everyone from local rats to grand lords with their problems.
A bare-bones playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3 is meant to take up to 100 hours, and Larian has promised 17,000 possible endings. Often when you hear about games that’ll take years to finish, you wonder how much of this will be mundane fetch quests and extra fabric that could have been trimmed.
So far, none of the content in Baldur’s Gate 3 feels like padding. I enjoy slow moments where I follow a small story trail away from my main quest. Even when there isn’t an interesting bit of loot to bag, the story itself leaves you feeling rewarded.
Excellent writing extends from the smallest pieces of environmental storytelling to the major quests themselves. Baldur’s Gate 3 has multiple high-stakes storylines to juggle at one time, and it does so with a flourish. Most characters you meet feel they really matter. Plus, Larian throws iconic and unique DnD monsters at you from the get-go, proving that a fantasy setting from the 70s doesn’t have to feel stale.
Combine this with highly interactive environments and the huge range of abilities your Baldur’s Gate 3 party can adopt, and you’ve got varied and strategic combat encounters every time.
The fights can get pretty challenging (especially if you waltz into an area you’re not adequately leveled for). But the turn-based combat gives you plenty of time to mull over your moves. The balance of luck and strategy offered in every scenario means there’s no love lost by replaying a fight a few times. Maybe this time you’ll shoot a fire barrel beside your foe, or you’ll send your Rogue up high for advantage on their sneak attack.
It’s not all fighting fantasy, though. When you’re not dabbling in swords and sorcery, Baldur’s Gate 3 offers puzzles to unravel which require real-life brain power as opposed to a high skill roll. They’re fairly spaced out and never too challenging – and for anyone who maybe doesn’t love the puzzle part of an RPG, they’re not going to stop you progressing with important quests.
Then there’s the character romances to pursue (those custom genitals might come in handy soon). I’ve not had time to court every member of my party yet, but I’ve already had a few highly entertaining dialogue scenes – whether I’m being rejected or accepted. Astarion may find me repulsive on this playthrough, but that’s just as fun to roleplay as when he’s smitten.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has spent three years in Early Access, slowly feeding more content to the community. As well as adding a final class and more Baldur’s Gate 3 races to DnD character creation and filling out the story, Larian has done plenty of fine-tuning.
Familiar battles are more balanced in the final version, and new skill trees and story beats flesh out the early game. We also finally get to find out who that mysterious second character we make at the start of the game is.
It’s nice to see a game this large and this significant given room to breathe. Every gradual update has further polished the experience, meaning this version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is more approachable, more in-depth, and more fun than ever before.
The tutorials are more in-depth than I remember them being three years ago, and boss fights are less easy to cheese. And with all the added cutscenes and dialogue options during downtime, there rarely feels like wasted space as you play.
And there’s plenty worth seeing beyond the first act of Early Access. I’m reluctant to spoil anything I’ve seen so far, and I definitely haven’t seen everything this game has to offer – even after 50 hours of adventuring. But what I have seen sparkles. It’s not long before you’re out of bog-standard goblin camps and encountering some of iconic DnD settings and characters.
It’s a long road to Baldur’s Gate, but I’m reluctant to say more. For me, the real magic was the surprise of seeing unique new things or beloved callbacks. And to make sure you have the same experience, you’ll need to go in as spoiler-free as possible.
Baldur’s Gate 3 ticks every box for D&D fans. Its world will win the heart of longtime d20-rollers, and it expertly tinkers with the rules of fifth edition to welcome newcomers into the fold. DnD owner Hasbro thinks BG3 will pull in more cash than its last decade of movie releases combined, and – if it realises its power as a gateway to the tabletop RPG – we can totally believe it.
Play it, and play it again. Play it alone, and then play it multiplayer with your friends. The tadpoles command it.
Source: Wargamer
