After finally completing a lengthy cooperative campaign of Baldur’s Gate III earlier this year, I can finally write a review for what will surely go down as one of the best video games — RPG or otherwise — released in 2023.
Players create a custom adventurer at the beginning of this long-awaited threequel before undertaking an epic quest to destroy the alien parasite growing inside their protagonist’s brain. A rogue cult of mind flayers is to blame for the infection, with evidence pointing towards a bigger conspiracy threatening the entire of Faerûn.
A dynamic character creator, 3D character portraits, and vivid graphics bring to life an atmospheric world of adventure from the most famous of all role-playing settings. NPCs are wonderfully expressive and charismatically voice-acted, with players meeting dozens of them in a campaign featuring ominous dungeons, bustling cities, and wondrously-lit magic grottos full of evil monsters and ancient relics. A powerful PC is recommended if only for when players finally enter the city of Baldur’s Gate itself — such is the grandeur of its architecture and the density of its local activity, older graphics cards will struggle to render it smoothly.
New developer Larian Studios uphold their impressive credentials for this genre with a faithful implementation of the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition rules. Even for someone like me whose experience with tabletop D&D begins and ends with 3rd Edition, the d20 dice-based system in Baldur’s Gate III is easy to learn. I didn’t need to spend any time studying guides before settling on an intuitive character build of my own. I made a tanky dwarf sorcerer who would hold the line by casting toughness and shielding spells while my brother’s elven archer launched ranged sneak attacks from high ground. Once he realised how potent a multi-class rogue-fighter could be, it felt like we’d unlocked the true potential of our combat squad. This is the beauty of role-playing games featuring cooperative design, but rarely has the concept been realised in this genre so well.
The multiplayer cooperative mode — excellent as it may be — does require a long-term commitment from its players, and it is true that some of the drama gets lost when sharing screen time with other characters. For that reason, whenever we encountered one of the expressive companion characters, we decided to murder them and save their content for our own solo campaigns instead! Even then, there was still an annoying tendency for the party’s faceless hirelings to trigger automatic cutscenes we didn’t want them featured in (especially if a charisma check was incoming).
Fortunately, the combat system in Baldur’s Gate III is supremely absorbing. The newly restrained concentration mechanic for spell casting does limit some of the absurd spectacle prior D&D games had in their later stages, but it does create a more balanced experience overall. The martial classes are more capable as well, but a good spellcaster can still turn a battlefield upside down by casting Wall of Fire and other impressive incantations.
Of particular merit here is the encounter design which shines when playing on Tactical difficulty. This mode presents a solid challenge for RPG veterans where ruthless enemies will routinely shove your party members into pits or other hazards. The physics engine creates an interactive environment where traps and explosives encourage players to use their surroundings against enemies wielding many savage tactics and magical abilities of their own.
Within this category are some fantastic boss battles against bizarre foes like illusionist trolls, nigh-invincible golems, and even an undead bartender who supplements his assault by drinking enchanted grog from the diseased distillery he wears about his corpulent frame! Tactical battles like these compliment larger engagements and entire sieges which have unique puzzles to solve as the battle rages on. In the early to mid stages of the game at least, combat is more nuanced than players simply using their most powerful abilities as fast as they can. However, combat is less challenging and less inspired in the game’s third and final act. Once characters reach maximum level, they’ll have no further use for experience points, so completing quests and optional battles by then doesn’t feel as rewarding.
Nevertheless, Baldur’s Gate III has creative set pieces and ideas everywhere — from the ogre horn item that allows players to call in some (very) heavy reinforcements, to the third act ghost story quest, and the stolen cargo that literally unleashes hell if players open it — this can be such a weird and exciting game. My brother and I were even forced to reload a save when an important NPC we met died and triggered Armageddon in the exact fashion he warned us about before we laughed him off. Yeah, we had to lose some progress to backtrack to the offending quest and resolve it properly, but it proves how unafraid Larian Studios was in creating quests of wild potential.
One element of Baldur’s Gate III I didn’t enjoy was its “adult” tone. The game features some extremely explicit scenes of sexual intercourse; the portrayal of which I’ve always found to be somewhat cringeworthy in video game form. Likewise is the amount of guttural swearing which mimics the style of Game of Thrones to mixed effect.
Still, if you can overlook this, as well as the occasional pathfinding woes and assortment of glitches, Baldur’s Gate III remains an immensely generous RPG that never once feels like it was meddled with by an overbearing committee. This is a Larian Studios production through and through, and is all the better for it.
Baldur’s Gate III on Steam »
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