Trees bend and sway in the wind as the grass ripples like a sea, green and brown and gray marking the landscape on my screen as I intently watch a group of four characters quickly moving towards a ridge on the edge of a cliff.
Baldur’s Gate 3 swept me off my feet in August when it was released, earning a score of 97 from PCGamer reviews and a 96 from Metacritic. It even became the highest-rated game on Metacritic for a short time.
When Baldur’s Gate 3 was first announced, being playtested, and even in the time just before its release, most people weren’t entirely invested in the game yet. That’s why it came as such a surprise when the game, upon completion and release, was much better than a lot of games in the past few years, a difficult milestone to beat considering that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and other high-quality games came out in the same year.
Larian Studios, the main developers of Baldur’s Gate 3, already sold 10.6 million copies of the game and earned $500 million dollars in gross revenue since the game was released on August 3rd. This is evident considering the highest number of people playing the game at the same time was over 875,000 at its highest. That high player count remains high to this day, with over 200,000 players still consistently playing the game even over 2 months after its release.
The game had a lot of things stacked against it, and despite all of the possibilities of it going wrong, it came out on top. Baldur’s Gate 3 came from a niche video game series that was made in a niche video game genre, which was based on Dungeons and Dragons, a relatively niche hobby. It’s almost impossible to give full context to the game, but the shortest rundown I can give is this: Baldur’s Gate 3 is set in the world of Faerun, a massive high-fantasy setting and the main world of D&D right now.
In the previous two games, the story revolved around a handful of major characters, some of which are present in Baldur’s Gate 3, and the plot mainly focused on some specific curses, afflictions, or gifts that the main party had. Though you won’t be in the same party as the previous two games, you’ll still have to contend with an otherworldly threat in Baldur’s Gate 3 which threatens your character’s mind; literally. You’re infected with horrifying brain worms. You’ll be exploring the world with several companions, discovering secrets, fighting off enemies, and searching for a cure.
In order to do this, you’ll be using D&D 5e’s system for character creation, combat, and more. Those who are familiar with D&D or Divinity Original Sin 2 might understand Baldur’s Gate 3 faster than most, while others might have to work for knowledge a bit more. As a D&D player myself, I’m extremely happy with the way that Baldur’s Gate 3 translates combat to a format more suited for video games. I don’t especially love the way combat works in D&D, but in Baldur’s Gate 3, it works really well and is a lot of fun.
Exploration will easily be the most intuitive part of the game alongside NPC interaction- for the most part, it’s clicking on the places you want to go, things you want to investigate, and people you want to talk to. This may not be the most glamorous system for exploring a world, but the places you go to more than make up for it. In my opinion, Baldur’s Gate 3 has some of the most beautiful, interesting, and terrifying environments I’ve seen in any game.
Then again, if you’re really not interested in the technical or artsy stuff, simply walking around the world is an amazing experience, coupled with amazing background music, character interactions, and plenty of random things you might encounter along the way. And besides, sometimes all you need in a game is something that keeps you going, whether that’s the music, the characters, or the world.
For me, Baldur’s Gate 3 meets all of my expectations, needs and interests, and it’s definitely earned all of the awards that it has received. Though it isn’t a perfect game, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that Baldur’s Gate 3, in my opinion, is one of the greatest games ever made.
