From the roughly 20 hours of adventuring in Baldur’s Gate 3 at its Early Access launch, I can already tell you that this is probably the closest a story-focused RPG of this kind has come to emulating the experience of tabletop Dungeons & Dragons. The systems here allow me to do exactly the kind of clever but ridiculous things I would ask a human Dungeon Master if I can do. Rather than the simple “no” you would get from most RPGs when you ask if you can skip an entire quest by climbing around the backside of a mountain and sneaking into the bad guy’s lair, Baldur’s Gate 3 will tell you to roll for it. It’s an impressive start, but it’s definitely a very early early access game. There are just enough frustrating bugs and exposed areas of missing polish that a lot of people are going to be better off waiting until it’s finished before jumping in.
The flexible interactions between character abilities and the world allow each class the chance to shine in ways they normally wouldn’t. My elven wizard always had a spell prepared that triples a target’s jump distance. While this would be a very situational ability in most games, not really worth spending a spell slot on, in BG3 it can allow you to reach hidden treasure, gain a vantage point to rain down destruction with advantage, or even bypass obstacles entirely by taking to the rooftops. I ended up having to remind myself to take a few combat spells because I was so excited about all the interesting ways I could use the utility ones in combination. I like to play my wizards as sort of mystical Swiss army knives on the tabletop, not the glass artillery pieces they are in most digital RPGs, and I’m so thrilled to be able to do that here. Larian treats level design and environmental interaction as part of how you win battles and solve puzzles, and it works brilliantly in their envisioning of Faerûn.
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And it’s a beautiful envisioning at that. The environments and characters look amazing, rendered in a saturated but realistic style that definitely evokes the 5th Edition D&D books. It made me think of what Dragon Age might have looked like today if it had stayed a bit more grounded like Origins instead of bringing in the more stylized, graphic novel-esque look of Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. Outdoor areas are brimming with life, detail, and small stories to discover. Dungeons are appropriately gloomy and chock full of deadly traps and other surprises, even though most of the ones you’ll explore in Early Access were a bit too short for my liking.Roll for Initiative
The turn-based combat is also well done, though. It feels faithful to the 5th Edition D&D rules, but also knows when to deviate to avoid being slavishly accurate to a fault. Many of the classic D&D-based games, including the first two Baldur’s Gates, did themselves a disservice trying to force the square peg of real-time fights into the round hole that is the d20 system: combat in tabletop D&D has always been turn-based, and this is how it should be. Initiative rolls to determine who goes first really matter. It’s much more comfortable to take stock of the situation and marshal your resources while contemplating how to control the environment. Sure, real-time combat can work, especially in games where you’re mainly controlling one character, but this type of game works so much better and feels so much more faithful to its tabletop inspiration with turns.
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Since the Early Access build is restricted to only the first four or five character levels, it also highlights some of the issues with the system it’s borrowing from, though. Low-level characters have such small hitpoint pools and unimpressive saving throws that even fairly low-stakes combat encounters can turn deadly in a hurry if you roll poorly. Casters can only use their powers a couple times before having to take a long nap, and there isn’t much for melee characters to do most turns other than swing a sword. You don’t really get anything interesting to do with your once per turn bonus action until later, so it feels like a wasted resource. All of these are problems that would require rethinking some D&D basics to solve, and tend to go away on their own at higher levels. But especially replaying this build multiple times, they definitely got on my nerves.
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There’s also nothing I could find to stop me from heading back to camp and resting after every single fight, though, which tilts the scales too far in the opposite direction. If I can fully heal and regain all of my spells whenever I want, Baldur’s Gate 3 loses the feeling of being on a long and dangerous adventure on which you must think carefully about your limited resources, which is a staple of D&D. Similar games like Pillars of Eternity have solved this by letting you carry a limited number of camping supplies that you have to go back to a major town to replenish. And the story here seems to present a reason why you should be in a hurry. But even when I was actively trying to waste time to see if anything bad ever actually happens, I was never punished. Maybe that will be different in the full release. But for now, it makes everything far too easy.
Company of Heroes
That said, Baldur’s Gate 3 has done an amazing job of grabbing my attention from the very beginning. One issue I had with Larian’s Divinity: Original Sin games (particularly the first one) is that they start out very slow and meandering before picking up steam. This adventure, on the other hand, is compelling from the first minute, and is so rich with exciting characters, locations, and plot developments along the way that I never got bored. The cast is dynamic and complex, with excellent voice acting and dialogue writing even for minor players.
Each of my companions was memorable, if not necessarily endearing. One in particular crossed a line I wasn’t willing to forgive, so I set them on fire. You’re absolutely allowed to do that, and life will go on, which is cool. From the dashing blademaster Wyll to the arrogant mage Gale, they each present the beginning of extensive, engrossing personal stories that I’m excited to see through to the end some day. Except for that one jerk. They just ended as more kindling on my campfire. Not sorry.
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On the other hand, I was fairly disappointed that there are currently only six classes available in Baldur’s Gate 3’s Early Access version, and they’re (somewhat understandably) the most “basic” ones: Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, Ranger, and Warlock. My favorite base D&D classes – Barbarian, Druid, Sorcerer, and Paladin – are nowhere to be found. I imagine more will be added as we get closer to the full release, but for the moment the options are pretty limited. To make up for this, though, the list of playable races is fairly extensive. Three different kinds of tiefling? Half-Drow? Larian has gone above and beyond the obvious here, especially since NPCs out in the world will absolutely react to your character’s background.
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And unfortunately, Baldur's Gate 3 is technically a bit of a mess at times. There are plenty of bugs, ranging from hilarious AI glitches to frustrating progression-blockers that make entire quests impossible to finish. Without spoiling a major story beat, at one point I killed a major character who was annoying me and their followers standing just outside the door never seemed to react to that fact. A character I met later swore to kill the deceased personally, and I couldn’t even tell them, “No sweat, I already handled it.” Some cutscenes still feel unfinished, with placeholder spell effects and missing lip sync. Tabbing out during a loading screen, even in borderless windowed mode, more often than not caused a soft lock or a crash to desktop. And leaving Baldur’s Gate 3 running in the background for any extended period of time caused my whole system to start chugging. Right now it’s in playable but fairly rough shape.