Baldurs Gate 3 is a True RPG Experience

every time I hear about another upcoming video game that brings back a classic and portrays the rules of Dungeons and Dragons as Faithfully as possible I feel how my youth is leaving my body I already know what such games will offer me a Tavern partners with hard Fates squares with Wolves another plot about a chosen Shepherd beating metaphysical Gods with a holy stick and pages of text dedicated to my every sneeze most developers repeat like a mantra we make for True fans after all they are sure that if they move away from the Cannons set by their ancestors if they take away squares and wolves nobody will buy their game at all because it's a niche genre at the same time few people want to go beyond this Niche developers have been trying to resurrect the series for years using all the same laws of the genre that were used 30 years ago it's the same as making Call of Duty in the image of the original Doom although developers could potentially turn a niche genre into a mainstream genre if they start move forward instead of walking in circles and stop chafing at a group of nostalgic Boomers who don't even make the box office but in 1999 the boundaries was broken by plcape few years ago by disco elesium which doesn't even have a combat system and here are are the heroes of this video lan Studios which one of the first realized that genre has to finally start evolving they started out like everyone else but later Lan released Divinity original sin and instantly became a rock star in their genre because they decided to make a game not a rules visualization it seemed to me that Lan really wanted players to actively try to pour liquids from barrels interact with the environment and combine stuff in bottles so the game is still more about combat rather than roleplaying it's all very cool and fun but I personally missed something and it turned out that I missed balers Gate 3 balers Gate 3 is the first game I've ever played that comes so close to my DND experience no one is pulling me by the hand through wolves and mandatory quests no one puts me in the skin of a heroic hero who must save the village and then the world balers Gate 3 gives me the freedom to play you don't even have a clear goal in the beginning you have been infected with ithd parasite and need to safely get rid of it that's it how are you going to do that where will you go for help do you want to bother it at all that's entirely your decision once you get past the intro you're free to go wherever you want this game is a Sandbox any location you wander into completely by accident is packed with content for an entire DLC and the most amazing thing is that it's all closely tied to your quest to find a cure I didn't see the situation where the wild Hunt is meekly waiting for you while you enjoying gwent all the quests aren't in a vacuum they're not just individual stories you go through for EXP they're an integral part of your adventure and your story and most importantly they directly affect that story I don't remember where I L saw something like that I really don't here's an example you go into the swamp and there's a hag waiting for you and she smells that you have a parasite and she knows how to get rid of it if you've read the books you know that hags are not to be trusted but they are very strong in in Magic and theoretically can really help I read the books and of course I politely declined her help but my friend played as Paladin and he decided that the parasite was getting in the way of his service to the gods so he decided to trust the hag she took out his eye with a long fingernail kissed it and then put it back in it didn't Cur him but did something bizarre instead it made Paladin and oathbreaker because part of his body was darkened by dark Forces he accidentally broke the Paladin's vow and became a renegade a completely different character who has unique dialogue options unlocked and a changed relationship with certain characters simply because he decided to randomly trust a random bobka what RPG can do that that's not all we go back to the camp where suddenly appears a mystical night in cool armor who also used to be a paladin but had to break his oath and seeing a kindred spirit he offers to teach my friend the dark path he went himself and now my friend has confusion in his soul he has a personal Quest that isn't even in the game either give himself over to the dark teachings or find a way to restore the Paladin's oath this is the RPG I wanted all along it expl exps your imagination and I haven't even said a word about a great Quest around this hag and why sheeps aren't what they seem how you can go about it in drastically different ways and importantly how differently you can fail it in balers Skate 3 even when everything goes sideways it's still a legitimate playthrough option and the game takes that into account the threat of Prophecy isn't severed and you don't have to persist in the Doom world you have created we got into so many different exciting situations as if the game planned it that way at the same time by killing everyone on our way we missed about a dozen huge quests we didn't understand why the spiders in the goblin Fortress were fighting for us why a dark elf woman was running everything but we had fun anyway so I refused to admit that we were committing war crimes in the sacred grove what I like best about the approach to the story is that players will go to the same places and their key events will be about the same but the journey itself will be unique if you take 30 playthroughs or maybe more I'm sure you won't find two that are the same there are just a billion little events in this game that you can go through on your own and create your own personal Adventure that will be unlike any other the replayability of this game amazes and scares me let's say you encounter a magic mirror that won't let you into a room you can trick it find the past by examining your surroundings or intimidate it but if you're playing as a barbarian you don't have to engage in thought processes you can simply break that mirror and move on and in this barbaric way you can go through the whole game forgetting about decency and abstruse speeches which is radically different from the experience of a Bard or the Paladin you can engage in every Skirmish or you can go through the game skipping 80% of all battles solving every conflict with Charisma if you go through the game once you won't see a half of what balers Gate 3 has prepared for you it's surprising because modern AAA games don't come up with absolutely nothing new monotonous quests boring characters and so on one yes this all happened for a reason I have a video on my channel where I cover the cises of the modern gaming industry in details but damn it's annoying the final nail in the lead of the cofin of my trust was Starfield there is a review about Starfield on the channel by the way check it out wow that's a lot of self- advertisement sorry in Balor Gate 3 you are never winning nor losing because every time you will be doing something you will roll the dice I've heard that the dice system is not understood or accepted by many because your stats doesn't play ultimate role in your journey but that's the whole point of the game play dice is an event generator and it is not only you who throws it but also everyone around you because of which unexpected situations and decisions happen just like in real life a first class chef with Decades of experience can accidentally cut his finger with a knife or get get burned the super axe of the strongest warrior in the game may not get through the thick armor of a monster or miss a Nimble opponent your enemies don't have to die if you've learned powerful spells because they're also capable of something even a B's lies can be exposed no matter how charismatic he is a dice decides the outcome of any event and it won't always be on your side and that's a great thing yo it forces you to get involved and understand what's going on just like in Disco elium lapses in dialogue can unexpectedly lead you to a better outcome similarly here the dice leads to unpredictable events that you'll either have to extricate yourself from or find another solution that sounds more interesting than just dialogue options to me and since there is a lot of dice driven action here the combat system is turn-based and and for many people this will be a major stumbling block I understand the frustration it's slow it's drown out it looks horrible but if you continue to stick to such principles and think that balers Gate 3 is not worthy of your time you will miss one of the most exciting games of the generation and the combat system here is one of the biggest factors of the enjoyment well yes you need to put some effort and learn how to play this game because B Gate 3 is not your average action RPG but it's the same as learning how to play Counter Strike because it's not as simple as Serious Sam no one dies in CS if you just click the mouse but it doesn't make the game worse moreover I don't really understand realtime battles in such projects because there is usually a tactical pause and closer to the finale games like Dragon AG or even original balers Gates turns into turn based games because you have to pop PA the game almost every second to be physically able to do goddamn something it's hard to figure out how everything works though even after 30 hours I had questions about some mechanics because tutorials here are like to kill the Tyrant shoot at it until it dies the developers said that the whole First Act is a big tutorial and it's true but I would like to understand the basic stuff right away hints pop up here but they're more often generalized if you want to understand something specifically you have to learn it experientially because you're unlikely to find answers on the Internet only after 20 hours I realized that spells with characteristic tests do not test me but my opponent I mean I have a spell and it says endurance test for a long time I thought that the higher my stamina is the more powerful or accurate this spell hits because my experience in tabletop Denon D taught me just that but it turns out that the stamina test is taken by the opponents and the higher their stamina the worse my spell works on them to the point where they can ignore it completely I don't know if I missed the explanation from the game or if there wasn't one at all maybe I still haven't figured out how it works but I wish such extremely important things were explained clearly you can't just rush a crowd of enemies no matter how strong you are enemies have their own characteristics features and resistances which you should figure out and take into account before doing anything almost every battle here is like a puzzle that needs a unique solution and relying solely on your stats is not the best strategy if you have upgraded strength to 20 it doesn't mean that you will kill your opponent with two blows it just means that you have significantly increased your chances of a successful dice roll the whole point of combat is to learn how to benefit in any sort of situations I personally remember a moment when I was in a desperate situation as Bard I was left alone split up from my squad and huge predatory chickens that I simply would not have defeated alone hunted me the squad was far away and the chickens moved much faster so running was not the option but it all happened on narrow Stone passages right above the abyss so I decided to gather as many of these chickens as possible in one place and then I threw them into the abyss with a spell not too many games allow you to win using your own intellect and not virtual weapons and every time it feels awesome if you encounter Giants just spread oil under them and and watch them waste moves trying to get up here you need to analyze look at the resistance and characteristics of opponents spend moves not to deal a damage but to buff partners and take the best positions and the further you go the higher you level up and the better equipment you get the more opportunities in battles you will open up and the easier it will be for you to win blizzard can relax for now Boulder Gate 3 won't become an icon of RPG because it is still a crpg if in DND an experienced dungeon master can secretly tweak opponents stats or change the course of battle on the fly to build the right progression and not kill the player's interest then a video game is a subject to clear programming and predefined numbers which are hard to perfectly balance for each scenario although I'm pretty sure this problem will be solved in the future games with artifici icial intelligence even in the First Act you meet opponents who obviously should tear your party to pieces but fall like adults when they see you classes are also not perfect the same Bard at the very beginning can be completely useless if you make one simple mistake in upgrades but this has always been the case balance problems are inherent in all crpgs take any game open forms on it and you will immediately find that Mages in this game are weak Warriors are too op and there is no point in taking other classes at all so blaming balers Gate 3 for failing at balance is not appropriate it's a problem with the genre and the video games limitations there's always something that works either wrong or slightly better than everything else but the developers are actively updating the game and and it will only get better over time it is certainly not very frustrating but the ancient interface design is when instead of double clicking you have to drag items into your inventory it immediately makes you realize that something is wrong here your inventory is a trash can collected items inevitably create chaos and the items themselves are mostly useless yes the trader inside me was certainly happy for the first couple of hours because I could sell at all except that it is extremely inconvenient to do there are no quick sell buttons here everything is dragged and dropped manually in 2002 in Moro wind this problem has been already solved by finding all the trash in your bag you will spend as much time as you would in battles another annoying little thing why is there no combat speed slider yeah combat looks cool but after 50 hours you you usually just want to know the outcome of the cycle instead you have to watch the moves of all participants of the battle and there can be a dozen of them in baldr Gate 3 there are a lot of similar Source spots inherent to the big release it took 6 years to make the game imagine do they spoil the impression of course they do but only because everything else in the game is awesome it's beautiful it's huge it's diverse it doesn't think you are stupid it believes in you and doesn't hold your hand and it's probably the best game to enjoy DND D while I was living in Russia I love to play D and D from time to time but after I immigrated I can't do it as often as I would wish but bunders Gate 3 was a real salvation to me and be sure to play it with friends yes it's also fun to play alone but it's like watching a comedy you always love ling a good company in this game you can start arguing and spoiling each other's plans burst into battle and save from imminent death like a real bro this helps to bring more variety into already diverse gameplay if you're still wondering if you should start playing Balor Gate 3 the answer is a definitely yes you see it is a game that evokes love it reminds you why you play video games in the first place it's a proof that games haven't gotten worse they've just became a pop culture and it's in every puff culture after five bad Cash Cow titles there will always be one true Masterpiece that's it for now I am preparing a video about armor core 6 so subscribe to channel and hit the Bell to see it first also I will appreciate if you like the video and leave the comment I am the game Guru love you all see you next week bye-bye

Channel: The Game Gooroo

Views: 6,009

Keywords: baldur's gate 3

Id: 3DVnxgVO-yw

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023