Baldurs Gate 3. Detailed opinion about the gameplay of the game

Oddly enough, I would like to start this essay on Baldurs Gate 3 with words about Dragon Age: Origins. The creation of Bioware in 2009 was the first game of this scale for me, deep, complex, grandiose – an RPG in the high sense of the word, including one that influenced my still emerging tastes, setting standards for visual style, narrative, gameplay and overall quality. To this day, I consider DAO to be the main representative of the genre, which has not lost its luster despite the past years. Will the same be said about Baldurs Gate 3?? Quite possible. Moreover, such projects to this day remain piece goods, which only increases their cultural value. At the same time, Baldurs Gate 3 in many of its features turned out to be damn similar to Dragon Age, and that, in turn, is the ideological heir of the original Baldurs Gate – that’s why you can’t find a better example for comparison.

It should be noted right away that Baldurs Gate 3 is a remarkable game in its integrity, possessing enormous visual power, both visionary and dramatic, which is achieved by unprecedented scrupulousness and attention to detail. What distinguishes a grandiose RPG from an ordinary one is precisely how multidimensional the world is piled up over the head of the main character, how deep and catchy the illusion is that the player is woven into a fictional reality, is its integral part, the consequence of which is the roleplaying of the chosen role, the opportunity to interact differently with the virtual space. Like Dragon Age, like Baldurs Gate – take away the gameplay associated with duels from them, and these will still be good, high-quality games, because they have a lot more to offer, and the combat system is only an applied part of a single multifaceted work.

In its assembled form, Baldurs Gate 3 is unconditionally good, however, over more than 130 hours of playing time, I have accumulated many complaints about its individual components, which I would like to discuss.

1. Education

You don’t have to look for problems for a long time; they start from the first minutes of getting acquainted with the game. Education. Consider him not in BG3. Those skimpy text boxes that accompany the adventurer’s first steps hardly explain anything about how the game works, other than the most basic “run/attack” options. And for me, as a person who had never encountered the CRPG genre before, and was not a member of a D&D party, even less so, this was a real problem. So much so that, having completed BG3 entirely on “tactics”, it was only towards the very end that I began to understand most of the in-game rules and mechanics.

What is KB, KS, how does “interference” and the “difficulty level of a spell” manifest itself, how does a “test” differ from a “skill test”, “resistance” from “resistance” – the game will not tell you. No, each attribute, of course, is accompanied by a brief description of what it is, but essentially, without a bottle and one complete playthrough of the game, again, you won’t figure it out. Other features of the game will have to be learned solely by touch during the battles.

As a project promoting itself to the widest possible audience, seeking to revive the gaming community’s interest in a seemingly dead genre, Baldurs Gate 3 looks like it was created as a deliberately niche thing purely for fans of Dungeons and Dragons who already know what’s what here. And nothing prevented us from including training in the game – the starting location seems to be intended for this, but in return it serves only plot and aesthetic purposes. For those who would hasten to argue that games should be learned through experience, I will answer that there is a certain difference between discovering new subtleties and details of gameplay that make it more complex, deeper, richer, and having difficulty developing the most basic understanding of it. Baldurs Gate 3 is the second option and it’s a bad decision. Dragon Age, which is also not a simple design in cross-section, was much more understandable and obvious in its mechanics for the newly arrived wanderer in itself, and was not lazy in properly teaching him the basics.

2. Gameplay

Let’s move on from teaching the game rules directly to them. Despite the fact that I didn’t like taking part in battles throughout my playthrough of BG3, I still had mixed opinions about the combat system here. And it’s not about the step-by-step component of the project – I don’t have any problems with that. Deceived, in fact there are problems. Implemented, in fact, very decently – I don’t know of another example where moves would be implemented in real space in the metric system, and not on a field lined with cells. But this is again a story about how the game doesn’t even try to teach you anything, and you will gain all subsequent experience solely from mistakes and miscalculations.

"In the heat of a fight, I decided to cut through the bush? Well, excuse me, my friend, this is a thorn bush and it has entwined your legs, you won’t run further.". "Did you think you were going to run and shoot?? Oh, no, sorry, you won’t have enough visibility from your new position.". “But here we have a full basement of traps, it’s better to switch manually to step-by-step mode – if you stay in real time, you’ll be incinerated in the blink of an eye. And what? We didn’t tell you about this? Well, what can I say, I’m sorry".

Seriously, I had been playing for a couple of hours at that time, I went into the tomb where the Deceased rested without picking up a torch – because who told me that a torch is a functional thing in the game – I didn’t see any traps in the darkness, but I received a dozen notifications about “passing the test”. What a test? The devil knows, of course. And then one of my companions failed the test and I helplessly watched them burn alive. The least you experience at this moment is misunderstanding, if not irritation.

I also went a little https://independentcasinosites.co.uk/review/madcasino/ overboard and turned the brightness too far down, and literally couldn’t see the traps on the floor – recommendations along the lines of “make the third image almost visible” are usually quite optimal for my eyes, but not this time.

Further in the 1st act, a burning estate is discovered – when you understand that in such places you should activate the turn-based mode yourself, and that the bottles of water with which the backpack has been stuffed all this time are a throwing object just for such cases, this segment is even passed with interest, although by that time I was angry with the game for mocking my ignorance of its rules.

These difficulties only arise when you are a beginner and take your first timid steps in unfamiliar territory. Here I will also include some aspects of communication with the game, such as moving the camera exclusively to the keyboard buttons, some of its absurd angles, hidden and implicit capabilities for controlling a squad – all this is not a flaw of BG3, however, it took me an unimaginably long time to fully adapt with painless movement through the virtual world.

What I never quite came to terms with throughout my playthrough was what character stun states were and how they stacked. Dragon Age, and a galaxy of other works, instilled in me at a basic cultural level that if in a game with a tactical bent, if you drop, immobilize or otherwise neutralize an enemy, then he will be inactive for some time, deprived of the opportunity to fight. Elementary, hit the enemy on the head with the hilt of the sword, he is knocked down for a couple of seconds – or misses his turn if the game is turn-based. In Baldurs Gate 3, this is implemented in a rather awkward way. The game, as you know, relies on its interactivity – the ability to disable the enemy not only through weapons, so to speak.

And there is a situation when you throw a bottle of oil at your enemy’s feet and he falls. You rejoice, because you incapacitated the target, making the battle easier for yourself. But what happens, this guy’s turn comes and he calmly gets up to hit you over the head for your malicious deceit. And it turns out that his fall to the ground is not a stun at all, it’s just a debuff in which hits to this target have an advantage. But if the enemy goes wrong during his move, slips and falls, then in this case his move will indeed be interrupted prematurely. A very strange mechanic, which I also took too long to comprehend, because all my previous gaming experience contradicted how it works here.

Moreover, the game has stunning in the most familiar sense, but for some reason this tactical advantage was not available to me as a player. I also still don’t understand why my own characters missed their turns, although I didn’t notice any effects on them that would explain this in any way.

An even more significant complaint about BG3 is that most of the spells or actions in the game are completely dysfunctional, or even harmful when trying to use them. A wizard, or related class, has a huge number of magical tricks at his disposal, but how many of them are good and practical enough to be used at least periodically?? I would venture to say that one tenth. In all 130 hours of playthrough, I have never encountered a situation in which the “magic lock” spell would have been useful to me. I have never had the opportunity to cast a curse, because it is associated with a number of difficulties – deciding to spend an action point on, in fact, a curse, getting close to the target, hitting it with this very curse, and not making a mistake with the effect, because what is “force damage” and how does it differ from weapon damage, I still have no idea.

Such spells should only be used on “bosses”, but the trouble is that the chance of successfully hitting them is several times less than against an ordinary enemy, which also deprives the action of its meaning. Yes, even if you get hit and apply “horror” to a ferocious enemy, nothing will prevent him from passing the resilience check and throwing off the debuff already on his turn. Therefore, from the entire priestly assortment of Shadowheart, I exclusively used healing, the “shelter” spell, from time to time “pillar of fire” and that holy whirlwind that causes damage to enemies around her. Quite modest for a choice from several dozen positions. Although, frankly speaking, many of these spells have the same principle of action, and it is extremely rare to see something really interesting.

Not to mention how limited mages are in their main resource – spell slots. Only by the 3rd act there are enough cells to allow yourself to more or less actively waste them. Until then, austerity. Although, in fact, if you resort to a “long rest” after almost every battle, then there is no such problem, but I avoided doing this, even when the weight of the bag with supplies grew over 50 kilograms. I don’t know why – probably from natural frugality, or stinginess.

Criticizing a game inspired and inspired by D&D for having gameplay built entirely around dice rolling is perhaps pointless – that was the intent, to bring a tabletop role-playing adventure to a digital format as recognizable as possible. Still, BG3 is a good example of how outdated and simply inappropriate this approach to video games is. How many times has there been a situation in which the success or failure of a duel was weighed by one single blow to the enemy – whether he would reach the enemy or pass by. And considering how difficult and unpredictable some of the fights in the game are – I stormed the entrance to the Lunar Towers for more than two hours – a miss with a chance of hitting 75% or more seems mocking. But the further you go in the game, the more the player’s squad begins to exploit their own evasiveness, to the point that you directly take it into account when drawing up battle tactics.

Baldurs Gate 3 is definitely a tactics game – a game that requires planning, informed decisions, and adaptation to a changing situation. However, the truth is that most of the tactical potential of the work is provided by the play from the environment – shadow, light, ice, fire, all sorts of abysses into which you are always trying to throw someone. The characters’ abilities as such do not offer the player much tactical flexibility, for the reasons already mentioned. As the same warrior develops, new skills appear, but in essence they represent the same attack with a sword, perhaps endowed with some additional property. As a warrior, I had mainly two options – hit the enemy’s head with a sledgehammer or try to push him off the cliff.

In the same Dragon Age there was no interaction with the environment, however, the game, which offered to take control of the same 4 heroes, corresponded much more authentically to the concept of “tactics”, requiring to distribute heroes across the battlefield, constantly moving them, pursuing priority goals, leading away from threats. Heroes, even within the same class, could have unique skills, many of which, when used correctly, could change the outcome of a fight, not to mention a combination of skills, such as splitting a creature turned into ice.

3. Character leveling and role-playing aspect

What was funny to me was that the characters’ personalities and behavior show their class status much better than their gameplay aspect. What is the fundamental difference between the strict Laesel, who is a warrior, and the frantic Karlakh, who is a barbarian, directly in battle? In my case, the fact that Laesel had three attacks per turn with the ability to increase her chance of hitting to an acceptable level, while the barbarian Karlakh had slightly stronger special attacks and was probably a little stronger. Otherwise, there was almost no difference between them – I didn’t even try to get into “multi-classing”, because I was expecting unique differences for each type of hero. Of course, there are differences, but against the general background they are completely inconspicuous. I wanted to take my own character, also a warrior, along the path of an “otherworldly knight”, which meant that he would have magical abilities, assuming that this would give me greater versatility. Ironically, it was an almost completely useless decision that only limited the potential of my protégé. Only towards the end of the game did this path find some use, when I learned to block attacks, paying for it with magic cells, and, oddly enough, during the battle with Orin the Red, where I pushed the cultists feeding her power over the edge of the arena. Although, frankly speaking, it was possible to manage with the help of thunder arrows.

Leveling up in Baldurs Gate 3 looks unusually clumsy by modern standards – the game automatically gives the hero a large amount of health and gives him a new feature. If the player is free to choose something, besides class, it is the character’s “personality traits”. Some of them are certainly useful, like an ability that prevents getting into an ambush – although this happened rarely – and there are also completely useless ones. Why, for example, can a hero be trained to wield a lute?? I taught Will to play the lute, now he can play the lute. Is it funny? Yes. Is it practical?? No, absolutely not. D&D is, among other things, associated with taverns, taverns have bards, and bards play the lute. Now Will also plays the lute for me. This very lute in this case acts as a metaphor for both the game developers’ great attention to detail and their carelessness towards the practical side of the issue.

By the way, there were bards in Dragon Age. They were implemented, not to say with great imagination – it was, in fact, an aura that raised the fighting qualities of allies, but nevertheless, the role of the bard in the squad corresponded to the spirit of Lelianna as a heroine and was useful to me as a player. About Will with a lute from BG3 I can’t say either the first or the second.

4. Interface

And finally, about how terrible the interface is in BG3. I swear, if I somehow got used to the other technical aspects of the game, the dizziness from working with its interface haunted me until the very end. You always have a huge number of buttons on your dashboard, the game itself pushes them there, and it would be okay, since it also regularly changes their places. Sometimes finding the ability you need on the “quick access panel” is a whole story, and it can be easier to go to the personal profile of the character himself and pull the ability from there. I don’t know how it was possible to come up with such an inconvenient interface, it’s nonsense. Moreover, it is divided into subcategories, “warrior”, “items”, that’s all, but it hardly gets any simpler. The situation is complicated by the fact that sometimes heroes acquire new abilities, either with experience, or through receiving an enchanted item, you forget about it, and do not remember until by chance – by chance – you see this ability hidden among a dozen others. Yes, there is a special tab where you can place skills in a convenient order, but as soon as the character picks up, for example, a torch, all the skills associated with melee weapons immediately disappear from there. Why? Because. Disgusting interface of abilities, there are simply no words. I struggled with it the whole game.

I also had problems with the inventory interface, but in the spirit of some “Ultima 7”, where it was impossible to find the thing you needed. The same idiotic approach to implementation. God forbid you have 100 positions in your bag, and, say, the 56th one turns out to be empty. The new thing you need will fly strictly into this 56th cell, and now sit and look for it. Regular difficulties with searching for potions, or something situationally needed. But, in fairness, I’m an idiot in this situation, because in the inventory there is a search by name, which I didn’t notice for two thirds of the game. Because I opened the interface via Tab to all group members at once, but there was no search there. It’s worth saying that in Dragon Age the interface was intuitive? In general, both laughter and sin.

5. Results

In this essay, I cited the gameplay features of Baldurs Gate 3, which, to one degree or another, annoyed me throughout the entire game, or part of it. They don’t make the gameplay of the game bad, but their totality, let’s say, puts the combat system of this RPG below all other aspects for me. Despite the fact that in the same memorable Dragon Age, I liked the combat system and everything connected with it almost unconditionally, being both intuitive to learn and quite smart to use. Alas, I can’t say the same about the gameplay of BG3. Yes, it has a lot of its own advantages, which often give rise to unique situations, but, no matter how great it would be to throw a goblin from a height for the spiders to prey on, the gameplay in BG3 is quite one-dimensional, impractical and inconvenient, and for all its interactivity, there is little in the way of an independent game option. As part of such a large and spectacular project, the gameplay of Baldurs Gate 3 is certainly not bad. But if I happen to want to turn to this luxurious work again, it will be last of all out of longing for the local dice and the chance to hit, the impractical spells, the ugly interface.

Next time we’ll talk about the artistic side of the game – the plot, narrative, characters and everything that they make up.