Overhyped or Game of the Year? [ Baldur's Gate 3 Review ]

when a company creates a game that gets a small but vocal response from other developers saying it's too much or that it sets the bar too high that alone should tell you that this game is worth looking at and maybe even playing and Baldur's gay three is no exception and since it is one of the biggest games of the year it also needed an appropriate amount of attention for a proper review around 240 hours as of the point of finishing writing this review with both single player and multiplayer experiences so this is going to probably be a fairly long video as well so for the flyby night viewers just skipping through trying to decide if you should just buy it the essence of this is that Ballers Gate 3 is a great game for you if you enjoy titles like divinity original sin or pillars of Eternity but like these titles you will encounter bugs it's unavoidable at the scope and you cannot escape the odd dichotomy of having both choices that have long lasting and in interesting in-game repercussions saddled up next to illusion of choice Oddities where it will railroad you at strange times for those looking for more detail on the actual depths of the game its story The Bugs Etc then stick around as I will be covering that and so much more and maybe even show a bit as to why in spite of the bugs and in spite of the game being well hornier than the animals on the Discovery Channel this alongside similarly disruptive releases from fromsoft are some of the most important games of The Last Five Years even if they do have their share of flaws getting that last point out of the way first these games like Baldur's Gate 3 Elden ring and I'd even say to a lesser extent tears of the kingdom and armored Core 6 are extremely important especially since each of them has easily set new records when they released showing that players actively want to play strong Standalone titles and are voting with their hard-earned money to support that without even needing any gimmicks to force their hand in Baldur's Gate 3's case this was stacked on top of it being in An Early Access title for ages prior to this which normally impedes A Game's impact on release but in the case of Baldur's Gate 3 instead served as a springboard to amplify the already strong title into astronomical success for the studio that said I wager most of you coming to this video are more interested in why the game performed so well so I'll save most of the rest of that for another video and the simple truth is the attention to detail and the overwhelming consideration for the Player's experience are the reasons sure there's some points it falls short but the fact that choices I made before even leaving what is essentially the tutorial still had impacts near the end of the game it's a nice feeling experience and you're not punished for taking those choices merely given different options and pieces of the story now starting out you get the opening cinematics that set the scene that you've been abducted by mindful players and had one of their worms shoved into your eye hole which needless to say is a very bad thing though after that you're given the opportunity to create your character and Baldur's Gate 3 gives you one of the best implemented pools of options for any modern d d based game sure you cannot choose something like goblins or furbols but you do get access to all the core familiar races a decent handful of their sub-races and even a few less common races such as tieflings Dragonborn githyanki Etc and while you do only have a certain amount of customization such as two to four body types and a half dozen faces for each race this is understandable considering the sheer variety available this is continued with the class selection with the only core class missing being artificer and that's understandable because Baldur's Gate 3 is pretty much based around the SRD style characters available and artificer is added in books like eberron rather than the core game this is also likely why we don't have racist is like War forged or changeling even though one could argue that all of the above make indirect appearances in the game itself alongside all of this you do choose all the rest of the details of your character and yes you can choose skin colors from everything if you want just by clicking a check box same for eye colors and you also do the usual phase hair tattoo Etc selections you expect from mid-tier character customization while a slider system would have been nice it would have also increased the complexity with very little benefit one big Improvement I wish there was during character creation would be the ability to look at what classes change over time with levels since as it stands all you have to go with is the stats for level one same for leveling up where you only get information about the level you are currently grabbing which can be a bit much for people not familiar with DND or on the flip side people extremely familiar with it but not used to the gamification of the mechanics one thing that Baldur's Gate 3 does well in regard to that gamification is is that well yes combat is going to be a necessity for every character to at least perform adequately in there aren't really any abilities or attributes that don't have some utility in the campaign so that deceptive and Charming Bard will have plenty of interesting interactions that actually shape the game and so will the brooding thief or the wizard with the social skills of the turnip but once you've assembled all this decided if you're observant social or just one to give into your dark urges you choose your guardian which is a character you'll encounter later and then you get dropped into the continuation of the Cinematic you started in with a lot of sneaky bonus details that you will not notice until after you've beaten the game and go back to watch it again it definitely has its fair share of oh neat moments if you do go back and watch it and ultimately this will lead you to the Nautilus basically a mix of tutorial area and setting the foundation of what will be the core goal of the remainder of the game or at least a good chunk of it for both both you and the majority of your party members if you're playing solo you'll be by yourself while multiplayer will have you each Spawn from your own pod and go about the journey weirdly with how it's done the game originally felt best with only one or two custom players so you could still access the Allies you pick up along the way and explore their stories as well but it can accept up to four custom players and they increase the possible party size in the nautiloid with the latest patch so even though it doesn't change the main game cap the patch that allowed this also made it possible to explore these characters lives within the four character limit and not hold you back in the Nautilus basically letting you send the custom characters to a wardrobe and letting you use them during the first part when you don't have access to said wardrobe now for my playthroughs which I did a few I've done everything from solo with four custom characters which requires some fiddly workarounds which I'll probably make a tutorial for to solo with just the one and even a multiplayer playthrough with a friend and you will get interesting interactions regardless it will just vary in and just how many you see in a specific playthrough no matter the party you end up with you will get introduced to what the worm in your eye does you will get told it needs to be rectified and you will get a base introduction to a couple of the key players as you make your way to the Helm of the ship and loot what you can from the imps and thralls along the way and some of the more odd uniquely named items you can find along the way can be used to unlock some more hidden stories much later on as an optional perk for paying attention in the helm you get your first taste of actual proper combat since the previous encounters will have generally been basic pushovers even on higher difficulties but in this encounter you'll have those basic small enemies but also a timer requirement and much tougher enemies you're meant to avoid rather than engage as a way of showing you that the game does not care what level you are the world exists in spite of you not to scale with you so it will be entirely possible to encounter foes above your abilities that said if you are a bit Wily this first big battle can also teach you about the reality that while level absolutely matters in this quick and creative thinking can reward you and get you out of sticky situations since it is entirely possible to NAB gear off of these higher level enemies and even kill them for really nice bumps and experience but it requires learning about your skills and using them wisely not to mention a little bit of luck and if you do so the game even rewards you with more dialogue and a bit more insight into your temporary Ally in the encounter and just how little or how much they care about you but whichever path you take you make your way to the control panel before the timer runs out and launch yourself into the actual core game which should be a much more familiar space for those used to the DND Universe since you're stranded in the wilderness in a much more standard fantasy world and you even find your first long-term companion knocked out on the beach nearby and since she's a cleric you have your basic healing ability squared away not far away from this you'll have plenty of opportunities to get additional party members of various key roles ranging from the gith Yankee you encountered on the nautiloid all the way to other strong additions in the form of a wizard and a rogue that have their own Oddities and Trauma now this is actually where my first critique of the game comes in not in the fact that these characters are available so early or that there's skill checks for immersion's sake but rather that well these are mostly some rather hard to like Folks at least in my opinion until you work at them a bit that cleric that you met and to a lesser extent the Rogue are the only ones that form a crack in their armor so you have to work them to get them to basically be enjoyable companions with more personality than me me me and when you do though they all end up having interesting character arcs but I found that to be a fairly big hurdle and the Rogue has other things that make him have a bit of a hurdle to get over as well out of these first four three of them have Unique Mechanics to mess with outside of classes which can be an alternate form of Engagement if you keep them around one even being the key tool for Speed running the title should you want to go that route after Gathering up these folks and choosing which one you want to send to Camp since your party is limited for without mods you'll have a few battles under your belt and probably have explored a bit of the World the game Rewards easier for this even before your first major story beat in the Druid Grove you not only have interactions with one of your captors but also a dungeon with multiple Avenues of approach even some peaceful ones that let you get an important traveling companion for your camp and a bit of world history and the rest of the game continues this trend there are no pointless side quests there's very few places you can explore that will not reward you with lore money rare items or any mix of the above some even giving you shortcuts or alternate paths to later things in the game even just reading random books will sometimes give you additional dialogue options in future encounters meaning you could end up with intriguing alternate paths just by exploring the lore now as mentioned the first major story beat happens in front of what you will come to know as the Grove a Haven for Druids and a temporary stopping point for tieflings running from the very pits of avernus which is essentially hell itself this Zone hits on a lot of social issues through this without being overt about it basically it's doing a good job of showing rather than telling and if you actually dig further into the stories of the Zone the people involved in the various points of tension and dig around for some quests you can learn about Shadow Druids hags why the tieflings are there where they're going and explore a decent array of plots ranging from heartwarming encounters with a Bard sad encounters about a child just wanting her family to be safe and getting in trouble for it and even silly encounters between a man and a bear that just can't quite understand each other there are some discussions that approach this Zone as if it's a commentary on racism but the reality is while there is actually a lot of racism present in multiple places in the game this zone is much more based around the impacts of xenophobia specifically and the need to bring a level head in to minimize or even ultimately prevent the potential damage and death caused by toxic individuals and fear amidst a stressful situation and your choices in the situation various side quests in the area and ultimately the major quest of the Zone involving the Goblins nearby will determine the fate of everyone in the Grove and have a lasting impact on future companions as well as items you'll get as you progress into the later acts of the game and yes you can even go as far as siding with the goblins against these Druids which while cutting you off of access to a lot of the options will open up new ones that a vast majority of people will not have seen namely a character that can only be obtained through this choice though admittedly it involves sacrificing a whole pool of other character options though even if you stick with the good choice of saving The Druids and saving the tieflings and reducing the tensions between them by getting the teeth link safely onto the next leg of their Journey you will have plenty more characters you can pick up from the most obvious being a druid that we all know the romance options for but also other characters found Beyond The Grove in act 1 such as an awesomely entertaining Barbarian with literal burning passion and and the more vanilla than ice cream warlock who gets you access to yet another romance option even outside your combat Companions and yes as you move further into the game there are a couple more characters too though these ones you find in act 1 will also be the primary potential romances should you choose to go for that though you don't have to but you probably should be warned the characters in this game are as mentioned earlier hornier than the animals on the Discovery Channel and I will stick with that description so you'll basically be dodging romances more so than simply not engaging with them and while it's cool that you can develop connections romances and friendships with these companions it is one of the few areas where Baldur's Gate 3 Falls really short for me at least on expectations for dialogue and character development since it basically takes a very checkbox approach to romance and companionship you do X Y and Z and you'll get the sexy times it very much feels like the interactions borrow more from dating Sims or even like playing characters in The Sims itself rather than actually integrating into the character's Arc all that said after you've done your first playthrough it is actually pretty simple to recruit all but three of the potential playable characters within about the first hour or two of play since they do show up in specific locations and are easily predictable with the remaining recruitables requiring waiting until act two and three so you will have plenty of time to choose your favorites for most of them and if you don't like any of them you can recruit from a handful of emotionless characters through your Undead friend and camp and I do think there was a lost opportunity with him his name is Withers since it would have been fairly simple to allow him to let you create custom characters much like the default Tav character you play and removed the need for janky workarounds to get a themed party of your choosing as it stands you have to bypass the launcher and have them from the get-go to allow this to happen which can flub up the early game if you plan on plucking these custom characters in and out now now the nitpicking on characters aside which oddly enough ends at the social aspect since you can respect them super easy for class stuff I've hyped up all the things you can do in this starting area but this quick summary does not do it justice or show off its strengths and weaknesses since act 1 as a whole when you count the mountains the swamp The Dungeons and the plethora of Side Stories and character specific experiences you can explore ended up being an easily 40 hour experience in and of itself or basically a whole game in and of itself if you actually explore it the Grove we already covered to an extent but it holds nearly a dozen quests and key story bits within its walls if you explore it and its counterpart the goblin Camp which has multiple ways to approach it from violence to diplomacy is almost as in-depth since it has a great deal of information about the absolute several key characters to interact with but only a handful of potential quests in and of itself between these locations you'll have a full-blown town with multiple underground workshops jobs giving you access to Arcane artifacts recipes and crafting options not to mention more goblins and also an interesting Trio of ogres with their own short story and Quest and probably one of the scenes that cements just how horny this game can get to the South you have the swamp which gives you much more experience with how the checks you make greatly influence the world you encounter and give you more encounters with the hag storyline which they do an excellent job with especially with the excellent voice acting on the hag itself not to mention some hidden information about The Grove and the surrounding regions to the north you have more familiar generic DND grounds with one of my favorite recruitable characters as well as a few challenging encounters with some less than Savory folks a rescue mission from a burning building an angry cow and even an underground smuggling ring with a little extra information about your companions being solid rewards for each of these in all of these areas you'll have opportunities to unlock special powers through your good or in some cases seemingly bad choices so while smart decisions may be the best route for most of it don't be afraid to sometimes make terrible medical decisions that allow unlicensed bards to dig around in your brain with unsanitized ice picks you never know what you'll discover now act one is not all deep lore interesting items and unlimited exploration amidst the dives into the underdark through mountain passes and daring rescue missions or mass Slaughters there are a couple moments of video games stink in the act the one that stands out most to me is one of the early encounters with a devil named Raphael if you're willing to push the boundaries and try to accept the deal with the devil rather than refuse it like any sane person would you run into the first railroading moment and pretty much the only one related to the removal of the parasite in your brain if you choose to sell your soul the devil will give you the curve and you'll be pushed further down the road for your dealings with him this stands out especially harshly because pretty much every other method of parasite removal puts you on a path to a few possible outcomes while Raphael will give you the same path regardless he admittedly does Branch out as we get into act two and three with actual agency coming into play but he is the first encounter that gives you this illusion of choice and while thankfully it's not nearly as common as other titles he is not the only one this weirdly would not be nearly as big of a sin to me but these types of encounters stand out as a sore thumb when you have so many instances with detailed and granular impacts in the world I mean seriously I mentioned your actions in the tutorial will have impacts in act three who dies in a random battle will change how cutscenes play out and you can readily choose to side with or against pretty much every good and evil force in the game short of very specific key bosses so it is strange that a partially optional thread that happens to continue through the entire story has an early Railroad in it now you don't have to do all of act one but I would personally recommend doing as much as you can find since it's a great experience and there's no pointless Encounters in it it's exceptionally solid but you will eventually need to move on to act two which has multiple entrance points though primarily people will either find it by digging through the underdark and crawling their way through one of the few time-based segments in the game with true Soul near or they will find their way above ground through the mountain pass which will ideally take you through the get Yankee crash which has just as many interesting portions including the opportunity to literally get wished to death which admittedly is fun albeit a good reason to quick save before particularly threatening dialogues and yes you can fully explore both areas and get all the loot you could want from them both the threats of entering a dangerous Zone and needing to make sure you're done with the previous area are a bit empty in most cases since the point of no return is actually a bit further into Act 2 than These Warnings and yes I actually hold that against the game as well since once you start on the steamroll in late Act 2 into the start of act 3 there is no turning back but it is also not announced before starting that so let's just say make a hard save point as soon as you get to the cursed lands if you want to be safe now in Act 2 assuming you did all of act one you have a bit more of a mixed bag there are plenty of things to explore here and plenty of options interesting characters and some cool albeit sometimes annoying Mechanics for side quests you get to explore everything from a hospital that Revels in suffering and death with nurses Straight From A B movie to a forge filled with traps and shadows and even a wide array of puzzles a graveyard and a Bastion of Hope at an inn where you'll encounter an old familiar nod back to the original games now Act 2 even with plenty to explore and multiple ways to approach the big Target of the ACT is much shorter than act one or three it will feel almost like a darkened intermission almost where the focus is much more on the ax mechanic an ever-invasive Darkness fueled by Char that will impact how you explore what you explore and the enemies you'll encounter and certain decisions can destroy the best laid plans or protect them and for me while Every Act has interesting and even challenging battles with multiple solutions for pretty much every Class Act 2 has easily the best big boss fight of the bunch admittedly a little easy when you know the game and how to work it but it feels like much more effort was put into planning each beat of the story than most other places in the game with multi-stage encounters strong themes of character growth and exploration and it really is good at setting the stage for each of its major encounters and the characters involved something a lot of games fail at with generic good guy versus bad guy tropes for example you will see the near insanity but odd logic of the surgeon or sheer disregard of Life by certain chosen by his flippant remarks even about his own family and if you pay attention you'll see how grief and hunger for power and revenge shaped one of the major villains of the game and how you play the story will change your exposure to these and the many lives that circle around them unfortunately this fumbles a bit as we approach act 3 which is probably the most Quest dense of the ax or at least it felt like it to me since you not only have continuing quests from the first two acts some of which resolve here or get truncated by decisions you make here but you also pick up a ton of quests ranging from less impressive scavenger hunts for clown body parts all the way to multi-layer deep moral quandries the unfortunate part is while a lot of act 1 and even act 2 quests feel deep and meaningful and you can follow through with them to act three a lot of quests that start here end up feeling good enough but a bit less satisfying than their earlier act counterparts simply because you have less time to savor them and a lot of the pure act 3 quests feel like they have limp conclusions such as merely adding to your ally list for the final battle or just being a check mark in your Journal a good early example of this is the trapped children's toys you trace it step by step finding the source of the toys then the source of the traps then who decided to do it and when it's over with all you're walking away with is more stuff mostly explosives which are fun but you never really get a story payoff for it there's sadly several quests like this in Acts 3 and it's blemished a bit more by the encounters with the other two chosen of the absolute which compared to your act 2 boss encounter are lackluster sure they're fine and Oren's character design and voice acting is exceptional but at this point their encounters will fall flat since you're comparing it with much more complex and layered encounters from the two previous acts I personally think in any smaller crpg these would have been perfectly fine encounters but the bar was set so high with things like the toll collector the general thorm fight and other bosses you can optionally face in act 3 and act 2 that these two just felt small in comparison despite being anchors to the core Journey you're on sure you can hamstring yourself in encounters with them or even tip the encounters extremely in your favor but both basically ended up just being flat with gortash being evade the gimmick and snipe him down while Oren was just a big transformed monster that accidentally stepped on the hostage which was sad considering she is a shape-shifter aligned with bail which could have made and made so much more interesting and I should probably reiterate I'm not saying act 3 is bad I'm saying it doesn't live up to acts 1 and 2. so it's kind of like complaining about a Bugatti because the tires are dirty there are still great quests that work their way through here such as the conclusion of the Raphael Arc if you're stuck with Shadow heart her encounters with Char are nice further exploration of the emperor for those of you that are into that and many others do happen here and they do show off mechanically interesting fights among these that actually have more depth than even I was expecting at this point though with this mechanical and puzzle design design philosophy you do run into the occasional bug and unfortunately what had the potential to be two of the more interesting fights in the game for me did turn into Duds due to odd behavior in the game and weird bugs namely a particularly timed Rescue Mission you'll eventually find where you rush through a collapsing facility to rescue prisoners while essentially endless enemies spawn I ended up with weird turn desyncs and almost ended up having to play it in a weird broken real time that kept robbing me of turns this will eventually get polished up with patches and such I'm sure but as of the writing of this it is still buggy as Sin and is one reason why for 100 percenters at least I would recommend savoring the first two acts for a bit longer especially if you're on Console since we will see a good number of bug fixes come in over the next couple months the other buggy and weird mission for me at least that was big enough for an issue to be mentioned is a certain haunted house where my sea invisibility just seemed to flat out hardly ever ever work this is partially due to see invisibility working on a check system rather than something more akin to True sight where it's just always on but also partially due to a particular enemy there that ignores all stealth turn or trickery Shenanigans and prevents you from going through it in any manner other than Brute Force against swarms of invisible enemies and most of the other bugs I encountered in the ACT were either performance bugs that have since been patched or bugs from me intentionally trying to break the system which yes I did on a few occasions resulting in both advantages for me as well as major disadvantages for me in some cases depending on how my luck was kind of going at the dime and after all that the final battle or more precisely the lead up to it can get pretty interesting too since you can actually evade most of it and you can summon the Allies you've gathered to help you along the way though I think I would need to be on tactician to make that worthwhile due to how I play so I ended up just summoning all my Ally eyes against the actual final boss to gank them since I had so many people backing me up and had farmed most of the gear in the game by that point ending up with over 30 000 gold and over 300 magic items in my storage just in case I wanted to swap something else on a whim but for a new player or someone not well versed with DND I could totally see this final battle and a few of the battles leading up to it being serious challenges and probably overtuned at least on normal difficulty and above thankfully you can adjust the difficulty as you play in case something is wrecking your face and acting as a wall for you though they did make an odd decision to lock the lowest difficulty out of multi-classing so you may have to swap back and forth with a higher difficulty when you level up if you wanted to try more odd builds but I can sort of see it from an easing people into the rules perspective because monoclass is just easier to manage the other big note about act 3 is that to wrap up Loose Ends especially if you make odd choices there will be some odd plot holes that can crop up but this more involves very specific paths through the dialogue and are not things you're normally going to encounter while exploring the title or encounter some oddly unique situations but I feel these are at least to an extent unavoidable in a game with the scope we really see it in almost every choices matter style title with a large enough scope and a lack of hard railroading now so far I've been talking about player options the story how it all interacts and the basics of that as this is probably the biggest reason this game is in the position it is that attention to detail the freedom and the experience is much more than a lot of titles have given us especially at this scope in a very very long time but moving over the mechanics the classes and the gameplay it is very much true to DND 5e with only a few adjustments for being a digital game which can confuse people not used to tabletop RPGs but is pretty easy to pick up after a bit of playing if you're attentive basically instead of how most tactics games handle it Baldur's gate instead handles it with a movement pool and action reaction and bonus Action Pool which are early on mostly one of each but as you level up you start gaining the ability to get much more economy from each of these spaces or even bigger pools of one or more of them so don't think of it like x-com where everything costs points from the same pool but rather think of it more akin to having slots that you can use every turn for specific things after that it's mostly just determining what you want to do with those slots which as you guessed are determined by your class and despite all the strongest class ever or don't do this type videos that have undoubtedly cropped up since release the classes in terms of actually playing the game are all well designed and enjoyable so you can choose what you want and still have fun with it that said some do actually make the game much more prone to being an easy mode than others especially more bursty classes that can also tank like the Paladin but the game is perfectly enjoyable even if you you go so far as playing as absurd from Puffin Forest Fame and going one level in every class before the end for a mishmash of what the hell and since level cap is 12 for power creep reasons you have just enough levels to do this and yes you will likely be level 12 before you're done with this title at least if you explore around rather than beelining the main quest going down the list of classes available you first have Barbarian which if you want a pre-made character karlak is your pick but like every class you can always just use the custom character options such as origin or dark urge to get them needless to say the Barbarian is your big tanky brute as the name implies and gains access not only to some fun damage skills especially after picking their subclass at level 3 but they also have a good deal of damage mitigation and efficiency boosting skills especially while using their class-specific trait rage their subclasses while decent enough pretty much focus on the same kinds of effects more damage and more tankiness whether it's through wild magic rages boosted abilities through totems or just hit more stuff do more actions in the form of the Berserker while these each do have flavor and strengths or weaknesses of their own they don't impact your playstyle as much as subclasses for other classes the fighter which you'll find in the origin Lazelle is similarly a somewhat tanky but more refined character and like Barbarian does get a lot of attack Buffs as they level up with some of the most important ones being fighting styles and extra attacks though the game does mislead you a bit by stating that their primary stat is strength when in reality you will generally choose strength or dexterity to focus on depending on what kind of weapons you plan on using Nimble weapons and Bows go dexterity hammers axes and heavy blades go strength the subclasses for the fighter are also a bit more varied than the Barbarian with the champion probably being the closest to their meteor cousin since it focuses on just hitting hard but the Battle Master gives you more tools for controlling the battlefield through Maneuvers which lets you move disrupt and otherwise influence allies and enemies while the Eldritch Knight is your Mage fighter able to cast mostly damaging spells in the middle of all their normal fighter skills and if you plan on doing that keep two things in mind those spells are intelligence based and they basically use intelligence to help them along and involves gay three you will need to do some maintenance for this subclass since you'll have to reset your weapon bond every single day which can be a bit annoying maintenance since we'll see it kind of show up again in another class now the next class is probably another one most people will be familiar with and that is Rogue and yes they are sadly to an extent Hamburg in much the same way they are in the tabletop environment due to being much more toolkit characters focused on the world rather than explicitly killing outside of specific circumstances namely stink attack basically an ability that makes you able to burst damage each turn provided you're able to set up Advantage for them or basically when you get to roll two dice to improve your chance to hit the Rogue who is embodied by asterian oddly enough has similar breakdown to the fighter in subclasses with a sort of this is a rogue but more option in the form of the Assassin the Rogue but more utility in the form of the thief or the Rogue but with magic in the form of the Arcane trickster these are gotten a few levels in and as with all other subclasses in the game it's choose one and that's it so choosing wisely is important if you don't plan on resetting your levels after going through Withers there are some gims you can pull with each of these subclasses and while Arcane trickster is often mocked for being the weakest simply because unlike Eldritch Knight it focuses on utility spells rather than damage spells and impacts less damage overall these utility spells can actually do a lot of work in more world-based exploits such as evading or manipulating enemies instead of just overtly killing them there is also one thing that I've kind of struggled to find a place for in this review and that is pickpocketing and thievery in the game is odd and since Rogues do that a lot if you're planning to go that route stealing stuff in this game is fiddly at best you get a visual cone but you will also run into a lot of situations where civilians will be uncannonly aware of things going missing even if they don't see you do it and they will end up blaming you for it so despite the loading screen tip stealing is not necessarily the best way to wealth sticking with more martial classes we have the monk a class not represented in the default origin characters so you'll only get them through custom characters starting out and they are a strange soup of abilities since they are Schrodinger's class both being overpowered as hell in the right setup or kind of weak in the wrong setup or even just too early monks are basically determined by what path or basically subclass you take with them way of the hand is your punching things character with a lot of cool abilities that let them manipulate the battlefield and do a number of hits not unlike the Battle Master fighter just like their body rather than armor and weapons the way of the Shadow is basically your monk Rogue with a lot of movement tricks and well Shadow stuff and they are pretty popular multi-class options for that reason and finally you have way of the four elements which is your monk wizard of sorts able to cast fireballs and such with your hands basically this is what you pick if you wanted to do a Last Airbender cosplay moving a bit more into magic with half casters we have the ranger the less popular of the two options for this type of character they are a sort of Druid slash fighter hybrid and just so happen to like playing with animals so you have a decent mix of low-level spells combat abilities and perks from their class features you'll also see a lot of the fighter influence thanks to a fighting style and abilities that work mostly with your ranged weapon choices but the class can be fined in melee or range thanks to spell options one thing to remember is their spells are wisdom based so don't cheap out on that trait if you plan on using more than their control oriented spells the subclasses are also an interesting mix with The Beastmaster giving you a fairly decent Pet Companion to basically give you additional distractions as well as more damage options the gloomstalker is more of a hybrid with a rogue rather than a fighter and pulling in some decent movement and stealth skills and is a good way to get dark vision if you're not playing a race with it and finally you have Hunter which is just a ranger tilted a bit more into heavily combat oriented skills now the Paladin despite being a half Caster like the ranger tends to outshine the ranger at a lot of steps because they are much more of a tank but also have access to much stronger direct damage abilities both through their Spell section which is focused on healing and damage compared to the Rangers healing and control but also due to their access to Smite which allows them to sacrifice spell slots to further amplify their damage they are best treated like Fighters with spell slots for most of the game but do tend to lean a bit more into their magic towards the end game on top of this paladins also have access to a toolkit of extra abilities such as lay on hands for a small short range healing option as well as oath charges that allow them to access special abilities based on their subclasses which come in the form of Oaths in character creation you can choose from three of these devotion Vengeance and ancients each being different interpretations of the Holy Warrior ranging from healing to anti-evil type stuff though paladins are also the only class that has an unlisted subclass the oath breaker which you get by breaking the tenants of your subclass you choose at the start and you even got a free book to tell you what those are the oath breaker is much more offensive oriented and gives in a bit to the dark side and is weirdly the form of Paladin I prefer playing because it has some unique quirks that make it especially handy with certain subquest bonuses now moving over to the full casters that have way more spell slots we finally have another class with a proper origin character in this case cleric who you can play as Shadow heart these are partially what you'd expect in that they do have a diverse array of healing skills by default but most people really don't understand how this type of character works in D and D versus more traditional RPGs this is because healing and d d is not designed to keep you topped off instead it's intended to keep you away from Death the well-played cleric is actually a bit of an offensive Powerhouse that has more akin to a Divine wizard rather than a dedicated healer unless you choose a very specific domain for them for example Shadow heart starts out as a trickery domain cleric focused on Illusions stealth and manipulation and gets bonus abilities and spells that align with that from outside the core cleric spells the other domains work fairly similarly with war having almost fighter style boosts and functionality combined with a handful of spells and abilities Tempest being focused around lightning and thunder damage abilities nature being almost druidic Twist on the cleric knowledge being heavily control oriented and boosting spell casting light is oddly enough giving you a decent bit of Fire magic to go with your radiant Tendencies and life is well your cliche healer and gets the perk of kind of supporting that on top of this all clerks have access to a number of support abilities such as turning Undead and a once per character ability called divine intervention that you run across much later it's a high level ability and it gives your party a one-time Boon that is pretty substantial as far as picking your god that actually doesn't matter as much though it is worth noting that shadowheart is the only one that can worship Char all of the rest are restricted to a crap ton of other gods that give you special dialogue options at different parts of the game next on the full Caster list is the Druid one of the few classes I actually didn't play a ton of since it's not one I play a lot in tabletop either but the bit I did was pretty enjoyable they are more control oriented takes on the cleric with healing but also a lot of plant and lights spells that control the battlefield and manipulate enemies along with doing a bit of damage sometimes the three subclasses also lean into each of the Specialties of the class rather interestingly circle of the moon is your traditional shapeshifter with it unlocking better wild shape options such as making it only cost a bonus action instead of a full action and also unlocking special wild shapes available only to them rather than other circles land and spores are a bit more mundane in most cases with land letting you unlock special spells based on what biome you choose with each level up making fairly customized casters while spores is more eclectic and is a take on the combat-oriented Druid able to do a number of interesting damage augmentation abilities special spell selections and Spore based abilities that kind of overlap with other skills moving on to Bard this is actually one of only two classes you will not find natively on a companion or Ally you get to control in the game though you will run across a few like Volo or alphera in your travels bards are interesting in that they take the half Caster role of classes like Paladin and Ranger and flip it on its head instead making you control a full Caster that then subclasses into doing something else though on the plus side bards do have a small selection of healing abilities as well so they can serve as a good backup to a cleric while maintaining much of the utility of a rogue and still being able to fight College of lore for example is your Swiss army knife Bard that sticks mostly to Caster goodness and gets to pick up extra spells and proficiencies and is likely what you think of as a Bard while the Valor and sword schools Focus much more on integrating combat Into Your Arsenal Valor being the more tanky approach while swords is more offensive and is generally my more preferred Bard flavor of the ones in the game since it provides you with a lot more mobility and tricks thanks to the flourish attacks staying in the casters we have the sorcerer who sadly lacks one of my favorite subclasses in the game and is lacking in a companion to fill its shoes though I wager Ma odds will solve at least one of those soon enough that said the selections available are pretty good with Wild magic draconic and storm subclasses basically already being there as far as what Sorcerers do they're essentially Wizards with a smaller spell pool in exchange for more interesting ways to modify their spells using sorcery points or in a pinch even spending those points to generate additional spell slots it is also interestingly the default for the dark urge playthrough as far as the subclasses go wild magic is just utter chaos a good subclass for quirky fun but I'm not a big fan of how random it can get in any version of the game though it is very easily the source of some of the most entertaining magic user stories in d d the other two are a bit more reasonable dracana gives you bonuses based on the type of dragon you draw power from and makes you more durable while storm which is honestly my favorite of the bunch we have gives you Mobility after casting spells and can be summarized as I would like more lightning with my lightning please which is just great the last proper full Caster is the wizard which you can choose to be as Gale or you can create your own for and is exactly what it sounds like the maniac that casts Fireballs lightning bolts magic missiles and turns you into a sheep sadly most of the flavorful subclasses for the wizard are in supplementary materials so they won't be found here but you can still choose from the schools of magic for various effects though as with most tabletop games most people are going to choose evocation simply because it is the best at making things go boom the other subclasses do have their uses if you're wanting to play a specific flavor of character such as going divination with a hobbit to have ungodly re-rolls or necromancy to raise the dead and terrify all of the NPCs in the game but for this class if you're going to choose something other than just blow everything up with evocation it would be a good idea to pull up a list of the spells in the game and decide just how much you want to use them with most the other schools either being better at multi-classing or as a camp friend that does a lot lot of work such as transmutation with giving you the improved Alchemy output of crafting and the transmuter's stone I should probably note that there is one gripe I have about the wizard and it actually applies to a few classes and even the Feats you can pick up at specific levels and that is that there is very specific skill called Shield it boosts your armor class but also and pretty much super importantly it completely nullifies magic Missile yet for some reason the game does not allow you to use a reaction to cast it against magic Missile which is really weird and frustrating especially in specific encounters that use the spell heavily that aside the last class is warlock whereas most new players would probably know them as the Eldritch blast machine gun though if you really dive into them and as someone who usually Mains warlock Wizard or cleric like I do you actually can get a lot of really dangerous utility out of the Warlock regardless of what the path is you take there are also a class that essentially has two sub classes first is your Patron which determines bonus spells and passives you get the most popular being fiend for power gaming but the great old one and arcfay giving you more fun utility options with the great old one being especially nice in this campaign and the other subclass you NAB is your packed chain giving you access to familiars a few of which aren't available to any other class blade making you more of a melee combatant but It suffers the same issue as ultrash Knights where you need to refresh your chosen weapon every time you long rest but it does give you plenty of extra damage output and lastly packed of the Tome which expands your spell library and gives you some limited daily casts of various nice skills the reason warlocks are treated weird though is that instead of having a lot of spell slots like other casters they only have a few that means in a given battle you'll only cast one two maybe three at higher levels and then supplement it with elder blasts or attacks but you'll always cast these Spells at a high level which can be dangerous as hell these limited spell slots though are restored on a short rest rather than a long rest meaning burning less supplies to restore them as well as avoiding the downsides of time-based limitations in the same zones now all that out of the way the fun thing is you can choose any of these classes any of their subclasses and even build them completely weird and the game will give you an enjoyable experience a lot of things to explore and even unique ways to interact with the world sure a barbarian will go to the same places as the Warlock but where the Warlock will get an option to study runes and ask their Patron for help the Barbarian will get the option to rip off a door or bash their way through a lock and these unique options pop up in some of the most unexpected locations meaning that without playing through in all of them you will be left wondering just what other paths could have potentially been available hell even without dialogue options the shape-shifting on a druid can actually let you sequence break a lot of areas if you have a Keen Eye which is a ton of fun to mess with while other classes need spell slots or item to take advantage of these alternate routes and most people don't realize that you can actually Bypass or avoid the vast majority of combat encounters with some smart plays you can even get access to some of these abilities to bypass and sequence break different parts of the game through Feats which are basically improvements you get as you level up a class which for most of them is every fourth level but can be more frequent for certain ones like the fighter now probably the last big point that I actually really like about Baldur's Gate and even d d itself is the itemization sure A plus one weapon is better than a mundane weapon but the game is built around side grades and utility rather than just bigger damage number go boom the steady progression with every level the proficiency growth over time and the diversity of options will always make DND itemization far more interesting and engaging to me than anything churned out by games that just multiply your damage by orders of magnitude with every upgrade and Baldur's Gate 3 lives up to this many times over with a lot of interesting items interesting uses subset items special ways you can abuse and utilize them ways you can use alternate tricks to save special items and how you can mix and match classes to take advantage of items that at face value are just quirky puns and enemies will do the same to you in a comical Twist on things so needless to say I enjoyed myself with this game I played way too much of it and I'm sure in this extremely long video I have actually missed quite a few things so do feel free to ask any questions about something I might have missed or what you're curious about whenever it comes to the title and I'll be glad to answer them as I start yet another playthrough to explore even more despite at the start of writing this having crossed 100 hours and now sitting at the end of writing this at over 240 and while I don't have any idea how long this video is since I record all the audio in one batch with several takes I think talking at you for at least 30 to 40 minutes is enough time to open the floor for things you want to know instead and for those that want to watch this and other videos without ads for free check out the patreon and while I give patrons a seven day early access period all videos eventually become free to view for everyone regardless of their Patron status

Channel: Alzorath

Views: 2,886

Keywords: Baldur's Gate 3, Baldur's Gate, D&D, Dungeons & Dragons, DnD, 5e, GotY 2023, Game of the Year 2023, BG3, BG3 Overhyped, BG3 GotY, cRPG, Baldur's Gate cRPG, Best cRPG, turn Based RPG

Id: _YjAWrMXqDo

Length: 50min 9sec (3009 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 05 2023