Introduction
A couple weeks ago I ended up buying Baldur’s Gate 3. I had the day off and I love Dungeons and Dragons, so it was only a matter of time until I bought the game. I am shocked by the amount of dialog choices as well as the different ways you can get out of situations. You could have several play throughs and still find new things you missed previously. As of now I’ve played through the game once and am almost finished with a second play through. I recently finished the game the same night the game awards were happening. I completely missed all the game trailers and I need to get caught up. Baldur’s Gate 3 is available on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation.
Quests
There are plenty of quests that you can do, aside from the main quests. There are quests given by certain characters or quests that begin when you enter a certain location or pick up an item. You can keep track of your quests in the journal. If you lose track of one of your objectives, that’s the best place to look. You can often find the most updated information of what’s going on with the current quest and what you’ve done so far.
Combat
I had brief reservations at first because I wasn’t sure I would like the combat. I’m glad that I was wrong. Combat is turn based and turns are decided by dice rolls called initiative. This sets the turn order for that encounter and changes when an ally or enemy is defeated and can’t fight anymore. On a character’s turn you have a certain distance you can move and different actions that you can do. Using spells, attacking enemies, using potions are all things you can do. If you’re good at strategy games then you shouldn’t have any issues adjusting.
The Characters
I really enjoyed all of the characters. Throughout the game your party members have their own quest lines that you can follow. As you learn more about that party member and complete their quests, you’ll learn more about their stories. I highly recommend doing character quests. Mostly because you learn more about the characters as well as more about the world in general. Each character has an approval rating for how they view your character. That rating can raise or lower depending on certain choices you make. Some characters might agree with a decision that you made while others will disagree with that decision. What really ties the characters together is the voice acting. The voice actors knocked their roles out of the park.
The character builder is one of the best ones I’ve come across. You have a lot of customization options with the different races and classes that you can choose from. Your choices in the character creator changes dialog options in the games as well as how certain characters react to you. For example, my first character was a paladin. Sometimes dialog choices appeared in conversations directly related to my class. So not only does the character creator make your character feel unique, but you also might experience.
Any Bugs?
I don’t have a lot of negatives to bring up. The main issues I’ve had in my playthroughs are minor bugs. With each update they’ve been less frequent. I do need to bring up a major bug that is currently impacting Xbox players. Right now some people are having their save files get deleted. From what I’ve read this issue is still impacting some players, though Larian Studios is continuing to work on a fix. If you want to avoid the bug completely you can get Baldur’s Gate 3 on PC and PS5.
Conclusion
This is definitely a game I recommend you buy. I’ve had a lot of fun and have at least 150 to 200 hours put into the game. It ended up being my most played PlayStation game this year. If you’re looking for a game that feels complete then this is the one. I’d also like to mention that the music is great. Didn’t share any because some things are better experienced in the moment. As always thank you all for reading and I wish everyone a Happy New Year!
If you’re on BlueSky you can follow me there @gamerwithglasses.bsky.social.