(button beeping) - [Jake] Hey, and we're
back with another episode of Before You Buy, that show where we give you
some straight-up gameplay on our first impressions of
the latest games releasing. As usual, it's me Jake and today we're talking
about Baldur's Gate 3, this is the full release of a game that has been in early
access since the fall of 2020 believe it or not, so quite some time, but that version of the game was limited and only a small portion of it where this is a full-fledged, massive, finalized release. And Baldur's Gate 3 is a big deal because it's a new full-fledged Dungeons & Dragons based game, the original Baldur's Gate, now a classic was developed and released by BioWare in 1998, but now in 2023, we have Larian Studios at the helm, and they're the developers behind the heavyweight Divinity games, most recently the successful and great RPG, Divinity: Original Sin II, you've probably heard about it. So, now they've been recruited
by Wizards of the Coast to go all in on a new Baldur's Gate game and the result seems to be magic. So, this is out on PC and it'll be out on PS5 in September, and Xbox eventually, and we've been playing a review
copy for the last few days, but just know that this came in kinda hot, we didn't get it very early, no reviewer did, and this is a massive game, so we wanna preface that this is strictly a review-in-progress, you know? Strong first impressions only. Myself and co-writer on this, Eric, have been getting as
many hours as we could in it and we combined our
powers because personally, I'm not a big Dungeons & Dragons guy, and he is, so that way you can get a
bit of both perspectives. Now, since we often just
do first impressions in 'Before You Buys', we thought it was important to at least give you the early heads-up here, we've seen past the early access stuff, but we haven't seen the end of the game, so just know that. But that being said, all signs are pointing to
this being pretty damn great, couple of little things here and there, but it's a pretty sprawling RPG for quest and character lovers, it's challenging, but also has a staggering
amount of flexibility for you to make mistakes, make some wrong choices, and experiment. And the game just keeps going, and you keep playing, no matter what you throw at it, it seems like it's always
down to throw something back, you don't need to know too much about Dungeons & Dragons universes, you know? This is a new game, it's a new adventure, new characters, and you'll learn some
of the lore as you go, it can be overwhelming, but I was able to get through it. And it's a fantasy world with
a new darker mystery afoot, the Mind Flayers are
out there as a threat, and they're infecting people, and you, and some others end up
with little Mind Flayer tadpole spore type-things
burying itself in your head, and you've gotta somehow get it out and figure out what's going on. Now, that is like the very, very early setup of the game, if you played the early access you know, and for anybody else, I'm not spoiling anything, trust me, it goes much further, and dives into more fantasy, political intrigue, the occult, warring factions, basically everything you'd
expect from a fantasy game, but with a good focus
on strong characters, and relationships. And that's where a lot of the work, and the writing, and the branching storylines show, and it seems really impressive, even just with like a play-through and loading some different saves, and messing around, there's a lot going on. So, when you start, you choose from one of
seven origin characters, these are all characters
connected to the story, with their own backstories, motivations, race and of course class-type, and most of them are compelling, and tempting really to select, but we ended up rolling
our own custom character, you can also do that. You know, you create them, you change their face, you give 'em a backstory, and a class, and they still have agency in the story, just like anyone else, but good luck focusing on
the main quest out there man, there are a lot of distractions, pretty much right outta the gate, and all of it is tempting, because it all seems thought out and interesting, little quests will keep you intrigued, little stories might hook ya, the loot may not really
always be super exciting at the end of side-quests, but XP and a good adventure just manages
to still make it worth it. To Eric, our resident
Dungeons & Dragons fan, this feels like a miracle, the production values alone, put this in the realm of AAA gaming, but the actual gameplay
is about as hardcore and you know, a little inaccessible to see
RPG neophytes as it gets. This is a hardcore computer RPG, through and through, and Larian seemingly hasn't
really made many compromises, you've got four party members total, which feels a little small compared to, I think six you could get
in the original games, but it does streamline things a bit, combat is turn-based, but it tends to be quick, and brutal, which is a welcoming change compared to how long certain
encounters could last in Divinity 2. The game does a good job
easing you into combat, but like once you're out of the tutorial, the gloves are off, every encounter is a challenge, and they almost never
feel stock or half-baked, even the smaller encounters usually still demand you to think and use everything, and really be challenged, it's not often that you
come across something and do (indistinct), and then it's dead, like no, this is not
really that type of thing. Even at the start of the game, there are cool, memorable enemy encounters
that feel like something out of a D&D session, like something that
somebody just makes up, like take for example this part where an Undead bursts out
of a coffin to scare you, and while you're stunned, it runs around breaking open more coffins to get reinforcements, if you're quick enough and kill the one guy, then nobody wakes up. And it's not all just combat either, for a computer RPG, there are a lot of environmental hazards, and it's not just traps like
you'd expect from D&D game, there are areas where
the most dangerous thing isn't the enemies, but the world itself, like this burning building where you have to like put
out fires to get through, or these explosive mushrooms that have to be carefully navigated. There's a lot of jumping too, lots of like almost platforming sections where the only way to progress is to jump, and with like everything else, the moving powers are
essential in this game, just like Larian's other games, if you don't wanna get bogged down and overwhelmed by enemies, being able to either teleport
depending on who you are, or jump long distances
is practically essential, it can turn nearly
impossible combat encounters, much easier with the
right movement abilities. This sort of thing always
keeps you on your toes, but it can also start to be a
bit exhausting on the brain, because there's a very
few combat encounters where you can take it easy, especially because unlike
the OG Baldur's Gate games where you could just spam
resting whenever you want, this game makes ya work for it. One thing that makes this game different from other CRPGs is because
of it's roots in D&D, spells don't cost mana to cast, instead, your characters
have spell charges that can be recharged with
a special ability once, but otherwise can only be restored by taking a long rest. In most D&D RPGs, you just slam that rest
button after every encounter, but this game forces you to
think about it a little bit more because now you can't just
take a nap every five seconds, you actually have to spend resources now, and it's not even a small amount, it's pretty significant. We do like that the game actually gives all the food you find in these
games like an actual purpose, when you find crates
filled with bread or meat, or cheese, you're actually gonna go, "Ooh yeah, I need that!" Because you need to spend
those resources on resting, it's clever, even if it's a little
nerve-wracking sometimes like thinking about whether
you should rest or not, overall, we like the mechanic, it adds more depth to a mechanic that originally had none. But of course it all
comes down to your build, the RPG stuff, but also how it affects your dice score and ultimately, you're down to the roll of the dice for everything, it's great that it's at
the forefront of the game, it's keeps that D&D
vibe true to it's core, but it doesn't feel hokey, like it's pretending to be a tabletop game or something like that, it just is how it is. And speaking of dice rolls, the role-playing stuff like we keep saying is where the game really succeeds, to both of us, this is one of the most
impressive things about the game, the depth and width of the role-playing
opportunities here, is seemingly pretty incredible so far, it seems like every other event or conversation you get into, you get some special response, related directly to your character. Now, Eric played as a half-orc paladin, with a guildsman backstory, so in any given situation, their like replies related
to being a Baldurian citizen, a paladin, a healer, you could communicate with animals, use your alt-sworn subclass
to mediate conflict. And even, as per the lore of D&D, face judgment if you break an oath, the game takes this stuff seriously, if you're a paladin who
promises to protect people, then sell them out, then you lose your paladin powers, and get chewed-out for it. Then, I played as a high-elf rogue with a performance background in being raised on the streets, so I could take advantage
of a bit of stealth, and sneak-attacks, and combat, which is fairly useful, but also I could talk my
way out of a lot of stuff, and especially when it came down to me like having to pretend to be someone else, or kind of put on a show as a distraction. The amount of opportunities
the game presents you to really embrace what your character is, is probably the biggest achievement, like we keep saying. You can also embrace the darkness, and take advantage of Illithid powers that we won't spoil, but if you look into it, a lot of that stuff has been
talked about pre-release, being able to go hog-wild and do whatever you want, and even in certain instances, go a bit mean, and embrace the dark side seems really tempting
every time it crops up, we haven't seen that
stuff to the end though, to tell how meaningful it truly is, so we can't go too much further into it, but it seems good. The world of Baldur's Gate
3 isn't like the biggest, craziest thing, it's not Assassins Creed honestly, but it is very dense, and it's easy to spend a lot of time in a relatively small area, just because of how
much stuff is going on, and how much you have to
do just to get around, it's so dense that sometimes seemingly, plot-essential stuff can
get easily passed over, there were some areas we had
been through multiple times before you even noticed
some important NPC. Like a lot of the game, the amount of things gets
overwhelming at times, it's at points, an exhausting game to play, but it's also easy to just
get deeply immersed in. Even when you're stuck, or you don't wanna progress, just go to your camp to rest and start chatting up your party members, this is where things can get pretty fun and seemingly, a little spicy. It's really just one of those like, 'just one more minute' kind of games where it really forces you
to keep your mind active, and engaged at all times, so you do one thing, and you just have to
see what happens next. Now, if there's a downside to how deep and open the game is, it's that it can be easy
to forget to quick-save and lose a lot of progress, this happened to me quite a bit, the game only auto-saves selectively, it doesn't auto-save
every time you change maps or talk to people, so if you neglect to make a save, and then bumble into a
very tough enemy encounter that wipes you out, and it's gonna happen a lot, that can lead to a lot of time wasted, so get that old muscle memory back, do those quick-saves, don't be like us. And another issue is
because of how open-ended the game story is, it can sometimes feel directionless, at least at first, because you're running around
doing all kinds of cool, interesting, random things, and it's sometimes unclear when, and how you should resolve
certain situations. It's also a little hard to
keep track of things sometimes, the game gives you so many
options that sometimes, when an option doesn't present itself when you think it should, it can lead to confusion. The whole situation at the
Emerald Grove near the start is a perfect example, this is a relatively early quest where there's a problem
between these refugees, and the druids, and part of the reason
things have gotten so bad is because the druid
leader has disappeared, you might think that
finding the druid leader would resolve things, it's the obvious thing to do, right? But it can be a very, very long time before you
actually find the guy, so you can spend a good
chunk of the early game with this story unfinished, way past the point where
it feels like it's over. If you've played a lot of CRPGs, you know what we're talking about, where you hit a point where you're kind of
doing something wrong, because you think you
should be doing something, but the game actually
doesn't want you to do that, it's not a huge problem, it's way worse in Divinity 2, which had a lot more dead-ends
you could hit on-quest, but it's still a thing
that we both ran into. For some people, that's great, they love
having to figure things out, but it may be frustrating
for casual players used to more direct experiences, for me personally, this is what originally made me kind of bounce off of the Divinity games, but with this one, I really stuck with it, and found it to be worth it, if you're new to these games, you just gotta train
your brain a little bit, and you'll have fun. Now, what helps is that all of this, like Larian's other recents, you could play cooperatively
with some other people, which is absolutely crazy impressive, and they need to be commended for that. Now, I know we weren't able
to take advantage of this in our play-through, so maybe consult another reviewer or two, but just the fact alone
that you can do that is incredibly enticing, and if you're inclined, you can play with a controller, and the controls are fine, doable as of right now, as good as it can be I guess, but we just don't prefer
playing these types of games on a controller, still, the developers
have said they will tweak game-pad controls up
until the console launch, either way, you have a lot of options, controls, accessibility and a good amount of graphics options. Now, it's not perfect, of course it is a CRPG, there is some awkwardness
with certain animations, like climbing a ladder, or moving an object, or climbing a ledge sometimes, and there can be some weird cuts, or some unloaded assets that
flash onscreen for a section between screen-transitions, but it's mostly solid, Eric didn't have any
significant performance issues, but on my end, I had one crash, and I had a couple of stutters, especially once you start
getting into some of the bigger, dense town areas, but I was able to fix most
of my issues with settings, and a reset, you know, fiddling around, you know, PC stuff, not the worst. And everybody's machine is different, so maybe consult some other nerds, but at least from our experience, it does not seem like a disaster PC launch like we've seen so many times, it seems fine, and when you get it running good, and you got a decent enough graphics card, this game is a looker man, the characters' faces, and the environments are very, very good, above and beyond what we
usually see in this genre. Ultimately again, review-in-progress, but so far, it's one of the stronger games to release this year already, and that's even though we feel like we've only scratched the surface. The developers have said 75 to 100 hours, but we easily see ourselves
rolling other characters, and spending way more time, and who even knows how they're gonna enter
this game in the future, as of right now, it's a result of just good, game-making on the developer's side, and good community feedback. The early-access period
brought player feedback online that you can find for things big and small, from character
personality tweaks, to quality of life stuff, and inventory management, and the end result here, this final release, it's solid. Now, with Eric, a Dungeons & Dragons fan, it's the modern Baldur D&D
game you've been waiting for, and for me, as a non-D&D fan, it's another type of, "Yup, Larian has done it again." Type-situation. A game that asks a lot of you, but is so rewarding, the more you unpack it, or I don't know, like peel back the layers, the onions, I don't know. Ultimately, Baldur's Gate 3, upon first impressions, between the two of us, seems awesome, and we're excited to see more reactions, and more stories, and weird things come out of it. But hey, that's a Before You Buy, you know how this works by now, we give you some pros, some cons, and some personal opinion, and now I wanna hear yours
down in the comments. Are you jumping in, day one? What type of character are you gonna make? We would love to know, that stuff's fun to share. But also, if you've been playing since the early-access period, do you see some differences? Have you been providing feedback? Who are you? What type of player are you? Are you new to this stuff? Let's talk about anything Baldur's Gate 3, down in the comments. If you liked this video, and you like what we do here, clicking the 'like' button helps us, thank you very much, but as always, thank you for watching, and we'll see you guys next time.
