Baldur’s Gate 3 is a Dungeons and Dragons inspired, turn-based RPG. You play as a custom character, or any of the ‘origin’ characters and go on an adventure to try and cure yourself of a parasite embedded in your head by whatever means you decide.


Combat: The combat in this game is turn-based, while that is not for everyone, I firmly believe that if you are to only play one turn-based game ever, it should be this one. The combat is adapted from D&D 5e, which revolves around rolling dice and adding your characters proficiency to those rolls (so a spell-caster is going to be more likely to land spells, and a martial is more likely to land melee attacks). The game is well balanced aside from edge case builds that generally will not be used by your average player and add to the fun of the game rather than taking from it, in harder difficulties these more ‘broken’ builds can even become balanced. Enemies and battles are interesting and challenging, some fights need extra planning, especially in higher difficulties, but if you get good equipment and collect all available experience the game can be quite a breeze even on the higher difficulty. They have since added ‘honour’ mode, which is a great extra challenge and fundamentally changes a lot of fights.

Progression: This game is split into 3 separate acts and can be completed in anywhere between 40 and 120+ hours, I personally spent 60 hours in my first playthrough of act 1 alone, although I am the type of player who attempts to see every little secret in a game on my first run (I didn't). The pacing is basically up to the player, you can spearhead the main story and comfortably complete the game on balanced difficulty, but there are also multiple individual storylines for each companion that continue mostly from beginning to end. Almost every quest, puzzle, or action in the game has multiple different solutions that all seem to have been thought of by the developers. There are even significant battles that you can skip entirely through dialogue options and passing certain ability checks. Levels can be weird, as someone who explored a significant amount of side quests, I reached the maximum level of 12 shortly into act 3.

Controls: The controls in the game are simple, you could play this entire game with just your mouse if you wished. The UI is easy to use, however I had some issues with things like storage container UIs opening behind my inventory, but you can easily move them, so it is a minor issue. The camera can also have issues in various cases, although I didn’t find these to be too intrusive, and they are easily fixed with a mod. Near everything is customisable and accessible.


Narrative: The story is set in the world of the Forgotten Realms, a standard setting in D&D, so a lot of the wider worldbuilding already exists. However, this version of the Forgotten Realms has history relating to the previous Baldur’s Gate games, this can be seen through various texts, dialogue, and reappearing characters. The main story is interesting and compelling, giving strong reason for the protagonist and side characters to pursue their quest. The twists are interesting and act 2 especially is full of very good story writing, while act 3 may seem a little rushed in comparison. There are many books and dialogue options which tell minor stories which are interesting to find. There is also an alternative storyline when you choose the non-recruitable ‘Dark Urge’ character origin, this storyline is incredible and honestly feels like it was meant to be the original main character, although I can understand why the decision was made to make this an alternative storyline, as following the evil path can result in a significantly shorter story, and loss of multiple companions indefinitely. The lack of polish to act 3 is undesirable but understandable, this is a small team who worked on this game for many years and were seemingly forced into a release due to time constraints. However, the depth and breadth of storytelling in act 1 and 2 combined makes up for this, and I’m sure we can expect updates to act 3 in the future, as the team have already added a fleshed-out epilogue post release.

Characters: There are many extremely compelling characters in Baldur’s Gate 3, the main cast of recruitable characters have very nice, well fleshed out stories, aside from Karlach’s who lacks much meaningful substance and closure in act 3. In my opinion, the main cast is one of the best parts about this game, they all have great stories and dialogue, even with each other when roaming around the world. The voice acting for the main cast is also incredible. There are characters which I do wish had more of a part to play in the story, such as Minthara (to flesh out the evil Dark Urge storyline), and Alfira. The side characters are great too, with several dozen important side characters each with their own amazing voice acting, and hundreds of minor characters that are all performed well too. As for the main villains, only one really stood out to me performance-wise, and that is the villain you will meet and fight during act 2, incredible voice acting from the veteran that is J. K. Simmons, and an amazing backstory. The other main villains suffer from the lack of polish in act 3, one of them in particular has an amazing design which I fell in love with when I first saw it, only to be disappointed to find out they had the least relevance of them all (Dark Urge fixes this slightly). Finally, romance options are vast, and provide some quite heartfelt interactions.

Writing: The writing in this game is frankly incredible, all the stories are told well without any missing information or plot holes, and dialogue never strays from the personality of the characters. It really feels like you are always interacting with other people with their own ambitions and reasonings. Quests, dialogue, and even the world changes based on nearly all your actions, basically everything is accounted for by the writers, some making for quite hilarious moments. This is one of the many reasons that this game is worth several plays, and why I have played this game 3 times all the way through, and even more times partially through.


Graphics: The graphics in this game are nothing to write home about, but they are perfectly fit for purpose in this style of game. There are no parts of the world that feel particularly unpolished graphically, everything suits the fantasy setting with nothing seeming out of place (except your Tav with bright pink hair running around in their underwear). The dialogue for at least the main band of characters is done with motion capture, so the dialogue feels real, and emotion is well conveyed.

Sound: This game comes with an amazing soundtrack. All the music fits the theme of every area and scenario that it is played in and adds so much to the experience, I have zero complaints here. Spells and abilities also have audio that makes sense.

Performance: I play at 1440p with a Ryzen 7 5800x, 32GB 3600Mhz memory, and a 4070 SUPER with the game installed on an NVMe SSD. I have faced no issues with performance in this game (aside from when engaging in barrelmancy), and constantly max out my monitor at 144fps at max settings. The game has DLSS and FSR support, but I had no need to with my current setup. Load times are very good and barely noticeable.


Baldur’s Gate 3 is an incredible game, it has won many deserving awards by both critics and players. This game was easily the best of 2023, and one of the best of the decade. It is a masterpiece that really gives the finger to AAA studios who consistently pump out half-baked £60 games and expect us to just accept it. The clear love and care that went into this game at every level is amazing to see, and I hope that more games follow this trend.