Baldur's Gate 3 Review - Controller Player's Experience

balers Gate 3 came out a couple weeks ago and before the release I wasn't going to buy it on day one the game looked right in previews but there was just too much going against it one I've never played DND two I didn't know anything about Baler skate one or two three I'm not that into crpgs with dragonage Origins and Wasteland 2 being the outliers four I play almost all games on a controller despite all that my friends hype got to me and I bought the game and after 110 hours of gameplay I have finished the game fully played on a controller and I wanted to share my thoughts of the experience hopefully encouraging more people coming from my perspective to play the game especially when the PlayStation released is just around the corner and the Xbox released hopefully in the near future I'll start with more General thoughts on the game systems story structure and characters without big spoilers and then move into the game play with focus on the cont controller experience and being a DND Noob the game starts with the character creation which honestly was the most overwhelming part of the game without any DND knowledge as the game is fully based on its rule sets when it comes to the stats races classes combat and exploration I did spend a bit of time on YouTube watching videos to get a better grasp on what class I might want to play and how the dice rolles actually work for the exploration dialogue and Combat special shout out to wolfart FPS whose guides YouTube's algorithm recommended me and I found those very helpful there is a lot of choices you need to make during the character creation but luckily there is an in-game way to respect your character later on I ended up choosing a Wood Elf Ranger as it sounded fun and simple enough for a new black me after the character creation and a short prologue the game does just throw you into the world without too much handh holding which was a bit scary scary but also exciting you meet your companions quite quickly and for me that was really important as they provide much needed context to the story and other things are going around you hello I'm Gale of Water Deep apologies usually better at this the companion system feels very familiar as a person who enjoys the modern BioWare RPGs but bers Skate 3 pushes the system forward as the companions have really amazing personal story lines with their own deep motivations and the potential romances are the best video games have to offer I'm sure you've all seen the post of how horny these characters can be quite early on in the game but it really doesn't give off enough props to the actual wholesome relationships you're able to build during the game and how the game reacts to you and your partner in different ways the companions are elevated by amazing voice over work and I was also surprised how much actual moaing they have done done for the characters every line of dialogue is fully voiced and the mocha brings so much life and emotion to the interactions it's beyond incredible for a game this size why do you insist on assuming the past I was a slave a vampire spawn K by the Zar family perhaps I still am I was never able to resist their commands dialog systems themselves were fantastic with a lot of dialogue options that might might make you be good or bad or anything between I really love the flexibility of the choices and unlike in combat all exploration where those dice rolls happen in the background dialogue checks are presented with an actual visual roll of a dice which made both the successes and the failures more intense balancing between choices I wanted to make and the choices I had the easiest time to pass with my stats sometimes came into the way and I was not above saves coming until I pass a check on a dialogue line I really wanted to go [Music] with and those dialog choices really do matter the story offers a lot of twists and turns during its 100 hour length and a lot of those moments can be altered in many ways depending on the choices you do during the game you never know when a decision in the first 20 hours might come back to haunt you 50 hours later of course the possibilities are not endless but I was truly impressed in the opportunities the game presented in both Main and side quests it was quite heartwarming to see a character I saved in act one from a terrible situation to thrive and be happy in act three it had no effect on the main story but it does wonders to make the world feel alive other thing that really surprised me was how brilliant the game structure is the game is split into three acts with each Act serving the traditional storytelling purposes but more interestingly also switches the feel of the game around the First Act starts of the story it offers a widespread of things to explore in the wilderness but the exploration is mostly blind as you don't yet yet know the world or the context for anything you see so you kind of go with the flow learning the game systems and world you're in second act switches things up and offers you two very specific areas to explore with one of the areas offering a truly unique atmosphere the exploration is more focused on the things happening in the story and kicking the story into a new gear then comes act three when you finally reach the city of balers gate itself and the game switches up once again long gone is the Wilderness and in its place is a densely packed City you once again have a wide variety of things to explore but unlike in aine you now understand the world better so you have the knowledge and the context to appreciate the things you Explore More which I found very very satisfying the different locations visually feel different which keeps the game fresh throughout its Long play time the game looks really good but its graphical features are not anything in mindblowing but the art style and the world feels well realized the music and the audio design also help to create fantastic atmospheres there is one song in act that has been stuck in my head as the song itself was very good but it's implementation is amazing as its mood and lyrics reflect on where you are in the story to send the Ste watch through here all this those refuges I also love the small sound effect that happens when the game does a background roll in Exploration or combat giving you the feel that the dice has been rolled glowing eyes are rarely a good sign and now we get to the part I promised the actual moment moment gameplay and combat and how laran Studios have done the impossible and translated all of the systems to be played on a controller I started the game with a mouse and keyboard as the game obviously was first designed for it and I was scared how jangy the control input was but I quickly realized I can't play the game this way for me it is important to be able to kick back and chill when I play video games and mouse and keyboard just does not offer the Comfort I wish so I switch to the controller mode first thing that shot me was that every aspect of the UI is different depending on your input device I was expecting slight changes but almost everything is different controller UI does feel a bit Bland and cheap compared to the traditional UI which has all types of visual flourishes for different elements but the controller UI is very functional and you do get used to it very fast there were some minor bugs that showed up in the controller UI and the game overall luckily I did not encounter anything gamebreaking or something a quick load didn't fix my main gripe with with the mouse and keyboard controls is the point and click exploration and the movement outside of combat luckily playing with a controller switches that up and you can move in the world with direct inputs just like in any third person action adventure game even in this mode you are still able to switch the camera angle so you can be right behind the character if you want or move to a to down view with a quick right stick movement you can also quickly switch between characters and split or group your party by by pressing the left trigger but the thing I was afraid of most was actually interacting with objects in the world as for mouse and keyboard it is as simple as point and click an item luckily laran has given controller players few different options to handle this first you can just walk towards an item and if it highlights you can interact with it but if there are many items right next to each other it might be difficult so in that case you can just stand and push the left stick s to left or right to cycle between those close items to choose the correct one and if that is not enough you can also press down a on Xbox or X on PlayStation and you can do a scan of the immediate area and then a list of interactable items shows up and you can choose the correct one from that none of these are as intuitive as point and click but after getting used to them I found it to be more and easy to interact with items and ended up using all three ways depending on the situation and as left click on Mouse opens up contextual menu for interacting with them X on Xbox or Square on Playstation does the same thing on a controller you can also click the left stick to enter a point and click mode or click the right stick to quickly see all interactable items with their names both of which I never had need for but it's nice it's there access to inventory spell book rest and stuff like that is handled by a radial menu accessed by the right trigger which works well but the inventory well the inventory is the biggest hurdle controller players need to overcome the inventory UI itself looks nice and for example comparing and equipping equipment has been made easy but actually navigating the inventory can be slow and sometimes annoying throughout the game you will pick up tons of equipment potions spell Scrolls and random junk there are few ways to sort the inventory by type time or weight but even then it's sometimes on overwhelming trying to find that particular potion you want when you don't remember what the icon looks like so you do have to slowly go through all of them and with each party member having their own inventory the problem might go trouble one thing that is very nice about the inventory system is that you can use a potion even if it is in other party members inventory as long as they are not too far away from you which alleviates some of the inventory annoyances and here are a couple of great smaller features features before I jump into the combat you can enter jump mode with quickly clicking up on the d-pad or you can equip a light source by holding it down which is helpful especially in act two holding down on the d-pad enters your party into the stealth mode it's small things like this which makes me really appreciate the thought put into the systems the combat also worked really great with a controller the combat does go into a turn-based mode with a point and click systems which was fine for me as I am more experienced with tactics style games even though my crpg experience is not that deep every turn you can move a character a certain amount by clicking on where you want to go then you have an action and a bonus action unlike on mouse and keyboard where you select your action from a menu on the bottom of the screen controller you open up a radial menu with left or right bumper these radial menus have all your available actions these Menus can become a mess as you gain more and more abilities throughout the game and your potions and scrolls are also there you can modify these radials by moving abilities around and adding more radials but it is a quite slow process so I didn't bother with it after choosing an action then the game goes back to the point and click mode to choose your target I actually found the targeting to be quite easy and intuitive in most situations even with AOE spells but sometimes you do have to battle the camera as you try to find the correct camera position to be able to Target specific things but I feel like I would have had the same problem even with a mouse so the controller input for the combat was very good and enjoyable I never really had any problems with it honestly the bigger issue in the early game was actually understanding the dice rolls that go behind the systems affecting how easy it is to land attacks and how much damage you do to the enemies and vice versa the game also offers a lot of creativity in the combat of how you can use the environment or different elements to dominate your enemies you could for example will throw a bottle of grease at the enemies and then strike the area with a Firebolt creating a larger Inferno so there are a lot of systems you can work with in the battles but I highly recommend not trying to understand it all because if you do then it will be overwhelming even after 100 hours there were still spells and abilities I didn't fully understand but that's okay and remember there is an easy mode if you just want to focus on the story after 110 hours I finished the game and the credit sold all although the ending did not blow my mind it was very satisfying especially with some of the character choices I made throughout the way and the game did leave me slightly heartbroken for a very specific reason relating to the amazing Roman system in the game the whole game was a truly exceptional Journey which I'm eager to do again in the future which is very rare for me as I usually can't replay these big games I went in not knowing if I was ever going to play past the opening hours but in the end bers Gate 3 is easy L my favorite RPG of all time and most likely a top five game overall it really was that special experience for me so should you play this game as someone who likes story-based games with lots of choices and amazing characters if you have never played DN yes if you have no knowledge of balers gate yes if you have no experience with crpgs yes if you only play games with a controller yes Laren has managed to pull off an incredible feat of making the game really accessible without sacrificing depth or complexity and that in itself should be celebrated if you got this far thank you and I hope you found the review helpful the game really was so good that it inspired me to write this review which I have never done before so all the feedback would be greatly appreciated as I might want to do more of this and press that like And subscribe buttons If you want to see more thank you you and have a nice day

Channel: Rioichi

Views: 16,924

Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's gate, Baldurs, review, controller, Playstation, PS5, Xbox, Dungeons, dragons, CRPG, Dualsense, Xbox Series X, Series S, Series X, gate, RPG, role playing game, romance, Astarion, Karlach, Wyll, Gale, Shadowheart

Id: SA-oiN4-qNo

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023