After nearly three years of being in a slow crawl of Early Access. We finally have the full and complete Baldur’s Gate 3! To say this game has high expectations is an understatement.

Luckily with all these expectations, Baldur’s Gate 3 delivers, and then some.

Endless Possibilities

Baldurs Gate 3 Review

One of the reasons many people love Dungeons & Dragons 5e is the endless possibilities in front of you. Baldur’s Gate 3 adapts practically all of this edition’s classes, races, spells, abilities, and rules. Making for a practically perfect adaptation of the tabletop game.

This makes for a lot of replayability value. In Early Access, I played a lot of different characters and classes; it lead to the game feeling completely different in many ways. In my first playthrough in the final release; I played as a Necromancer. It felt unique and fun to play in its own fun ways.

Speaking of uniqueness. Dialogue and the world of this game feel so rich. You’re free to converse and interact with the world and characters as you see fit. Depending on your race, background, and class, you can sway conversations in any number of ways. I was purposefully buffing my charisma stat to help bolster my results in dialogue.

It’s not just dialogue, too. You roll virtual dice just like you would in a traditional Dungeons & Dragons game. This amazing risk/reward gameplay loop keeps you enthralled as to how a given scenario will end up. Since my Necromancer has a magic background, I rescued a potential party member from imprisonment. They were able to use those skills to help with those checks, and it allowed me to free my party member and gain a valuable ally in battle earlier than I may otherwise have.

Find Your Friends

Speaking of party members, like Dungeons & Dragons, you can equip and customize your party to best complement your playstyle. The companions you meet all have great personalities and dialogue, and it makes it hard to decide who to keep. Some companions I kept around; not because they were the most simpatico with my party. I liked their characters.

While customizable, I found that party members are pretty much set in their subclass. It could’ve been interesting if my Shadowheart could’ve converted from a Trickery Domain Cleric to a Death Domain Cleric. It makes sense for the more static characters to be this way but alas. With a game with this many opportunities to customize your experience; it felt weird not to have that level of control over my party.

Layered And Complex

You may not have played Dungeons & Dragons or any of Larian’s other games; this can be intimidating if you are those people. The opening section does its best to inform players of the various systems. It mostly succeeds in doing so; but many systems are at play here. It does feel like the game doesn’t do much to ween you into it.

Luckily the game is fully co-operative via online, LAN, or couch co-op. So if you have friends you want to play with; it can make the game much more enjoyable to play and makes the experience even more akin to Dungeons & Dragons.

Conclusion

Larian has arguably made one of the best RPGs of all time and one of the best in recent years. It’s a lot of game to take in, and it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea; if you show the game patience and commitment; you’ll find there’s plenty of fun to be had and content to tackle.

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