So, Baldur’s Gate 3 finally released for PS5 this weekend, and so I finally had the chance to see for myself whether or not this game I’ve spent the last few weeks salivating over was actually worthy of it. Well, in the interest of remaining as objective as possible, the jury is still out on that. However, I have nonetheless had a lot of fun so far, and I’ve already found myself feeling really impressed several times during these opening hours. If the game can keep it up, I could definitely see Baldur’s Gate 3 being “Game of the Year” material.

At this point, I’m still very much at the beginning of the game. At most, I’m probably only five hours in and am still getting the hang of playing Baldur’s Gate 3, but it’s been fun all the same. First off, the game is gorgeous! The opening cutscenes do a great job of grabbing your attention and getting you invested right off the bat, and the actual game maps, characters and general art direction are spot on! The world is so colorful and everything looks like it fits together despite at times being very different in terms f aesthetics. In particular is the mind flayer ship compared to the forest it winds up in. The ship is absolutely alien, yet it looks like it still belongs in this crazy fantasy world.

Then there are the characters. Everyone looks fantastic! You can really tell that care and attention was put into them. It doesn’t matter who you talk to, all characters are fully voiced and look as though they were given individual attention before being let loose into the game. I’m sure that’s not fully the case. You can’t have a game this big without some degree of repetition and reuse. Still, it’s very hard to see. It really is a far cry from “BioWare face” and the vapid NPCs you come across in most Fallout and Elder Scrolls games.

Okay, but what about the game though, right? Well so far three things have really stood out to me: the character creator, the amount of freedom you have and the dice roll mechanic. Starting with the character creator, it’s probably the most in-depth creator I’ve ever dealt with. You have so many options when it comes to race, sub-race, class, subclass, backgrounds, specialties, stat distribution and so on!

Seriously, you have everything you need to fully flesh-out your prefect custom character! I probably spent a good hour and a half just looking through everything and trying different combos before settling on a half-wood elf fighter focusing on dual-wielding and being more about charisma than about raw strength.

Picture a robin hood type who’s more of a frontline fight than he is an archer. Appearance customization is good too, though a bit more limited than a Bethesda game. You don’t have endless sliders to deal with. Instead you get a large variety of pre-made stuff (with some ability to tweak them to your liking). It all goes to ensuring that your character always looks good when its finished (unless you purposely set out to make someone that’s super ugly). None of that “looks great in the creator but awful in-game garbage).

Okay, freedom and dice rolls. Basically, if you can dream it, you can probably do it (within reason). Unlike a lot of other RPGs out there, there really is more than one way to get things done in Baldur’s Gate 3. Come across a locked door and can’t pick it? Well, have you considered just breaking it down? Got some NPCs blocking access to your objective? You’ve got options!

You could try to force your way through and risk turning every NPC in the area hostile, but who wants to deal with that? You can try to talk your way through (if you can pass a dice check). OR…you can just backtrack a bit, find a spot to jump down, and go for it! This is a game where you often say to yourself “there’s no ay this can work, but lets try it anyway,” and it actually does !! It’s kinda crazy!

Lastly there’s the dice rolls. Often, when you attempt to do something, you’ll be asked to pass a skill check of some sort. To do this, you need to roll the classic D&D 20-sided die to see if you’ll pass. Your skills and other status affects can help you out depending on the roll, but there are almost no guarantees here. Larian could have kept this in the background like in many other RPGs of the past, but their decision to more or less put the dice in the player’s hand works wonderfully!

It adds tension and drama to many actions and interactions that would otherwise be a bit mundane. Success is a thrill and failure is crushing, but both are fun and help to heighten the feeling that events are proceeding naturally rather than always being a forgone conclusion. In short, it keeps the game exciting no matter what you’re doing.

There’s still a long way to go before I can say definitively (in my opinion) whether or not Baldur’s Gate 3 really lives up to the hype, but I’m really enjoying it so far! For now, I think it’s fair to say that Larian Studios did their best to give the game as solid a foundation as possible, so I think chances are good that the rest of the experience will be decent at least. I’ll make sure to check back in once I’ve reached the finish line. For now, I think it’s time to jump back in!

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Have you played Baldur’s Gate 3 at all yet? What about any other new games you’ve started recently? How are those going so far?

Image from the Baldur’s Gate 3 Steam page