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I’ve sunk a weekend into Baldur’s Gate 3 now. This wasn’t something I initially planned on doing (for reasons detailed later), but a friend of mine generously gifted it to me to co-op over a free weekend. So I’m here to say: it’s fine. Not terrible, not terribly amazing. And if you like Divinity: Original Sin and Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition, you’ll probably like Baldur’s Gate 3.
Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) sits at what appears to be an ideal confluence of my own interests. I have run several Fifth Edition campaigns over the last decade (since it was still known as Next), Larian Studios has been making consistently good cRPGs for over two decades (which I’ve even backed on Kickstarter), and the Baldur’s Gate franchise set the nigh-unbreakable conventions for one of my favorite game genres – the cRPG. I wouldn’t say that I am the target audience for this game – I would say that I am in the category of people that execs would just assume would buy their game anyway. And yet, I didn’t.
This relates primarily to my recent move away from D&D 5th Edition. Hasbro’s betrayal of the D&D community (regarding their attempt to revoke the 1.0a OGL at the start of 2023) soured me on further support of the system, and having since moved to Pathfinder 2nd Edition my opinion on the mechanics of D&D 5e have fallen yet further (this will become relevant later).
In a vacuum, there seems much to recommend BG3: it’s pretty, has a familiar combat system, and a decent story hook alongside several companions you can get to know over the course of your playtime. What it doesn’t have is a compelling reason to choose it over other cRPGs (except, of course, the familiar combat system). At the time of this writing, you could get the Avernum Trilogy, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker for a little over what you would pay for BG3 (and I would recommend you do). Or for that matter, you can get Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Baldur’s Gate 2, and Divinity: Original Sin for a little under. Some of this is because a couple of those titles are currently on sale, but that’s hardly a rarity.
Fifth Edition and Faerûn
The more I have thought about this, the more it seems apparent that D&D is the mediocre core of what could otherwise be a fine addition to Tier One cRPGs. Tactically, 5th Edition is pretty straightforward – and at a game table, this has been mostly fine for the last decade. When the core books released back in 2014, I was all-in on it: between great artwork, simple-seeming rules, and mechanical flavor which supported a wide variety of archetypes, there appeared to be a solid base for additional content and expansion of the system.
The release schedule for books seemed to indicate this was the plan: only a few books each year to slowly grow the repertoire of character options (instead of a deluge of splatbooks like previous editions), and the first couple releases seemed to be working towards this. But then, as more books were released there were no new directions for player choice, power curves started trending upwards, and the flavor for classes and races became increasingly diluted. Fast-forward to the end of 2022 and Hasbro announces One D&D, which definitely isn’t a new edition. Maybe. Probably. Actually now it’s not called One D&D anymore. It’s D&D 2024. Will it be backwards compatible? Probably! Wait – what happened to the OGL?
You might be asking: what does all this have to do with the mechanical implementation of the ruleset in a video game, which should stay static once published? Well, that brings us to the tactical problems of Fifth Edition. In a given turn, there are relatively few choices to be made in a round of combat – and despite not being as lengthy as 4th Edition combats, it tends to be up to the DM to find ways of making combat less…well…boring. Larian Studios has played the role of DM here quite well, as anyone who has played Divinity: Original Sin will know. Environmental effects and splashy graphics (as well as a healthy dose of verticality) do a fair job of spicing up the simplistic combat. But like a memetic hazard which once known cannot be unknown, I was constantly reminded of the tactical choices available in Pathfinder and how limited my choices felt in a fifth edition system.
Sadly, the problems of Fifth Edition do not stop at the mechanics. The Forgotten Realms (the primary setting for 5e) have been often called a kitchen sink setting – vastly powerful beings and artifacts around every corner and a trove of anachronisms. I hadn’t thought this would be an issue (the original Baldur’s Gate duology seemed to work just fine), but once again the Pathfinder cognitohazard and its default setting of Golarion, which is just as much a kitchen sink but far more coherent than the Realms, disrupted my enjoyment. Partly this is trouble with the vast array of settings BG3 seems to want to cover – the titular Baldur’s Gate, the underdark, Avernus, Spelljammer, and of course the “standard” fantasy countryside. This would be okay, I think, in a setting that is a bit more coherent (again, like Golarion). But in the lands of Faerûn, I think would have been best to focus on just one aspect of the setting and not try to make it all make sense (much like the original Baldur’s Gate, actually).
Though this next issue finds its source somewhere between Hasbro and Larian, I found the writing of the villains somewhat flat and a tad insensitive. I haven’t gotten far enough to know if the mind flayers have some sort of motivation, but much like Darth Vader they don’t really need one – they’re simply evil (and that’s fine and occasionally quite refreshing). But whereas goblins in Golarion (now there’s a podcast name for you) have a rich culture and reason for acting the way they do, the goblin tribe which takes up much of Act I of BG3 seems to lack a certain sense of self-determination (which has a quasi-reason which is spoilery, so I’ll leave it out here) or sympathetic drive. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Nok-Nok, but I like my villains to either be sympathetic or understandable (Magneto/Walter White) or unabashedly evil (e.g. Darth Vader).
Baldur’s Gate 3
As the game opens, you either create your own character or choose from a few pre-selected ones, each with their own motives and secrets. You begin in a burning ship. As escaped prisoners, you fight your way out while the ship is attacked, barely escaping with your lives. After gathering your wits, you begin walking up a beach while keeping an eye out for the other prisoners you saw onboard, all while searching for someone who can help rid you of the thing forced upon you onboard the vessel. Now, it’s entirely possible for someone to think I’m talking about BG3 here, but I’m not. I’m describing the introduction to Divinity: Original Sin II, which just happens to be…shall we say: eerily similar. Admittedly, the stories distinguish themselves quickly (and the nature of your curse is quite different), but this was an amusing similarity.
So indeed, not all my problems with BG3 can be laid solely at the feet of 5e. And not all of these following notes are faults, per se, but they did all frustrate me to some degree. First, your party size is only four. Mechanically speaking, that’s probably close to the sweet spot for 5e in person, but it drastically limits your viable party composition in-game (especially in co-op) since you almost must have two tanks. Your likable companions are similarly limited, and the companions which aren’t constantly spouting innuendo or broadcasting their desire to get in your pants is, I believe, 0. And while this trends distinctly towards personal opinion, I have found that frequent course language is immersion-breaking and often feels as if the writers are just trying to sound adult. A great counterexample to this are shows like Battlestar Galactica or Red Dwarf, where despite there being a clear “replacement” word, those same words become almost iconic to the series (since all words are made up, but particularly ones we consider rude) and feel natural in the lingo.
The only other major oddity is the lack of a real-time combat system option. I mentioned this in my Kingmaker review, but turn-based modes in cRPGs can easily turn a five minute encounter into a fifty minute one. I think this was a choice based around the lack of throwaway fights in BG3 – practically every combat is potentially deadly (on tactician and balanced mode, especially since the AI will continue to attack you after your character goes down), and since the difficulty options are limited to easy, normal, and hard you don’t have the granular control from something like the Owlcat games which would let you tune things to your liking. For the most part, combats thus far in my playthrough have been mostly well-crafted and required attention. But when you do run into a fight you know you can easily win, this also means you still have to spend the next 30 minutes proving it, and sometimes I found myself wanting to reload just to avoid it entirely.
Smaller issues also crop up occasionally, like the inability to entirely skip past the dice roll animation, which takes a good 5-10 seconds, the lack of a sort button in your inventory (well, one of your inventories) or search boxes in merchant inventory, not being able to ready an action, not being able to pan the camera freely (and seeing where on the world map you’re looking), some actions without risk still taking forever (like breaking down doors or guardian statues), and having fewer face options available than genitalia – which is not a comparison I expected to make. Normally, character customization is something which I wouldn’t even mention since so often you’re only staring at them from behind or above, but given the number of cutscenes which feature your character in full 3D, it is odd that there isn’t more ability to blend or adjust facial features.
Technical Issues
During my playtime, I encountered a fair number of technical issues (which may or may not be fixed by the time you read this and/or play). A terrible amount of input lag started plaguing my save at one point which required rolling back to an earlier save (losing a few hours of progress), menus would become unresponsive requiring a restart of the game, there were a few random crashes, and characters would glitch into scenery when they went prone, preventing healing. It wasn’t unbearable by any stretch, but there were more bugs than I would hope for in a modern release (then again, modern releases often rely on the ability to patch post-launch).
Concluding Thoughts
Baldur’s Gate 3 is not a bad game. It is a solid Tier Two game, definitely worth playing if you have friends who want to experience it or if you’ve already played all my other cRPG recommendations and are craving more. The mechanical dullness of 5th edition does a computerized version of the same no favors and the implementation – while often tweaked or represented in interesting ways by Larian Studios – lacks a compelling reason to choose this over other systems, especially given the lack of regard Hasbro has for the fans of the D&D role-playing system.
In comparing BG3 to Divinity: Original Sin II, I’m reminded of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous in comparison with the original Kingmaker. While the former is more attractive in some ways and covers a larger scope, the latter has a certain charm and focus – from story to companions to game balance – which make it the better game.