Since the cRPG genre actually became a thing, many developers tried to adapt the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop experience to a video game format, with varying degrees of success. However, no game ever came close to achieving this than the Baldur's Gate series, whose two main entries are still today among the best role-playing games ever made.
It's been 22 years since Baldur's Gate 2, and to this day, we still haven't received a similarly engaging D&D computer role-playing game, despite plenty of other titles being great games on their own, such as the Divinity series by Larian Studios. The latest entry in the series cemented the Belgian studio's reputation as one of the top RPG studios, giving them the chance to work with Wizards of the Coast to develop the highly anticipated Baldur's Gate 3. After a long time in Early Access, the third entry in the series is finally out, but does it live up to the hype or even top its predecessors? The answer is a resounding yes.
Before Baldur's Gate 3 campaign begins, players can either select one of the seven Origin characters or create their own. For my first playthrough, I went with a custom character, as I didn't feel like experiencing the game's world with an established character. The character creation offers a huge amount of options that allow the player to customize pretty much every aspect of their characters, from appearance to race, class, background, and attributes. Unlike the previous entries in the series, there are no attribute rolls, so it's possible to either assign scores manually or use the recommended spread, which I feel is pretty balanced, and, most of all, helpful to newcomers. A randomizer option is also available, which speeds up the character creation process with some cool-looking options.
While hardcore RPG players will probably go with their own character as I did, picking any of the Origin characters is fine for pretty much every sort of player. The main cast is actually pretty varied, offering some compelling personal tales on top of the main plot. The elf Astarion, for instance, is a vampire spawn who served his master for over two hundred years before finally getting free. The Blade of Fronties Wyll made a pact with a devil to obtain extraordinary powers, but at a great cost that weighs him down. Lae'zel, a Githyanki soldier, is forced to live a life she has never experienced before in a world that despises her race, and for mostly good reasons, as the Githyanki are ruthless conquerors. The Dark Urge seems to be the most interesting character to pick, as this customizable amnesiac warrior is controlled by a violent and cruel urge to perform all sorts of heinous acts, and the player can choose to either fight these urges or give into them to become yet another danger in the Forgotten Realms.
No matter which character is picked, the Baldur's Gate 3 main campaign has the same overarching story, set over one hundred years since the events of the second entry in the series during an invasion of Faerûn by the mind flayers. These fearsome beings have been kidnapping people, implanting them with Illithid tadpoles that will eventually turn them into mind flayers. Something, however, goes wrong, and the nautiloid airship is attacked by Githyanki warriors and their dragons. After a dramatic escape attempt that brings the ship through multiple realms, the nautiloid crashlands on Faerûn. Knowing all too well the danger posed by the tadpoles, the survivors set out to find a way to remove them, not knowing the deep connection the tadpoles have established between all those who have them implanted in their bodies.
This general overview is, obviously, only the tip of an iceberg that goes incredibly deep. Within a few minutes after landing in Faerûn, I became involved in a struggle involving a power-grasping druid who was willing to kill a child for a crime that was committed to prevent more suffering, a struggle that could be solved by either aligning with the power-reaching druid, kill her in cold blood, or save the true leader of the druid settlement who was kidnapped by goblins to remove her from power and restore order. Or, I could have ignored all this and focused on finding a way to remove the tadpole inside my head.
While Baldur's Gate 3 falls in the same trap as other RPGs by presenting an urgent main quest but giving players the freedom to do whatever they wish without consequences, I feel it would be a crime to go straight for it and skip content that let players immerse themselves into this world.
Players have to experience how the game not only gives players so many options to solve the problems presented to them. Oftentimes, all of the options are valid, but some of them may come with heavy consequences. Another highlight is how the world itself reacts to your choices. As I headed towards a goblin camp, for example, I had the option of attempting to sneak in, or try to reason with the creatures, hoping to put the intimidation a Berserker exudes to my advantage. I opted to sneak into the camp and was eventually forced to fight the goblins, but the other option would have been fine if I didn't want to fight and wanted to go for a more peaceful approach. The game is filled with similar situations, turning everything up to eleven in later Acts to allow players to come up with their own answers to the many questions the game puts in front of them. Act 1 is truly only a small appetizer compared to the following Acts.
Any RPG wouldn't be engaging without a solid cast of characters, and Baldur's Gate 3 definitely delivers on this front. The main cast is well-developed, and party bantering does a great job of fleshing out their personalities. Their personal stories are extremely interesting as well, although they feel a little samey when they join your party, as most of them seem to be looking for revenge against those who have wronged them in some way. The game's great story and characters are powered by writing that feels spot-on right from the start, with a good balance between serious and dramatic moments and humorous situations which helps make them memorable. Other NPCs are just as interesting, and their struggles only manage to feel the world feel more alive than in most other games.
Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't just deliver fully with its story, as its gameplay is just as good. At its heart, the game doesn't feel all that different from Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is unsurprising since it runs on the latest version of the Divinity engine. Controlling a party of up to four members, players travel throughout vast locations in search of the help they need to get rid of the tadpole implanted in them. As the party travels the vast and dynamic world of Faerûn, they will get to meet a lot of characters, ranging from fearsome devils to not-too-bright goblins, traveling bards, and all the sorts of creatures one would expect to meet in a fantasy setting, collect all sorts of items and fight all manners of enemies. Traversal and exploration are pretty much standard fare for cRPGs, although the use of abilities such as jump spice the experience up a bit, as does the Turn-Based Mode, which is extremely useful to avoid traps and enemy detection and get the party in a good position for combat. As the world of Faerûn is vast and filled with all sorts of secrets, proper exploration is always rewarding, also considering the game's loot system, which features no randomized loot whatsoever, so a weapon that feels powerful at the start of the campaign is likely to be just as strong later on. This choice not only makes the game faithful to the D&D ruleset but also makes party management slimmer.
Unlike exploration, combat in Baldur's Gate 3 is turn-based only, lacking an option for real-time with pause combat seen in the previous entries in the series. While this could put some long-time fans of the series off, I think using a turn-based combat system was the way to go to faithfully translate the D&D experience to a video game. Other recent cRPG attempted to do the same, but Larian brought things to the next level, tweaking the combat system seen in the Divinity: Original Sin series to make it more enjoyable. The much faster pace is only one of the tweaks that make fighting enemies in Baldur's Gate 3 way more fun than in the studio's previous game. Combat is also slightly more straightforward, which is a definite plus as it makes the whole experience more accessible, doing away with the countless terrain effects that were the focus of the Divinity: Original Sin 2 combat system and placing a stronger focus on resource management and positioning.
Depending on their class, each character has various resources to manage, from movement range to action, bonus action, Spell Slots, and unique resources, such as Superiority Dies for the Battle Master subclass, or Channel Divinity for Clerics and Paladins. As such, it is possible, during each turn, to perform more than a single action per turn, potentially giving a single, powerful unit the chance of taking down an enemy at full HP in a single turn. Many of these resources, however, can only be restored with either Short or Long Rests, so players need to think long about when to use the powerful skills that deplete them. Long Rest at camp requires supplies to restore characters fully, so it is not possible to go all out during each enemy encounter without consequence.
As mentioned above, proper positioning is extremely important to win battles in Baldur's Gate 3. Long-range attacks with bows and crossbows, for example, get an Advantage modifier when launched from a higher ground and a disadvantage from a lower ground. Select spells affect all characters in their radius, and some ground effects and traps can be used to one's advantage if the party is positioned right. The possibilities are truly endless, also thanks to the character progression system, which gives players many different build options.
Each character, in true D&D fashion, belongs to a class, which can be picked during character creations for custom characters or is assigned by default to Origin characters, although respeccing and class-changing is possible by spending gold. The first time any character levels up, however, it is possible to multiclass any of them, allowing players to come up with some unique combinations. Unlike proper D&D, which requires a certain ability score to multiclass, Baldur's Gate 3's multiclassing doesn't feature any limitation, so you can create any class combination right from the start of the campaign. Some combinations obviously don't work as well as others, and a multiclassed character may not reach the full potential of either class, but playing around with this system adds yet another layer of depth to the experience, allowing players to be whomever they want.
The Normal difficulty setting is not particularly challenging, so no choice will be particularly detrimental, although decent knowledge of the D&D 5th edition classes will help plan a strong multiclass character. I have gone with a basic Barbarian with Fighter combination, and I haven't made my life any harder since I did, despite some overlapping between the two classes' abilities. At Tactician difficulty, however, I would advise against experimenting too much with little knowledge of each class, as the enemies are way stronger and smarter and will require you to be at the top of your game to win fights, although things become easier as character level up and acquire more powerful combat tools.
Even though knowledge of the D&D 5th edition ruleset helps, it is hardly a requirement to enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 to the fullest. While the game doesn't hesitate to throw at the player all sorts of terminology, it does an excellent job of explaining things with contextual tutorials every time a new mechanic is introduced. While dice rolls dictate every combat action, most are done automatically, so knowing exactly what dice are used for the Fighter attack rolls, for example, doesn't really make or break the experience. The same goes for Saving Throws and the like. D&D players will love the faithful adaptation of the tabletop's RPG mechanics, and everyone else will enjoy the game just as much without really knowing what all these rolls and numbers that pop up at times actually do, although it helps when using skills that give an advantage on certain rolls.
The most players will see of dice rolls in Baldur's Gate 3 is during dialogue or skill checks to pick locks and disable traps. In these instances, players will need to roll a score equal to or higher than the indicated skill check. Depending on the character, their current condition, and skills, such as the Cleric's Guidance skill, it is possible to activate bonuses that make it easier to meet the skill check value. This is the only instance in the game where it is possible to influence the results of the roll almost directly before the throw is actually made and avoid a potential Critical Miss, which will end the interaction with the worst possible outcome, usually a battle.
While Baldur's Gate 3 is undoubtedly a great cRPG, there are some minor issues that I feel impact the experience in some capacity. While the interface is functional enough with both control schemes, it would have been much better with a bit more polish and quality-of-life features, such as better inventory sorting or a better highlighting of interactable elements. Additionally, interacting with a specific object that is close to others feels rather clunky, sometimes even frustrating. The lack of some sort of progression chart for all classes is also disappointing, as it is difficult to plan multiclass builds without having to experiment and respec, even for those who know the D&D 5e classes inside out, as Larian made some tweaks to pretty much all of them. Other recent cRPGs have something like this, like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, so hopefully, the developer will add something similar to the game in the future.
Experimenting and then reverting back is part of the Larian Studios' design philosophy, as fans of the studio know, and this also applies to the general gameplay, which was designed around being able to save the game pretty much everywhere. Save scumming is an incredibly legitimate tactic in Baldur's Gate 3, by having to save before a battle or an interaction to reload to get better outcomes doesn't feel exactly natural, and some players may be put off a little by this.
When it comes to presentation, Baldur's Gate 3 delivers as much as it does with its gameplay. The game's high production values are evident from every single visual element: character models are extremely detailed, cutscene direction and facial animations are great, giving the adventure a far more cinematic feel than any other cRPGs, and locations are vibrant. Audio production is just as polished, with each dialogue in the game being voice-acted, something very few RPGs as massive as this can boast of.
Performance is extremely solid as well, as I have no trouble running the game at 4K resolution, DLSS quality preset at an average of 90 FPS on my system (i7-10700 CPU, RTX 3070 GPU, 16 GB RAM). The game also features a huge selection of graphics settings to tweak, which are presented in the menu with pictures highlighting how each setting impacts the visuals so as to help players strike a decent balance between visual quality and performance. The game also supports AMD FSR, though only version 1.0 at launch (FSR 2 is coming soon), so even those without an NVIDIA RTX GPU have an upscaling option at their disposal.
It is worth mentioning, among the myriad of great options Baldur's Gate 3 features, that controller support is among the best seen for a cRPG. While it will be tweaked and improved further in time for the PlayStation 5 release, it already works extremely well, featuring multiple radial menus that are extremely easy to use and a valid alternative to the keyboard and mouse controls which work as great as expected.
Before release, Baldur's Gate 3 promised to be an extremely good cRPG, but Larian Studios exceeded all expectations by creating one of the best games of the past five years. The huge amount of possibilities given to the player, combined with excellent story and characters, solid turn-based combat and tons of replayability, make the journey to save your characters from the mind flayers' tadpoles one that has to be experienced by all those who have even just a remote interest in role-playing games.
Review code provided by the publisher.
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