Baldur's Gate 3 is Larian Studios' most ambitious game to date. It's important to illustrate that immediately, because this is the same developer behind Divinity: Original Sin - it is no stranger to setting the bar high. With Baldur's Gate 3, the goal appears to be taking and refining what's been learned across previous titles and its own lengthy Early Access period. Adhering to the tried-and-true Dungeons & Dragons tabletop experience and implenting it into a gargantuan co-op RPG somehow works, and it works well - except for when it doesn't, often enough to make it worth considering whether its scale gets the better of it at times.
Baldur's Gate 3 begins with high-stakes action. Immediately thrust into the role of a hero - either pre-designed as part of a diverse cast of characters and classes, or customized by the player as an original insertion into the story - who has been infected with a mindflayer tadpole. Usually a means to an incredibly bad end in quick fashion, they discover that they have been gifted with rare powers and no transformation - yet. Assembling a crew begins soon after, though, as always, there's nothing that says players must up with similarly afflicted characters. The incredible amount of choice that comes with Baldur's Gate 3 is truly on display within its opening minutes.
Combat Limited By Imagination...& Bugs
The most important part of Baldur's Gate 3 is that its dizzying options and strict adherence to tabletop-style character skills, quite simply, works. While overwhelming at first, it's easy to experiment with different abilities and find uses for even the most niche ones. Combat is spectacular at times, with a great deal of options that can either be obvious or require some quick thinking. One boss feels insurmountable, only for an accidental moment of brilliance to lure it underneath an environmental trap. A spider web can be incinerated to prevent movement loss, while floors can be manipulated with innocuous water to produce shocking results in the hands of the right magic-wielder.
Baldur's Gate 3 really does manage to capture the best parts of a roleplaying campaign. If a player can think of it, there's a good chance they can do it, provided it falls within the confines of their party's abilities. Those infatuating late night moments of tabletop madness - "why would you ask a pig if it's a long-dead god?" - feel like they've been captured in Baldur's Gate 3.
Unfortunately, the engine propelling this enrapturing combat forward doesn't always enjoy being burdened with so much potential. At times, combat will simply stop moving - an enemy will get stuck thinking about its next move, or find itself in just a weird enough spot on the map that it doesn't think it can continue its turn. There will be a brief hang-up where nobody moves, and then nothing - the next turn will be started. It can be comical, but in certain tense fights it popped up and felt almost like cheating, with a powerful foe skipping an entire turn for no other reason than, it would seem, standing a little off to the left of a raised platform.
There's also something of an issue with scaling, but that's more down to the game's tabletop mechanics. Characters make big advancements early and level somewhat quickly, while things grind to a hault and take much longer through the back half of the game. As less abilities and changes pile up, combat begins to be a bit more repetitive as the party settles into whatever incredibly overpowered combination of environmental setting and fireballs it prefers. Things never get dull, but that wide-eyed wonder of the early stages of Baldur's Gate 3 does evaporate gradually, settling into a top-tier RPG that runs into the same issues many do in their closing moments - there's simply a best way to be approaching things based on build and equipment accumulated over the first half of the journey.
Scale & Choices That Matter
While the open-endedness of the best Dungeons & Dragons campaigns is something that Baldur's Gate 3 easily captures, that doesn't necessarily come without hiccups. There's a little lack of polish when it comes to story beats that can be jarring. Characters will sometimes react to a new story moment, only for a different line of dialogue to bring them right back to it a minute later, occasionally even repeating the same line. Some quests seem to trigger over the most minor circumstances, and a lack of clear direction in some big story moments can make it feel like progression is halted when, really, a player simply needs to chance things and hope they work out.
In some ways, though, this is a good problem to have. It doesn't happen often enough to be a disaster by any means, and the trade-off is that Baldur's Gate 3 feels riddled with choices that genuinely matter. Impactful conversations with seemingly insignificant characters will suddenly ripple out across multiple chapters and acts. An item acquired that looks suspiciously like it might be useful almost always is, if a player is patient enough - even if it is worth a fair bit of gold. And skills and abilities that seem oddly suited towards combat are exactly that because they have overworld uses that are invaluable replacements for skills that the party might not be geared towards.
The best and worst elements of Baldur's Gate 3's scale becomes obvious in its third act. Once players actually reach Baldur's Gate, it feels like the storyline accelerates much faster than the cadence of the narrative would require. It's a by-product of needing to tie together so many different loose threads scattered throughout the first two acts, and it's a problem those who have played Larian titles might be familiar with, depending on their opinion of Divinity: Original Sin 2. While it feels absurd to insinuate a 100 hour journey was rushed in spots, that's exactly what happens in the third act.
However, that Baldur's Gate 3's story doesn't wear out its welcome in that triple-digit run-time is a testament to the quality of its adventure throughout. Were there plot elements that felt like they got glossed over after some build-up? Yes. Were there a multitude of characters recurring across acts as minor additions that told a bigger story about the world? Absolutely. And it's the latter that's so memorable, and so unique to the design and attention to detail that colors Baldur's Gate 3.
Performance Issues & Fixes
The other notable element of Baldur's Gate 3 is performance. At times, the world will start to lag and frames will drop significantly. Usually, this is after an extended period of time playing - several hours at minimum - or when there are particularly busy scenes occurring, like fights with 15+ people involved or world assets that are visually taxing, like a windmill. This gets exacerbated in the third act, where the wide-scope of the map necessitates a lot of rendering power, something that can make BG3 feel like its swimming at the bottom of an ocean for a minute or two.
For all its flaws, Baldur's Gate 3 is an iconic, engaging mess of brilliant ideas. It's the type of game that both makes players want to invest all their time into finishing it while simultaneously keeping them thinking of what their next build will be when they inevitably decide to replay it to see all of the things they missed the first time. While it's story swells into a crescendo it isn't quite able to perfect, the wide disarray of compelling side tales and character development is perhaps an even better reflection of the world it inhabits. Baldur's Gate 3 is an imperfect game set in an imperfect world, perfectly executed.
Source: Larian Studios/YouTube
Baldur's Gate 3 releases on August 3, 2023 for PC, with a PlayStation 5 version arriving on September 6, 2023. Screen Rant was provided a digital PC code for the purpose of this review.
