Baldur's Gate 3: A Masterpiece (Review)

balers Gate 3 has been out for a few months now and in that time it has gotten Universal praise it's one of the highest rated PC games of all time on Metacritic it has over 95% positive reviews on Steam months after release it's still one of the highest played games on Steam every single day it's been called a masterpiece it has tons of perfect review scores and is surely going to win several Game of the Year Awards with all this you may be asking yourself is it really that good the answer to that question is yes balers Gate 3 is an amazing game that is absolutely deserving of the praise it's getting from the game play and story to the choice and consequence there's so much good about this game it has its flaws and it's not perfect but it's truly amazing that this game exists and before we go any further I just want to make a note that there aren't going to be any spoilers in this review not a big fan of putting spoilers in reviews even after the game's been out for a while so if you're afraid of spoilers don't worry you can keep watching so with all of that here is my review of balers Gate 3 balers Gate 1 and 2 are iconic games so much so that balers gate 2 is often referred to as one of the best games of all time when balers Gate 3 was announced there was a fair bit of skepticism there were questions of if it will be a sequel will it be turn-based or Real Time with Pauls will it really be deserving of the iconic balers gate name 20 years after the last release of the series well I'm happy to say it is 100% deserving of the iconic balers gate name feels like an evolution of everything that made those original games so great starting with gameplay balers Gate 3 does a away with real time with Paul's combat in favor of a fully term based game it takes the fifth edition of The Dungeons and Dragons rule set and tries to put as much of that as it can into a video game and laran did a great job here they changed a few things but overall it's very familiar and very similar to the fifth edition rule set and it all works so well combat is fun and tactical you have tons of spells and Feats to use during combat especially at high levels even at levels combat is still very fun and engaging it's all due to the way the encounters are set up you can use high ground to your advantage you can use a Firebolt cantrip on an oil barrel to create an explosion or you can shoot down a chandelier that falls on an enemy and does damage there's so many ways to use the environment to your advantage the game is designed so that players can use their creativity to solve the difficult combat encounters and that creativity is helped by the 12 different classes in 46 subclasses all allowing for different play Styles oh and you can multiclass giving players even more options and the freedom and creativity to solve problems isn't just for combat but everything else in the game for exploration players can sneak around or shape shift into a mouse to fit into a small hole or fly to a ledge that may not be accessible an exploration is a key part of this game the game is split into three main acts each with their own explorable open area in these areas you will find Secrets quests and general World building from NPCs scattered around and that's what I love about this game is there just so much to find there's so much content I've played for a few hundred hours now and I'm still finding new things on each playthrough and all of this exploration and the entire game combat everything can be played with a keyboard and mouse or a controller and the controller support is really good on PC I actually liked it so much that I played half the game with a controller but going back to the world and exploration a little bit I think now is a good time to talk about how goodlooking this game is and how good the music is and want to talk a little bit about the performance of the game this game is gorgeous the lighting the details in the environments the spell effects and especially the character models are all phenomenal so much detail has gone into every little part of this game and with all of that it runs pretty well especially the first two act I played on PC the majority of the time but I also played the PS5 version for a little bit and played a lot on the steam deck as well all three performed really well in Acts one and two now act three does have some performance issues that need to be addressed and laran is addressing those in some patches but I didn't have any major issues performance- wise I did have some bugs uh which I'll get to later in this video but performance- wise it's pretty solid again especially acts one and two going back to the detail that's in this game that includes the performance capture and dialogue for everything in the game the voice acting in this game is so good not only for the main companions but even random NPCs you meet in the world that may not even have a quest associated with them laran has mentioned there are over 2 million lines of dialogue in this game and all of it with the exception of the player character is fully voice Ed and motion captured it's incredible and all of this is set to one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a game every single background track was great just listen to this for a second [Music] sometimes I would just walk around camp and not even go talk to any of my companions I just wanted to listen to the music more and the music in this game is just so good but now I want to get a little bit into the companions the story and quests in this game and again there's not going to be any spoilers the companions in this game are all great there are several companions you'll meet throughout the story and there are what I would refer to as six main companions you can recruit and these are the same ones you can play as as origin characters with a few others that you can meet as the story progresses all of these companions have deep personal quests that really make you feel attached to the characters I was genuinely interested to see where their personal stories would go and work to make sure I completed all of the companion quests also as I mentioned you can play as some of these companions as An Origin character to experience their story from a different perspective and most of these companions will be with you throughout the entire 80 to 100 hour Journey Through the story so a little more about the story the story starts out with mind flare abductions including abducting the player character the Mind flares are infecting people with these little tadpoles that will turn them into mind flares the player character gets infected with this tadpole and starts on a journey to find a way to get rid of it and find out why these abductions are happening in the first place the story was really great and really kept me engaged throughout the entire playthrough I constantly wanted to know what happened next and the pacing was great from start to finish and I think a big reason for that was the quests reactivity and choice and consequence throughout the game all of the quests in the game were fun and they all felt like they added to the main story or some World building in some way even some of the smaller side quests I didn't feel like any of the quests were filler quests and almost all of them can be solved in multiple ways going back to the freedom and creativity that the game allows I played a rogue character in my first playthrough some quests I was able to sneak around to get something done only to talk my way through that same scenario with a high Charisma paladin on my next playthrough it was so much fun trying to find different ways to finish these quests I also love the choice and consequence and reactivity that this game has and that's not only in just the dialogue options that specifically were tied to my Rog class but it was in a way that the game would react to a choice I made in act one only to see it play out or come back to bite me in act 3 there are several Cho choices that can be made throughout the game that will directly impact the ending even smaller choices will have an impact or at the very least the game will remember those choices let's say you help a gnome in the First Act well maybe you'll find him again later in the game and maybe he'll remember that and he can help you these kinds of things happen throughout the entire game and help so much with immersion and replayability so I love this game and I love the time I've spent with it and I'm going to continue to play it but as I said earlier it has some issues it's not perfect the first issue I have with the game is the level cap I have no issue at all with the level cap itself the game caps out at level 12 if you know anything about fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons you know spells after that start becoming way too powerful you realistically couldn't balance a video game around that my issue with the level cap is that I hit it way too soon I explored a ton in the early parts of the game and hit the level cap at the beginning of act three so for the last chunk of the game wasn't progressing at all I was just doing quests to see where the story would go and that's fine because the quests in the story are all great but I had the same spells and abilities for dozens of hours and this isn't a huge issue but it's just a minor issue I had with the game I would have liked to see an experience spread out a little so you still get a sense of progression even later in the game a little earlier I mentioned that I did have a few bugs and that's another issue I had with the game is that it was a little buggy especially in act 3 I had a few side quests that I couldn't progress or complete and a few cut scenes were bugged larion has done a good job at putting out fixes very quickly but there were definitely some things that still need to be fixed and this kind of leads into the last issue I had with the game the ending without getting into spoilers I did not like the ending to this game I said a little earlier I love the story and it kept me engaged the entire time well that's true up until the very literal last minute of the game now I know this game has around 10 to 15 different endings so my choices certainly impacted it and I only finished the game completely with one character but the ending had issues for me personally but I'm almost certain my ending was bugged the final cut scene just ended no real resolution to any companions it just kind of ended I reloaded my last save and tried again and had the same result I did some research and saw some other people reporting bugged endings so it it had to be a bug I almost hope it's a bug because then it's fixable but for me personally the very end of the game soured my enjoyment a little bit but to wrap up even with these few issues balers Gate 3 is an incredible game it has ended up becoming one of my favorite games of all time with its great gameplay and story and interactivity and choice and consequence and reactivity it is definitely worthy of all the praise it's getting and I definitely feel it is worth the 80 to 100h hour time investment for one playthrough even if you're not a fan of Dungeons and Dragons or turn-based games or even an RPG fan you owe it to yourself to try this game it truly is a masterpiece

Channel: Mythic Byte Gaming

Views: 2,117

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Id: luinclhDxPw

Length: 12min 28sec (748 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 17 2023