Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Genre: CRPG, RPG, Isometric, Turn-Based, Narrative, Dungeons & Dragons

CRPGs used to be the king of the PC platform before online MOBAs and shooters started to dominate the gaming landscape. The genre has since faded into obscurity in the last decade or so, with several exceptions, of course. One of the developers still championing the genre and holding the fort is Larian Studios, who blew everyone away with their Divinity Original Sin games. With the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, can they almost single-handedly bring back the genre into the modern age? That’s not an easy question to answer and perhaps there are no right answers, just like how there’s no ‘right’ way to play Baldur’s Gate 3, and therein lies the best thing about the game.

I won’t rehash what other earlier reviews have already said about Baldur’s Gate 3, but after spending more than 70 hours, this review contains my genuine thoughts about the game.

A Mighty Odyssey

Essentially, Baldur’s Gate 3 is literally an entire Dungeons & Dragons campaign contained within a single game, or maybe thousands of potential campaigns at that. Ever since the dawn of video games, many developers through the ages have claimed and boasted that their games have freedom, or that no playthrough is ever the same. However, those are usually buzzwords intended for marketing and promotion, and it’s rarely the case they are (with rare exceptions). Amazingly, Larian Studios have achieved just that with Baldur’s Gate 3. Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 reminds me of the same way I felt when I played the Mass Effect franchise or The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim or The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt for the first time years ago. The feeling I’m referring to is of being so immersed in a game (its world, narrative, characters, etc.) that you feel the real world melt away when you play the game. That level of immersion is rare even in some of the best games ever made, so when a game that does make you feel that comes along once in a blue moon, all I can say is that it’s pure magic.

I won’t waste your time recounting the premise of Baldur’s Gate 3 (you can get that by watching the trailers or if you’ve already read any earlier reviews). That being said, I want to praise the sheer number of possible story permutations, choices and events. There are so many possible permutations that I don’t think it’s possible to fully experience every single little thing that the game has to offer, at least not without spending literally hundreds of hours and many playthroughs. The branching pathways and different choices mean that it’s highly unlikely, maybe even impossible, that any two players of the game will have the exact same experience. That’s not even mentioning the wide range of races and classes you can choose from, all of which will affect the narrative and how NPCs react to you. For instance, in my playthrough, I chose to play as a Githyanki because I was fascinated by the background history of their race, and I was surprised when the race turned out to be one of the few races who are actually sort of integral to the narrative (I won’t spoil any details).

Bad Dice

With all that being said, Baldur’s Gate 3 is not perfect and still has its flaws. Since Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on Dungeons & Dragons, it’s no surprise that it will have mechanics from the iconic tabletop game. That’s mostly what makes Baldur’s Gate 3 different from other similar RPGs. Almost everything depends on the roll of the dice, including combat and dialogue options. Sometimes the dice check (DC as they’re referred to in-game) or dice rolls are automatically done from behind the scenes (when in combat), but sometimes it’s an actual mechanic that you have to manually roll a D20 dice (when in conversations).

This is where my opinion might differ from the more general consensus, or many might just agree with me. In the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, dice rolls make playing the game more exciting as it offers a sense of unpredictability and even opportunity. It’s what makes Dungeons & Dragons, well, Dungeons & Dragons. However, the mechanic doesn’t necessarily work as well in an actual video game like Baldur’s Gate 3, or maybe it can work if it’s not applied to almost everything. In other RPGs, lockpicking usually depends on whether you have the skill or a high enough stat to perform it. In Baldur’s Gate 3, every time you perform lockpicking, you have to go through an entire D20 dice roll animation. Yes, you can skip it by clicking it, but if it fails, most people will likely just reload a save and retry it. When you end up having to reload several times just to make sure your lockpicking is successful, it’s very annoying and frustrating, especially since lockpicking is something you’ll be doing a lot in Baldur’s Gate 3 no matter what class you chose.

What makes the dice rolls annoying is that these are the things or actions that you can simply just do in other RPGs if you simply have the ability or skill or item to do so. You’re given the option to do something or perform an action because you have the required ability or skill or item. In Baldur’s Gate 3, it doesn’t matter if you already have those. For instance, I already have a lockpicking tool but I still have to go through a dice roll every single time. I’d understand if my class isn’t suited to lockpicking. I’ll just have to use one of my other party members whose classes are more inclined towards lockpicking, but then, I’d still have to go through dice rolls. On the bright side, Baldur’s Gate 3 allows players to save at any point during a conversation, even right before a dice roll. That makes me feel like the developers anticipated that having so many dice rolls would force players to save scum.

My main point is this; Baldur’s Gate 3 dangles its most interesting options before you like a carrot in front of a donkey, then denies them to you based on random luck. It sucks when you miss out on certain content in the game just because of a bad dice roll, which itself is based on random luck. Sure, it may seem foolish that I’m criticizing a core Dungeons & Dragons mechanic in a game that’s based on Dungeons & Dragons but there’s no reason that they couldn’t have made the dice rolls more dependent on something other than what feels like random luck.

Fortunately, the turn-based combat in Baldur’s Gate 3 is based on an invisible dice roll system, but it’s not as prevalent. Sometimes it’s still annoying that your attacks or spells can miss just because of a dice roll or despite a 90 percent chance, but it’s not so different from the punishing RNG systems of games like XCOM. I ended up occasionally lowering my difficulty to Explorer while playing Baldur’s Gate 3 because I chose to focus on the story and narrative. And trust me, even at Explorer difficulty, Baldur’s Gate 3 is harder than you’d expect a game like this would be. Enemies still hit hard and it’s still easy to die. You’re not meant to play Baldur’s Gate 3 like a traditional combat-focused RPG and that was my mistake early on, especially since I was still grappling with the mechanics of combat in the game, which were confusing to someone like me (who was not familiar with Dungeons & Dragons system for magical spells and such). For instance, in one combat encounter, I turned myself invisible and sneaked to kill the leader of a group of enemies, which automatically meant I didn’t have to fight through a whole horde of weaker enemies.

Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 like a normal RPG made it feel tedious. I had no idea what spell slots are or what cantrip spells are. It was only after I understood how combat works that things finally start clicking into place and made them more enjoyable. Even after spending hours in the game and finally understanding more of the game’s Dungeons & Dragons mechanics, combat still isn’t easy. It feels like the Explorer difficulty really should have been the default Normal difficulty. The developer should consider adding an even easier difficulty for those who really just want to exclusively focus on the story instead of having to delve into deep combat mechanics. Due to a lot of the reasons I mentioned above, it all feels like artificial difficulty making the game harder than it’s supposed to be, especially when all you want to do is to enjoy the game’s narrative and role-playing elements.

Don’t get me wrong. When the combat does eventually open up later in the game and once your party gains several levels, it starts becoming fun. Suddenly, I look forward to combat situations even though I dreaded them in the early game. Still, to reach a level where the combat started becoming enjoyable and satisfying will take at least the entirety of Act 1 and halfway through Act 2, which was already around 40 hours or so into the game. Despite its flaws, it’s important that I make it clear that Baldur’s Gate 3 only gets better and better the deeper that you get into the game. The game just keeps opening up and your previous choices will carry over from Act to Act, which kept me going. I struggled through Acts 1 and 2, but near the end of Act 2 and the beginning of Act 3 was when I hit my stride.

Last but not least, Baldur’s Gate 3 is surprisingly both polished and unpolished in almost equal measure. On one hand, it’s impressive how everything comes together from Act to Act; all the choices, characters and decisions that you make. The game also never crashed for me, not even once, which is rare for a game like this (even The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt had crashes). However, the game still suffered from some major bugs, albeit no game-breaking ones. One major bug that hit me early on in Act 1 was when I tried recruiting a new party member and the quest log for the recruitment bugged out. It stayed that way until almost the end of Act 1, and while I ended up being able to recruit that character, there were still some things I couldn’t do with him (which meant that he was still somewhat bugged).

Particularly, Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 suffered from a lack of polish. As soon as I entered the new area in Act 3, I encountered some lag and stuttering, as well as visual glitches like character models not popping up during conversations. A lot of players have been reporting the same problem online. All that being said, all these problems (bugs and glitches) can eventually be fixed and patched out with future updates. At the time of writing, multiple hotfixes have already improved how Act 3 runs so far and as of Hotfix 4, I haven’t really encountered any major bugs.

Good And Evil

While Baldur’s Gate 3 has its issues (what game doesn’t?), it definitely deserves all the praise it’s been getting and then some. Although it launched in a packed year (The Legend Of Zelda Tears Of The Kingdom, Final Fantasy 16, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Dead Space Remake, Hi-Fi Rush), Larian Studios’ latest effort is a strong GOTY 2023 contender. That’s how good it really is, especially when you’re immersed in the world, narrative and characters, which are the best parts of the game.

With that, it’s time for me to jump back into my adventure in Baldur’s Gate 3, 70+ hours and counting…

PROS

• The sheer amount of freedom and choices.
• Grand narrative and characters.
• Expansive world and story.

CONS

• Tedious and difficult combat at times.
• Bugs; need more polish.

FINAL SCORE: 80/100

Baldur’s Gate 3 was reviewed on PC based on a review copy provided by the publisher. It is now available for PC. The PS5 version will launch on 6 September 2023 while the Xbox Series X/S still doesn’t have a release date at the time of writing.