As the name suggests, this is a sequel to a couple of games I would absolutely not expect anyone to make a sequel to anymore. I loved Baldur’s Gate, but out of all the classic RPGs that could use a sequel, this (or the D&D ruleset) weren’t anywhere near the top of my list.

Hearing Larian was behind it made me hesitant. I’ve played a decent chunk of Divinity: Original Sin and while there was a really solid game with fantastic ideas in it, I did not get on with its sense of humour and the overall writing and world building. To the point that I gave up on it.

I’ve watched a bit of a Divinity: Original Sin II playthrough and that felt less grating, but I never got around trying it.

Baldur’s Gate 3, on the other hand, is fantastic. It takes the spirit of the old classic RPGs (big on world building, big on a grand, epic story, big on characters, big on turn-based combat) and absolutely delivers on everything.

It’s almost unbelievable how well they make all this stuff work. They keep the D&D rules, but tweak them enough that they fade into the background. You still feel this vast legacy and can engage with it if you want. But you can just not pay too much attention to it and still have a grand time.

You pick a starting character (there’s a list of pre-made ones — each with their own personality and background), or you design one yourself. The rest of the characters will appear in the game as your potential companions. You also pick/create a "Dream Guardian" — a character that you’ll see in visions throughout the game and who’s mystery you’ll slowly start to uncover.

Here’s my character: Talia^[1] Maarschalkerweerd de Klotzs^[2] (a Drow trans woman):

And then you’re just thrown right into it. A flying ship is ravaging a city, kidnapping people to turn into mindflayers — you among them. The ship is attacked and you find yourself freed, not yet turned and needing to get out. You might be able to rescue some of your future companions before the ship crashes and you find yourself on a coast — stranded, confused and with a mindflayer tadpole inside your brain.

And it only gets better. There’s the Githyanki, dragons, a lich, dimensional hopping, dark elves, dark dwarves, the Underdark itself, genuine druids, clerics of the goddess Shar, hags — and all that and more within the first act of the game. Unlike the first Baldur’s Gate it just dives straight into the weird and interesting stuff of the setting. I was expecting a bog-standand fantasy quest where it takes 20 hours to even get anywhere and here you’re talking to this strange weirdly attractive companion in your dreams right from the start. And how the hell are you not a mindflayer already?

I really liked that aspect of it. The game is huge, but there’s something interesting going on elsewhere. None of it feels like dead space.

There are three acts — each with a genuinely different feel and even the way you move through it. The middle one felt the weakest to me, but not by that much and it was still fascinating with lots to do. The third one gets you to the city of Baldur’s Gate itself and that’s where everything comes together.

The companions all have their personalities and agendas in the finest Bioware-like fashion — they wouldn’t be out of place in Mass Effect or Dragon Age. You still only get to take three on your adventure and that’s still a bummer.

And there isn’t a reliable indication over when they’ll drop some new lines of dialogue.

There is an exclamation point floating above their heads when the character has something important to say, but they react to smaller things with no way of knowing (other than chatting them up) so I ended up checking up on everyone every time I was in the camp (to comment on what just happened), every time I was about to head to bed (sexy times!!) and every time they woke up (what’s lying ahead) just in case.

I wish we could have moved past that. I don’t want to lose basically any in-character banter or reaction, but this gets boring quickly.

Side note: this was solved perfectly in Hades and every game of this mould should adopt that thoroughly. There you do have an exclamation point above the character’s head every single time when there is something new to say. And there’s enough dialogue written that you always have someone to talk to. It must have been incredibly labour intensive, but it is great.

I have a thing about game endings — especially for games as massive as this one. Hate when they completely change the game and put you through an annoyingly long fighty section just to put add more hours between you and the end.

There is such a section here and you can absolutely grind it out. Or you can do a bit of sneaky action, then do a small bit of targeted fighting. And then before you get into the big dangerous area that ends with the Big Honkin Fight With The Big Final Boss, there’s a way to just like…​ kill it and go to the epilogue — if you’ve played things right and you’re ready to make some sacrifices. I did this and it felt absolutely amazing. Great end to a fantastic game. This is one of the few massive RPGs where I don’t have serious qualms about the final section (Fallout 2 was like that. And Fallout 1 too I think?).

Such a refreshing thing. It’s a bit weird talking about respecting your time for a game that took me 164 hours to complete. But despite its ridiculous size, I rarely felt bored or lost or wishing something should be cut.

And yet, the game is extremely long. Way too long for me. I’ve basically played this for over a year at the expense of plenty other excellent games. I might have felt differently had this come out ten years ago. But at this point it is too big.

Other than the sheer size, the only two qualms I really have are about its inventory (there are way too many items and the management becomes a neverending chore — I wish the genre could move past this busy work) and spells (again, way too many choices — and while I believe there are uses for all of them, frontloading this decision before resting is a D&D tradition they could have gone without). Both would result in an even better game I think.

And that you can’t change the speaker mid-dialogue. There’s a lot of situations where you need to pass multiple skill checks to get somewhere in a dialogue. And your crew has all those skills, but they’re spread out. Lae’zel can intimidate, Shadowheart might have crucial information about the deity whose temple you’re in and your main character can be great at persuading.

You might need all three to get through a single dialogue, but whoever started the conversation is the only person who gets to use their skills or insights. Everyone else is just standing around watching your character’s doomed efforts trying to remember a crucial thing about the religious symbol the cultist is wearing.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is an excellent game and it truly feels like something special. Combining Divinity: Original Sins' strengths (great environments, lots to do, the varied ways of combining items and status effects, many different approaches to solving each problem and the way how the "premade" characters just integrate into the story and you getting to meet them later on) with Bioware’s focus on conversations and relationships with your crew and the rich, fascinating world all clicks together wonderfully.

P.S.: A special shout out to Amelia Tyler who voiced the narrator. Her voice accompanies you throughout the entire game and it is possibly the best thing about Baldur’s Gate 3. There’s this bemused quality to it that just fits the situation you’re finding yourself in so well.

P.P.S: I feel I’d trust this group to build a good Planescape: Torment successor. They go into a lot of weird places and make them work. A lot of areas have serious Torment vibes and the team handled them brilliantly.

by Tomas Sedovic on 26th January, 2025