A Sincere Review Of Baldur's Gate 3

growing up I was The Adventurous type I used to grab a backpack pick up my favorite stick and set off into the woods just outside my childhood home I remember the feeling of how vast the woods felt how impossibly tall the trees were how every time I stepped into the woods I was stepping off into another adventure letting my imagination take me wherever it wanted maybe today I would find a new base a new point of Interest a felled tree is now making a bridge for me to cross the creek into Uncharted Territory all leading to confronting a new imaginary foe a dragon to slay the magic of our childhood imagination is something that is impossible to bottle I've only ever felt something similar playing games like the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time an immortal game to me because of how well it delivered on that sense of wonder walking into an unexplored world no Direction just an adventure that developed on its own RPGs in my mind are meant to feel like a journey as if I've started on a second life and I'm going to live in this world until I've completed my quest Ocarina of Time was a journey while many games have come close to it over the years I don't think it's possible to recreate the sense of wonder or vastness that I felt exploring Hyrule for the first time I've explored every single area in the game looking for every single secret that I could find spoke with every NPC to hear their story and I felt as though that experience was just for me and me alone every interaction with the world and its characters left an indelible mark on me it's one of the very few games that I feel like I could hand draw a map of and know where everything is in the game that's the mark of a special game a game that makes it feel as though it was made specifically for you a game you remember an experience that you carry for a lifetime Baldur's Gate 3 is what I consider to be my second Ocarina of Time I've been on a journey with Baldur's Gate 3 for over three years now I've been a part of the Early Access and I feel like I have a hand in the creation of the game but beyond that it's been a game that I've anticipated for a really long time look I'm a Casual Gamer I work a 40-hour job I come home I play a couple hours of games and then I have to go to sleep I am not the kid that I used to be that could completely lose themselves in a game has no distractions however this game seems to do the impossible to make everything disappear to make it where the only thing that I'm paying attention to is the game that I'm playing and the moment that I'm playing it and nothing else seems to matter that's an incredible feeling and it's something that's incredibly valuable this is a heartfelt casual Gamer's review of Baldur's Gate 3. Baldur's Gate 3 is one of the most stunning games that I've ever played while it's not the most graphically intensive it's incredibly dense with character the Wilderness of Act One the temple Vista in the mountain pass the neon colors of the underdark the Despair and Gloom of Act 2 and the busy streets of Baldur's Gate while it's easy to get swept up in the Grandeur of Baldur's Gate 3's map design and its character design I think the most engaging part of the game's visuals is how it feels like there's something hidden around every single corner of the game the game is always giving you these visual hints that are being displayed leading you towards a secret while the game provides map markers for quests I've never felt like I've ever had to use them because I just naturally find my way through to every single quest in the game the game moves the player which I find a much more valuable and memorable experience than being directed while I do love the world design it doesn't take away from how impressively characters are designed the detailed hair the individual complexions their eye movements facial expressions and Body Language their careful design not only shows a high attention to detail but also the love and commitment that was poured into making these characters feel alive and as a result I find myself completely immersed anytime I'm in conversation with them I genuinely cannot take my eyes off of this game most times when I'm playing PC games I have something going on on my second monitor whether that's watching a stream or a YouTube video or having a conversation in Discord there's always a distraction but when it comes to Baldur's Gate I'm always fully engaged there's nothing else going on unless I'm actually streaming and that's a completely different story and one of the reasons why I'm so engaged is because this is probably the most realistic experience I've had talking with characters in a game the most realistic depictions of having an actual conversation with somebody in a video game or at least the closest I've been to it and I didn't realize how important that was until I played something like Starfield where the characters and the companions are animated in a very Bland way and this isn't something that's a strike necessarily against Starfield but it just shows how much more value can be brought out of characters and companions specifically when you animate them in a very specific way that makes it where they feel real you can tell shadowheart is hiding something you can see how much Carlock wants to live that adds an incredible amount of value to the player's experience to my experience specifically beyond that there are beautiful areas in this game that tell stories on their own whether that's areas in Act 2 where you can see that there's broken down ballistas or Machines of War you can tell that this is a battle-ridden area something went down here you can see things like that even across act 1 as well that adds again even more value to the experience because it's not just these blank areas that were transported to walking long distances where there's nothing going on no that density of character that's in this game leading you from place to place there's always something there there's always something to look at something to discover someone to talk to a story being told so many games have these Bleak worlds where you have minutes upon minutes of walking through blank territory with nothing going on nothing to look at nothing to interact with that doesn't exist here and because of that I'm always engaged and that's so refreshing I'm not sure if it's my newly discovered love for the mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition or it's maybe just the high of enjoying the addiction to Classic role-playing games however Baldur's Gate 3 just feels good to play while I definitely have some gripes with the UI especially Inventory management man healers and spell casters can be a major headache with the ungodly amount of prepared spells that they get many of them being incredibly situational so it can feel relatively clunky at times however Dungeons and Dragons just like Baldur's Gate 3 are very situational games every combat encounter has multiple Solutions whether that's applying specific Buffs or debuffs to overcome enemy strengths using the environment against your enemies or coming up with your own unique destructive ways to swiftly bring combat to an end while many people may look at turn-based systems as a hindrance for Baldur's Gate 3 something that slows down gameplay I look at it like an opportunity to think craft a strategy and see how your plan plays out I get the time to take a breath enjoy the game at a slower pace and not be overwhelmed by the fast-paced mechanics gameplay and bright lights that we see in action RPGs in contrast to the swirl of blades and spells that we see in action RPGs we get to scout ahead find the engagement and start coming up with a plan of attack and for me that's been half the fun conversely sometimes we'll find encounters that are going to catch us off guard combat that just seems to pop out of nowhere or maybe we just made a bad dice roll and now we're forced to make quick decisions to find the upper hand that part is really engaging and it just feels good even after playing multiple playthroughs of engaging the same encounters over and over and over again I've never felt like they've lost their luster I always try something new always try to find a new way to put the enemy at a disadvantage and especially when you're going from normal to tactician encounters just never feel the same well I definitely wish there were more difficulty levels tactician is relatively easy once you've got your classes online however similarly to Divinity original sin 2 we'll probably see some random encounter mods and some higher difficulties soon enough I want to take a moment to talk about character progression and customization I love Dungeons and Dragons rule set when it comes to character progression and itemization especially in a video game the fact that it focuses on the transformative nature of the classes and their design rather than items allows items to actually play a much bigger role than they do in many popular RPGs you feel far more agency in your choices that you make when you're building a character and choosing their background attributes Feats and spells and at some point when you find a weapon or a piece of equipment that does something as simple as Misty step it completely changes your strategy for Encounters in the way that you even Explore with your party you feel the power of every single level that's gained and it's in stark contrast to a variety of the action RPGs I've played where you really don't feel any of the power from the levels that you get especially in the early and mid stages of the game in Baldur's Gate 3 by the time you reach the end of a specific act you feel like you are the god of that act all before the crashing reality of stepping into the next ACT crushing your confidence and forcing you back to playing a more strategic way rather than just rushing headlong into combat so I feel like Baldur's Gate 3's combat is actually relatively fast paced and the reason I feel that way is because of how creative we can get with our characters within a single turn whether that's throwing a potion at a character to heal them or interacting with an object that maybe activates a trap that hurts a bunch of enemies shooting a lever that drops a hammer all kinds of different ways that we can interact with our environment the enemies and even NPCs there's all kinds of different ways that we can creatively bring combat to an end and I feel like when we have all of these different options at our disposal we're looking at what weaknesses different characters have seeing what kind of spells they might use or what characters they might go to attack thinking about what spells we have available to us when and where is the best time to use them when our mind is that activated and we're that engaged with the game the combat doesn't feel slow that's why the game feels so good to me now I do think that there's plenty of things that Baldur's Gate 3 does wrong with its mechanics specifically just things that I feel like they underutilize when I'm looking at something like camp supplies camping and resting in general short rests I have never felt like I couldn't find camp supplies I'm finding food all over the place and while it might be a little bit difficult at the very beginning of the game when you're playing tactician and you're in Act 2 or act three I feel like it's a complete non-issue it's not a problem for me because I have tons of gold I can just go to all the different vendors that I've seen across the entire game buy packs and I'm back on the road I feel like this is one of the reasons why there needs to be another difficulty something that's going to ramp it up a little bit higher make supplies a little bit more difficult to find make potions and things like that more difficult to find so that we actually use the crafting in the game I feel like crafting is something that's also underutilized while I like it being an option and I feel like that's the route that they kind of try to go with this they didn't want to make things necessary for you to have to understand or necessary for you to interact with because they felt like it detracted from the overall experience I think not making that stuff necessary in tactician takes away from the experience of wanting to play a more difficult play through I want to try to ration things and I don't want to just put that upon myself arbitrarily I don't think that's the word for it uh not in a real way I don't want to put it on myself in a real way I can't think of the word right now I'm sorry you just have to leave you just have to live with that but uh I want to be restricted I want to have to think about how I'm going to ration my skills and abilities my heels my potions I want to be put in a position in which I do need to think about using things like oils and elixirs and things of that nature and I feel like the game really doesn't push you to need to use any of those kind of things so I would like to see something like that in the future now I realize we're going to have mods that are going to make the game much more difficult and probably a lot more engaging than it already is which is crazy to even think about but these are things that I would like to see them work on in the future Baldur's Gate 3 just feels good to play not mechanically like I stated before but atmospherically even as I'm writing this review right now I'm listening to the ambient music that's played in Camp just as the music in Baldur's Gate 3 captures my attention it is now gracefully motivating my writing we often tend to say X or Y game has great music but we never really talk about how that makes us feel or how it enhances our gameplay experience camp music gives me a genuine feeling of reprieve it's subconsciously motivating me to take a break walk away from the game and disconnect for a little while Overworld music on the other hand actually moves me throughout the world whether that's the Brazen Adventure that I feel through the woods of act one or my cautious steps that I'm taking across act two Combat music both focuses and inspires my strategy as weird as it may sound I feel like I'm executing attacks and abilities to the rhythm of the music I feel the world through the music in this game and it's something that I really appreciate we often discuss sound design in more realistic manners seeing how guns shoot in different hallways or outside or next to certain things or whether or not certain sounds sound real or not things like that but we never really talk about how Sound and Music specifically contributes to our gameplay I'm looking at a game like Baldur's Gate 3 there's sometimes sounds that are actually drawing you towards Quest objectives maybe that's a conversation that you're hearing off in the distance or a frog that's creaking in the bog I think it's my best way for you to say that I brought it up in another video as well there's these different audio cues of the game actually drawing you in different directions to make sure you know that there's something interesting there that's such a powerful tool and it's so nice to not have to be directed by a big glowing Quest marker that's telling me that there's something that I need to go talk to somebody that I need to go talk to or something that I need to interact with not to mention this game's music is probably the best score that I've heard since playing Final Fantasy games like Final Fantasy 14 or Final Fantasy 16 earlier this year it's so obvious how much larian cares about this game when you listen to the different music scores across the entire game whether that's adventuring around in Act 2 whether that's listening to alfira play in The Grove whatever you can just tell that the emotion is there they're trying to elicit a specific emotion from us whether that's firing us up in combat whether that's firing us up in the very Opening screen before we even start our game whether that's calming us down in Camp they're very specifically trying to elicit very specific emotions from the player which not only engages us further and enhances our overall experience but just gives us something to sit back and appreciate and I love it really do sound design in this game is Bar None one of the best that I've seen this year if not this entire generation but beyond that this is some of the best music that I've heard in video games in a long long time Baldur's Gate 3 is Bar None the best companion and character role-playing game that I have ever played the character art the animations their writing and their voice acting is peerless while I think there are a ton of games that do something similar with NPCs or companions none of them do it as holistically or as thoughtfully as larion has done with Baldur's Gate 3. you can feel the genuine care for the characters it's almost as if they wrote them as true Companions of their own real friends and not just these character archetypes that we normally see now I'm not saying that some of these characters don't fall into familiar tropes however within a few conversations many of your preconceived notions of those characters are completely obliterated as these characters continue to evolve throughout the entire story and sometimes really drastic ways due to the genius of the character writing and their portrayal I found myself not only interested in the main story but heavily interested in every single character's Arc in most RPGs your character's story is the one that takes precedence you are spotlighted you are the hero however in Baldur's Gate 3 you're just one of the party members it's a collective story a collective adventure with each character holding similar weight impact and importance to the overall story of the game and it's all tied together with some of the greatest voice performances I've ever heard in gaming and I think that's incredible I am not the main character we are the main character everybody in the party plays their role you're sharing in triumphs you're sharing in defeats and you're also judged for some of the actions that you take in most games that just not really done the same way characters aren't ever portrayed in this way parties aren't portrayed in this way you are always spotlighted as the main hero the main character everything's about you you but in this game it's about us there's something so cool about that so Dynamic about that that adds so many different layers to not only interaction and engagement but obviously the permutations and things like that that they put into the game and that's one of the reasons why everybody's story everybody's experience is so vastly different from someone else's there's characters that I have in my party that my friends have never put in theirs there's characters that I've met in NPCs that I've formed relationships or bonds with out in the world that have died in other playthroughs with my friends and I'm not even talking about dark urge that's there's something so cool and so unique to everybody having their own story and you being part of this Collective story rather than just all of the attention being on you while you are the one that makes the final decision in a lot of cases you can make those decisions using other characters in the party I have a playthrough where I'm playing a monk they're an absolute dial tone for the most part the main character isn't even the main character I'm using Shadow heart as a Bard because she actually has skills to talk to people unlike my monk that just can stare at them and fail roles every five seconds I think this is something that gains even more depth when we start looking at character quests and things like that and how well they do this inner weaving of not only character quests but also quests throughout the entire world every Quest feels like it has an impact on the main story nothing actually feels like a side quest in this game and there's something that's so cool about that while I do enjoy that in very I don't know more like sandbox RPGs where I can just go off in a random Direction and have a random Adventure there's something really cool about making everything feel like it feels like it intertwines with the overarching narrative it's something that just makes the entire experience that much more engaging it makes everybody's experience that much more unique I really love this game in the off chance that you found this video before purchasing Baldur's Gate 3. buy this game it's worth a shot even if it's something that you normally wouldn't play this is your adventure to have they've thought of so many different options so many different permutations making sure to keep in mind that you might just kill off every single person that you meet whether it's the art architecture music characters spells builds progression loot narrative or just wanting to go out and slay some monsters Baldur's Gate 3 offers a lot to anyone that wants to give it a shot and it's a game that I will always wholeheartedly recommend so if you made it to this video and you're upset because I just spent my entire time gushing over Baldur's Gate 3. I will admit that it's difficult to be objective because the game is incredibly special to me it's a game that I genuinely love to play and it's made by a developer that I wholeheartedly respect and can't wait to see the next thing that they make I'm not going to deny that Baldur's Gate 3 has its issues just as any game always does but the difference here is that Baldur's Gate 3 actually offers more value than it offers issues and that's what we tend to judge things on it's difficult to be able to weigh whether or not games need to be able to come out complete where we just need to have good games I recognize that there's some issues that are always going to be persistent but when it comes to companies that we know or at least that I know that I can trust larion Studios is one of those companies it's easy to tell looking at the game just how much they love it it's easy to tell how much they love and enjoy interacting with their community they want this game to be the best RPG experience larion Studios can possibly deliver and it's a game that not only by its release set a new standard for RPGs but it's also a game that's set a new standard for myself inspired me to want to put more effort into things that I do into the things that I enjoy it makes me want to bring more value to other people through the content that I make here on YouTube it's a game that's always going to be special to me and it's a game that I honestly just can't wait to play more of I hope you guys enjoyed the video thank you for sticking around this long I hope you guys have a great day stay cool stay righteous stay safe guys and as always I will see you in Baldur's Gate peace

Channel: Legendary Drops

Views: 14,709

Keywords: baldurs gate 3, baldur's gate 3, bg3, Baldur's Gate 3 expansion, Baldur's Gate 3 Mods, mods, expansion, bg3 mods, bg3 expansion, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3 tips, baldur's gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3 tips and tricks, baldurs gate 3 review, baldur's gate 3 review, baldurs gate 3 classes, baldurs gate 3 guide, baldurs gate 3 mods, baldurs gate 3 beginners guide, baldurs gate 3 secrets, bg3 tips, bg3 gameplay, baldur's gate 3 story, baldurs gate 3 news

Id: GFj66tAc87c

Length: 23min 2sec (1382 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2023