Baldur’s Gate 3 ruined every RPG I’ve played since
Larian set a bar so high it should be illegal. Now everything else feels like it’s reading from a script.
I have a specific kind of resentment for Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s the resentment of someone who can’t go back. Every RPG I’ve started since has hit the same wall around hour three: I try something the designers didn’t gift-wrap, the game blinks at me, and I remember that Larian would have had a line for this. A whole branch. A companion reacting. BG3 didn’t just raise the bar; it moved into my house and started judging the other games.
Reactivity as a love language
The trick isn’t the dice or the romance or the sheer volume of voiced dialogue, though all of that is staggering. It’s that the game almost never punishes curiosity with a brick wall. Kill the quest-giver, throw the macguffin off a cliff, talk to the dead, shapeshift into a bear in a courtroom — there’s a thread waiting on the other side. It makes you feel like a co-author instead of a tourist.
It set a bar so high it should be illegal, and now everything else feels like it’s reading from a script.
Is it flawed? Of course. Act 3’s city famously buckles under its own ambition, the back half has performance hitches that no patch fully exorcised, and the sheer density means some companions get less love than others. But these are the complaints of a game reaching too far, not falling short — and I’ll take overreach over a checklist every single time.
The bit nobody warns you about
- You will reload an honour-mode death and feel it in your soul.
- You will romance the wrong person and restart 12 hours in. No regrets.
- You will never enjoy a less-reactive RPG the same way again. Sorry.
A 9.5, and the half-point it loses to Act 3’s ambition is the most forgivable flaw I’ve docked a game for all year.
The most reactive RPG ever made — and a permanent problem for every RPG you play next.
Plus
Unreal reactivity; best companions in the genre; curiosity is always rewarded.
Minus
Act 3 strains the engine; some companions under-served; you can’t go back to lesser RPGs.
Comments (7)
act 3 buckling is real but i’d rather a game collapse from ambition than succeed at being small. 9.5 is correct and brave.
i threw the artefact off a cliff in act 1 to see what would happen and the game HAD A BRANCH FOR IT. never recovered. never will.
reloaded an honour mode death and i have not been the same person since. felt it in my actual chest.
that’s not an honour mode death then is it. that’s just tactician with extra steps and a clear conscience.
the dark urge is the best way to play and larian burying it as an optional origin is the one thing i’ll hold against them.
genuinely cannot start another RPG now. tried three. all of them feel like museums after this. thanks larian, i hate it (i love it).
100 hours is a real criticism though. i loved every minute and i still only finished it on my second attempt a year later.
i rolled the dice honestly for exactly one act before i started save scumming like a coward and the game was great either way