What Is Baldur’s Gate 3

So, normally when I write about board games, this is the section on how to play the game. I’m going to touch on that some for Baldur’s Gate 3 here, but also, what is the game in general?

Baldur’s Gate is a role playing game on the computer. You make your character and take them through adventures having dialogs with the NPCs both in your adventuring party and outside of it, to explore the world and to try and solve the problem that you’ve been faced with. You also face off against enemies in combat.

As you progress through the game you also progress through levels for your character and party members. So you gain more hit points, improve stats, and unlock more spells. All of this is taken directly from Dungeons and Dragons as to how you progress.

And that is the majority of the game. It’s about dialog, combat, and exploring the world. All the while working through the story that of the game.

Is The Story Good?

Let’s start then by talking about the story. Baldur’s Gate 3’s story is engaging from the get go. The game drops you into the story and you just need to start running with it. I like the set piece that you start in, which is in the trailers, of the hells.

And it teaches you while still expecting you to play the game at the start of the story. If you fail to do some things that will impact your game going forward from the get go. It might not be the biggest things, but you might miss out on a whole character if you aren’t careful, which is pretty impressive to start a game.

The story continues to grow from there. I like how it progresses not at that quick a pace, so it gives time for side quests. But it progresses in ways that makes you think about the story before. You need to remember who the characters are and where you’ve met them before. Because, it will matter as characters come back again in the story.

How Does Combat Work?

I think that combat is the area that trips most people up. Cut scenes with dialog and picking options. That all is normal. But the combat in Baldur’s Gate 3 is Dungeons and Dragons combat. You get an initiative, you pick from a lengthy set of spells or you need to consider your combat moves otherwise. And you do that for your whole party. And the monsters work in that way as well.

I know from what I’ve heard that some people don’t like this style of combat as well. And it is not going to be for everyone because it is different. That said, I like it. I like it because I don’t need to be quick on the buttons. When I play a game like Dragon Age, I set them casting some spell or using some shot, and I just keep on eye on cooldowns for when I can do it again. Or I need to try and spam moves or button mash. But here, I take my time to figure out what I want to do and I do that.

Now, as you gain more spells, it might become overwhelming for the player in the game. And it helps that I know what the spells or moves are from Dungeons and Dragons. So I sit down and I see “Fireball” I know what it is going to do. If you are new to Baldur’s Gate 3 and to Dungeons and Dragons it is going to be a different experience for you.

Final Thoughts on Baldur’s Gate 3

Why isn’t there more, you might ask. Surely there are more elements of the game to breakdown. There kind of are, and there kind of aren’t. So much of the rest of the game I’d consider to be traditional in what you are doing. If I’m playing a game or have played fantasy role playing games, or even something like Horizon Zero Dawn, you know what to do in these sorts of games.

The big question is, does the game grab you with the story? And is the combat something that works for you. I think some people will love the combat. I think other people, it is going to be too slow or too overwhelming with everything. And because of that, there is going to be a learning curve that some people won’t want to do.

For me, I love what the game does. I love leveling up my characters and seeing everything that can happen in the story. And I like the check system, maybe the other thing I could have written about. But the classic Dungeons and Dragons D20 system brought over to a video game, and it works well.

Have you played Baldur’s Gate 3, do you enjoy it. And is it worth getting and playing the older Baldur’s Gate games?

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The Game

In Slay the Spire you are battling through rooms as you climb your way up three levels of a tower. Each of the levels get progressively harder, but that’s okay, because you get more and better cards. Like a standard deck building game, you start with a certain number of cards, generally 10, enough for two hands. You’ll have some basic attacks and basic defenses, but as you clear rooms, and beat monsters, you get the option to add more cards to your deck. These cards can give you better defense, more attack, or maybe even some permanent affect like dealing poison at the start of each of your turns. You also get relics which can do all sorts of crazy things, some give you more energy to spend, make attacks or defense better, heal you, give you an extra card every few turns, or more gold. If you can survive all the way to the top of the tower you’ve won, if not, you start at the bottom again and climb away.

What Doesn’t Work

Some climbs are just going to be better than others. When you get cards and relics, they are fairly random. Sure with cards you can pick from three, but if it doesn’t work with your strategy do you take a less ideal card or just skip a card all together. And some relics are way better than others depending on what you are doing, attacks that cost 0 doing 4 more damage is great for The Silent if you are going with one build, but if you are going for poison, way less useful. So there is that randomness. But honestly, that is the only thing that I’d consider a weakness in the game. And since the runs are fast.

What Works

The room system works really well. You are given a branching path up each level and you can see the whole thing. So if I know that I want to go to a merchant room as fast as possible, I can plan for that. If I just want to fight for a little bit, can do that. If I want the random rooms, they are easy to plan around as well. Overall, the whole room system just works really well because you can plot your course to some extent and choose what you are looking for. I go for routes that will optimize how many relics I get, permanent effects, because I like to get a lot of them. But if you want to optimize your health, it’s probably better to avoid those epic monsters.

I also like the characters. There are four different characters that you can get in the game. You start with one and when you get far enough, you unlock another and then another, and another. It is a blast to play the different characters, and the characters are really different. The Ironclad is your most basic aggressive character who is going to be able to dish out massive hits. Then the Silent gives you either shivs or poison but is about dishing out damage in a more defensive way. I’ll let you find out about the other two characters yourself, if the game is interesting. But they are more complex.

Each character has multiple ways to play them as well which is awesome. The Ironclad, I said that he’s good for dealing massive amounts of damage, and that’s true. But you can also play them more defensively. The Silent you can either build towards poison or shivs. It might overlap later as you go though. But each strategy is viable. And this is where some of the randomness that I was talking about can be bad. If I build the silent to attack with shivs and then I start getting all poison cards, I’m going to end up with a weird mix and be less effective. But if I get the right cards, you can do crazy combos that make the game a ton of fun.

Who Is This Game For?

Is this just a video game for board gamers? I don’t think so, I think a lot of players of video games will enjoy the rogue-like nature of each run. The deck building aspect is there, and it comes from board games, but it’s an easy enough concept to understand. So I think this game with it’s low barrier of entry and fun game play will work for a lot of people. The hard core FPS players, now, maybe they won’t like it as much but the more casual player, this game is a blast.

Final Thoughts

There aren’t a ton of video games that I come back to over and over again. I like video games as a concept, but too often I’ll play, get distracted, forget where I am in a story and have to start over again. Slay the Spire is not like that. Slay the Spire is simple to play for an hour, stop and do something else for a week and then drop back it and play again. It reminds me of some older video games that way. You play them for a little bit and then you put it down, and pick it up whenever you want. The less time I have to play longer games, at least video games, the more I appreciate games like this.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: A

Let me start out by saying that I enjoy that style of combat. I like picking out what skill I want to use and who I want to target and then letting the combat play out. When it comes to real time combat, I’m not as good because I like to figure out a strategy of who I want to attack whom in the game and figure out tactics. Now, a lot of modern party based combat games, think Dragon Age, do allow for some tactical choices, and I spend time, especially before final boss fights, tweaking the combat to how I want it to be, but in the case of Final Fantasy, you get complete control over it, then you just watch a round of combat unfold.

Also interesting in this game is the need to grind. It isn’t something that you see too often in older video games where you have to spend the time leveling your character up before you can take on a boss, it’s generally assumed that you’ll be at the right level by the time you make it to the boss. However, in Final Fantasy you get to grind. That does mean that sometimes the game just sort of stalls and you are doing the same sort of combat against the same sort of monsters over and over again. That is a bit of downside to the game as you don’t get a ton of experience points for certain monsters so you feel like you are stuck in certain areas of the game or going over the same ground again and again.

Besides the combat in this game, how is the story and game play?

The story is pretty straight forward, you are going around trying to gain various orbs and rescue the princess, but the rescue the princess quest feels more like a learn the game mechanics quest and figure out that you do need to grind some. It sounds like there are more quests in the game, but at this point in time I’m still grinding away. I do like the fact that I get to name my characters and choose what classes they are to build up my party of characters. That means that I can focus it how I want to, though, I feel like having a good blend is going to be what makes the difference at the end of the game.

The non-combat game play is pretty straight forward. You’re running around a map looking for combats. And by looking for combats, I mean having them randomly drop you into one. This can make it a bit tricky at times because you aren’t sure when you are going to find a combat, and depending on the area you are in, you aren’t sure if you’re going to be able to handle the combat. So at times you’ll be running as fast you can to get back to the inn and save the game so that your characters and rest and heal up.

Will I continue to play this game?

While I do find how you get into combat a bit wonky and there is a lot of grinding for XP that you seem to have to do. I do plan on finishing this game. It feels like a classic, it’s easy enough to play, and my party of Dave, Boo!, YaYu, and Gary need to prove that they can actually become capable fighters. It’s also a very relaxing game to play, sure it’s a bit annoying when Boo! is doing melee damage 1 point at a time because I’ve run out of spell slots and then Boo! misses, but all the combats are easy to see what’s going on, and the run away mechanism keeps the party alive most of the time.

It’s a classic, it’s a fun time, and while it might take me a while to get through, I’ve enjoyed my time with it. If you are interested in the Final Fantasy games and want to try the original, it certainly isn’t a bad idea to jump into this game and give it a whirl. And, like I said, it’s not that stressful a game to play. Once you get leveled enough it makes it pretty easy to grind out more levels, it just takes time.

Game Suggestion: Own

[Game Suggestion
Own: Own it, it’s a classic and fun to play
Play: If you can find it and it’s your type of game check it out
Pass: This game sucks, why did they ever make it]