Baldurs Gate 3 Review - Sex, Spells, and Squid Brain Babies

as Gandalf once said it was the best of times and the worst of times and Boulder's Gate There is almost assuredly always a plethora of worst of times These are times the bad times have nightmares about and Baldur's Gate 3 is no different you find yourself aboard an attacking mind flayer ship with your brain pregnant with one of their worm babies and you have to fight through a bunch of buttholes literally and figuratively to escape only to crash land the damn thing right after you get thrown clear and then you're saved by magic spell before you turn into a giant red spot on a mysterious beach somewhere your quest is to find a way to get that squiggling mind flayer baby out of your head before it breach Burns its way into making you one of them worst of times most of this review will be spoiler free with blurred text in a lot of places if you like this kind of thing and feel I went the extra mile subscribe and hit the notify Bell it helps and we are only 8.7 million subscribers away from being bigger than the PlayStation channel so help me beat them and thanks to this video sponsors you what is Baldur's Gate 3 well it's a crpg from laryn Studios a game many years in the making a sequel and above franchise and a game that uses everything larion Studios has learned from Divinity games all the way to the seminal Divine Divinity it's a complex sprawling detailed and at times cumbersome monolith and so far it's every goddamn thing I'd hoped and many things I'd never expected as with any good role-playing game you start with making a character now there's many races and add to that 12 classes in more than 40 subclasses but before you go into analysis paralysis let's break them down pretty quickly of course there are humans the milk toast of Baldur's Gate they fit almost any slot if you need a blank template that's the one Orcs well not full Orcs half Orcs because that'd just be nasty big naturally strong and proficient making people's insides outside these are great Fighters half elves are a mixture of human and whatever elf race they bred with they're good all-arounders then there's the full elves if you like your legless Shield skating Heroes even the drow the dark elf variety a favorite for Forgotten Realms fans are here but if you like your party pretty short and your Heroes shorter you can grab a gnome or a half lean or a dwarf all of them outfitted with their own bonuses to height challenged racial classes or choose the gith ugliest sin but brutal in a world that needs it they look a bit like skinny Orcs with Undead noses but if you want a hero that looks like a bad guy pretending to be a good guy you can go with the tiefling marked by the deals they've made with Devils or the Dragonborn despite what has to be a huge number of neck problems they're one of the ones that start with an excellent beginning racial offensive weapon if you choose right I say choosing right but I really just mean choose it all because really while some things may be slightly or easier or harder in the game there really is no wrong choice and then you jump to the classes if this is the first time out of the d d Barn you're looking at the future Corrals and Open Fields of freedom and find yourself confused you can always choose the fighter they take sharp things and hit other living things until they're dead things it's a pure numbers game but if you like you can do more of the same thing but while wearing less the Barbarian might be up your alley then or you could try warlock a man or woman who takes the devil's bet and agrees to a pact with Baldur's Gates equivalent of Old Scratch trading power for the the black beta servitude or perhaps you just want to stroll around mimicking Bon Jovi's Blaze of Glory videos outfit yourself with some 80s rocker hair grab a musical instrument and lead the charge as a magical musician That's The Bard class or clerics and paladins if you wonder what the difference is one's a holy man with spells Divine from their God and the other is a preacher who heals with the healing power Hefty weapons and a personal belief in their own Oaths or maybe you want to cast some spells pick the sorcerer a bit closer to the magic without all the study sort of a conduit to natural magic ability without the need for spell books if you like Gandalf's ability to just make up spells on the Fly this is for you or perhaps the wizard is they're pretty much what you think think Harry Potter without the pesky pre-made horcrux wielding enemy and with a desire to study the deepest of magics and with a spell book that needs its own wagon at higher levels you like to steal things while not being seen or see things that are not as they seem the Rogue is your choice what if you want to command the power of animals and you're tired of talking to one so you want to transform into them pick the Druid and if you want to command them like a general and a militant Pokemon game that's the Ranger killing and controlling animals can be your thing lastly if you are always warned to watch out for quiet people who don't say much that's the monks no weapons because God gave him two feet arms and a head to beat you to death with they're the Bruce Lee's of balter's gate lastly for everyone there's backgrounds from acolyte to criminal Sage to Soldier all of these change up the skills that you start with let's get to multi-classing just get it out of the way on the medium and high difficulty multiclassing becomes available so when you level up not only do you get your bonuses moves ability spells attacks songs or likewise you can just staple another class throw in a different class completely on your character maybe a mix of magic user and Drew it cause magic spell casting bears with tomes and knowledge fill in their brain after every single night's hibernation just sounds scary all that done is time to jump into the game properly where Boulder's Gate 3 almost instantly pushes itself to the top of the Heap as the interaction of everything that you've done and created to any one particular point it's not just casual it's a true reflection of each part for example random roles for all sorts of situations some point some pointless but all them feeling like a culmination of what you've done prior letting you feel like every single stat and choice you've made matters attributes Drive some abilities as do weapons like how you can attack with those weapons what you can use you're saving roles for weapon types as well as magic but they can also matter in the narrative and a choice you make in dialogue and it's that flexibility and focus on making sure everything matters that you can feel at any time in the game to avoid spoilers about the story let me say this much much further after the Early Access section ends Baldur's Gate does not stop telling engaging stories it's not just the main story it's the side content the same focus on characterization we saw in Early Access continues the same risk and reward and the same deeper meanings to decisions that can change entire sections if you go one way or the other it simply has not dropped the ball yet and that includes the side quests while so many games can't stop themselves from just adding in unconnected quest after unconnected Quest Baldur's Gate 3 side quests are almost never just collecting or going going out and doing things it's about furthering the stories involved and extending out the knowledge of all of the people within the game World the races the individuals the groups and their own troubles nothing feels extra or tacked on nothing it's an outstanding moment when you realize that someone you saved hours earlier is in a new location thankful for being there and offering a quest that wouldn't be possible vyan made the tough choice and then later it happens again with that same character because that side quest leads back to information about the main quest and then another side quest everything seems to matter in Boulder's Gate 3 and it really does remove a lot of that hero going to get some milk kind of quest delivery we see in other games let's talk about the mechanics though while a lot of what you do is exploring in real time combat itself is a complex Beast of turn-based with the ability to move and attack or attack and move at its most basic everything has something to offer in Baldur's Gate the classes sometimes the races as well as weapons and proficiencies and skills and the sheer amount of abilities interactions between between them between characters and the environment itself there's a ton of unique things that you can do and this is a testament to 5e and its DND system but it's also a testament to their ability to put it within a game every battle begins with a surprise or lack of it and initiative roles and then you're deep into the battle system with the entire top of the screen sometimes covered in tiles of enemies and friends coming together to shake maces at one another and see who can treat the other like a pinata the quickest everyone can equip close and range weapons and each has their own special move sets like large swords having the ability to possibly hit many enemies while another may have the ability to charge into enemies blade first most anyone can use any weapon but if a character is not proficient in a weapon or armor they don't get the proficiency bonus which can be the difference between a Reload and just resting after a battle every character can move in allotted amount rated on their attributes their skills encumbrance and many other adjustments with the ability to also leap up and down above and below enemies much of the game's bonuses come from advantages and disadvantages for instance being above your enemy's line of sight gives you an advantage over them then you can choose from your abilities depending on your class some are available in every battle others once a day still more have many requirements like a short rest or even something more Arcane the game's HUD does a pretty good job showing you what you need to see though it can be very busy and clicking on your friends can happen when trying to attack an enemy up close so watch out for that it is not unusual to hit the wrong character if you're just click happy just be aware this is all based on the new d d rules so there are a ton of numbers from weapon damages to add-on damages due to elements or other restrictions so just throwing a weapon into somebody's hand and having them go in attack may not be the best bet even if it looks initially like it does more damage especially when it comes to understanding range it's the name of the game here as a up close range weapon may have a much narrower chance of hitting but if you can disengage from the enemy you can get attacked from the back as you run past so you're constantly whittling away at the bits of data presented to you in the hood sometimes taking larger risks because three award for up close might make you sprint through two to three enemies attack of opportunity ranges which could end up killing your character as you progress you'll get items with unique attributes that might change combat or even how you get into combat with each character having head body arms legs rings necklaces and weapon slots to outfit the combinations of what you can do how you can get into and out of battle using the jumping the sneaking and all of the different moves that are available to you is purely mind-blowing whether it's talking or getting into combat exploration is how you get there and understanding that it's not just combat is very important for example they're searching investigating pilfering everything not nailed down or being around some wizard lock and trying to figure out how to get through a particular door towns with suspicious gaps in some of their buildings exploration across huge lands and due to the game's jump mechanic as I said there's a lot of platforming including a massive number of Secrets if you pay attention to what you're doing within any one of the environments honestly would be a five hour video if I wanted to talk about every min max that you can do in every different combat location that you'll get in or just every different combat situation that you might find yourselves in and decide upon a different way in which you want to battle an enemy if you die you can come back reload and try it again in a completely different way sometimes talking yourself directly out of battle and regardless if you're just exploring in the middle of a puzzle or fighting people graphically the Polish here shows even locations we saw in Early Access in the past have had updates though if you played recently you've already seen some of them it's a game that seeps atmosphere from which is bogs with stagnant water hiding unknown enemies to the deep but not really dark under dark with its radiant bioluminescent bad guys land steeped with deeply saturated Undead every crooked cranny is filled with something in this game each character is highly detailed when you zoom in and every single character that you meet in the game world has some Arcane bit of equipment or unique item or look to them and despite luminaries and other amazing companies within the same genre it's difficult to argue that point that the use of 3D cutscenes and elements for every single discussion elevates this title above a lot of other crpgs it just looks incredible when you're talking to the different characters and that adds to the feeling of being there and it's something that a lot of crpgs well frankly they lack a little bit however even with dlss or FSR the game can drop some frames even on the 40 90. it's not as bad as Remnant 2 and its huge frame drops there but it does have a tendency in some areas to creep really low sub 60s on a 4080 while exploring with most options at high but not all some of them at Ultra these drops are less often than just the slower frame rates that you can see in battle which a lot of times were above 60 but you do have to mess around with dlss or FSR nowhere near as bad as some of the unoptimized games that we've seen and there is a ton going on here it's not Soul crushing but when you have spell effects prayers chance and dead enemies and a lot of those battles it can eat up a bit of that FPS and make it slightly less smooth this is based on the last patch as I said before just a couple hours before launch what the patch didn't need to fix is the audio all three categories are amazing first musically it is astonishing how good Baldur's Gate 3 feels when it comes to the audio and yes I did say feels creepy ghostly chance in the darkdorf Fortress catacombs are haunting an amazing and complicated track that Echoes The dark past of the race themselves if you talk to the characters and understand their history it's like a hundred dead dwarves babbling a battle champ or the first time you enter some haunted lands that Darkness seeps in around you and it is backed up by incredible wins and strings it is one of the most orchestral feeling soundtracks I've heard in a long time that didn't Elevate itself to the point to where you absolutely noticed it above what was ever going on on screen it fits perfectly and every single track so far has been incredible when it comes to incredible although the voice acting it is astonishingly good it is definitely up there with the levels of Mass Effect and Triple A role-playing games pissy drow kids the underdark's most mysterious creatures to every character you meet greed or Yeet the [ __ ] off a mountain your party is equally superb it's not just the characters and the tropes that you expect though those are there it's some very unexpected change-ups I wasn't looking forward to and when they arrived I was astonished at how well they presented there are stories that continue to impress each one has some Secret in your party some little thing even the characters that are the most blunt the most forward in their forced of delivery and narrative always hid some inset secret as well making them feel more alive and all the more worth figuring out like a human Rubik's Cube just looking for that next line of text that indicates why someone reacts so violently to a particular choice every character's voice is impacted by the environments as well Echoes from Subterranean Caverns are built into frighten characters on a beach but the best part has to be everybody Whispering into the mics when sneaking around there's something deeply immersing when that happens it feels like the thief is Whispering directly into your ear to watch out sound is also ridiculously good varied effects processing environmental impacts on everything a special note again are the unique moves characters can make in and out of battle and their sound effects with them characters screaming as they blast on Arcane energy or whipping out Celestial Shields made of Guardian Angels or thrown themselves into a frenzied rage what also helps is the audio is informative there's large Mist sounds thwacking out so even if you miss the text readout you can hear it but the best part might just be that environmental audio I talked about a second ago has to be some of the thickest sample layering I've heard in a game like this from Eagles and seagulls dogs cats buildings crumbling enemies grumbling and chanting to some magic user in the Next Room babbling incantations to Hidden deities it's amazing work and well worth the experience if you had a good home theater or headphones the level of immersion that good audio brings to a game is no more evident than a Quest inside a burning building as turn-based actions play out and even the world gets its turn and when it does that crumbling and cracking of groaning supports consistently warns you that getting out fast is more important than getting out after trying to grab everything that sound layer is just something else and if you want to experience all this by yourself that's fine but you can also do multiplayer and Co-op now there are a couple bugs I had a few drops you have the ability to invite in friends and play through the host story or create your new group and your new group game as one if you want I did get kicked out of a couple games and that brings us to some bugs first while platforming in the game is something that we've seen since the Early Access with characters leaping across Gorges destroyed Bridges and more can be very easy to make a jump and not realize one of your characters isn't with you and you don't have to be very far separated for them to enter a battle I had no less than five times where a character refused to make a jump and wouldn't enter combat when I landed splitting the group up between one in battle and three not and due to the jumps being attached to actual attribute levels it can take some fiddling around to figure out who can go where and if you're not paying attention you can actually lose a little bit of time as you're drawn into a combat with maybe one character and you have to switch between the characters in turn based and the characters not in it the same can occasionally happen in stealth as sometimes a character will get pulled into combat leaving the others outside and then you have to click around and engage them all now I do get it and understand that of course sometimes you will want one character in battle and others not but I would have liked this to have been tighter especially when it came to the jumping because this did end up occurring the developers have also asked that we cover the game based on the actual mouse and keyboard you can play with the controller but your review should be based on the mouse and keyboard because the controller has a couple issues I played a great deal with both and I have to say I really did enjoy the controller gameplay but it is missing a couple things for example I couldn't figure out a way to go into stealth with the entire group like the mouse and keyboard where it's just one button meaning that I had to switch to each character and toggle them over to that but because of the way the skills are done on radials and the ability to actually customize those radials actually really like the controller gameplay it was very fun I do have to say that the journal itself can be a messed for questing and this is something that comes up not often but enough times that I have to mention it there were sometimes where it updated fine with all the data and the quest was updated but there was simply nowhere to go this happened three or four times where the overall gist of the questline was to go do stuff but stuff had been done in fact stuff was already so done I had a hard time finding out new places to even go and do more stuff baller gate is a massive title complexity on top of complexity from Battle to combat to story to interpersonal relationships and it's a lot to track you could say it's a good problem to have but being stymied by having no real idea where to go from a particular Point can remind a player of any pen and paper game that they played the inevitable time where a DM gave the players a hint and they missed it never to be uttered again and everyone camps and then reads books reads every item's description goes back talks to people looks at the dialogue options and the logs to try to see what they've missed only to find out that for some reason a very very small spot on the map holds an unmarked secret you need small bits of frustration but something that as I'm working through this game I definitely noticed and wanted to mention now when it comes to the fun Factor where the role playing and role-playing interacts directly together rewards the gamer for actually paying attention versus just throwing your points into strength and moving on or a particular skill and just buying it because you think it'll give you a cheaper price somewhere lying cheating being boldly honest or discussing ancient Dwarven architecture with a dark dwarf in the calm of an underground Fortress starts to matter because the information many times can be used elsewhere if you succeed on the roll but regardless of all of that and regardless of success Baldur's Gate is a friggin blast and that's a lot especially for a review that's actually still occurring the game is massive we've got some time with it but only a couple days I did spend 20 hours in one day playing it so far Baldur's Gate it's just one of the titles it feels like it comes along once in a generation and in the entire time I've played there hasn't been one large misstep in many ways it feels more like a d d session but with some more strict rules than it is a video game channeling the latest pen and paper rules and this is a testament to the developers understanding that experimentation is the juice it's the juice and pen and paper and it should be the juice in a lot of video games but it doesn't always get there secret platforms to get to hidden locations or Secrets they're there switching sides in an instant to better your own turning on those sworn to protect you they're there as well figuring out that many spell combinations like dousing fires to have your paladine Sprint through them to get up and close to an enemy or knocking someone down stealing all their stuff and waiting around for them to wake up and wander around trying to figure out how to take you out unlike so many games the attempts that you make they just don't feel scripted they feel like experimentation where you can realize that hey you know what I bet no one's tried this many games Pat themselves on the back for enemies special weaknesses or some particular shortcut but usually you can figure it out because the door to get somewhere is locked Baldur's Gate may have that same exact door but it's open resisting the desire to rest on its Laurels and making you think oh I guess this place is explored and then when your party says interesting and you find yourself nodding along with them thinking yes yes that is so far I would say this is a buy hope you guys like the review if you did give it a thumbs up I'd love for you to share it talk about it this is my review and progress I'm having a blast the game hasn't let me down yet peace out check out the patron oh and further reviews from games coming soon thank you it is over where I am concerned [Music] then our bonds yet I do not recommend Shadow heart seek it again his intelligence May yet prove the key to unlocking the artifact's secrets we should ensure we follow up I mean Ridge Boulder's Gate memory loss isn't usually a symptom of ceramorphosis if it is they've forgotten to write it down in any text I've read on the subject then again our case isn't exactly usual perhaps whatever's causing our tadpoles to remain in stasis has also affected your mind [Music] I'll give it a shot I can't be subtle sometimes [Music] ah

Channel: ACG

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Keywords: acgreview, angrycentaurgaming, gameplay, ACG, gaming news, acg reviews, video games, angry review, acg impressions, videogame reviews, videogame review, game review, acg review, games, gamenews, reaction, ign, steam deck, react to, comedy, podcast, Baldurs gate 3 Review in Progress, baldurs gate 3, baldurs gate 3 review, baldurs gate 3 gameplay, baldurs gate 3 impressions, bg3, bg3 review, baldurs gate three, baldurs gate 3 recommend

Id: nqezPwk3vW0

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 03 2023