Baldur's Gate III (2023)

BG3 casts and incredibly wide net of gameplay and unfortunately gets tangled in the line. It stumbles and, on the way down, drags down the really enlightened RPG and combat elements into the same muck of save scummy, stealth finagling and crate searching simulation we've seen by every other open world game to come out since 2000.

I won't beat around the bush, this game is so overwhelmingly popular and successful that I can't even begin to pretend that my opinions haven't been influenced or reflected off of all the other discourse online. It's lovely that Baldur's Gate got a modern sequel, it's great that 5e D&D got that AAA rep that the last two major editions missed out on. I'm happy that it exists, but I don't think that 'replicating D&D' is a proper excuse for including so much drudgery.

As I mentioned, BG3 sits on a base of Fallout 3 style open world sim gameplay, just with a slightly more directed story path (it's not truly an open world game and that actually is to its benefit), but the shine comes in its Tabletop RPG accuracy and combat design. Almost all of the fights in this game, at all levels and scales, are excellent. There are considerably few annoying straight up fights, though I do worry about just how build-dependent they may be even on Balanced difficulty. I never had a problem, but using a straight up Champion Fighter or two may make the questline bosses insurmountable if you're not super savvy with how items interact.

The problem starts after that, because the combat system is used to house puzzle and tactical challenges outside of just fights and that's where the game's true Bethesda-style heart is. Starting from Act 2, you're going to be put in incredibly fiddly situations where 99% of things go right, but you have to restart because an NPC ran into a fire or an AOE blew up a chemistry set and immediately dunked on your whole team. This doesn't happen a lot, but the 'nearly no way back' game progression and saving means you can end up locked out of a character relationship, quest objective, or item because of the physics or sim elements causing some crazy chain reaction that simply makes it less fun to continue playing.

This repeats everywhere throughout the game, dialogue trees with RNG checks that, guess what, lock you out of content and require save scumming. Large amounts of incredibly fiddly stealth scenarios in Act 3 that can lock you out of content (or threaten to take away all of your gold) and require save scumming. As the game progresses it becomes more complex and overwhelmingly more dense and everything on the screen is one wayward click or misunderstanding from becoming an unrepetent disaster.

My 'do everything possible' run of the game was about 90 hours, of that I'd say only 2/3s was actual gameplay, that's more than an entire days, a raw 30 hours, that was spent just reloading things until I played out a scenario in an incredibly specific way or brute forced my way past checks that would have dead ended a scenario. And each time you have to walk into a 25 second loading screen.

The game is also far too complicated for its own good. Looting things is far easier than I remember Bethesda titles being, but ultimately you can loot so much so easily that money really doesn't matter at all, but selling things does cost you a lot of raw time and busy work. Tens of thousand of lootable crates end up adding zero value to the actual game. Similarly, the complex spell and physics interactions really seem like they're just there for really hardcore or challenge mode players, but the fact that you can use crates to climb your way into a house early really doesn't benefit the typical player. By the end, when fights got large, I was also getting large amounts of graphical glitches and constantly having to check online guides to solve soft lock situations (like selling a mandatory item that you have to pick up off the ground in a precise way or else you don't get a specific cutscene).

It's simply too complex for its own good and it did not need to be this way. D&D 5E definitely held the game back (and the relationship with Wizards of the Coast even more so, its plainly obvious they left the game open to story DLC), but the open world formula held it back even more so. I'm really, really tired of games embracing these finagly stealth systems, uncapped and unrestrained relationship managers, and 100% physic environments and ending up with worse games because of it that take far longer to finish and aren't in Early Access for literal years. Just... just make normal games. Please.

Gameplay: This is certainly the most impressive CRPG ever made, but mainly because it creates and allows players to get themselves in a fully acted story.

Yet the limit to level 12, and the lack of a full set of spells, and the direct translation of 5e means that certain classes are extremely boring. In comparison to Divinity 2 this game actually is far less engaging from a character building perspective.

This means that the levelling process is slow, and less involved, and people will have wildly different experiences. Re-spec is the most fun thing to do for your companions, but I fear many will never do this.

Writing: Characters consistently behave and act as though they are humans with a specific view on the world. And places people with different views in the same space. Group think has been a big detriment to media in the last two decades, with black and white thinking dominating. So a grey, realistic story is refreshing.

Acting: Some of the best in gaming. Not on the level of a focused story game, such as the last of us or recent final fantasy. But the mo-cap make every encounter meaningful.

Final Act: the massive city while impressive from a scale perspective, makes for a less intuitive experience than what happened in the previous two acts. The environments feel less unique and memorable. And it is difficult to understand who to talk to, though the game does signpost this a little.

This in combination with a less refined final act in terms of narrative and consequence makes for a half hearted ending. Specifically, in terms of gameplay, you will hit the level cap relatively early, for me levelling in games and the scaling of my power is important. So this made the final act far less enjoyable.

Small notes: The game does not give you an understanding of your build choices, so there is a feeling of flying blind. Anyone not familiar with DnD will be wholly confused. However, there is almost no possibility of making a choice that will even slightly influence the power level of your characters to a level that makes a difference.

Strong recommendations to play the following classes: sorcerer, druid, warlock, cleric, paladin.

Recommendation against: rogue.

Mods to expand the number of spells are available.

I'm not finding Act 3 to be as buggy and broken as I've seen reported elsewhere, so maybe the patches have sanded off the rough edges, but I will say it's a bit of a bummer how most quests in the Act resolve with an unavoidable fight.

Combat is a toothless bore at this point, and the huge enemy counts and frequent use of enemy invincibility just drag out each encounter without adding any depth or challenge. Feels like Acts 1 and 2 were better about letting you bypass combat with skill checks or exploration.

Soooo, I started my Bard run. Nope, I’m not done my Druid run, but I did read that a certain epilogue will be part of the second patch, and I’ve decided not to finish my first run until that patch drops. I’m still playing through my Druid run, but taking breaks to play as my Bard just to slow things down a bit.

Two main things I’ve observed: 1) Bard is fantastic to play from a story perspective, what with all the ridiculous Charisma, plus the Jack of all trades bonus; 2) combat is much easier this time around, simply because I know what to expect, which also means I’m being creative instead of straightforward.

I also killed Commander Zhalk on the Nautilus this time around, which means Lae’zel has a very nice broadsword right from the start. I know I’ll replace it in time, but it’s a good starter.

An interesting twist, because I’ve decided to keep Lae’zel in my party with Shadowheart during this run, is that making one happy has the inverse effect on the other. This means that my decisions invariably raise my status with one and lower it with the other. So I’ve begun to send one back to camp before pivotal choices just to keep them both happy. Seems fitting for a Bard who happens to be a bit manipulative when they can’t be persuasive.