Baldur’s Gate 3 (PS5) review

I spent about 68 hours of playthrough time completing my first game of Baldur’s Gate 3, and at the time of writing I’ve almost completed Act 1 in a new game. And here’s what I made of it. Spoilers will be kept to an absolute bare minimum.

 

Story

The premise of Baldur’s Gate 3, which is made plain right from the off and isn’t a spoiler, is that the player character has been infected with a horrid mindflayer ‘tadpole’ that will soon turn them into a mindflayer (psionic alien thingydoo with tentacles that eats brains). Luckily, the ship on which the player is captive is attacked and crashes, enabling them to escape and try to get healed, potentially alongside other infected ex-prisoners.

The player can have a party of up to four, with three pre-made NPCs or hired hands (without any special dialogue, quests, or other than wafer-thin personality) making up the numbers. Options in dialogue and action are significant and do not fall into simple good/evil variations (though some choices are obviously nicer than others). DnD fans should be aware there’s also no alignment here, so don’t expect chaos/law to be tagged in dialogue choices or affect anything. Naturally, NPC companions will like or dislike certain things.

There’s often more than two choices to be made that substantially affect an outcome, and these can occur via dialogue or by action. A minor example of this is how I freed someone only to then be confronted by an individual over this. The irate individual then summoned a lot of help and things escalated to a full-blown battle. While I’ve only played through once right now, it’s pretty clear that certain actions affect things down the line and it feels like choices can shape the story significantly (I’m quite tempted to start an evil playthrough to experiment with this, although I’m torn between Electra the drow storm sorceress, and the halfling bard Little Schmidt).

Discussing the story in precise terms is impossible, and I don’t want to spoil it. In general, very vague terms, I liked the way it unfolded and the very clear variety of different approaches that can be taken. In addition to the main quest, companions have their own quest lines which are among the most interesting in the game. It can also often be worth it to have conflicting party members to enjoy the antagonistic banter. The majority of companions are found in the first act, with a small number in act two and one in the third act, potentially.

 

Character Creation

It’s possible to play as one of the various pre-made NPCs (I think every companion that can be found in the first act). However,  most people prefer to make their own character, and this has a lot of options in most areas. In a shocking turn, there are actually multiple good hairstyles (a rarity in RPGs), although preset faces are only 10 in number. Skin and eye colour (including ocular heterochromia, or different coloured eyes), tattoos, scars, and more can be customised. Larger races also have a quartet of body types (essentially, slim male and female and stronger/bigger variants). No fat body types, though.

Be sure to switch nudity on or off as you like in the settings as this might be OTT for some, or delightful for others.

Aside from the physical side of things, character creation covers races. Each has their own features and sometimes offer unique dialogue options (my second character, a white dragonborn monk, has had quite a lot of class and racial dialogue choices). This is the most minor impact of the class, which determines combat style and, to a lesser extent, social engagement. Classes like sorcerer, warlock, wizard, and bard offer a strong magic focus, while the monk, barbarian, rogue, and fighter are largely about physical conflict. Rangers, paladins, and clerics are more mixed. Be aware the subclass (chosen at different levels, but all, I think, in the first three) can add a big degree of variety and the monk and fighter can take on an arcane aspect with the Way of the Four Elements and Eldritch Knight subclasses respectively. This can be a good way of balancing a party.

Charisma-focused classes such as paladin, sorcerer, warlock, and bard offer the best chance of doing well in social interactions (and if you want to be overpowered in these pick up the cantrip Friends and enjoy advantage, although this has later negative consequences on the hardest game setting, I believe).

Racial variety, incidentally, can vary a bit, as there are 10 different types of dragonborn. This determines not just appearance but breath weapon (with resistance [halving the damage] for the corresponding element). Elves, meanwhile, have just two (wood and high) with drow (dark elf) being considered a separate race.

For the most part, I like character creation a lot, although more facial variety would be good.

Appearance can be altered in camp via the magic mirror, while Withers (also in camp) enables changing class. Note that changing race is not possible.

Gameplay

Gameplay has three main aspects: combat, stealth, and dialogue.

Those familiar with Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition will be right at home, though there have been changes. I also recommend setting reactions (mostly opportunity attacks) to be asked about rather than occurring automatically. Even for opportunity attacks this can matter, but as other reactions can use up class resources (ki points for the monk or battlemaster fighter superiority dice) having them happen automatically can drain said resources unhelpfully. Some spells have changed how they work (polymorph has been massively nerfed) but, broadly speaking, it’s very faithful to the tabletop game.

For those unfamiliar with how this works, it’s similar to either XCOM or Divinity: Original Sin 2 (also by Larian). Physical attacks can be made any number of times, magical attacks, excepting basic cantrips, can only be done if there are available spell slots. These can only be replenished with rare potions or upon a long rest (save the warlock, who has fewer spell slots but gets them all back on a short rest). There are also some individual class resources, such as monk ki points, or channel divinity for clerics.

Summon spells, whether elementals near the top end or the cleric’s early spell Spiritual Weapon, are very useful because they not only add an extra attack or two, they also provide something else for enemies to target.

On standard difficulty, enemies behave in an intelligent way. Cast Grease on a foe and, if they can, they’ll jump out of the area rather than walk across it. It’s easy to be outmatched. Enemies do not scale to the player’s level and if you’re out of your depth this will soon become apparent. Some fights can be avoided entirely, including some major battles (in the second act I evaded/‘won’ a couple of these with good dialogue checks).

A good tip for ranged attacks is to dual-wield hand crossbows for two attacks rather than one (although I think this uses up the bonus action). In each turn, a character gets a main action, usually a spell or physical attack but this can also be ‘helping’ a downed character return from KO with 1 hp rather than risking them dying. They also get a bonus action, usually something like jumping (movement permitting), taking a potion, applying a poison to a weapon, or ‘dipping’ which is most commonly putting your weapon in a nearby flame to add fire damage on your next attack. Movement is as it sounds and is halved if you’re prone and stand up.

 

Stealth can be used to evade combat, steal from people, eavesdrop, or get an advantage in initiating combat. One fight I struggled with (I was slightly underlevelled and it was a tough fight) was eventually won by sneaking to start the fight in a more advantageous position. Note that the party can be easily split at any time so it can be worthwhile to send a rogue or monk ahead to scout things out and leave the clunking, heavy armour-clad fighter a little further back.

 

Dialogue is often just a matter of choice but there are three specific skills related to it: persuasion, deception, and intimidation. The former is the nicest, the middle is being a talented liar, and the third is a mix of charismatic power and threat level. However, as noted, there are also unique class and race options, and sometimes other skills (such as arcana or history) may offer alternatives.

When not out in the world, the player and party retire to their camp, which includes NPCs not currently in the party and reminded me a bit of Dragon Age: Origins.

All attack rolls, checks, and saving throws are made using a d20 (20-sided dice).

 

Graphics

The extra time and money Larian had means they were able to flesh out the Divinity: Original Sin 2 approach with much better character models allowing for closer shot conversations and cutscenes. For the PS5, there can often be a moment or two before textures decide they want to show up, with hair and armour looking rather potatoey until that happens.

Overall, the graphics are rather good, especially for the genre, but also not the main selling point.

 

Sound

Voice-acting is very well done, with a mostly British range of accents (although there’s at least one villainous American). This extends beyond the companions to the minor characters, from earnest tieflings to delightfully arrogant goblins. Also, the spell Speak with Animals will offer a large array of new interactions with friendly (and less amicable) beasts.

The music and sound effects are both good as well.

 

Bugs and Other Problems

Bugs were few, but I did have at least one crash. Over more than 70 hours that’s not horrendous but can obviously be improved. The texture loading I’ve already mentioned.

Occasionally it can be tricky targeting enemies on different levels in combat, or indicating which level a character should move to during battles with various elevations. For the latter, it’s easiest to find a ladder/rope etc and click ‘use’ on that, then move from there. For the former, enemies can be targeted with the left and right on the D-pad, which is a little clunky but can resolve the matter. Targeting can also be awkward either when characters are in close proximity.

 

Replayability

With a very large range of class and racial options, numerous party compositions, and varying major and minor decisions to make, there’s a super-abundance of replayability in Baldur’s Gate 3. If you have the time.

Be aware that while you can also re-spec NPC companions into new classes this may alter their available dialogue interactions.

 

Conclusion

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a great RPG, and well worth your time.

 

Thaddeus

 

Review: Four Against Darkness

 

A little while ago I bought Four Against Darkness, which is a solo (solitaire) RPG book, a bit like Dungeons & Dragons in a much lighter way. Although for a single player, there are four members of the party made of various classes chosen by said player (elf, dwarf, halfling, wizard, warrior, etc). NB this can also be played as a light RPG with a party of players.

To play you need the book itself, a pair of d6 (six-sided dice), and some graph paper.

The game procedurally generates dungeons by rolling dice, with the contents of rooms generated the same way. These contents can be foes (large or small), unusual features, or traps. The dungeon is ‘won’ by defeating the final boss (which can appear in any room or corridor) and getting out alive (retracing steps can mean encountering wandering monsters).

Necessarily, characters and combat are way more basic than tabletop RPGs. Most of this is down to dice rolling, although player choice is present in some important ways, such as choosing when your wizard or elf casts spells (which are powerful but you only get a few for a level 1 wizard and one for a level 1 elf). Likewise, you can choose to search an empty room (which can lead to finding useful stuff or being attacked). When to use healing powers/potions/bandages can also be important.

Players can also choose to not immediately attack foes, who may flee or ask for a bribe.

It’ll be slower than this the first time and the number of bosses can vary (the fewest I encountered was one, the most was five), but a game might last around 45 minutes from start to finish. Overall, I like this book and the system a lot. Once you get to grips with the rules things flow pretty smoothly and quirks add a little to the characters/party (my rogue, Rapsnax, has rolled a 1 on every single trap he’s ever tried to disarm, failing every time).

There are a lot of supplementary books, offering specific adventures/dungeons, new classes, and expanding the levels for characters. But I would strongly advocate just buying the first book (around £10) and seeing if it’s to your liking before considering buying some of the many extra books.

Incidentally, RPG book fans should be aware that Lone Wolf is getting a full re-release, with the first few out already. If you’ve got a gap in your collection now (or very soon) is a good time to fill it.

Thaddeus

Oblivion Reminiscing

Occasionally I go back to my old consoles and play games of yesteryear. I was considering doing just that with my PS2 and enjoying classics like God of War, Shadow Hearts, and so on. But lately I’ve been wondering about playing Oblivion.

Made by Bethesda in the good old days when paying for horse armour was laughable and games didn’t take over a decade to be released because studios were too busy dicking about with live service bullshit, Oblivion has a lot of points I remember really fondly. And one I loathed.

Skyrim’s got a more realistic world in terms of paths and mountains, but the infamous sideways mountain-hopping is far easier in Oblivion. What this means is you can go practically anywhere, which means the world’s a bit less realistic but players enjoy a lot more freedom. I’ve gone multiple different ways after leaving the starting dungeon, whereas Skyrim does more heavily lead you by the hand.

Another big plus is that the cities feel larger, and more distinct. The city size in Skyrim is significantly smaller than in Oblivion, and the cities tended to feel like they had their own identities more. Markarth is nice and different, but mostly the architecture and feel of Nordic cities is pretty similar. That’s not the case in Oblivion.

Quests are also better in the Elder Scrolls IV than the next instalment. I won’t spoil it, decade and a half old as it is, but the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion is orders of magnitude better than anything in Skyrim. If you haven’t played it, give it a look. It’s engaging, enjoyable, and compelling.

Creating your own spells is a nifty feature you gain if you join the Mages, but for some reason it was stripped out of Skyrim. Why? It’s cool being able to create your own spells, and the range of spells in Oblivion, even without making your own, is substantially more too. And you can cast them whilst having a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. Plus the touch spells make being a battle mage a cool option.

Character creation obviously comes with inferior graphics, but against this you can alter the colour and length of your hair, and even fiddle cleverly to make your orc red (move the relevant slider all the way right, then left, then repeat until he’s red).

These are all things I like. So, what’s the thing I didn’t?

Levelling.

Now, maybe I’ll view things differently if I ever go back, but from memory the levelling system pissed me off. Enemies level as you do. Which can work. But if you don’t get your skills right then you become relatively weaker, making you less powerful as you level up. Which is insane.

I’m currently replaying Divinity Original Sin 2. Undecided if I’ll take a hiatus upon leaving Fort Joy or keep going, but it’s interesting to consider going back to Oblivion.

And the PS3 also has Dragon Age: Origins as well. Ah, happy days…

Thaddeus

Review: Pillars of Eternity (PS4)

I recently finished my first playthrough of Pillars of Eternity. I played on Easy (default difficulty), did some side-quests, completed the Caed Nua (fort/home sub-storyline) but this was not a completionist playthrough. Obviously there are some spoilers within but I’ve kept them as light and possible and don’t believe they compromise the story significantly.

Character Creation

There’s a huge degree of choice here, which affects both combat and roleplaying. As well as both genders, there are six races, each with at least one subtype, eleven classes (I erroneously said thirteen in my early impressions blog), customisable attribute stats and numerous background options.

Of the races, there are the fantasy staples of men, elves and dwarves, along with the unique aumaua (reptilian beefcakes), orlans (pointy-eared midgets), and godlikes (who look a bit freaky). The classes include standard fare (rangers, fighters, rogues etc) and some more unusual options (ciphers, chanters etc).

The only real downside to character creation is that there are so many options it can be hard to pick what to go for.

Story

The protagonist begins as part of a caravan headed for Gilded Vale, where the local lord has offered a good deal for new settlers. However, the protagonist has fallen ill, and so camp is made beside some ruins. What could possibly go wrong?

After the wrongdoing occurs, the player learns their character has become a Watcher, able to see into people’s past lives. It’s a bit freaky, and you continue on your journey to find out more…

The game is text- and lore-heavy. Personally, that’s not a problem (although it is a little overdone early on) but for some people this will be off-putting. One thing that did irk me was that there’s a lot of voice-over but sometimes (in the same conversation) the voice will be absent entirely and it’ll be just text, which is a little jarring.

I found five (there are more, it seems) companions on my playthrough, and each was distinctive both in combat and story terms. They’d have banter together, interject into my own conversations, and sometimes you can take them aside for a chat. They’re a good little crew, each with their own motivations and character.

World-building is extensive, and if you want to delve into it there is extra information (both lore and gameplay relevant) in the bestiary, as well as an encyclopaedia of information about gods and so forth.

As for the central plot, it hangs together well whilst allowing plenty of scope for side-questing. I don’t want to say too much. I did enjoy it, though here and there the twists were a little easy to see coming.

Gameplay

Combat is real time but can be paused easily and commands given to each party member (including animals following rangers, or summoned beasts). There’s a nice array of interesting commands that enable magical or physical effects and make, as usual, a balanced party more than the sum of its parts.

One thing that was absent which would’ve improved things was tactics. You can set a basic disposition for companions but you can’t pre-set tactical commands (as per FFXII or Dragon Age: Origins). On the upside, you can determine one or two customised formations, putting your beefcakes on the front row and having the weedy wizards at the back.

Combat isn’t scaled, so enemies have a certain toughness. If you wander into an area that’s beyond you, you will know, as the enemy sets about transforming your party of adventurers into worm food. There also isn’t random combat (you can sneak past enemies sometimes, if you like) and once you kill all enemies in an area, that’s usually it and they’ll be gone forever.

Experience is granted both for combat victories and advancing quests, and proceeds on an increasing basis (so, 1,000 xp for one level, then 2,000, then 3,000 etc) so the rate of levelling declines over time. I was level 10 when I finished the game, but I suspect it would’ve been possible to get significantly higher.

There is crafting of potions, cooking of food and enchanting of weapons and armour but this isn’t given a particular introduction (check the bottom of the inventory menu) and I missed it for some time. Good incentive to collect shiny rocks and magic weeds, which take up no inventory space.

If party members are knocked out (and they can be killed permanently but this is easy to head off) they acquire injuries that damage their stats, and if they’re tired much the same occurs. Both fatigue and wounds can be removed by resting either at a camp (camping supplies are limited, you can’t lug around 20 odd) or an inn. These rests can also confer bonuses, so paying for the swankiest room at the inn can be well worth it.

As well as a number of fleshed out party members, you can also make your own at any inn. Especially useful for higher levels when getting the balance just right will matter more.

Whether you fix up the fort of Caed Nua or not is up to you. There is a related quest line, and certain features offer resting bonuses or other advantages (I particularly enjoy the bounty tasks).

Away from combat the gameplay focuses upon the numerous decisions the protagonist makes. These vary a lot by choice (being nice or nasty etc), and by unique opportunities your particular race, class, background might afford. This gives a real sense of your adventure being a unique one rather than running through the exact same routine every time you play. In most RPGs nowadays, decisions that change things are actually pretty rare. Here, they seem to happen in pretty much every quest.

Graphics

The isometric view can’t be rotated but you can zoom in or out and the camera is rarely problematic. The nature of the game doesn’t place the emphasis on graphics, but they’re clean enough, and I like the style of art used in the rare ‘cut-scenes’ (parchment with ink drawings and options to do this or that) and bestiary. Functional and fine would be the way I’d put it.

Sound

The music practically oozes fantasy, sometimes reminiscent of Lord of the Rings, sometimes Final Fantasy or The Witcher 3. Sound effects are pretty good and voice-acting is generally strong. One quibble I’d have (and this might just be me, because I’m quite into voice-acting) is that sometimes you can tell when two characters have the same actor/actress and it makes my VA senses tingle (although it’s a long way from Oblivion…).

Longevity/Replayability

The game advertises itself as 70 hours. Not sure how long I spent, but I can easily imagine exceeding that amount. Varying difficulty settings, roleplaying opportunities, and some extra settings (like having your save file auto-delete if you die) certainly open up the possibility of multiple replays.

Bugs and Other Issues

I’ve mentioned a few things above and shan’t repeat them, but one I’d add would be that load screens are both frequent and long. Usually this sort of thing doesn’t bother me (Dragon Age Inquisition/Skyrim never made me gripe) but they are excessively long/frequent.

I only had the one freeze throughout, during a load screen, which isn’t too bad. So, loading aside, not much to complain about.

Conclusion

Some rough edges to sand off and polish, and if you dislike lore/text-heavy games then avoid this one, but if you like an in-depth story world with a great range of roleplaying opportunities then this is very much a game you should seriously consider buying.

Thaddeus