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16.08.2023 - 12:19 / gamesindustry.biz
We typically publish our review roundups within a couple of days of a title's release. But things have been a bit different with Baldur's Gate 3.
Developer Larian cut it pretty close to its PC launch date of August 3 when it came to sending review codes, plus Baldur's Gate 3 is a game of epic proportions – which means most publications have either waited to publish their thoughts, or published reviews in progress.
For the past ten days, the industry has almost been holding its breath to see whether Baldur's Gate 3's near perfect Metacritic score would drop down as more reviews were starting to appear. And as the dust is starting to settle, it's fair to say the verdict is unanimous: with a metascore of 97 at the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 is currently the best-rated game of the year.
This is based on 36 critic reviews. For the sake of fairness, we'll clarify that 2023's second best rated title, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, has a metascore of 96 based on 145 critic reviews. So things could still change as more articles pop up.
But it is unequivocal that Larian has managed a real tour de force with Baldur's Gate 3, crowning a very long development cycle and three years of Steam Early Access.
"Baldur's Gate 3 feels a little bit like Larian has accomplished the impossible," said Ali Jones in his 5/5 review for GamesRadar. "This is an entire, years-long pen-and-paper roleplaying campaign realized in beautiful fidelity. It's not just the borrowing of a ruleset, it's an understanding of what D&D is down to the most intricate detail, the result of a genuine passion for its source material writ large across the years-long work of a staff of hundreds.
"At a time when Dungeons & Dragons boasts a popularity unknown at any other time in its 50-year history, Baldur's Gate 3 will stand alongside the best of the best; with Curse of Strahd, Critical Role, and its own beloved predecessors. By any metric, it's not just one of the best D&D games or best RPGs ever made – it's a new gold standard by which the entire genre, if not an entire industry, will be measured."
The CRPG, based on Wizards of the Coast's Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition ruleset, is set 120 years after 2000's Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, and sees players investigating a situation that's left them infested with a parasite slowly transforming them (and other survivors) into tentacled creatures called mind flayers.
Baldur's Gate 3's faithfulness to its source material is one of its greatest blessings but, as with any adaptation of a tabletop RPG, that can also mean a bit of a learning curve for newcomers unfamiliar with D&D systems, reviewers noted.
"You make a character by picking from different fantastical species (tree
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is the fourth entry in the mainline Baldur’s Gate series. If you include the Dark Alliance games, you are looking at the seventh. Throw in expansion packs and Baldur’s Gate 3 is actually nearing the tenth entry in the long running series. That’s a lot of games to dig into.
Baldur's Gate 3's second patch is right around the corner, with Larian Studios suggesting that it's a ‘chonky' one. In a community update post on Steam, the developer revealed that the patch will be focused on improving performance issues, specifically in Act 3, where players have reported laggy cutscenes and stutters when the camera pans around. In addition to fixing bugs that halted quest progression, our companion, the cheerful Tiefling Karlach, will be getting a new optional ending — a closure that is described as ‘fiery' and ‘poignant'. The lengthy blog post also touches upon some cut content that was discovered recently by data miners, some of which have now been revealed as a consequence of bugs.
Dragon Age writer and Baldur's Gate 2 dev David Gaider has finally finished Baldur's Gate 3, and like countless other fans, he reckons it's "a worthy successor" to BioWare's CRPGs.
The beauty of Dungeons & Dragons lies in its immersive role-playing structure that bestows upon you the role of an author, but you never truly know where the story is headed. It's quite humane in that sense, where no matter how well-prepared you are, fate's inevitable gnarly fingers might have different ideas for us. Larian Studios' latest Baldur's Gate III explores the Forgotten Realms, a dark fantastical corner of D&D that's brimming with devils, deities, and the supernatural. A highly dynamic world that reacts to the digits on a polyhedral dice to weave an emotional tale about a group of broken people, gambling their lives against sinister forces that ooze Lovecraftian vibes. On the other hand, you can take a backseat and watch it all fade to misery, as you scroll through Astarion fan art and look up the quickest ways to romance bears in-game.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a hit with fans and critics alike, boasting an incredibly high Metacritic score of 96, making it one of 2023's highest-rated games, and one of the highest-scoring PC games of all time. But as great as it is, people still have hot takes, and thousands of fans have flocked to Reddit to share their own.
Baldur's Gate 3 has a pretty cool selection of companions for you to choose from, each with their own unique charms and quirks that makes travelling around with them and watching them interact with each other an absolute joy. However, a certain blunt Githyanki has caused somewhat of a stir on social media this past week, as some believe Lae'zal's status as the game's least popular companion is because female characters are held to a much higher standard than male ones.
If Baldur's Gate 3 has given you a hankering to play tabletop Dungeons & Dragons games set in the titular city, D&D Beyond has you covered. The Baldur's Gate Gazetteer is a digital supplement full of info about Baldur's Gate, from its geography, to the gods that are worshipped there, to the dark secrets it holds, to new rules for your character backgrounds that better represent seasoned locals.
A writer on the original Baldur's Gate has shared their surprise at stumbling upon a character they helped create as they explored Baldur's Gate 3.
If you’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 for a while, you may be wondering when you’ll actually make it to the eponymous city. It’s certainly mentioned a fair few times, so surely it’s a place of great importance, right? Well, yes, it’s quite an important place, and yes you will get there eventually.
Baldur's Gate III is arguably the game of the summer, and it isn't even out on consoles yet. Developer Larian Studios has taken a "it'll be out when it's ready" approach to releasing the game on various platforms. After becoming an instant hit on Windows when it came out of early access earlier this month, Baldur's Gate III will land on PlayStation 5 and macOS on September 6th. The exact Xbox release date is still unclear, but Larian has finally confirmed the massive RPG will come to Microsoft's consoles later this year.
Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke has announced that Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming to Xbox Series X/S in 2023. Available for PC and coming to PS5 on September 6th, the critically acclaimed RPG was delayed on Microsoft’s consoles due to issues with split-screen co-op on Xbox Series S.