Baldur's Gate 3 | Review

when game awards season comes around it's pretty easy to tell what's gonna win game of the year the game awards usually pick either a Zelda game or a from software game whether or not they deserve it they've had some out-of-pocket winners like come on Zelda over Odyssey God of War instead of Red Dead 2 it takes 2-1 in 2021 is this how you get your sick kicks of course though the one time they pick a fair winner is the year where I'd be fine with any of the nominees winning all of this incoherent rambling is to say that when Legend of Zelda tears the kingdom was announced to release in 2023 it was basically a spoiler for this year's game awards but then I heard rumors and Rumblings about a new game coming out a game that takes place in a fantasy setting which I'm not a big fan of a game that's top down which I don't like an RPG I'm not an RPG guy a game that has turn-based combat I hate turn-based combat a game that is coming to PS5 and is set into Throne tears of the Kingdom as game of the year well this I gotta play so when Baldur's Gate 3 came to the PlayStation 5 on September 2nd I loaded it up with absolutely no expectations and very little background I had no clue whether or not I'd like this game as I'm not a fan of his genre or setting but everybody seemed to love it and this is my background with Dungeons and Dragons I played one session with my friends and it was pretty fun in the first half and I love creating a character enrolling for stats but then it got hilarious as the game devolved when two of my friends spent the rest of the session trying to kill each other so needless to say I'm quite the novice when it comes to Dungeons and Dragons but I have to say I love Baldur's Gate 3. this game is everything I hate wrapped up in one game but they do everything right I said in my genres video that even if I hate its genre a game can still win me over regardless and Baldur's Gate wins me over in every possible way all of these things I mentioned it being an RPG the top down view the turn-based combat and the fantasy elements they're all utilized in a way that wraps up into a great experience I want to preface this review by saying I'm only 26 hours into this game so far and I'm still only in the first and I'll get more into that in a minute but yeah I still haven't gotten to act two so this review isn't going to be very in-depth when it comes to the story but everything else will be fine so to start off this game is huge each Act of the game has basically a new map from what I understand once you're around level 5 and Venture through the mountain pass you should be in Act 2 and have a whole new map so there are the base stones for each Act but there are also some bonus areas Baldur's Gate pulls a tears of the kingdom and has a big underground section which expands the map even further on top of that there are buildings that are very vast on the inside the derelict Temple is a good example as even though you're inside a building it can get pretty easy to get lost inside but a large map can be a hindrance to a game rather than an asset if there's nothing to do plenty of games have a lackluster map because despite its impressive size it feels completely dead and empty as there's not much to do and everything you can do is separated by Miles this might be a bit of a hot take but personally I think Grand Theft Auto 5 suffers a bit from this Los Santos is loaded with stuff to do and remains interesting but that's only a third of the map there is some stuff to do in Sandy Shores and Blaine County but nothing that is interesting or fun to me and the rest of the map is filled up by a giant Lake a giant desert or some mountains my brother actually had a very interesting point on this he brought up hell in GTA 5 nothing on the map is organically discovered by the player on the other hand some games can be a little too dense having too much to do in one spot I feel like God of War 2018 was honestly a little too much for me I just wanted to get the story done and they kept throwing things like Valkyries and go Sammy but Baldur's Gate 3 perfectly rides the line of having a large map dense enough to give you hours upon hours of entertainment but not so dense that it becomes overwhelming to the player there are a few side quests that do feel a bit like filler but the majority of things you'll stumble upon are exciting and tell their own story I like how side quests don't show up on the map before you start them and you have to discover them yourself traveling between quests and discovering the map feels fantastic as I explored my surroundings with my party with a black map trying to pick the right road to my objective it felt like I was a part of the Fellowship of the Ring like I said I am not a huge fantasy fan I like it enough but I don't gravitate to it the same way I do sci-fi or westerns I think the reason why is because I don't completely understand fantasy so I can't really relate to the characters or get invested in the stakes like if Sauron wiped out the whole Fellowship I'd be like to him they killed Will Turner but the fact that it's an RPG and I'm the one being affected by the plot makes me much more interested and invested in what happens like before playing this game I'd never heard of a tiefling before and I really didn't care but now that they're in danger and asking me for help I want to help them out any way I can I still don't understand too much and sometimes a character will go off on a tangent that sounds like a whole lot of nothing because it's just completely flying over my head but if you're a real fantasy geek you probably won't have that problem for weirdos like me though the game is saved by the fact that it's a role-playing game and it's an amazing one at that there's so much player choice in this game it's ridiculous starting off with the very first thing you do the character creation is pretty good it's not as in depth in the facial customization as games like Fallout 4 but it makes up for it in things like hair customization where you can pick from a wide variety of different colors add highlights and put some gray in your hair you can be a variety of different races too like Dragonborn elf gnome gethianki and more there are also plenty of backgrounds and archetypes to pick from all based off of Dungeons and Dragons I was able to literally recreate my DMD character down to the attribute points which was really fun you really can make your character you and more than just appearance most RPGs will give you three or four different dialogue options but there were times in Baldur's Gate 3 where I had at least seven to choose from and there are plenty more depending on your customizations as some of the dialogue choices are tied to being a cleric wizard elf halfling Etc what you say truly matters too I was talking to a Healer who was asking me questions I failed an Insight role so I knew there was more happening than I knew but because I'm in my hero playthrough I was straight with her and told her the truth because of that she said that her cure was actually a poison and since I was straight with her she'd be straight with me and tell me how to get the real cure I was blown away as a lesser the game would have had her poison me as a consequence of being naive but since she was written to be a kind-hearted do-gooder she reciprocated the trust you have so many options in this game whether it be during menial conversations or important quests that honestly can be a problem this many options multiplies how much content is in the game on my first attempt I literally made all the mistakes possible leading to me not advancing quests which meant I didn't level up enough and when I went through the mountain pass combat was way too difficult even after doing almost everything act 1 had to offer and that's why I have 26 hours on this game because I messed up so bad I had to restart and I wish the game held my hand a little more but that can be viewed as a good thing because I'm making the right decisions in this new playthrough the majority of my play time has been unique I act one will take you at least 50 hours to do everything possible and do every option the gameplay in Baldur's Gate 3 is surprisingly engaging I'm not one for strategy games turn-based combat or top down views but each of those aspects of the gameplay are executed perfectly top down is really the best way this game could be played as it lets you get a full View and understanding of the location of your enemies and allies I think my least favorite type of gameplay is turn-based it's so boring it's one of the main reasons why I haven't finished undertale well that and the fact that it's all black and white not black and white picture but like literally those are the only two colors 99 of the time even the South Park games I find to be annoying to play I'm glad the new one looks more like Happy Wars rather than playing like the other two but Baldur's Gate's turn-based combat is actually engaging as you have so many different options each move has a different percent chance of hitting on each character some characters are resistant to certain types of attacks you have an action and a bonus action per turn and it greatly matters how you use your magic and you really have to strategize who you kill based off of enemy hell health and the amount of enemies you need to weigh your options should I use magic to heal or protect an ally or do I use my action to attack an enemy with a Chance of that attack missing of course if you're me though you roll a Nat 20 inspecting a book but roll a 1 on a Charisma check and get jumped by goblins nonetheless though it's really less about skill and more about strategy and a little bit of luck the multiplayer is also very fun to play me and three of my friends started up a new campaign after I'd already played about 11 hours and playing together still made it seem fresh obviously I knew what was gonna happen but it was really fun as we all had unique and interesting builds that the NPC party members don't have the only two downsides for me was that they went and did something while I was trading and that since there were already four of us we couldn't Journey with any of the character companions that's not that big of a deal to me though I'd rather play with my friends and be able to coordinate and me not being there for certain story quests while I'm trading is mainly because my friends are horrible people it's also a nice feature because me and my friends split up so we could get Galen hysterian at the same time even though it can't have downsides depending on who you're playing with the multiplayer in Bulger Skate 3 only improves the experience to briefly mention the story I don't think it's very special at least when it comes to the inciting incident what follows it is fun and it's a good enough reason for the party to group together and go on this adventure I'm not gonna say what it is just in case you don't want any spoilers but I will compare it to other plots that are similar so if you really don't want this game spoiled at all skip 10 seconds ahead we've basically seen this plot before in Arkham City and Resident Evil 4 as it's a specific race against the clock the story is really nothing special or groundbreaking at least so far but it's definitely couldn't visually bulger's Gate 3 is very appealing it's graphically up to date yes we've seen better things come out years ago but we've also seen worse things come out the cutscenes however holy these are some of the best looking cutscenes I've ever seen graphically look at that mindslayer dude they're so slimy and check out this Dragon bro it looks so good I don't want to know how long it took for them to make it look that good there are however some graphical issues first off I've only ever experienced screen tearing when I'm using my capture card because I'm still figuring out how to use obs so all of this screen tearing you see here was organic I saw it while playing and the only way to stop it was to go from performance mode to Fidelity mode I've literally never experienced screen tearing by just playing the game until now I really hope lyrion patches that out in the future on top of that this game has some bad issues with graphical pop-ups it's not something that shattered the immersion for me but it would also be very nice to not experience that also there's no Collision detection on eyelashes which is pretty funny so they just go through the bottom of your eyelid the glitches aren't just visual either twice when I was playing my solo campaign and once when I was with my friends my game audio just completely cut out and that didn't just happen to me it happened to two of my friends as well they were able to fix this glitch by unplugging and plugging in their mic but my headset is wireless and turning it off and on didn't fix the issue I have read online that messing with the audio settings a little will fix it but that didn't work for me either whenever I had that glitch I would either close and reopen the game till it was fixed or just deal with it and not have audio also to briefly mention it the music in Boulders Gate 3 is also really good the theme at the main menu is really well done along with the combat themes no specific track has stuck out to me yet like other games have but it's overall a solid soundtrack this is where I'm Really Gonna geek out though the art direction of this game is inspired the loading screen specifically are incredibly beautiful I couldn't possibly create an art piece this fantastic if I try you've seen my thumbnails you know what I'm capable of the art style the materials used and the use of color and color theory wrap up into stunning visuals and Designs I'm sorry if I butchered these names but I have to give my props Alina dobrevina and Cohen van meerlo are the lead character artists and Technical art director at larion Studios and their amazing art has stood out to me the most in this game what stands out to me the second most however it is much more prevalent is the characters they're written so well and have interesting backgrounds and character animates characters like shadowheart can come into religious conflict with the main character based off of how you customize the character and what background you gave them and they're all very unique for example lizel wanted to have sex with me shadowheart wanted to do the devil's Tango as Syrian wanted to get freaky Gail wanted to have sex yeah if I'm being honest this game can be a little too horny I'm not really a prude but when I heard this game had bear sex in it I was like all right guys what what are we doing here all jokes aside though I really do like how unique each character is at your party and they're not just thrown in with their whole lives revolving around the main character they actually have backgrounds and things going on in their own personal lives I think my favorites are Shadow Heart Houston and karlak they're all not only fun to talk to and explore their histories but also great party members even Side characters are written well like Neddy and menthara the writing involves Gate 3 is no last of us but hey what is overall I feel that Baldur's Gate 3 is an amazing role-playing game that managed to win me over even though at face value I had absolutely no reason to like this game it manages to stay fresh and keeps the player invested despite its turn-based combat which gets repetitive and tedious in lower quality games to be fair I haven't played tears of the Kingdom but I've played enough of breath of the wild to know it's not my thing and I can confidently say that Baldur's Gate 3 has dethroned tears of the Kingdom in my eyes and is my game of the year until Spider-Man 2 comes out thank you guys so much for making it to the end of this video I really hope you enjoyed it I know it's shorter and less in depth mainly because I'm not a big fantasy guy and I wasn't really excited for this game and there's just so much to do in this game but yeah I was just really surprised by it and I thought I'd let you guys know that I definitely recommend it and just give my two cents on the whole game if you did like this video a thumbs up would be greatly appreciated as well as checking out my other videos If you like this one let me know what you guys thought about Baldur's Gate 3 in the comments I try to respond to as many as I can and I love discussing these games with you guys and hearing your opinion unless you're gonna be like this bald dude and complain about pronouns in a video game and with that I'll see you guys in the next video take care

Channel: Carter McSwaggins

Views: 2,443

Keywords: gaming, video games, Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's gate III, BG3, Larian Studios, Review, Carter McSwaggins

Id: atsfN1HjnY4

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2023