The closest experience to Dungeons & Dragons ever created
On October 6th the Larian Studios have released Baldur's gate 3 early access for Steam, GoG and Stadia, priced at € 59,99. Famous for one of the cornerstones of the CRPG genre, Divinity: Original Sin.
Furthermore, the story of Baldur's gate 3 is not written by Larian's guys, but rather revolves around the universe of the beloved. Forgotten Realms, di D&D.
We at Binfogamer.com received an early access key and explored this huge game world for several hours, and without further ado, we tell you our experience in the world of Baldur's gate 3.
Let's start the adventure
After a first CGI movie truly spectacular, we have to create our character through the character creator who provides many parameters, we have the possibility to choose the race, sub-race, class and sub-class of our protagonist, as well as obviously changing his physical appearance.
To be precise we can choose between 8 races and subraces of D&D and 6 classes (with different subclasses), so at first glance they may seem enough, but especially for those who play D&D creating the character will notice that they are not all.
No fear, we are still in early access, in fact, the same Lariant Studios has confirmed that by the release of the full game new races, subraces, classes and subclasses will be added.
In any case, the game editor seems to be promising, we are aware that some features are still missing that we will surely add later.
We were very impressed right away with the faces of the characters, whether they are npc, allies, enemies or the same protagonist that we are going to create. A truly meticulous care, which we cannot say for the rest of the body or the animations, still very woody and not very defined.
We also encountered several graphical and technical bugs, all things that the development team is still working on to solve them, things that we have already taken into account in our tried, after all it is an early access for this very reason. In addition, several players have encountered some crashes, which should have been fixed with the latest patch recently released.
Returning to us, after we have decided the appearance, race and class of our character, the game will ask us to create with the character creator, "our muse", our ideal type of man / woman. We still don't know how this will affect the game, after that, we can start our adventure.
A somewhat turbulent start
Before delving into the gist of this preview, let's see what awaits us in this early access.
Early Access is a complete narrative adventure (Act 1) covering over 25 hours of gameplay, including a tutorial. It was designed to be very dense, and with absurd replayability, thanks in part to the 46.000 lines of dialogue, the 600 characters to meet, the 146 spells and actions, the 80 fights and a large area to explore.
In short, even if in early access, it will feel like playing a complete game, especially if we take into account the replayability of the title. We also have confirmation that for the final version Act 2 and 3 are already in development, and if they are at least as big as Act 1, we will find ourselves in front of a game with a huge amount of mammoth contents.
The land of Faerûn is in turmoil.
Refugees cross the wilderness, fleeing the hellish fortress of Elturel. A vicious cult marches across the Sword Coast, uniting every race of monsters
and men under the banner of a cryptic god called the Absolute. Chaos strikes the foundations of Faerûn and no one can escape its claws.
Neither you.
The grotesque nautilus ship appears out of nowhere, obscuring the sun. Its twisted tentacles tear you away from where you are. The Mind flayers have arrived, imprisoning you on their ship, infecting you with their horrible parasite. You will become one of them.
By fate or luck, survive when the Nautiloid crashes into the land of the Sword Coast. You left for civilization, desperate for a cure for
parasite that infests your brain, eventually you will find yourself in the midst of a conspiracy that extends to the Nine Hells.
New enemies await.
As for the old enemies ... the shadows stir.
And all roads lead to the legendary city of Baldur's Gate.
This is how our adventure begins, on the ship of the Mind Flayers, infected with a parasite that will transform us into one of them, while some red dragons ridden by some Githyanki will attack the ship. In the midst of this confusion we will look for a way out of the ship.
From this moment begins the tutorial of the game that will accompany us until the escape from the Nautiloid of the Mind Flayers. once they have escaped and crashed to the ground, this great "game" will begin.
Dungeons & Dragons is that you?
Let's talk now about the gameplay of Baldur's Gate 3, which can be done in single player or in online multiplayer with friends. We can say right away that it is one of the best of the genre, is also the one that comes closest to a real D&D game.
Baldur's Gate III combat is turn-based, similar to previous Larian games, Divinity: Original Sin and Divinity: Original Sin II, but with even more elements taken from D&D.
the roll of the dice will be one of the most important mechanics of the title, as they are not only used during fights, such as to save themselves from a possible deadly attack, do damage, avoid falling into certain traps or pools in the ground.
But the roll of the dice is also fundamentally in exploration (a good shot in perception will allow us to discover hidden traps) or during dialogue choices, for example with a good shot we can convince someone of our innocence or deceive someone else etc.
The choices that the game offers us are literally many for our every decision we can decide life and death not only of the NPCs, but of our own allies. In the limit of the hardware / game our possibilities are endless. We are the creators of this adventure ourselves.
At the moment the gameplay seems most of the time balanced, but we can find some imbalance in the warlock class which at the beginning of the game seems quite over power.
Some fights and all too well hidden traps will give us a lot of trouble e if taken lightly they will lead us inexorably to defeat with an attached game over.
An Early Access not free from defects
As already mentioned at the beginning we found several graphic and technical bugs, with woody animations, unsynchronized lip and various crashes. All things we expected as it is early access, the game is in current development.
Moreover, thanks to the various feedbacks released by all early adopters it will be possible for developers find the different problems and fix them in time.
The game certainly deserves it and we can only imagine how beautiful and improved it will be in its version 1.0, but surely many of you will ask are these 60 euros worth?
The answer is certainly yes, if the early access has already satisfied us so much the full game is worth them all, with closed eyes. But is early access also valid?
Let's say that the most suitable answer is "yes and no", for sure it already looks like a complete game, but taking into account the various bugs and defects and how much content is still missing, like the Italian language absent in early access ma present in the final version of the game, we think that even a small discount for those who buy it in early access (even if only to incentivize the purchase) would have been the most correct move.
In conclusion
Concluding we were very satisfied with the work of Larian Studios, brought to life with Baldur's Gate 3 one of the best games in the genre. We recommend it to everyone, whether you are a veteran or are just starting to discover this huge genre.
Still the early access is full of flaws and lacks a lot of content, but there is already so much of it that it seems a complete game, we can't wait to experience new adventures in Baldur's Gate 3 with the next updates that the developers will release over time.
