Baldur’s Gate 3 – Review & Recommendation
Baldur’s Gate 3 is getting rave reviews from everyone, sweeping award shows and being called the Best Game of 2023 by multiple publications. And it’s really not hard to see why. Having played it myself, it honestly deserves all the praise it’s getting and it’s easily one of my personal favorite games of all time.
1. Deep Breadth of Content
The first thing I noticed upon jumping into this game was how much it had to offer. With 11 races, 12 classes and 46 subclasses, your player character can wield a vast array of different playstyles, backstories, and appearances, and all these choices will lead to meaningful storyline differences. The maps of Faerûn are expansive and littered with things to find, fight, and frisk for exciting and exotic inventory options. None of my friends have had anything close to a similar gameplay trajectory.
And that’s without going into spells or magic items, which will have a drastic effect on your playstyle or combat options, and the game is packed to the gills with countless options in either category. I’ve been having trouble finishing my first playthrough because I keep rolling up new characters to try every random D&D 5e build I’ve dreamed of playing but could never find a table.
2. Incredible Writing
I can’t get over how good the writing is. Every single NPC is voice-acted, and every line oozes with personality. The core companions are multi-faceted and nuanced characters who go through their own character arcs and respond dynamically to the player’s choices. The quests and storylines are incredibly flexible in responding to player actions, there were countless times I learned from friends that some choice I made had far-reaching consequences, or that some random NPC had a means to befriend/kill and throw the entire plot in a completely different direction.
3. Active and Engaged Devs
Larian Studios hasn’t just been resting on their laurels either. They are constantly releasing bugfixes, content patches, and major updates in response to player feedback. And considering they developed this game for over three years before finally releasing, it’s clear they’re in for the long haul. They’ve added new difficulties, combat mechanics, additional dialogue/cutscenes, customization options…I have trouble wrapping my head around it when the game’s already as expansive as it is. And finally they’ve wholeheartedly embraced modding, you can already go download pretty much anything you can imagine to further hone your desired gameplay experience. Much like Skyrim, you’re basically buying an entire library of games when you get BG3.
4. The Best Adaptation of D&D 5e Ever Made
In conclusion, Baldur’s Gate 3 exceeded my already-sky-high expectations in every way, taking the world’s most-popular TTRPG system and raising it to new heights. Fans of D&D will love what they find, and newcomers to the system will find themselves comfortably handheld by all the automated calculations the game runs on your behalf in the background. This is the first time since Elden Ring I purchased a game at full price, and I definitely think it was more than worth it.