Should You Buy Baldur’s Gate 3?

Baldur’s Gate 3 is slowly becoming one of Steam’s best RPGs ever released. The game has peaked at around 800,000 concurrent players, which shows its popularity. However, gamers still need to decide whether to buy the game since it is not your typical action RPG, where you can hack and slash. Fortunately, there are many reasons for players to buy Baldur’s Gate 3. 

What is Baldur’s Gate 3?

Baldur’s Gate 3 was developed and published by Larian Studios. The game is a classic party-based RPG set in the Forgotten Realms, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. It follows adventurers on a quest to thwart a Mind Flayer invasion of the Sword Coast. Players can start as an original character with unique backgrounds or create a fully-custom character.

The game employs a turn-based tactical combat system rooted in the D&D 5e ruleset. This systems-driven approach emphasizes player agency, granting freedom to utilize diverse mechanics for personal and party quests.

Character creation is comprehensive, allowing customization of race, class, appearance, and personality. Players can start their adventure solo or opt for cooperative multiplayer with up to four players. The game showcases the studio’s adaptation of the D&D 5th edition ruleset for digital gameplay while retaining the essence of the tabletop experience. The game stays faithful to its origins while offering an original game system optimized for the digital realm.

What Makes Baldur’s Gate 3 Worth Buying?

There are multiple factors to look at when buying a game. Fortunately, Baldur’s Gate 3 offers many things to convince players to get the game. Here are the main reasons why it is worth buying:

Gameplay Mechanics and Features

Baldur’s Gate 3 adapts the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition ruleset for its combat, providing a blend of real-time exploration and seamless turn-based combat. This strategic shift transforms battles into turn-based puzzles to solve. Each encounter presents challenges that demand careful planning and tactics, which mirrors the actual gameplay of a typical Dungeons and Dragons game. 

The complexity lies in managing various enemy types and their positions. Deciding your approach, prioritizing targets, and minimizing party damage is essential. The gameplay focuses on chess-like strategy and careful preparations, which can entice players who love thinking and planning their adventures.

The combat mechanics embrace a turn-based approach close to chess, demanding thoughtful initial attacks, order sequencing, and tactical maneuvers. This strategic depth contrasts with faster-paced action games. Intrinsic to D&D, dice rolls introduce randomness, leading to exhilarating successes and occasional frustrations.

This unpredictability gives Baldur’s Gate 3 a unique flavor, ensuring each playthrough feels fresh. Every encounter, character, and situation unfold differently, improving the overall experience. This randomness introduces excitement and thrill to any gameplay regardless of playstyle.

Immersive World Building and Realistic Environments

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers an immersive world in the renowned Forgotten Realms, a Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting. Larian Studios has skillfully translated this world into a vivid and engaging experience. The game’s environments are meticulously crafted, providing intricate details contributing to the world’s realism. Blades of grass, wall cracks, and suspended dust particles all contribute to a tangible and lived-in atmosphere.

Even in its early access state, Baldur’s Gate 3 offers impressive content, exemplified by its branching narratives and extensive dialogues. Every playthrough yields unique insights into the story and encourages players to explore uncharted paths, akin to the sense of discovery in Skyrim-level RPGs.

Emphasis on Build Creation and Difficulty

Baldur’s Gate 3 excels in character build creation and difficulty. Crafting your character’s skills, abilities, and attributes offers satisfying customization. The game’s challenge is less about speed and more about crafting a successful strategy, making it enticing for players seeking in-depth engagement and intellectual stimulation.

Planning your character’s build plays around the game’s placing heavy emphasis on careful and well-thought-out decisions. Some forms can help you progress in the game more effectively and quickly, while some can make it more challenging but also more entertaining. 

Compelling Storytelling and Length

Baldur’s Gate 3 boasts a captivating and intricate narrative that captivates players from beginning to end. Its story offers multiple branching paths and consequential choices, fostering high replayability. This depth of storytelling allows for distinct experiences, encouraging players to explore various character choices and outcomes.

The game’s narrative versatility is a standout feature cherished by RPG enthusiasts. Choices matter, leading to distinct paths and endings, fostering a desire to replay and explore alternative story routes. This longevity ensures prolonged enjoyment, with players discovering new narratives after the game. 

Baldur’s Gate 3’s rich story demands time and dedication. While its immersive narrative is a strength, its extensive content might challenge modern gamers with busy schedules. The developers estimate a minimum of 75 hours to complete the main story, underscoring the game’s depth and commitment required.

In addition to rich lore, the story of the game is dynamic. Your choices and dialogues can shape and alter your future and will impact your end-game story. Each playthrough yields unique experiences, with varied outcomes like companion interactions, challenging battles, and bypassing crucial encounters. This diversity adds layers of intrigue and replayability.

The game’s vast narrative potential contributes to its replayability, enabling players to craft diverse experiences through different character approaches. This feature, however, necessitates a substantial time investment. Completing the main story alone is estimated to require at least 75 hours, potentially posing a challenge for individuals with busy schedules.

Character Creation

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers an expansive character creation system beyond aesthetics. With options for race, sub-race, class, sub-class, background, and abilities, players can craft a character that resonates with their preferences and playstyle.

The game presents various choices, including over 11 races, 28 sub-races, 12 classes, and 46 sub-classes. These choices significantly influence your character’s identity and interactions within the world. The intricate character creator is a fantasy RPG enthusiast’s dream, featuring iconic D&D races like Dragonborn, Drow, Githyanki, and Tiefling. It’s important to note that race choices have significant gameplay implications due to racial bonuses. Optimal race selection is crucial for performance, as rewards can significantly impact your character’s effectiveness in various scenarios. 

Your character’s identity, personality, and race influence how NPCs interact with you. Dialogues are tailored based on your character’s attributes, fostering a dynamic and immersive world. Trust dynamics between races and varied conversations enrich your experience and contribute to character depth.

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers an expansive character creation system with diverse options, impactful interactions, dynamic storytelling, and engaging companions. Your race, class, and attribute choices influence dialogues, relationships, and overall gameplay, making the character-creation process a key highlight and enhancing the immersive RPG experience.

Gorgeous and Exquisite Graphics and Visuals

Baldur’s Gate 3 boasts breathtaking graphics powered by the Unity engine and incorporates cutting-edge visual technologies for an immersive experience. The game’s attention to detail extends to its environments, character expressions, and combat effects, creating a visually stunning world. The game’s environments are richly detailed, showcasing individual elements like blades of grass, wall cracks, and airborne particles. This meticulous attention to detail contributes to an authentic and vibrant world, enhancing immersion.

Characters in Baldur’s Gate 3 are rendered with lifelike expressions and movements. Their emotions are effectively conveyed through facial animations and body language, strengthening the sense of realism and relatability. The character creation system offers diverse appearance options, allowing players to customize their characters in numerous ways. While the isometric view might seem limiting, the frequent use of cinematic moments ensures players get to appreciate the visual intricacies of their characters.

The game’s settings are intricate, detailed, and brimming with vibrant visuals. Atmospheric effects contribute to the world’s immersive nature, creating a believable environment that seamlessly blends fantasy and reality. The combat sequences in Baldur’s Gate 3 are visually spectacular, featuring stunning spell effects and abilities. Battles are dynamic and intense, with cinematic animations that lend an epic quality to the combat experience.

Multiplayer or Cooperative Mode

Baldur’s Gate 3 offers multiplayer features that enhance its cooperative gameplay options, drawing inspiration from Dungeons & Dragons. Groups of up to four friends can embark on the campaign together, simulating the tabletop experience. Players have two options for multiplayer gameplay. One allows up to three friends to join an ongoing campaign by selecting ‘Multiplayer’ from the main menu and joining available lobbies. The second approach involves starting a new adventure together, with one player creating a game lobby and others uniting to embark on a new journey collectively.

Playing in co-op mode offers many exciting opportunities that cannot be experienced alone. Players can explore independently while engaging in essential dialogues when they arise. Combat provides freedom for individual actions, and players can even manage each other’s assigned companions. While the host has primary control, others enjoy autonomy, particularly in combat and character development.

Baldur’s Gate 3’s multiplayer isn’t akin to an MMO. Instead, it’s a deliberate integration that enriches the core story and character progression. This intentional approach distinguishes it from games where multiplayer feels like a last-minute addition. The cooperative experience adds depth and connection, especially for players familiar with the original D&D tabletop format.

Verdict

Overall, Baldur’s Gate 3 is worth spending money on, with long content to explore and enjoyable features to try out, like character customization and build experimentation. The 75 to 100-hour total gameplay estimate will feel very immersive due to the gorgeous world-building and lore. If you are looking for new games to try out, then Baldur’s Gate 3 should be on your list.