Baldur’s Gate 3 is a massive, party-based RPG based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset and Forgotten Realms fantasy world.
Great Characters
Great Graphics/Art
Great Story
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Story & Themes
Baldur's Gate 3 is a tactical, party-based role-playing game set in the Forgotten Realms and based on the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop ruleset. The player chooses a premade character, or creates their own from many D&D races and classes.
The story begins with the player character becoming afflicted with a unique parasite along with their companions early in the adventure. The main quest sets the party through forests, swamps, underground caverns, and the titular city itself as they seek to find a cure, and uncover a larger plot that threatens to destroy the region.
Baldur's Gate 3 features a large world divided into story acts, and each act has a plethora of NPCs, quests, monsters, puzzles, loot, and secrets to discover. As with the tabletop RPG, player choice and consequences are at the forefront, leading to countless permutations of various quests and characters.
Combat is turn-based and highly tactical, with each character or monster taking a turn to move and unleash weapon attacks, spells, or other class features. Players and enemies can use the environment, such as setting plants on fire, or knocking people off ledges.
The game's party members are a major focus, most of whom are found early in the adventure. All are fully voiced by professional actors, feature mocapped performances, and an incredible amount of dialogue to back up all the different player choices and dialogue options.
Save Points
The same autosaves at infrequent but important points. The game can be quicksaved or manually saved at any time.
Difficulty
Baldur's Gate 3 features five different difficulty settings: Explorer, Balanced, Tactician, Honor, and Custom.
Balanced is the normal setting, while Explorer and Tactician tune things easier or more challenging by scaling HP and stats, and changing the AI's overall efficiency during combat.
A post-launch patch added the Honor difficulty, upping the challenge even further, and allowing only a single save file (also known as Hardcore mode). The patch also added a custom difficulty setting, where players can tweak individual settings and options to create a tailored experience.
Heads Up!
Violence Intense Violence. Most of combat is played with a tactical, overhead view, but is accompanied with frequent blood splatter and cries of pain. Blood, gore, and mutilated corpses can be found in some areas. Much of the most intense violence comes from cutscenes, including torture, murder, and body part extraction.
Scary Imagery Baldur's Gate 3 isn't a horror game, but does feature frightening elements, areas, and monsters, including a disguised hag with a creepy lair, and a darkly twisted hospital.
Sex & Nudity Strong Sexual Content. Goes about as far as a game can go while avoiding an Adults Only rating, featuring full nudity and sexual acts between consenting party members and NPCs, often with fades to black or obscured camera angles.
Strong Language Strong Language, including the "F" word are included.
Substance Use Characters can drink various alcohol in the game to receive minor buffs and debuffs.
Consumerism Does not include any microtransactions.
Online Community
Baldur's Gate 3 supports online multiplayer with up to four players. Each player can choose to play as one of the pregenerated party NPCs, or create their own custom character. Characters do not have to stick together (provided they remain in the same story act) and are free to split up and tackle different quests, battles, and dialogue scenes.
Conversation Starters
- Have you ever played the tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons before? Would you like to after playing Baldur's Gate 3?
- Who is your favorite party member to include in your party?
- What has been your favorite quest or memorable moment in the story?
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