GameCentral gives its final verdict on Larian’s epic new role-playing game, but it’s not quite the flawless experience it first seems.
A developer not sending review copies until the last minute is almost always an indication that something is wrong; sometimes it’s just bugs and other times it’s a more intractable problem. There were performance issues when we started ourof Baldur’s Gate 3, but nothing too serious. And yet playing through the game in its entirety has revealed unexpected issues. It’s still one of the best computer role-players ever made but its flaws are more complicated than just a few visual glitches.
Baldur’s Gate is a large city in the Forgotten Realms setting, which is not the most Tolkien-esque of the Dungeons & Dragons worlds but still pretty close, with lots of elves and dwarves and dragons, but also many other less familiar creatures layered on top.
There are a few mechanical foibles, which we’ll get into in a moment, but not only are these minor but they’re completely overshadowed by the freedom the game grants you and the level of detail into which it goes. This is just as much a simulation as it is a role-playing game, if not of the Forgotten Realms than the whole process of playing a tabletop game.
A good Dungeon Master will know when to fudge the rules or ignore the dice rolls, just to keep the story flowing, but a game is never going to do that. No doubt it’s a novelty for fans that this uses the tabletop rules but it’s often hard to see what benefit that offers the game, especially as it means it takes forever to level up and the level cap is just 12.
Romance is also a major part of Baldur’s Gate 3, not just for you but for almost everyone in the game, from animals to monsters to ordinary people. Violence is mandatory in almost every video game, but love and sex are almost never even mentioned, let alone portrayed in any kind of realistic fashion.
No doubt these issues will be fixed in time, but the most unexpected problem is how inconsistent the different acts are. It’s good that the plot is always moving forward, and the locations keep changing so radically, but as the story reaches its conclusion the breadth of your options narrows and the sandbox style feel of the opening act becomes an ever more distant memory.
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