this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Baldur's Gate 3

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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)

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I'm interested in the game, I guess mostly because of the hype. I enjoyed Skyrim and Diablo 1/2/4, and I suppose they're somewhat similar to Baldurs Gate. Given that basic knowledge, is there a good change I'd like Baldurs Gate 3? Also, could I just jump into it without playing the first two?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Similar but dissimilar....

You can pick up 500tons of plates and forks like Skyrim. That's partly a joke, but partly to say that it's kinda similar environmentally. The world/environment has that sort of feel to it, but keep in mind that isn't really open world environment, it feels like it, but it's on rails like diablo is, so to speak. It's kinda a cool balance between linear path and open IMHO. Similar environment to the diablo franchise, but with a bunch of Skyrim openness tossed in.

It's a party based game... that parts ways entirely from both Skyrim and Diablo. You aren't player one, you're players 1-4... Do you go back far enough for might and magic? It's got a lot of that to it. 4 person party, limited skills per member so you gotta manage the balance among the party, gotta consider how your party is physically arranged in a fight so the cleric doesn't get squooshed... party mechanics that are absent in most of the genre. I love that it brought that back :)

The focus on loot is less... a lot less... one of the earliest party members you can pick up is an item sink that wants to be fed a high end magic item every couple days, so your best loot is subject to being little more than food. A little annoying but a neat dynamic. Your uberness is going to be determined more by attributes, skills, and spells than by what your gear looks like. It ain't a loot fest at all :)

It's got "romance" dialogue in camp, where you can affect the interpersonal relationships between party members, and you can have more than 4 in camp, on standby, so this gets to be kinda involved, I'm not a fan so I skip the camp stuff and just rest, can't speak much to it tbh but they'll get it on if you put the time in camp to do the relationship stuff.

There are a lot of choices in interactions, and they affect your reputation, and they can really affect quests and quest outcomes, and so far all I've seen is really good work by devs on not having different or odd mixes of choices result in any major borking of quests... you can take a quest from someone, slaughter the entire area they are in, and the quest will still complete (I didn't do that... what? I don't know what you're talking about... how do you even know anything about it if nobody lived to say anything anyway...). You can be very whimsical and even deceptive with the quest entities, I dig it.

No real time combat. Walk through a door somewhere hostile and you get an immediate roll for initiative. That's not terribly cool in terms of a diablo-skyrim-esque game, but it's very faithful to its D&D roots :) it annoyed me at first, but it grew on me pretty quick when I realized that the game is actually trying to DM, and doing a pretty good job at it in my opinion.

It's not really like anything, but it's got some endearing qualities that are similar to a whole slew of other great games. Little bit of a whole bunch of stuff :) kinda worth a try for just about anybody I think.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

When you're done with this game, if you haven't yet played the Divinity Original Sin games then I highly recommend them. I'd start with the newest, Divinity Original Sin 2, and then work backwards as desired.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This should tell you if you should get this game. Great review.