Baldur's Gate 3 is PC Gamer's highest scoring game in 16 years. Here's why
Baldur's Gate 3 is PC Gamer's highest scoring game in 16 years. Here's why
It's been a long time since we've been this excited by a new PC release.
It's been a long time since we've been this excited by a new PC release.
It's so refreshing to see an RPG that isn't afraid to be an RPG. It's not trying to twist and contort D&D into Call of Duty, it knows what it is and is proud of that. Games don't have to be dead simple and text free to be successful. Games don't have to have big in game stores or battle passes to be successful. They just have to be complete, an earnest attempt at a creative vision. I would take a game that tries something ambitious and very occasionally stumbles like this one over the most competent trend chaser any day.
I love how you're not punished for going your own way. I didn't like the way an important person in an important quest was talking to me. So I murdered her. I go outside and something completely unexpected was happening and my brother was shocked and asked me to reload the game because it wasn't how it happened in his single player game. I was like, no! Let's see where this goes! It was so cool how the developers let you do whatever you want rather than allow some NPC to force you to do a quest for her.
Yes, I think that's one of this game's biggest strengths; it allows for a broad spectrum of player actions, and actually shapes the narrative (to a degree) around those actions. I do think there ought to be a way to avoid the >!boss fight at the end of Act 2,!< but overall the freedom you have is really impressive. I'm in Act 3 of my first playthrough (total dark urge murderhobo) and I'm constantly impressed both by the scope and depth of the bad guy route, as well as the sheer amount of content I'm completely missing by telling lost kids to kick rocks, and casually slaughtering dozens of fully-voiced, potentially quest-giving NPC's. It's a glorious game. Definitely in the top 5 of the last decade, along with Witcher 3 and Disco Elysium.
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I was shocked when I found out astarion was a party character. I told him to take a hike because he just tried to kill me. Haven't heard a thing from him. It just let me do that.
You can kill basically anyone, and the game just goes on fine. You face consequences for that, but you aren't railroaded at all.
In addition this game is MASSIVE in terms of content. I was ready to wrap it up at the start of act 3 but man, if there's content to experience still
It's not trying to twist and contort D&D into Call of Duty
Uh... That actually sounds like it might be kinda cool. Are there actually games that have done that? I'd check 'em out if there are.
Closest I can think of is the Dark Messiah of Might and Magic game from 2006, from Arkane (who later went on to make Dishonored and more recently Prey and Deathloop). First person, you pick your class between Fighter, Wizard, and Rogue, and most of the combat involves figuring out how to use traps, physic, and magic to kill your targets. Lots of ledges to kick monsters off of or spikes to knock monsters into, or creating ice on the floor as a wizard to make enemies slip to their deaths. Holds up pretty well for a 15+ year old game.
Closest you can get is probably Avowed, coming out soon, but it's set in the Pillars of Eternity universe rather than DnD.
I will be playing this game for years and years to come. So funny to see all of the other developers and publishers crying that this will set a higher standard for games, they’re just constant reminders that I shouldn’t buy their micro transaction filled garbage.
For me, it's the lack of micro transactions, no online only nonsense, challenging but fair combat even on lowest difficulty. Are there things that can improve? Absolutely. As someone that played a ton of Pillars of Eternity, this has been a good experience overall.
I'd like to see a barber shop in the camp, by you-know-who. If they can let you change classes/respec, why can't we change appearance as well? I'd even go as far as race changing too. The qol not having to reroll would be very handy.
I also wish there was a pop-up for casting concentration spells while already concentrating on one. I've gotten better about it, but I still overlook that detail in the heat of battle.
"I see you have no romantic partner. Maybe some new drip will help with that."
Larian is working on a way to change your appearance during the game I think I've heard. But they seem ambitious about it. Like people would react to your new look. Not sure what's official about that though.
It's a great game but there is still a lot of tiny things to fix. It's got very strong bones though. The sort of things I have problems with are easily fixed.
Also, just make rerolling free. Seriously, I'm just starting dnd, I want to be some kinda spellcasring warrior, and the options are: paladin, warlock, paladin/warlock, paladin/sorcerer, eldritch knight.
Just being able to try out all the different options would help a lot. Not to mention, I'm oathbreaker paladin and you have to pay to fix your oath (1000g), pay to respec, and then break your oath again. It's too much! I accidentally put 2 points in my DEX during character creation but the cost to fix it is just too high right now.
100g ends up being a negligible amount of gold around, like, level 6. I don't disagree it should be free, but the price is extremely low once things start dropping magic items and shit constantly.
Also, don't sweat your build too much. Tactician is 100% beatable with a bog-standard single-class party of companions and a non-min/maxed main character. I didn't respec anyone at any time, and played a Swords bard with fairly bad stat allocation at the start.
My first playthrough was totally blind on Tactician, and I've had 0 experience with 5th edition DnD, and it wasn't too painful. I've played Larian games a lot, so that was in my favor, but even that experience is only really necessary on the hardest fights at the highest difficulty.
It's well deserved. I'm not a huge fan of turn-based combat but BG3 is phenomenally executed as an overall package. I'd play a non-combat dialogue and exploration version if I could!
Playing a bard can get pretty close 🤔
My brother's a bard and yesterday he found out when he plays in cities people crowd around and throw gold.
Lol my bard was built around the Charlatan background with the idea that he's basically that dude from Harry Potter Gilderoy Lockhart.
Over the course of the game he started to believe his own bullshit, moving first toward more Intimidation and then finally outright combat.
I fucking love this game man.
I’m really trying to do more of this. When I first started BG3 I just attacked first out of habit, but I’ve now switched to an approach where - when I see something that may involve a fight - I move my party quietly into advantageous spots, then stroll in casually with my bard to strike up a conversation. Worst case scenario, I’m covered by the party, best case they emerge after the conversation wraps up.
The cut-scenes are what pushes this game over the top. Very well acted and generated. I believe they used real people to help make them. And I really love when I see the game start to play a cut-scene because I know I'm about to have fun interacting with the characters.
Are you referring to motion capture?
Let me guess, its been 16 years since Skyrim was released and I'm still playing that fucking game.
I'm currently sitting about 7/10, personally.
While not the sole reason for the lower-than-most's score, one critique at the forefront of my mind right now is that the animations are atrociously janky. I am constantly pulled out of my immersion during dialogues by character animations that are robotic, glitchy, or just downright counter to what I'd expect my character to do.
Agree about the player custom character during dialogue. The facial animations are terrible considering the face options are predefined. Other characters though look great IMO. Not TLOU2 level face capture but fantastic for an isometric RPG
My character is a ranger who basically lives in the woods far away from people and is horribly socially awkward, so the slightly wonky facial animations have actually been perfect for her.
I can't make the spoiley thing work.
But I had an NPC in act 3 whose eyes kept doing weird spinny things. Both eyes would suddenly snap to me, then one would spin off again. And another NPC who kept ... flipping inside out.
7/10 is silly as scores go. It would suggest the game is better than average but not great.
Yeah, that's what I'm suggesting. It's almost like review scores are subjective. I think the game is good, but not great. I have a lot of QoL nitpicks, my partner and I have run into many multiplayer bugs, the dialogue choices are often 0 or 100 with no in between, I find that animations during cut scenes very subpar, and the combat is good but not great for me.
I think, even if you deeply love that specific jank, this game is only an 8/10 currently. As more people get farther in the game, they realize that what was amazing at first kind of falls apart in the later acts, with a truly atrocious ending and tons of cut content. Maybe with definitive edition it will hit a 9/10 but the increasing illusion of choice as the game wears kind of prevents it from being a 10/10. Still a great game but it definitely suffers and is a shell of what it could have been late game.
Larian: Seven? Silly Lemmite, you just don't understand what I'm doing, do you? The downvotes will only be passing, you should survive the process.
Whatever, what type of game was it again? Not one of the ones i like i think.
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Nope!
Read it yourself and find out why!
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