Review: There’s a lot to enjoy in BALDUR’S GATE 3, but it still has some problems to work out

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been the subject of discussion ever since before it left Early Access on August 3, 2023. A couple of years ago, I was lucky enough to try the game on the now defunct Google Stadia as part of Early Access and it showed a lot of promises. Larian Studios was then kind enough to give me a PC code when the game came out of early access and I hurried to download it. Even though I’ve been given a code, all thoughts below are my own. you can play Baldur’s Gate 3 now via Steam or on PS5 starting September 6 (sorry Xbox players).

Before I get too deep into my review, I want to share my PC specs:

• Processor: Ryzen 9 5900X

• GPUs: Radeon 6800XT

• RAM: 32GB DDR4 @ 3600 MT/s

• SSD: Samsung EVO 970 1TB NVMe

To put it bluntly, I had a nightmare time with him Baldur’s Gate 3. For the first few days of trying to play, I could only play for about 20-30 minutes at a time before my system severely crashed. Looking online, I’m not the only one who has encountered similar problems. After lots of experimenting and teaming up with friends to try and fix this, I found that I needed to cap the framerate at around 80fps and use DirectX 11. It was a very frustrating experience that really soured things. I saw so many friends and other people on the internet talking about how much they loved the game but for some reason it took me several days to figure out a way to play it.

Unfortunately, my frustrations didn’t stop with the frame cap fix. I finally patched things up and was excited to try the split screen multiplayer experience with my wife. At first it sounded great. It was really easy to put her into the game and we had fun playing together. The problem happened the next time I went to play. I discovered the hard way that once another player joins your adventuring party, they cannot be removed. WHAT THE HELL!? There was no way for me to delete my wife character so I could add another NPC. That shouldn’t be the way it works. While the game doesn’t automatically kick them out, the game should provide an option to leave the player character in the camp like NPCs. At the very least, the game should provide a heads up that the player character will be permanent.

My last major criticism a Baldur’s Gate 3 is the mostly silent player character. During the character creation process you can select a voice for your character which is great. Unfortunately, the character doesn’t talk much. During dialogue, you select from a list of options, but then, like in an old RPG, the other characters simply respond. I really wish we could have gotten interpretations of the player characters that actually talk to the other characters. In my opinion, it reminds me of some of my favorite games from decades past, but in a bad way.

I’ll keep my minor complaints to a minimum. These are things that don’t really detract from the score, but really could have helped push it further. First, I’ve always wanted more fanfare from Critical Successes and Critical Misses. They really look like any other roll only with the word “Critical” added on top. Secondly, if you use a controller, there were a number of times where it felt clunky trying to move around the world. This could simply be due to general clumsiness or not being sure if you can scale a patch of terrain or something else. Finally, I wish there was an official way to use WASD to move your character like an RPG instead of relying on clicking when using mouse and keyboard.

Okay, enough of the negativity. While I definitely have my gripes about the game, there’s a lot to enjoy. First, despite this Baldur’s Gate 3 it doesn’t use the latest graphics technology, it looks really nice. The characters and environments look really nice if you can use the high graphics settings on your computer. The spells are also really nice and the animations help you feel that something magical is happening. I know the team is working on integrating FSR 2.0 (I think it should have been part of the launch build) and that should be a big plus, but I hope they keep working on bringing more advanced technology into the game like ray- tracking.

Next, the music and sound design has been immaculate so far. The background music is solid and while I wouldn’t say it’s something I would blast in my car, it fits the game very well and adds to the experience. Likewise, the sounds of attacks, spells and even movements also add to it. The voice acting is also particularly solid although as I mentioned I wish the player character had more of that. Having a word for the different spells was also a nice touch. I know there are many spells Dungeons & Dragons they have vocal components, but my bands have rarely done much with them. In Baldur’s Gate 3, the characters say something like “Ignis!” for Fire Bolt. Adds a nice level of detail.

The character creation process in Baldur’s Gate 3 it’s quite extensive and I like it. You have to select your race, class, appearance, background, etc. When you go to change the look of your character, there are so many options for some fields, but it doesn’t feel overwhelming like other recent games in my opinion. I also like how some options change based on the race you choose. If you choose Dragonborn, it stands to reason that you don’t have hair, but instead lets you customize scales and horns. It’s little things like that that solidify a positive experience. I was surprised to see that Alchemist is not an option and not all subclasses are there when you reach those levels. I hope this is additional content that they add to the game in the future.

And what about minor praise? They definitely exist. First, I like that this game has split screen multiplayer mode! It’s very cute and now that I know those characters are permanent, I think I’ll start a new game with my wife from the beginning. Despite Baldur’s Gate 3 it is literally a version of the video game Dungeons & Dragons, implements every table’s favorite rule: consuming potions is a bonus action! This really helps the game. You can also do area-of-effect healing by throwing a healing potion near a group of allies, which is pretty fun, even if it takes a full action. I also like how you start the game with a couple of potions and a scroll of revitalization.

At the end of the day, Baldur’s Gate 3 it’s a very solid game, if you will Dungeons & Dragons and I wanted to get a higher rating. Unfortunately, the frustration of trying to run the game for an extended period of time, the inability to remove player characters from the party in a multiplayer scenario, and the lack of player characters actually performing during dialogue drag the game down to the low for Me. Of course, these are mostly things that Larian Studios could fix with patches and updates. Still, it’s a great game that plays great and can provide hours and hours of entertainment.