Baldur’s Gate 3 Review: A Passion-Driven Masterpiece

is time for us to review finally Baldur's Gate 3. we have been playing this game a lot some of us more than others but it's amazing we'll talk about that later Austin how much time have you put into it you think got at least 50 if not more 50 hours yeah that's nice yeah and then uh Jason you have not played it yet because you're afraid for Life get out yeah okay and then Joe you have beat it I've beaten it I've played enough for both myself and Jason there we go there we go all right all right as of last night I think I had 150 something hours clocked in but that's me going through the game playing multiplayer with other people starting new characters so it's a combination of all that stuff a single playthrough though is probably gonna take people 80 to 100 hours easily if you're you know if you're not just like rushing through it which you shouldn't you gotta experience this as a story that it is and man it is just so good what classes have you played through so far and which one favorite one my main class that I played through the first time with was uh cleric and then um fighter I'm playing as also which is always fun Eldritch Knight fighter so we can use magic nice um a necromancer I'm playing on one of my runs on my evil run uh because you know summoning the uh somebody in the dead is always fun and um uh wizard is also a really good one well I mean Necromancer is a chain off of The Wizard class and uh is that the subclass yeah it's a class of wizard yeah there's just so many good ones barbarians super fun if you want to just throw people around if you have a companion who is a halfling or a gnome you can literally pick them up and throw them that's a Barbarian so if they need to get like up somewhere like here come here I'm gonna throw you up on top of this Cliff so you know that was a thing like throw him as a weapon like oh you could have nothing yeah you can throw them into somebody and knock them down yeah but everyone takes damage to that everybody takes a little bit of damage but it's worth it the person you hit will go prone so it's like is it worth it I I uh I was playing with Travis and Sarah and Sarah's playing a uh Jared so she turned into a cat yes we're back at Camp so I go and pick her up and I was about to throw her she's like no no don't throw away that's what's like oh she's gonna there are some small areas that like only either small races or people can turn into things like cats or whatever can sneak through so it's like if you're just a bunch of big dudes or whatever you can't go in these areas like they're cut off from you but it's not like somewhere you have to go it's like sometimes it'll be a shortcut to a different thing sometimes it'll just be like a treasure room or something so it's like there's advantages to having different ways to do different things and like Wizards can turn into uh gaseous form which means they can just turn into gas and kind of go through these things yeah okay that's insane so favorite favorite one so far favorite class so far oh that's so hard to say I want to get this answer because I know the moment that I go home and start a new character and be like oh this is my new favorite class you know what really um I got one if you need more time uh okay yeah you go first so uh I like the fighter how many classes have you been playing at so far well I when you technically play as well because you have other characters with you but as your main let's go through them I was up okay good um so actually hang on sorry before we do that I want to like preface like what Boulders oh sure sure yes dang in case they didn't listen okay someone's first podcast this is gonna go on YouTube so therefore okay I've seen a video yeah anyway so people watching the show Baldur's Gate 3 is a story Rich party based RPG this is a crpg in some ways unless you play it on Console then it's I guess I'll still console yeah yeah yeah it's just hard to see it's fine uh but this is said the universe of dungeon and Dragons so I'm sure everybody is really realizing what this game is but I did want to preface just in case you didn't know but in this game your choices shape uh tale of fellowship and betrayal survival and sacrifice and a lore of absolute power so that's where we are that's a setup now we can talk about classic all right and I have beaten it but I'm not going to spoil anything past like the First Act and even that I'm gonna do a light light spoiler okay for anybody who doesn't know okay and this is also like part to the Forgotten Realms campaign of d d for any nerds who want to know that so like myself I remember the last time we were talking about this so it is most definitely connected to the lore of d d okay yeah that's what I was uh yeah the Forgotten Realms uh Campaign which is like years and years of source books and stuff but that's the area of DnD that is focused on yeah yeah so from top to bottom you've got barbarians bards clerics Druids fighter monk Paladin Ranger Rogue sorcerer Warlock and wizard that's the main classic there are subclasses for everybody I think if you're counting all the subclasses together there are a total of 48 classes you guys is ridiculous it's crazy sounds like d d I was like oh I want to be this class it's like oh now I can Branch out which is the best basically however you want to play this game you're able to if you just want to go through it without combat at all which for the most part you can and play a Bard like you can talk anybody out of anything or Charm them into not fighting you or sometimes fighting like killing all the other enemies for you like there are so many or if you just want to go all in be a fighter or something because or a barbarian and then you're just like a brute who's going in and taking everybody out Druids you can play the kind that just transform into Bears or um wolves or whatever or you can just play the kind that casts nature magic or even uh Spore magic which is like the dark Druid sort of that raises like the undead as kind of like fungus people and they work like that yeah oh yeah that was cool or no on yours oh yeah yeah on yours yeah they have been playing yeah I got Paladin which I barely played and then the Ranger and surprisingly I'm not liking the ranger like I do actually playing d d oh interesting because I feel like I do more damage there I don't like tabletop yeah are you playing uh The Beastmaster roll or what are you doing I think so okay so like your your pet is like your main kind of focus yeah yeah yeah just so they can get out there and take aggro and enjoy summon the bear okay like a Pokemon trainer exactly yeah but I'm only limited but I um when I play lizelle The Fighter I feel like I've gotten to her playlist at the fighter exactly I've got her in a good spot where she she can get in there she can do potentially five different attacks at one time because as you get to like level three or four you get an extra attack and bonus action on top of that attack and then she can set up her uh what is the thing she has a second not second one um anyway she can refill her she could do her two attacks and then do a bonus action to do two more attacks and then I have if I have a a sword I can hit him with my the oh yeah the handle yeah and then she has evasive footwork so during that time she's waiting to her next turn she could basically Dodge anything so she's just sitting there oh and then I just got something else where if they miss I get to have a free attack oh nice was that one of the feet yeah yeah yeah and there's another one I have anyway I was like she's kicking ass so fighter is your favorite I like her so far yeah yeah thought you want to get this game what's cool is just like however you want to play it like Pick a Class based on that because if Austin just wants to like Rush In And fight people then a fighter yeah it's the obvious choice because they're gonna be the best at that but if you want to hang back then a ranger probably would suit you better or if you want to be a stealthy class Rogue absolutely because stealth is so powerful in any game really but it's it's great to watch a new play stealth was it's cool I didn't know how I didn't know how to play a rogue and you play a Starion and I just sent him in there like normally but you're over here like sneaking around hiding they lose you and you go in there like backstabs yeah because massive yeah sneak attacks and sneak attack and you can even do sneak attack with Advantage any kind of Advantage you don't have to be hidden to do it if you have if somebody casts true strike on an enemy then you get advantage on them so you can sneak attack them while completely visible yeah and that's gonna do like double damage or triple damage or whatever it does and so you can take people out super easily with that but that's not everybody play style like some people don't like to sneak around um but if you just want to cast magic there's three different magic classes for this there's sorcerer there's Wizard and there's a warlock and all of them work completely differently um if you want to be an intelligent Caster that's where wizard comes in if you want to be a Caster based on Charisma then that's where uh warlock or sorcerer come in sorcerer is able to kind of tune their spells better to be like like okay I want this spell to have metamagic where it hits two people instead of just one as a warlock you have a patron so it's like you're kind of dedicating yourself to a demon of some sort and they are part of the story too now so as a warlock you're having to like talk and make deals with your Patron during the story as a part of it yeah because they're the ones providing you with your magic basically I just my my now permanent solo player character is a warlock I just created last night yeah so I'm playing the I'm going to the fiend route warlock thing or whatever and and I I just wanted to use ultra Splats because I never used before amazing and the thing and then so like when I first started in the first level I was like weak as [ __ ] and then I was uh I was when I went to level two there was an upgrade I can get that when I cast Ultras blast it adds my Charisma modifier to it so it does one through ten instead of one through ten I think my Charisma was plus three so then it adds three damage so it's like four through thirteen yeah and it's an 18 meter range shot that's just a direct shot at something and I have another ability that um or that I can you know cast like disadvantage or I know it's a hex so I can throw a hex on somebody and I can choose what I want to give them disadvantage on so I can be like wisdom intelligence Charisma whatever and you can just cast that like sometimes you can cast it multiple times without using a spell slot so I was like holy [ __ ] this is awesome I need to sit back as long as you don't get close to me that's the part I'm trying to figure out is like how to make sure they don't come towards me when you have like because I don't have my full party yet with that character so I'm like playing with like two people and stuff like that so I have my shadow heart lady who's like walking around and she's like trying to like heal and stuff like that but then the other one I found I was like I'm gonna jump up on this hill and then it'll give me like a couple of rounds for them to get to me and I can just cast I'll just blast at them nice is it push it back uh it does after you get to level three ability that when I hit he'll just blast it'll push them back like four meters nice so that's the optional thing you can put onto ultrasplast2 of course you're sacrificing something else yeah and as a war like you also choose what kind of Tomb or something you want where you can either be a weapon I can't remember a sword warlock or something where you bound a weapon to yourself and your charisma modifier is added to it instead of your strength so you're attacking with a weapon that's bound to you in that way you can be like a tomb warlock that gets like extra spells you can be like a uh I can't remember what it's called but it has like the um demon pets with it or an imp or something so yeah yeah it's a little amp you can have run around with you which is kind of cool too yeah so that was was playing the NPC companion in Warlock and we're on a bridge what was that uh will will yeah okay I got on the side of the bridge where there was a hole or he was on the opposite side and I went Eldritch blasting yeah screw you yeah like last time Joe was on the podcast and I was here yeah we're talking about Elden ring yeah and after like listening to talk about Elden ring I bought Eldon ring and played it now he's talking about this and I'm like it's in my cart now and I'm thinking about buying it it's at your car it's in my car right now so my question is before I like make the purchase what is what is bad about the game like what is like what is something that you guys like all three of you like officially like do not like besides the cross play and All That Jazz you kind of fell a lot but then that's the whole point is like you learn and get better that's normal and I think there's a lot of for me there was a lot of like lag time with that it's like oh I went to battle not at my best and I had to like play it over there was one battle I literally had to play over like 10 times until the game actually messed up and when I reloaded my save okay the guy was already dead oh like the battle ended that was like I didn't even play the battle okay I mean that seems like a really like small chance of something like that happening I will say like as far as a bad goes I get that out of the way like it is kind of buggy still especially in the later chapters first chapter pretty clean because that was I hear that that was Early Access tested for like three years so yeah that's like super cleaned up yeah yeah act two a little buggy but act three that's where it's like okay I can see that they haven't had a whole lot of time to clean this one up yet it's fine I got through it I think I only crashed once throughout my entire playthrough so that's like really good yeah but there are times where like I had a druid companion and then he was in Bear form and he as I was talking to somebody he just walked in front of us and all I could see is a big mass of fur as I'm having this conversation so sometimes some of those things will get a little like glitchy it's not game breaking in any way but it's just funny stuff like that'll happen sometimes but they did do a patch recently that fixed a lot of that stuff because there were also fixes a thousand fixtures they're also like sometimes in a conversation you'll just see a cup floating around like behind someone it's like what is why is this cup just levitating but again I think a lot of those were fixed uh as far as just pure gameplay I don't think there's anything I don't like about it it's difficult but it's meant to be as such I mean you can set it to a lower difficulty but even then I've watched some people play it on that one and it had started still had trouble with it so it's not hand holdy no it's just a little bit less I dropped it down to all my single playthrough I dropped it down to the the beginner mode or whatever and the only difference that I notice is it just gives you more um HP so I started out with 10 HP per character and then it doubles it to 20 at the starting character but I still died in the the first round with playing these little freaking brain creatures things in a very early party so it doesn't make it still it doesn't make you like stupid or anything yeah you just get a little bit more padding yeah they have the same Health you get a little bit more health and that's how they kind of compensate so that one's like story mode or something yeah like that balance mode is like the middle ground that's what I played um yeah attack I think tactical or tactician mode is the hardest one I don't know if I'm smart enough to do that because dude yeah you know there's a lot of tactics to go into this and I want to be able to I don't want to have it to where like if I make any mistake I'm screwed the whole time that's what I feel like tactician will be and that's for really smart people and you know I praise anyone who can do that but I don't know that I'm one of those people so I would recommend playing it on balanced and if you're having a lot of trouble just like Brett said like switch it down to story and you'll be fine so you can switch it down at any time yeah okay up and down so it doesn't matter how do you feel like it's too easy yeah switch it up if you like it's too hard so yeah yeah but balance I think is a really good because there were a lot lot of battles like yeah like I had to do them a couple times because it's like well I approached this wrong or whatever but it wasn't any as you auto save or quick save like you can go back a couple quick saves you don't have to go back to the one you just did if like in Austin's case like you got stuck in a battle or something just go back a couple saves once it was hours ago it's whatever but yeah I was gonna say when we to talk about negatives there's only I say there's three negatives to this game that I've discovered so far one is that the auto save is very unforgiving so you have to make sure you save manually a lot and I will forget often like I I played an hour and a half last night and was just in the zone and then forgot and I went up to uh well actually this is so early in the game but I went to the Mind flare thing that you encounter that's like half dead on the ground yeah you didn't think of like oh well last time I played him I went up and persuaded him to like I did the persuasion or whatever to get him to not kill me or not eat me or whatever so this time I tried to do it I failed my check badly so he kissed me and killed my main character and I hadn't saved since I fell on the ground I'd already gone through a bunch of [ __ ] down there I was like [ __ ] and it was like permadeath so I always sounded like once I had to go back to an old say because it was just my character was dead I mean there's no permanent if you can res yourself uh well I didn't have any of this stuff for oh that's true I would have to get back to the camp and then go to the guys yeah I don't want to do all that so I was like I'm just going back to the save but that was the one thing is the saving you gotta well it'd be just a savings yeah just be conscious and once you go through it like you'll start doing just hit F5 yeah quick save done you don't have to go to the menu and save every time or anything like that um yeah F5 f8 FH quick load F5 these are not really negatives these are just like nitpicks honestly okay two more nitpicks real quick so inventory so much inventory it's okay I'm gonna give you a recommendations thank you okay for inventory I know like you'll see those backpacks or pouches on the ground pick those up because you can put things inside of those backpacks you can have as many backpacks as you want so that way you can have like a backpack for your Scrolls yeah then you know which one you open that otherwise just a mess of stuff that's a good idea yeah yeah does the inventory weigh you down at all it does okay there is encumbrance and the more strength you have the more you can carry so you're gonna want your Fighter characters to carry your heavy stuff yeah but you can also what's great is like you can um like if you hold shift and just like click on whatever then it will select all the items and you can right click and just send them to your Camp you don't have to like take them back to Camp just send them to camp and they'll be there oh that's nice yeah it helps out a lot yeah um yeah it was a little Annoying at first but once you get used to it you're like okay there's all these things I can do to mitigate the problems I'm having oh that's smart I forgot about the the backpack thing I definitely want to try that um the third thing is it's just that there's just so much to this game it's just it's all good content yeah it's so bad problem like why is this game so shitty it's so much the worst thing is that it's really good yeah yeah like after my first playthrough I immediately wanted to go back and start over because I knew my next run would be completely different from my first one because I'm gonna make different choices if I'm a different class you get class like dialogue options like I was a clear so I was getting a lot of like cleric of tier options where it's like my this is what my God would say kind of stuff and they respond to those things in unique ways so it's like no matter what class you're playing how you're going through it like whether you're doing like neutral good bad whatever they're it's gonna play differently supposedly there are like 13 000 endings that seems like a stretch but maybe with all the like small all the subtle nuances yeah yeah so my next question like let's say I get this game and I invite you guys to my party you can't bring your own character into my party you have to create a new one right and those characters are locked with my party yeah so you want to start like a single player game for yourself yeah and then a multiplayer game with friends it's kind of like having a DND session basically that was their idea behind it yeah it's like you're not gonna have like all the time to dedicate to doing this campaign all the time so just wait until your friends can all get together and continue your current campaign and what I like also about this is like so for example I have a campaign right now with with uh Austin Joe yeah and they have characters in my game but I can play with Austin or I can play with Joe and then we just control either person's character as an AI while they're not here so it's not like I have to have them they have to have them there yeah I don't know what happens if that character gets killed off and you just like you can revive them you can revive them yeah spend gold to sprinkle over your life yeah you don't have to write people and that's like there are times where in the story and I'm not gonna say who but like and it's going to be different for everybody like some of my characters died uh for story reasons or just left the party because they're like I don't like the way you handled that I'm leaving yeah it'll tell you like they're gone permanently they're gone for good you cannot bring them back so your choices matter and you could keep all the party members I'm sure but there are also some where you're gonna [Music] people have different kind of uh mentalities when it comes to the choices that you're making second man click it I'm gonna I'm gonna keep talking about it until you click buttons really the only negative I found was that it kind of lags sometimes in between the story bits which is right and what you expect I mean you got to get through certain things you get sidetracked to do side quests and for me I think about like like the game like performance lag you just mean like oh no no like like actual storytelling okay yeah yeah like I feel like it's really strong early on you get through like it's quick to go to the Druid camp and there's drama there then you go to the goblin camp and there's drama there and you know you oh man it's just all this stuff is like really good at some points but then like it kind of falls off where I'm at right now I don't know where you are exactly but act two is such a good dinky Camp okay you're still pretty early actually it's so epic like it could have ended the game there and been like we'll release more later in different chapters and I would have been satisfied because it is so epic the scale of it and then you're like oh there's more after this after this thing I just did so in act three is that when you go to the Big Town that's when you go to actual Baldur's Gate okay and then I thought that was going to be sure but that was that was probably the longest chapter is like because you're there and all these surrounding areas and you're doing so much in that town that it's like wow I had no idea it was this expense so uh final question yeah um in-game content is there like more stuff to do after you beat because you said you restarted campaign and all that jazz or once you beat it once you be there's not really in-game content once you beat it like that's it but I I would challenge you to uh try to not play it again after you go through it and then think about the choices that you didn't make and be like okay I'm gonna go back and make these children in a notebook or something yeah yeah I need to recap yeah because like I'm just gonna say like at the at the very beginning that you were talking about with the with the Druids and the Goblins like you can choose to side with either the goblins or The Druids or somewhere in between and so that's like a really cool way to just like Branch off your story early on okay and the decisions that you make affect like the world around you okay and there's characters that you're you're saving along the way that can change everything or just sacrifice them and change it to something else and I don't know what these different changes are so I'm not looking any of it up I'm just going with it as I go so I know what my playthrough is like but yours is probably gonna be completely different than mine was and that's what I really appreciate about this game is how much variety there is in it even like it's it's turn-based tactics so that's not everybody's gameplay style but I think it flows so well and quickly in this one that I don't think you'll have an issue with it even if that's not your typical uh even if you prefer like action-based RPGs usually I think this one's like a really great version of tactical RPG yeah you already purchase it it's in my cart though I do I do want to say like I I would encourage everyone not to save scum and what I mean by that yes is like there are gonna be choices that you have that seem really big don't you can but don't save it before that choice is made so that you can go back if it doesn't go the way you want you wanted to because then you're just you're you're changing the story based on what you want not the dice you're completely decisions yeah you're negating the purpose of the dice in general if you're just like crafting it to only success because sometimes fun things come out of failures of those dice rolls or different scenarios that get you something better than you thought would have gotten you yeah in the first place there was one mission where this dwarf was trapped between all these like um explosive barrels and stuff and he's like dude you gotta get me out of here like I need to come back to my guy uh yeah explosive fungi that's what it was yeah and it's like I gotta get back to my wife and whatever like okay well I don't know how to get you out of there and then I actually did something that blew up all those mushrooms and killed him yeah and went back to his office I was like oh man I'm sorry like your husband died I meant to save him she's like oh no good riddance like he was a terrible person I'm glad he's dead it's like oh okay so as you know that that was actually what was gonna happen yeah so it's like oh okay so I could have saved him but that wouldn't have been good for her because she didn't like him anyway so that's like the good choice in that case was the accident that I made and accidentally blowing him up yeah yeah that's what we talked about this because I was like I'm saving all the time and I always go back if I don't get my right outcome why that's that's no fun that's like if you're playing d d and you're just asking a DM like let me re-roll that let me do 20 again yeah let's see I like I liked that I want someone to be like sorry this is what you have to live with I wish in the game would be like you can't just go back like you could go back but you need to go back like way far to come back to this point yeah this is what you have to live with you don't need somebody to hold your hand man no but it's a game it's not like real life where the choices I make in real life I can't just go back but in the game you have the ability that's why I think it went Baldur's Gate four times out and they having like an actual either like person running it where you can create your own campaign in the game and have these like your friends come in and you're like no you rolled it you're done that would be nice but I have been taking more of your advice um after playing with you because you know we we got in The Godly camp and there was a gnome on the windmill and uh so I was like oh we should just use the illited wisdom but I didn't say anything to brexit like his Brett's game and let him decide obviously we had to fight the Goblins because he filled his checks to I forgot what you were trying to do but well I think I I think well yeah I did fail with Jack yeah yeah he was like critical fail too like we got in there and it was looking super dire like I'm like I already know we're gonna have to restart this battle and normally I've been like I'm just gonna restart it like and then play it again and see how far I get yeah but like is your game so I'm not gonna tell you what to do so I was like let's just see what we get and somehow Joe pulled it out of the bag he did 32 crit damage to one Goblin it was that it was the road he was stealthing around because I kept having to like part of it was like luck of like please miss me when you shoot your arrow at me or whatever but otherwise it was like okay you can see what their line of sight is if you hold down shift you can see like the red so what I would do is on my turn I would try to walk out of their line of sight and then stealth and walk a little bit more because they know where you are when you first steal so if you just stay there sometimes they'll just come over there that's where the little step yeah Shadow will stay there but if you move after yourself they can't see you obviously so you're trying to just and so I just managed to dodge out of the way of everything slowly pick them up with three Health the whole time and so that was like some of it was luck but some of it was just strategy and just trying to get out of there and that's where it's like I encourage you you can purchased it [Applause] just hearing them talk about the Rogue that's what I want to play as I've been done I was the Druid yes thank you I was a druid and I was like there's just no way like there was a point where it's like I can attack maybe Miss and I don't know what else like that was it I was like just gotta be something to do and I was like oh I have a speed potion so it gives me another action so I could heal oh my God I got I got a chance to heal which saved me yes the next the next time I got hit and then I was able to do damage and I think I killed something yeah I was like holy [ __ ] like I wouldn't have stayed this long to see this play through because I feel like it's a waste of time in my mind because I just want to get to the story bits I want to succeed and I guess I'm gonna I kind of get like God of warish it's like yeah here's this point you die you come back you get through it and it's like you're you're kind of spearheading through through the missions through the levels get the story listen to the dialogue I find that exciting and here it's just kind of like yeah you kind of do have to slow down take the hits yeah I mean because the pain is part of the story and the way that I like the fighting I like that the fighting is great and the fight the way the fights end up can really affect the story like they're NPCs if they die during the fight they're just gone but if they're if they survive sometimes that'll really be a boon to you and they'll come back and help you later on in some way yeah okay and and otherwise they're just out of the story completely and so like crafting that's why I like say encourage you to just like go with things as they fall allow things to just happen if somebody dies just let them die if they're a party member you can bring them back but if they're an NPC they're just gone from that world and you know who knows how it's going to be affected it's not going to game over your world it's gonna You're Gonna Keep moving yeah but that could benefit you or not later on you don't know so just let it play and just see what happens and play with friends when you can because that's the really fun part is just like yeah those exciting times like that is where it gets really cool where you have those epic battles where it's like this is looking so bad there's still like three of their little like uh dot orgs or whatever they're dogs that are super powerful there's two goblins left there's two of us how are we gonna do us against four people and we managed skin of our teeth it's great so question on the uh the multiplayer how many people you play up together is it just four four yeah because four is your max party size okay okay yep oh I bought it it's downloading now yeah there's four spaces four of us great we'll start a new party I love it yeah I want to make a Barbarian so I'm kind of excited I thought I might have a problem like playing the game again but then being able just like oh I want to try this now oh I want to try that now like I don't care if I have to play you know the intro the story yeah I'm gonna start again I've done that a couple of times for that reason like when you start it'll take a minute to get used to it once you get used to it you start strategizing in your head like oh what if I'm a rogue but I take the thief route instead of the Arcane trickster route how will that play out differently yeah the character sheets in this is just so so in-depth like the amount of customization physically and like as far as like tactically you can do to your character it's just unreal how much there is to to to to manage and build out and then as you level up your character just gets so much more powerful and you can like you know swap out different play Styles and things like that too as you evolve further and it's just it's kind of amazing that I mean like you were saying like a bar like you can run around and like never having a combat encounter yeah like that's insane uh I I would say don't whatever you play don't judge your class off the first three levels because you're not really going to know what they can actually do until like level four or five and that point they're kind of like set in like a you still have a lot more you can do you go up to level 12 in this game but you you won't really know what you're capable of fully until around level five because Wizards or spellcasters in general start really badly because they have like one spell slot she can cast like one thing and then only can trips from that point but once they level up more you're casting all kinds of crazy stuff you're teleporting people over the map doing like you can uh like telepathically grab somebody and throw them at another enemy or something I throw an enemy at an enemy like it's great all the different things you can do you can turn somebody into like a not a cheese wheel there there's a genie that will turn you into a cheese wheel at some point so just know that but there's different things you need to read like I can't remember what it is like a sheep or a frog or something turn enemies into just a polymorph ability yeah um but yeah every class can be fun just give it a chance to pan out don't judge it off the first few levels is my main point yeah so how does the story progress through the ax uh without spoiling too much uh so what I think everybody knows at this point or what you'll find out in the first like two minutes of gameplay is you have been um abducted by illithids which are cthulhu's basically and they have put a um a worm or a tadpole into your head and what that's going to do is in a very alien-like fashion it's going to spawn another illithator it's going to turn you into an illithid but for some reason you're not transforming as you would expect to at this point and so part of the mystery of the game is you with all of these companions you've come across who also have these worms in their head and so the reason that your party's together is trying to figure out how to get rid of these or find out why they're in there in the first or why you're not transforming and um so primary Mission get slug out of head secondary Mission just solve mystery of why slugs in head and not transforming you and past that save the world actually yes from yeah from the illithids so it's like yeah we we talked about last time a little bit I heard some people talk about us on the podcast uh different podcasts and I thought it was really good point in that in a game that has so much choice and so much like stuff everywhere to do I love the fact that like the driving force of this game is that you have a thing you're heading trying to get rid of it like it's the simplest like main story beat that possibly can exist to allow everything else to be so powerful and that you know it's not like let's open this Grand huge thing and you got 10 different characters you're introduced to in the first five seconds and you got to know all these different things it's just like I gotta get to see on my head yeah I don't like it you want to get at the end of your head too right let's party up yeah figure it out together that just makes sense yeah yeah it's like nice and simple and I appreciate that exactly um and you forget pretty quick about the thing being in your head it's the main part of the story but you're doing so much else that's like I can't concentrate on that right now because I gotta save this first I gotta save this person because maybe they can help me get this worm out of my head who knows and um you also have the capability of um either holding back and trying to just like survive with what you have or you can at whatever risk you want to like power up the worm in your head to like kind of embrace it and become more I guess use more Powers based on your psychic abilities yeah you don't ever have to do that but that's an option that you have too is like let me embrace this embrace the darkness kind of yeah yeah but you're like how's that Grace it uh no I did not because I was scared of what I was gonna do I didn't know what it was going to do to me and so I I got two of the powers one was I can Dash forward and push enemies back or I can get in middle of enemies and then have a a circle that I push back so I was also on the bridge and I was like ah I killed like three enemies at once that was nice that's what's really cool too because it's kind of like a basic not a hidden class but it's like a different class you're playing all together because you're using those abilities instead of your main class abilities so it's like if you want to just embrace the embrace the tadpole each of your companions can use those Powers so you find tadpoles over time and you give them all yourself or you can spread it amongst your people yeah they're not going to want to but you can persuade them to do it's like well you want to take the three hours and it helps level you up yeah so you're basically like eating other worms yeah you get one and you get one we all have worms right so you think the story does a good job of like progressing through the acts and creating this feeling of urgency and and like I think heroism especially as you start like getting towards the end of Acts espec act two like really had a profound effect on me where I was like this is amazing I haven't played a game with a story this strong in so long that it just felt really refreshing and challenging in the right kind of way and just like rewarding after I was able to progress past that point and then full of surprise because I didn't look anything up so I didn't know what was going to happen next I'm like oh man that is insane that this is like what the next parts gonna be and then it's like okay well how's this gonna go and it's just figuring it out as you go and that's the fun part for me the surprise of it so do you have a good ending or bad ending I had a good ending okay I think yeah it's a tie up all loose ends or is it just like hey you did the thing yeah I think I think I mean it tied up most Loose Ends the only loose ends I would say I had was like um one of my companions was affected greatly at the end of this in a way that some could perceive as good or bad I'm gonna be really vague there one of them was killed completely as part of the story and but it's not going to be the same person for everybody who's playing through it it I I don't know if it's how it's randomized or whatever how this party thing happens but you might lose you'll probably lose a different party member than I did and like I was saying earlier like I I had a party member just up and leave because she didn't like the choices I was making at a certain point and it's like well I guess I have to accept that I guess yeah yeah and you'll you can also sleep with everything and everything wants to sleep with you I want to add that it doesn't matter who you're talking to if they come back to your camp at a certain point they're gonna try to seduce you yeah and you can accept what you want to do with that you could be level one and they still want you don't have to be powerful yeah but they'll think you're powerful and you're like you Just Go With It powerful in your pants as long as I don't catch anything I've been through well you've already got worms Oh yeah well there there that is I'll just spread them yeah yeah by the way that works great me too oh yeah this this is very well could get game of the year like I'll almost have no doubt at this point as much as I think are we going to stream at this Tuesday since it yeah we should wait so I have a question because I've asked you this Austin I think you were I think you were not sure yet but maybe you changed your mind now but we've had you guys have talked about your love of Tears of the kingdom and that came out this year as well yes I know this is a diff very different game yes but if you were to qualify right now between the two of them which one would win your vote like which what are you leaning on here's the kingdom or Baldur's Gate three if your game of the year if these were the only two options yeah for right now it would definitely be bulger's Gate 3 for me like cheers to the kingdom I bounced off of because like it was fun at first and it was very novel like it had an interesting novelty to it but I just it got repetitive to me after a while to where I was like I don't want to build a cart to go here I don't want to carry this Goblin over to his friend whatever like I I don't know it just got boring to me that's just the story wasn't compelling enough for me to continue through it so what is your game of the year so far with all the games you played it's got to be bg3 vultures gate three for sure and that's not to say there weren't other great games I really want to play Remnant too we were talking about that earlier oh and I don't know if y'all talked about that on the last podcast or whatever okay so I need to listen to that one but that one's one I really want to play I was going to but then Baldur's Gate 3 interrupted my life right and has become like my free time yeah yeah yep now I would say it's baller gate Ballers gate three just because of all the instances that you you can create these stories like you know we had this interesting battle that barely got out of the live and that's gonna stick with me for a while and just how much content's in here and I can play with four uh three other people it's like okay this is gonna be great all the different classes yeah yeah for now for now this is the closest to playing d d with your friends digitally that I have ever seen I think yeah there are some other good games out there like wildermith that has a very you know it's got a great mode to it to where you're playing d d ish stuff with friends you craft your own kind of campaign stuff but this one's just so vast that you can really have a lot of fun with friends and your story is gonna be completely different than your solo Story Probably so that's where it's really exciting and what I like what I really like about it too is like it's a very dense game with a lot of mechanics you have to figure out very quickly but because it is built in the DND world having come from playing DND yeah it's all familiar you know it's like I've played a sorcerer the sorcerer has my twin spells my meta magic all that stuff that I'm used to it's got my shield that Travis hates yeah like all that stuff exists here and I love that I can just jump into like I played a barbarian on DND I played a monk and d d I've now played a warlock on here but it's like I I get how this all works so having come from a d d background like this makes the complexities that would normally pull me away from a game accessible because it's just like I I know it you know I get it kind of on that note I always play a ranger just because I like it right I can stay back on tabletop d d and you know I like what they do but now being able to Branch out and try different things like uh your companion who's the uh the the Barbarian uh tiefling yeah like it's really cool like I made her a uh spell rate or she has a spell rage so when she rages oh so she gets a random spell a spell oh that's cool and one of them is she can teleport anywhere she wants to or when you in your rage you just like an explosion or you can you can summon this one thing that's like a jellyfish thing and it will explode next to whoever you summon it by so I was like what that's like a wild magic sorcerer yeah where you as you cast spells like the higher spell level spell you cast or whatever the there's a chance of some random other magic thing happening as you cast but it could be good or bad like maybe you'll light your friends on fire or maybe you'll blow up the whole enemy team that's like a risk reward type thing and just have that wild magic going on um something yeah God what else is it going to say I have so many thoughts on this game continue talking though Austin but that's it it's like I never would have known that this was possible if I didn't have this game yeah because I I like the ranger for what it is but man and I think like the main reason why I want to get this game is because like I miss d d I miss like playing d d with friends and all that but now we have friends that are like like out of state out of town and stuff like that so we can't get together like this and then like whenever covet happened that was hard to get people around and get back together I think this is a good balance where I can still get that feeling again and not be around you guys because I don't want to be around you guys either so I understand I understand exactly and I will say stay at home in your underwear yes that's great and this does look visually a lot better than roll 20 you're not gonna lie so yeah yeah I've got some pretty good looking visuals what's really cool is like in the same way in D if you just want to be like a flute master and like that's how you go through your battles you can do that in this like become a Bard have a flute and just be like my bush my performance you just feel like my performance is so good it's like even dead that no one will kill me because I'm just entertaining them all if you like if you're a Bard and you're in town playing music people give you tips because if you're if you're passing your performance test because people are like this is awesome Come dance around you and just give you money so there's just so many questions yeah exactly they're tossing you lots of coins well I'm very excited yeah I'll probably start up my character tonight if I did [ __ ] man so you can be around huh yeah I'm gonna be Rogue nice I love playing as a road so with Rogue you can be a thief an Arcane trickster which is like a magical type Rogue or a an assassin which is just great at ambushing and starting battles probably the one I'm going with this assassin so that's ducky that makes sense yeah well there you have it folks Ballroom Skate 3 Game of the Year um I feel like you could talk hours more on this game but it's definitely well deserving larion Studios they've continue to put out masterpieces after Divinity original sin 2 is such a great game went into the game that they loved and grew up on Baldur's Gate one and two and they were like we're gonna make a Baldur's Gate and they made a Baldur's Gate it is so good and we highly recommend everybody pick it up this is what 60 dollar game so I think yep 60 game with just enough content like it's amazing I just can't believe that there's so much content in here I mean I can't wait till people start modding it like I bet uh well I don't know if they do that I was like I could imagine people like creating their own worlds that's what I'm hoping for like Baldur's Gate 4 is like you can pull these NPCs out and like create your own storyline or your own that would be awesome you can actually run it almost like a Evil Dead the game where you're like playing uh spirit but you can just go around and follow these your your characters will follow other people's characters and just start throwing stuff and that'd be the next thing well supposedly the DND team is doing that right now they're making a 3D engine yeah oh yeah that's supposed to be like you know where you can make like your own but obviously it's not going to have as much good control as this but yeah you'll still have 3D environments you can like put your players in it and you don't have to make a nude mod for it because everybody can be naked in this case that's true at the beginning you choose the size of your genitals oh my God those are not the size I'm sorry you choose there's six different penises and there's three different Volvos okay he's running at me with a club yeah I've made my Dragonborn Paladin and I looked at it and it's like oh I have a dick I have a scaly dick didn't realize they would they would have all lizards and not yeah yeah how are you supposed to make Norm that's right I have a tail for those who wow uh good steps that's Bargains gate three land Studios killing it love it so good

Channel: The Inner Gamer

Views: 4,105

Keywords: pc gaming, console gaming, nintendo switch, casual gamer, indie games, gaming history, gaming news, the inner gamer, playstation 5, xbox series x, video game podcast, baldurs gate 3, baldurs gate 3 review, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, larian studios, baldurs gate 3 beginners guide, baldurs gate 3 tips and tricks, baldurs gate 3 classes, baldurs gate 3 romance, baldurs gate 3 before you buy, baldurs gate 3 tips, baldurs gate 3 multiplayer, baldurs gate 3 builds

Id: zfeJJ1xJOMo

Length: 47min 17sec (2837 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 30 2023