My Baldur's Gate 3 Review - GOTY for 2023

are you guys ready because we're gonna dive in Deep dive today Baldur's Gate three I'm finally reviewing the game this and this is after all those months of about three years technically of Early Access but really hard the last two months leading up to the launch and then since then I mean every single day I think I've missed one day up to this recording and that was the day that cyberpunk 2077 launched the 2.0 update I was like you know what I've got like four videos for Boulder Skate 3 in the bank for the next few days I'm good to go and I did skip a day but apart from that one day I have played every single day and it is an absolute Masterpiece of a game um I want to just kind of leave all this on the table here um because it's a I don't think I've ever done a review before I actually finished the game and the reason I'm doing it before I actually have finished the game is because we're like two months out from um from the launch and I told people when I started my druid playthrough I was like it's probably gonna take me about three months to get through the game because I'm balancing that with Starfield and then cyberpunk's coming and so we're you know we're blending the three together but on top of that I've also got my sorcerer playthrough who's gonna be he's in the underdark right now so I would assume that by the time I wrap up act three and wrap up my druid playthrough I'll be getting probably pretty deep into act two uh with my sorcer and then I'm gonna switch over and I'll be streaming the Sorcerer And then of course we have the multiplayer stuff and I've got a rogue and a ranger Beastmaster coming down the road at some point so it's not a game that I'm putting down anytime soon and that's what's led me to want to go ahead and give a review even though I haven't beat the game now for some of you and you're immediately gonna say well if you haven't played the whole act three you can't make a review because this side of the other you do you you do you um I know that this is for me this is the game of the year I love Starfield a lot and and I really love cyberpunk 2077 the 2.0 update everything they're doing um it's they're all great games but Baldur's Gate 3 is going to take my game of the year slot um it's just got too many really cool things going on and it has its issues there are some bugs and there's still performance issues in act three uh I actually literally just patched patch three or um as I was waiting to record this video so I'm jumping in this afternoon I'm gonna be playing some offline with my Sorcerer And it's it's the patch 3 stuff and I want to take it out take a look at that and then I'll be back you know middle of next week with the Druid streams once we get past the Phantom Liberty launch um this is just despite all the little quirks that are in act three this is the best crpg I've played ever um that slot for a long time was held by Baldur's Gate 2 and there were games that came close um Dragon Age Origins pillows of Eternity to dead fire both came really close but Baldur's Gate 2 always managed to stay at the top and then larion Studios came along and dropped this on this end it has proven to be the coolest crpg I've ever played and I I don't know that I've ever seen a game that takes so many of the nuances of tabletop and actually does it well in a digital space I have seen games that have made good attempts a perfect game would be like Celesta crown of the Magister if you have not played Celesta get on it that game is awesome and it uses 5th edition d d rules which are the same rules that larion is using for Baldur's Gate 3 and they do a very similar turn-based uh game but they use the grid pattern but you still you see all your dice rolls it's just slightly the UI is a little bit different and and Celesta made a very good attempt but it was still lacking a lot of the scope and the scale that larion was able to do by having a team that was you know 10 times bigger um so some of the things that I can think of are like throwing shoes or inanimate objects at enemies or picking up player characters and chucking them at enemies or being able to shape-shift into a dozen different creatures and go into small forms and go into tunnels and find secret entrances or go into gaseous form and check it out or FL use the fly spell to go over there or the Misty step and the verticality of Baldur's Gate 3 where you've got height Advantage for spells and archery and all this other stuff and then you you're using this entire 3D map for combat where you've got verticality to think about as well as you know the horizontal layer so you've got this entire 3D Battlefront and and this was the first game that I have ever been willing to put myself through um turn based and come out the other end going that wasn't that bad um because even Celesta I like Celesta a lot but the turn base was still nagging at the back of my mind and because I like the pause based versions um Baldur's Gate one and two coming to mind pillars of Eternity one and two I like the pause based as opposed to the you know turn based and despite that fact um I love Baldur's Gate 3. it's an amazing game it has a ton of strategy to it all the things we just mentioned with the verticality and the way you can do things are enhanced by things that larion brought to the table with their previous games which are like using the environment to your advantage and having water that could become ice or electrified and having blood that could be done the same thing too because it's a liquid then having you know noxious fumes and gases and and grease spells and web spells and things that can be set on fire and explosive barrels and grenades that you can launch along with flasks and all these other things um add to that melee and uh ranged abilities and cool abilities on all sorts of weapons if you have the proficiency with those things and then cool things on Armor if you have the proficiencies with those things layered on top of spell casting and the complexities of that system and having all of these different abilities in the game hundreds of spells and then on top of all of that somehow managing to seamlessly allow for mouse and keyboard and controller support on the same device in a way that very few companies do then you have Beyond oh I'm just going to keep going everybody just we're seven and a half minutes in and I haven't yet stopped with all of the cool [ __ ] that this game has in it so then we have the fact that they built a motion capture cinematic Studio from the ground up for this game and they pulled it off because you don't have stiff yesterday looking Graphics you have a game that looks it's not as polished to say something you might see from like Final Fantasy 16 or something that's a very different linear experience Jedi survivors another good ones God of War is another good one where the focus is primarily on the visuals and they don't have all this complex engineering going behind the scenes with Boulders Gate 3 have all this complex engineering going behind the scenes but they still managed to pull off really amazingly well done um characters with motion capture and voice acting and a talented cast that were in the studio for weeks on end in the you know costumes in the the capture costumes doing all of it not just the voices but the motion capture and then what they did with the lighting and the shading and everything and the makeups and skin textures and then you know all the hairstyles you can choose and and all the different races that they have in the game and the sub Races they have in the game and all that like looking at the Dragonborn and all the crazy things you can do to make those characters look unique on top of the tflings and all the ways you can make the tieflings look unique and then you've got your you know variants of elves and gnomes and all these other things hahaha and on top of all of that you have this music composition this soundtrack that is like probably I I really think I haven't done my soundtrack episode yet that's coming down the pipeline but I kind of feel like this soundtrack has jumped into my top three soundtracks of all time it's a banger of uh of a soundtrack matter of fact I could probably say with certainty that if we're talking only about RPGs crpgs this is the best soundtrack I've ever heard for a crpg second only two the Baldur's Gate and icewinddale games because those games also have amazing pillows return to one pillows are fraternity two Dragon Age Origins like these these games have all had great music but Baldur's Gate 3 has an amazing score um and I say all of that to say that this game has not only all of that but the permutations that they talked about the 17 000 I'll never see all of them I'll see a few hundred through various playthroughs I've already seen dozens um through various playthroughs um it's been an absolute treat to to see the way that they've done this the The Nostalgia and the legacy of the series um such an honor because that was one of the things I loved about Baldur's Gate one and two was because you could go back and do it over and over and over and get a slightly different experience each time depending on who is in your party what choices you made and they've taken that and scaled it up and on top of that we still have the multiplayer component which is there as well so I think that at the end of the day I mean the only nitpicks that I have are the turn based thing and I will still always always always prefer the six person party system I just do I like having six people in my party um it's just always been my preferred method they did a great job here with four people in your party and all the the complexities of the combat system they have in place [Music] um exceptionally well done exceptionally well done I don't think there's been a single moment in this game where I have felt like there was fan service being done or something didn't feel polished even even the times when I've seen bugs I've been willing to just sort of shake it off because the rest of the experience is so [ __ ] amazing that I'm not gonna let a an animation sequence that aired out of turn as an example or you know a frame drop when I drink a potion because the VFX you know those are little things that I've noticed along the way and there's other little things but those do not detract from this being an absolutely amazing experience now I'm a hundred plus hours into my main character's campaign and if you want to consider all the time I spent in Early Access we're probably in the ballpark of like 500 hours now between all the different characters of playthroughs so I've spent a lot of time with this game and and I can I feel like I can rightfully say that is a masterpiece of a game even like technically haven't finished the main campaign yet the reason I want to do that is because I just want to get it off my chest I've been playing this game for months in a couple months now and it's just so amazing and every day that I come and stream it it's just a blessing and all the guides that we've done I've done almost 400 videos on Baldur's Gate 3 alone the vast majority of which have happened in 2023 like I did a few leading up to the game um streamed the entire first time I did the Rogue when the Early Access hit back at 2020 um when my channel only had like 80 followers like uh it's you know I this this game has always been here for me and it's been an amazing experience it's been a great journey to see it grow through Early Access and this is where one of the areas where I will say that um I'm gonna be doing my Starfield review after this maybe it might be tomorrow the day after it depends on when I air it but that's the second game I've ever played where I'm gonna be doing a review before I have before I've actually finished the game because I'm already over 150 hours in that game in in my first playthrough and I have at least another I would argue there's another 200 to 300 hours ahead of me before I finish my first playthrough of that game and then I'm going into the new game plus mode so I'm gonna get the rest of this here and like as much as I've played Skyrim you know half a dozen times over the years and Oblivion half a dozen times over the years more than half a dozen times over the years I will be playing Starfield half a dozen times over the years so I'm going to be doing a review of that you know um at 150 hours in because it's just it's an amazing experience but I love like with Baldur's Gate 3 I can look at you know Studios or some studios Bethesda larion CD projekt Red some companies are still willing to make that to make to make the risk to take the risk to take the plunge to make a deep Rich RPG I would also say it looks like Dragon Dog Dragon's Dogma coming up looks pretty amazing as well I just caught wind of that the day I'm recording this actually um there are some companies who are willing to put in money to make an amazing RPG experience not every company and not every publisher is all about you know and and there's nothing wrong I don't don't get me wrong I don't have anything against microtransactions as a rule but some companies over rely on them and just make these games they monetize it first and once they have a monetization strategy they wrap a game around it and I just feel like those types of games people don't play those for more than the 40 50 hours that you're gonna get out of it whereas when you create a game where you just give the people a richly deeply designed title with a couple hundred minimum hours of entertainment involved you know two to three hundred hours in the main campaign if you do a completionist journey when you can provide that to people Witcher three cyberpunk 2077 Baldur's Gate 3 you know these these companies star field who have been releasing these games in 2023 I feel like we may be making a return to the to a golden age of game development once again now I can't make that prediction with any certainty but I can say that larion Studios and these other companies who have come out in recent months with these amazing you know RPGs that have hundreds of hours of entertainment and then the ability to replay the games and get thousands upon thousands upon thousands of variations that is something that every company is going to be watching and if they're not inspired by that they'll be intimidated by that because the people have shown that we are more than happy to spend all of our money on games like Baldur's Gate 3 because they provide us with an amazing RPG experience an immersive world that we can get into and spend hundreds of hours without being pelted with [ __ ] microtransactions and cosmetics and and you know all of these things these gimmicks to try to to try to run the game as a service just make good games everybody larion Studios have proven that if you make if you just make good games the people will come they will play it they will knock it out of the park in terms of reviews and larion you did The Impossible and I'm really looking forward to seeing where you guys go with your next game um it may be a Divinity sin game or you may get convinced to do a a a sequel to Baldur's Gate three um I I personally would vote for larion Studios to come out and do the icewind Dale three because you did such a good job with Baldur's Gate three just I would love it if you could somehow make that dream a reality get the license to icewind Dale 3 and have larion Studios make that because I would I would sacrifice I would sacrifice my firstborn who I don't have but still you know that's a that's a I would love to see that game kind of fruition by the time I'm 50 or in my early 50s and be able to sink my teeth into that as I head into retirement um this is a great game everybody Baldur's Gate three my game of the year probably my game of the decade um we're only three years into the decade but I don't see anything on the horizon that's gonna be as immersive or as richly detailed as this but we don't know they're still seven years ahead of us but for now get out there play it don't yawn like I just did um get out there play it have fun play it with your friends the multiplayer is amazing cross save on your PS5 played on your PC I've been playing it on PC it's coming to the Xbox series X as soon as it hits the Xbox I'm getting it for the Xbox and I'm gonna start playing it there instead of my PC it's just a great game everybody love to hear your thoughts drop them down below like subscribe and hit that Bell icon so you never miss an update daily streams happen at 11AM we do a lot more than just Baldur's Gate three so check out all the other playlists join the Discord links are below I'll see you in the next one stay safe everybody

Channel: Renfail

Views: 4,900

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Id: ZHjyZIzT8p0

Length: 18min 23sec (1103 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2023