Baldurs Gate 3 split screen with Nintendo Switch Controllers?

[stranger218]

So I'm looking at this game mainly to play split-screen co-op with my stepdaughter who is just starting to get into D&D. The thing is, her laptop is probably a little underspec'd for the game, while mine should probably be able to run the game in split screen mode without too many issues (12th Gen Intel Core i7 - 12700H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU, 32gb ram). We also have a Nintendo Switch with a few sets of default Joy Con controllers. Would that be enough to play split screen with her? Has anyone tried to play the game with the Switch Joy Con before? If not, which (budget) controllers would you recommend to play the game with? Since the game is quite pricey (no doubt worth the price according to the feedback I'm getting), I'd like to know if this would even work as intended on my system before possibly spending a few hundred euros on the game and additional controllers and then finding out it doesn't work well at all. Does anyone have some experience with either playing split screen, what kind of hardware are you running it on, and has anyone tried it with the default Switch controllers or would you recommend something else? Lowering some intense graphical settings would not really be an issue.

[Lani]

Quick answer Baldur's Gate 3 isn't available on Nintendo Switch, and it isn't set to come to the platform. I think that's a dead end unless/until Larian Studios announces differently.

Your laptop should not have any issues.
The game features options for playing at lower settings and a slow HDD mode (for those PC's without an SSD) but without knowing your daughter's laptop specs it'll be hard for anyone to say for sure whether it'll be playable on that machine.

Minimum playable specs:
CPU Intel Core i5 4690 AMD FX 8350
RAM 8GB
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 AMD Radeon RX 480
Storage 150GB

The GPU better have its own VRAM and not shared.
CPU is a bit more important than it would be on a shooter or action RPG.

Sorry, I can't say anything useful about controllers as I don't use them.

[stranger218]

Thanks for your response.
I'm pretty sure the Nintendo Switch would be severely underpowered for the game of this magnitude so I'm not really looking in that direction. :D
I'm just wondering if I could make it work in split screen on my machine and if I need specific controllers to play it. Like you, I don't have any experience with PC controllers since mouse and keyboard always worked for me, but for this specific use case I'd obviously need to set external controllers up somehow.

[Ettanin]

Be aware that Baldur's Gate 3 covers topics rated for at least a mature audience.

That said, the support for the JoyCons depends on which way you wish to interface with them with the system. If you use an emulator driver that maps them to XBox controllers, it should work, but the button labels shown will be those of XBox controllers.

If you use Steam's controller mapping, check this reddit thread here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BaldursGate3/comments/15iolhm/playing_with_nintendo_switch_pro_controllers_is/

BG3 does not support Nintendo Switch comtrollers natively.

[Lani]

Originally posted by stranger218666:

Thanks for your response.
I'm pretty sure the Nintendo Switch would be severely underpowered for the game of this magnitude so I'm not really looking in that direction. :D
I'm just wondering if I could make it work in split screen on my machine and if I need specific controllers to play it. Like you, I don't have any experience with PC controllers since mouse and keyboard always worked for me, but for this specific use case I'd obviously need to set external controllers up somehow.

Aahhhhh! Xbox style split screen on a pc? Never considered that.
Looks like it's possible yeah and you PC should be able to run it. You will need two controllers though and in that area I can't help you better than Google can :-)