If you’ve read any of my stuff here on Screen Love Affair so far it’s probably pretty evident how much I love movies. When I’m not at the theatre though chances are I’m at home playing video games! I feel like I’ve had a controller in my hand my whole life. I’ve had everything from a Super Nintendo to an Xbox Series X and I’ve lost thousands of hours in hundreds of different gaming worlds. That’s a big reason why I’m so excited writing my first review for Baldur’s Gate 3! For those of you unaware, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role playing game (RPG) and believe me when I say this is a real RPG. Most games that call themselves RPGs are extremely limited in their actual role playing elements. While a true RPG should make you feel like you have complete and total freedom, you’re usually stuck with binary choices between extremely good and extremely evil. Do I save the village and all the people in it or do I let them all die for heaps of gold? Well this is without question the most freedom I’ve ever experienced in a game. But freedom is nothing without an exciting story and engaging gameplay. I’ve beaten Baldur’s Gate 3 from start to finish three times now so I feel qualified to give you a basic overview and tell you whether Baldur’s Gate 3 is worth your time or not!
Story
If you’ve read the title of this game and you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait, Baldur’s Gate THREE but I’ve never played Baldur’s Gate 1 or 2!” Let me assure you that there’s nothing to worry about! For starters, the first Baldur’s Gate came out in 1998 and the second in 2000 when I was only three and five years old. While I’m sure they’re great games, they’re definitely dated and I never played them before either. With BG3, there’s no big continuation here where you’ll be completely lost or not understand the story as it unfolds. This is an entirely new adventure that does have some callbacks and characters from the old games, but nothing that will negatively impact your playing experience. The writers at Larian Studios (who developed this game) brilliantly weave in these characters and references in such an organic way and it teaches you the history without feeling like an exposition dump or assuming you already know everything. You could meet a character who someone in your party adores as a hero and they will tell you all about what they did and why they earned such admiration. The game doesn’t just plop someone in front of you like “Hey remember me?” and you have to awkwardly Google who the person is before you move on.
As far as the main narrative goes, the game opens with some wicked cutscenes that provide you a lot of context and details right away. Your character is captured by some Illithid (basically octopus looking people) and they infect you with a tadpole that will eventually turn you into one of them. As you begin looking for a cure though, you’ll find that there’s more to this story than meets the eye but I will let you discover all the twists and turns for yourself!
Throughout the story you learn so much and the world building is just fantastic. With so many different races and characters and history to learn about, the game unfolds things at a pace where you can actually retain the information and they don’t assume you know absolutely everything. In almost every conversation you’re given a dialogue choice to ask for more details or an explanation for something if you don’t know what something is or means.
In each playthrough I felt like I was learning more about the world and the people and after playing three times in a row I am just itching to jump back in and spend more time in the world and story of this game. Every companion has a backstory and quest line that extends throughout the entire length of the game that keeps you deeply invested in the outcomes for all of them. The only downside is that you can only actively travel with three of your companions but the rest will travel with you in your camp and you can swap them out at will.
My only minor complaint though, as someone that was totally new to this world and this game, was that there were some characters that I met and saved early on in the game that by the time I saw them again in Act 3 I had totally forgotten who they were or where I had seen them. This is likely more of a consequence of how I play games though which is usually in long bursts where I will play for hours and hours at a time so I don’t really have time to process a lot of those things. This didn’t hurt my experience beyond me just stopping to think for a second about where I saw this person before though and if anything it added a layer of enjoyment to my subsequent playthrough when I would meet the characters again and realise “Oh so THAT was this person,”. It’s also a testament again to the role playing elements and just how much your choices matter. I would rescue someone and I would totally forget about it immediately after and not realise that this small gesture can actually have impacts at the end of my journey which is a really cool feeling to experience.
While this game didn’t have the emotional impact on me that other games like Red Dead Redemption 2 had, I was so engaged and invested in everything and everyone in a way that I’ve rarely often felt in a game.
Gameplay
I talked about the role playing experience and gameplay a bit but now let’s jump in with both feet!
As I’ve said, the freedom and the customizability feels near infinite. When you start out you can select one of the pre-made “Origin” characters or completely customise your own character. If you don’t select any of the pre-made characters, don’t fret because they can all become potential companions and join your team (except for Dark Urge which we will touch on later). If you choose to create your character you have 11 races and 31 subraces to choose from. After that, you get to pick from 12 different classes too depending on how you want to play. As you level up your character there’s 46 subclasses in the whole game, but each class usually has three to choose from. More experienced players can experiment with multiclassing as well if you want to have more than one main class. The point is, you can REALLY customise your character to be basically whatever you can dream up and everything is viable so if something sounds cool to you, do it!
I think it’s important to take this time to address what might be the elephant in the room for some people. The combat in this game is turn-based. HOLD ON! Don’t panic. If you read that and you’re immediately turned off by it or you’re skeptical, please don’t be. I was one of you. I looked at gameplay videos of Divinity: Original Sin 1 & 2 (Larian’s previous and similar games) and thought I would absolutely hate it. I grew up on fast paced FPS games and played Call of Duty every year for practically a decade, so the idea of trying this out was an immediate turn off. The thing is though, it’s so deep and complex that what it lacks in speed it more than makes up for with strategy. Even how you walk into combat can dramatically change the outcome of the battle. Do you take the high ground and ambush them? Do you run in the front door and start swinging or do you sneak around the back to attack them from behind? Whatever path you take, once you’re in combat you’ll take control of all four members of your party so variety and team cohesion is key. Do you bring along a healer? A mage? Do you run four melee characters and just hit everything to solve your problems? Keeping with the theme of freedom in this review, all of those choices are really up to you! Even at the balanced difficulty combat is challenging and isn’t just mindless. You will die if you don’t take care and consider each move in combat and there really is a skill to it too. I couldn’t believe how much easier things were for me on my second playthrough because of how well I understood the mechanics. Bosses that killed me multiple times or took me ages to beat I could handle easily in a few turns just because I took the time to learn their weaknesses and account for that in combat. Turn based combat actually allows for a more customizable experience where you control not just your own character but your allies too and it’s one that if you open yourself up to it, you’ll find it incredibly rewarding!
I want to expand on the role playing elements a bit more too. Having gone through this game three full times now, what blows me away is how many choices you really have with almost every opportunity presented to you. There’s not just good or bad options, there’s varying degrees of good and bad, there’s grey area choices, or you can just ignore things intentionally and walk away and let the chips fall where they may. Characters can ask you what you think they should do and you can give them your opinion or simply say that you can’t make this choice for them. During dialogue sequences there are additional options for you to choose from that are specific to the decisions you made in the character creator, whether they be race or class specific, which allows for a greater sense of immersion for your adventure. I definitely recommend that you be very mindful of the choices you make throughout the game because the consequences of those decisions are VERY real and they can have immediate and long lasting impacts. Even in Act One you can make decisions that will permanently lock out particular quests, kill potential companions, or have recruited companions abandon you because of the choices you make. So be thoughtful with your choices because you never know what could happen as a result!
Exploration is another big thing in Baldur’s Gate 3 but it’s also not mandatory. You can miss or intentionally skip over a lot if you’re not curious enough to check things out. I tend to do more “completionist” runs when I play games so I like to explore every area and talk to every character I can. Playing that way can take around 90ish hours for a complete playthrough from start to finish. There are just so many options here and if you’re anything like me, you’ll immediately want to restart and play a completely different character and make completely different choices to see how things could’ve gone differently.
My first character was a Bard who I played as a “good” player making decisions that I felt were right. I like to play RPGs this way, only because this is my first experience with the story and I want it to be authentic to me personally. On my subsequent playthroughs I choose to role play a bit more. With my second run I selected the Dark Urge origin character, went with the Sorcerer class, and opted to make all evil choices and this made for a DRAMATICALLY different experience. I will admit though that I was always nice to animals when I had the chance to be (sorry Timber) because I just couldn’t bring myself to be mean to them. My last playthrough was another more virtuous one where I played a Monk/Rogue dual class and just punched and kicked my way through everything which was incredibly fun too!
Speaking of the Dark Urge, we definitely need to talk about that a bit more. Larian recommends that you don’t do the Dark Urge playthrough for your first one and I definitely understand why. If you select the Dark Urge, the total freedom I mentioned before is somewhat limited. Because of the “dark urge” in the Dark Urge, your character has an innate desire for evil and murder. During the character creator, you get a glimpse into the Dark Urge as it tells you, “My rancid blood whispers to me: kill, kill, and kill again. My ruined body yearns to reap death in this world, and when this foul Urge calls, it possesses my whole being. Injured beyond repair, I know nothing besides this; I must resist this Dark Urge, lest it consume my mind. I must discover what happened to me, and who I was. Before my twitching knife-hand writes a tragedy in blood.” This adds a whole new element to the game because you have this Dark Urge inherent to your character that tries to compel you to do evil acts. Do you give in to your Dark Urge or do you resist it? What are the consequences of these choices? This was such a unique way to experience the game and I’m so glad I did it, but I’m also glad I did it after my first playthrough.
For the absolute best experience with this game, I would suggest that you play it twice because in many ways the Dark Urge can be seen as the “main character” of the story. Their story is woven into the narrative in such a way that it adds an interesting element to the events of the game that is really cool but it doesn’t allow for a fully player-driven experience as some choices may be beyond your control.
The sheer amount of choices make for an entirely unique experience and it’s impossible to experience everything this game has to offer in just one playthrough. Heck, even two playthroughs where you make completely different choices doesn’t allow you to experience everything because there are more than just two binary outcomes in almost every situation.
So much of the fun for me was also talking to my brother and my other friends who played to see what choices they made and outcomes they got. There’s just so many things to find in this game that can change your experience every time you play it. Hell, I’ve played nearly 300 hours and I still will hear about things and choices I completely missed out on. After all those hours though, all I want to do is jump back in and do it all over again!
Verdict
Few games reach the heights that Baldur’s Gate 3 does. Simply put, this game is a masterpiece. There’s a gripping narrative, compelling characters, unbelievable levels of player freedom, combat that keeps you on your toes, puzzles, laughs, and drama. It’s the kind of video game that as you’re playing it you get this feeling that you’re playing a game that will define a generation.
If you’ve ever played an RPG and you enjoyed the role playing aspects in them, then you’ll definitely enjoy this game because I don’t think I’ve ever played a better pure RPG before. The amount of content packed into this more than justifies the price tag and then some.
With Baldur’s Gate 3 you can strap on the boots of an adventurer and live out a fantasy epic where you can fight or embody evil, save the world or doom it, play music at a tavern, hangout with vampires, or even make a deal with a devil. Well, unless you don’t want to of course.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S wherever you like to get your video games from!