Well friends, here we are again. After nearly three years of waiting, Baldur’s Gate 3 has finally reached its full release point, meaning everyone can finally experience one of the most anticipated games of the year in its full glory; from those who religiously played the early access, to those who waited for the full release, and even those who didn’t know they wanted the game until the hype blew up.

For those of you experiencing deja vu regarding GBAtemp reviewing the game, that’s no accident; I had the pleasure of reviewing Larian Studio’s first Early Access build back in 2020, where I had many great things to say, with one primary complaint; the price. I was irked that Larian would charge what was, at the time, the standard retail price for an unfinished first third of the game. Now that the full release is here, it’s time to revisit what, I think, is one of the best interpretations of the classic Dungeons and Dragons world in modern gaming; does the game live up to the tremendous hype it generated when the full version dropped, and is it worthy of breaking sales and concurrent player records? Come with me on this adventure of a review, dear reader, and let’s discuss together.

  

Descent into Avernus… and Ascent Back to Faerûn

The general story for Baldur’s Gate 3 sees our cast of characters abducted by the Dungeons and Dragons equivalent of aliens, psionic beings known as mind flayers. The mind flayers infect each character with a tadpole which will, over time, force them to metamorphose into mind flayers themselves, before their ship plane shifts and finds itself trapped in Avernus, the first of the nine layers of the hells. Hell serves as little more than a tutorial during the first act, however, as you recruit your first round of early companions, fight your way to the ship's control center, and force your way back to the Material Plane, and the Forgotten Realms continent of Faerûn.

From here, you and your companions must seek out a way to remove the parasite from your heads, while tackling personal goals, quests aplenty, and a much greater conspiracy that thrives just beneath the surface of the initial story pitch. Beyond that, the story sort of goes in whatever way you want it to go--in true D&D fashion, the player characters and their choices shape the world around you, and how the story pans out. There are a ton of choices to make, characters to meet, quests to conquer, and choices within those quests that, along with the character creation options that we’ll talk about below, ensure that no two playthroughs of Baldur’s Gate 3 will ever be exactly the same.

  

At its core, the gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 3 hasn’t strayed far since early access, though plenty of additions have been made. With your standard mouse and keyboard setup, the game takes on the traditional isometric “point and click” option for traveling, with your keyboard and on-screen display giving you access to all of your characters' abilities both in and out of combat. Newly added for the full release however is controller support, which gives you much smoother camera control via the joystick, and a more traditional “move character via joystick” for traversing the world. Gone are the easily clickable character abilities from the always visible user interface, replaced instead with the just as seamless ability wheels, accessible via the bumpers of whatever controller you opt to play with. Between the two methods, I definitely prefer the keyboard and mouse control scheme for this game, though I feel like much of that comes from the amount of time I’ve spent in early access with the game. The controller support is definitely welcome, and was an obvious necessity for the PS5 and upcoming Xbox versions, which play quite fluidly and nicely.

  

Consistent between both methods of control, though, are communication with your party and NPCS, and combat. Character interaction comes down to those dialogue trees we’ve come to know and love from many an RPG, with the added flair of different ability checks to access different outcomes of conversations, complete with simulated dice rolls straight out of the tabletop game. Dialogue and conversation also happen to be the primary way that you get your party to approve or disapprove of you and your actions, ultimately leading to a decision of whether or not they’ll travel with you for some specific members. In combat, turn-based strategy is still the name of the game, a far departure from the original method of combat from the previous Baldur’s Gate titles. Each character takes their turn one at a time, and has an action, bonus action, and movement at their disposal. Different classes have different special actions and bonus actions that they can use, be they specific spells for magic users, extra damage from combat-oriented classes, or absolute nonsense from bards and monks.

Different weapons, armor, and magic items also give you extra actions that you can use in and out of combat, and the newly added tadpole powers give extra bonuses and options to those who opt to give into the dangerous and dark parasites that live deep within each character's brain. Some abilities only recharge with a short rest, of which you get two each “day,” or a long rest, which sees your party sleeping for 8 in-game hours to replenish yourself back to full… provided you have the camp supplies to do so. Some classes even get special abilities fully custom to themselves, such as the wizard's ability to copy scrolls into their spellbook, or the paladin’s ability to break the rules and be forced into a subclass shift. Accurate to the source? Yes, for the most part. Just as fun in a video game? Also yes. Which brings me to the next topic of conversation.

    

One of the biggest questions I’ve been asked in regard to this game, both in person and online, is how this game fares as a single-player D&D simulator; it’s a fair question, given the popularity of the tabletop game and the way in which Larian tried to be faithful to the 5th edition of the game, without hindering the experience as a video game. To that end, I think Larian was pretty successful; it’s not a perfect 1-to-1 simulator in terms of the rules and abilities available in game; generally, I feel something like Solasta is a bit more accurate in terms of a rules-and-gameplay-simulator, and has features that this game doesn’t like the online dungeon builder, and new “modules” in the form of campaign DLC.

Where Baldur’s Gate succeeds in its own right, however, is in the writing, amount of content, and accessibility to familiar races, locations, and characters that dedicated D&D fans will recognize both from the established lore and previous Baldur’s Gate games. The game even picks up where the module “Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus” left off, giving tabletop gamers who’ve experienced that adventure a little something extra, with that adventure's canon events being addressed here. Combat-wise it’s certainly more faithful than the original series of Baldur’s Gate games, be they the real-time-with-pause from the original two, or the general hack-and-slash that Dark Alliance would bring us, but that doesn’t mean it’s better. Just different, and more accurate to the source material.

New abilities are added for combat, the Illithid tadpole powers are entirely custom to the game, and magic items work a bit differently, in a much more user-friendly manner. In this D&D fanatic's opinion, I think the game does a phenomenal job of getting just enough right in faithfulness to the game, without hindering itself by the rules. It focuses on being a great game first, and a D&D property second, which I believe is what can be attributed to the tremendous success this game has seen since launch.

  

Filling Your Character Sheet

When it comes to character creation, one of the biggest and most interesting features is the choice between your origin character; Unlike early access, where players really only had the option to create a custom character and choose their background/backstory from a list of available options, folks can now take on the role of one of the early companions found in the game; Shadowheart, Astarion, Gale, Wyll, Lae’zel, and newcomer Karlach, who is recruitable for the first time in the full release. These options are great for someone who just wants to quickly jump into Baldur’s Gate 3 without a ton of time in character creation, and also to get to know your companion characters better.

Also new to the full game is the custom origin character “the Dark Urge,” which locks you into the Haunted One background and a story of memories lost and violent urges that you must overcome, which should sound familiar to players of the original Baldur's Gate games, but gives you freedom to customize your character fully beyond that, including changing the race and class associated. For both Dark Urge and Custom characters, you have full access to the 11 “default” races in the Dungeons and Dragons players handbook, as well as the 12 classes from said sourcebook, and 46 subclass choices from across the entire span of D&D. Once you have your character race chosen, you can customize them quite fully; from hair and skin color options, to horn and tail choices for Tieflings and Dragonborns. There’s also a ton of options for inclusivity and customization across each character race option, where you can choose your body type to be more masculine or feminine, and choose your voice, genitals, and character pronouns independently in the same character creator; all of these offering full ability to customize your character to be what YOU want them to be, what you want to play, and make sure everyone feels welcome and represented in game, which at the core is what D&D strives for.

     

Outside of the character creation screen, your class is fully customizable at each level, both for companions and custom characters. You can choose from a list of subclasses based on how you want to play, decide which spells to learn, and prepare for your spellcasting characters. Decided you don’t like your class, or decided to experiment and figured the class/subclass loadout isn’t for you? For a pittance of coin, you can use everyone's favorite camp zombie, Withers, to re-spec and re-choose your class from the start; both for companions and player characters. Though this is an aspect I haven’t used for actual gameplay, and just to test out the feature, it’s an option I love having available. And I find that it offers a ton of more freedom in being creative with your class choices, without forcing you to restart such a long game if you decide you’re not having fun with your build.

When it comes to choosing your party loadout? Despite the change from a six-person party to a four-person party from previous Baldur’s Gate games, all unused companions will be waiting for you at camp, which you can easily and effortlessly return to at any time to swap out your party members, who gain enough XP to scale with the current party level every time they rejoin. This makes it tremendously easy to make sure you have the right companion for each job, whether through optimizing your build or just wanting to make sure characters are present for quests associated with them.

    

Assembling the Party

Being a Dungeons & Dragons game, Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t be complete without the multiplayer component; D&D (or rather, Tabletop RPGs in general) being one of the most collaborative gaming experiences possible, it just wouldn’t feel right for this video game adaptation to lack on the party based fun. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can assemble a party of up to three friends, four players in total, to take on the game with your own adventuring party, forgoing the pre-generated NPCs and origin characters that the game normally uses to fill out the party.

While this may make for a playthrough that goes against most established lore for the game, there’s no denying the pure chaotic fun of getting together with a group of friends in a game where the only limit to what you can get up to, is your imagination. With that said, Baldur’s Gate 3 won’t be replacing something like Roll20 or Virtual Tabletop for online D&D games anytime soon; as the game lacks any kind of map creator, dungeon builder, and even some major character options from the tabletop version of D&D, including a full class and a ton of subclasses.

There’s also the matter that, as of the writing of this review, any multiplayer games lock all included characters into that game, but as Larian has already announced plans to fix this in the next major update, I won’t be dwelling on this aspect. At the end of the day, the multiplayer options are a net gain for this game, and add a ton of extra replay value on top of a game that’s already bursting at the seams when it comes to reasons to replay. And with cross-platform multiplayer on its way in a future update, there will soon be no barriers to how you and your friends can gather together and adventure.

  

One of the major features touted by Larian in the leadup to the release of the full game was the cross-platform save options for this game; whether you’re playing on a PC, a Steam Deck, a PS5, or through Nvida GeForce, your save games are able to traverse the gaming multiverse and allow you to pick up where you left off no matter which platform you opt to play at that time. I tested this through my Nvidia GeForce subscription, killing any other Wi-Fi draws in my house in order to get this colossus of a game streaming to my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra. The cross-save worked entirely as I’d hoped it would, giving me access to continue my journey to the Sword Coast’s most glorious hive of scum and villainy from anywhere, so long as I had a stable Wi-Fi connection to stream with. I even was able to get some playing done while traveling out of state to work, via a huge use of cellular data from my phone (thank you unlimited data plans). The connection when playing was quite stable, though the performance was admittedly a bit on the laggier side, owing likely to my strength of connections and the pure fact that I was streaming the game onto a phone.

For those looking to take their game away from the desktop, this is where the PS5 and Steam Deck support come in; with the Steam Deck being a much better way to take your adventure on the go, and the PS5 version offering incredible gameplay, story, and graphics to a much wider audience than if this game would’ve continued to be a PC only experience. And with Xbox Series X and Series S versions looking to be on their way before the end of the year, this powerhouse of a game will soon be available to gamers everywhere, no matter your preferred platform… as long as your preferred platform isn’t a Nintendo Switch.

  

For those who followed the game closely during early access, the full launch definitely didn’t slack when it comes to new content. In addition to two fully new acts of the game's story for us to explore, and a ton of new locations, characters, and quests within those acts, there were also some significant changes made to Act One. Most notable of which are new gameplay mechanics, such as the tadpole abilities and potion crafting; they’re about as simple as they sound. The tadpole in your head can be upgraded by collecting resources from other carriers, giving you special abilities for combat and beyond that can be used to make the game easier. The alchemy options are just as straightforward, collecting resources in the overworld to craft recipes and create potions you can use in game.

Other major changes are things we’ve already been over, such as controller support and new class/race/background options in character creations. Beyond this, though, the changes that stuck out to me most were those that affected the party companions I’ve come to know and love; new cinematics and character designs make them stand out from their earliest incarnations, and some have had their stories completely overhauled from early access, with entirely new goals and ambitions. Some are hornier than they once were, and try to trap you into an in-game romance with their inflated ego. And some let their harsh exterior drop a bit sooner, and let those players more geared towards affect their attitude for the better.

If I have to find something to complain about? I think I’m overall disappointed in the amount of new companions that the full release introduced; only five new playable companions join your party, which does double the amount you could have in early access, but still pales in comparison to the amount of recruitable companions in Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, 25 and 17 respectively (and that’s also ignoring the lack of a single player fully custom party without multiplayer shenanigans). Some may view these updates and changes as the least Larian can do for those who supported them through the development process. While that’s a fair and true point, it’s also one that I offer with deepest gratitude, as one of those who have been watching and playing this game from the beginning. Watching and being a part of the progress and growth has been so rewarding… and seeing the whole world embrace this game in return has been incredibly vindicating for a game that deserves even more accolades than it’s already gotten.

    

A Nat 20 - Critical Success

And so we reach the bittersweet conclusion to this review; the conclusion of my following of the game for GBAtemp. Ever since that first day that I booted up my review copy, I’ve considered covering this game a labor of love. While regular re-reviews weren’t a thing I subjected our readership to for every update, patch, and addition, I kept my eyes on the early access progress very closely, and made sure to make note of the progress as it was going on, even providing my end of year updates during our yearly games roundups, knowing it would all come down to this final review. And was it worth it? Absolutely. Larian Studios rolled a natural 20 on Baldur’s Gate 3, and showed up ready to impress on every aspect of the game. Genuinely perfect games are hard to come by in our industry and hobby, and I make it a point not to be too liberal when scoring a game so as to dilute the impression of a perfect score.

But in this reviewer's humble opinion, Baldur’s Gate 3 has more than earned its verdict. The presentation, gameplay, story, customization, and overall experience of the game have been nothing short of incredible, and even more rewarding when choosing to follow the adventure through the early access period. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a true masterpiece of gaming, and one that I sincerely hope everyone gives a try at least once in their lives.