I pitched the strategy and we promptly returned to the game. An idea sprung into my head as I was standing in the shower, wasting water as I thought about Baldur’s Gate 3 and the encounter in the cavern. The towel was thrown in as we bowed out for the night, but the thinking didn’t stop. ![]() We even attempted having two of our party Misty Step across the chasm and pre-emptively attack from above, but this inadvertently caused my paladin to break his oath – and I’m no oathbreaker! We attempted rushing in and fighting, but the bandits were just as happy to blow themselves up too if it meant sending us to the Nine Hells. We tried the diplomatic route to no avail. What followed was about two hours’ worth of different strategies and attempts. We made a plan, but as they say, man plans and the dice laugh – or something like that. ![]() What we wanted to do, and hoped we could, was defeat the bandits and save the man. These bandits had – rather dastardly – spread oil everywhere and placed explosive barrels around ensuring that everyone would be annihilated if necessary. In the back of this room was a man tied to a chair, receiving a beating. We were in a cavern with a few bandits that were one conversation away from becoming hostile. Though some will snub their noses at the notion, one particular encounter saw my wife and I reloading numerous times as we sought to experiment with different strategies to get the outcome we hoped we could achieve. While the combat is slower than real-time fighting, it’s far more meticulous and rewarding. It then boils down to tough decisions trying to work out where you want to move your hero given they can only cover a few meters at a time, who to attack with your primary action, and whether your bonus action should be spent on attacking, healing, or something else entirely. Players and enemies alike take turns performing an array of actions during a fight, with various restrictions on movement and number of attacks per go. You can imagine my relief, then, when it immediately clicked.Ĭombat in Baldur’s Gate 3 is handled in turns. When it comes to RPGs, I’m far more used to the Elder Scrolls-style of adventuring, and while I had dabbled in D&D, I wasn’t sure Baldur’s Gate 3’s combat was going to grab me. It’s here that Baldur’s Gate 3 yet again captures the joy of D&D: It can be played entirely co-operatively.Īnd so we set off on our quest, not knowing what to expect, but so far enthralled and somewhat overwhelmed with what we were about to undertake. My wife, on the other hand, created an elf ranger with proficiencies in being sneaky and the ability to speak with animals. ![]() After about an hour of tweaking, I had settled on a human paladin (I know, standard fare), with an oath to uphold justice and some proficiencies in a few areas including Intimidation and Persuasion. Part of this is thanks to the near overwhelming character creation screen. ![]() The appeal of Baldur’s Gate 3 is immediately obvious in that each player’s story will be unique and each playthrough of this 100-plus hour campaign will be just as interesting as the first. After being infected with a parasite that will eventually transform them into a monster, the player is thrust into a living, breathing world jam-packed full of characters as complex as the rules governing the combat. Like any great D&D campaign, Baldur’s Gate 3 kicks off with a bang, a call to action, and an intriguing mystery to solve. Larian Studios has somehow managed to nail this sense of creativity in Baldur’s Gate 3, despite the challenge of trying to think up the various shenanigans players will attempt. D&D has always succeeded in capturing the imagination of players, letting them try out anything their minds can concoct. But this time, the team sought to infuse its latest offering with the Dungeons & Dragons 5 th Edition ruleset. The genius at work behind Baldur’s Gate 3 is Larian Studios, a company nestled in Belgium and one that has delivered many a critically acclaimed RPG. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a triumph, a new pinnacle in what it means to be a role-playing game. I walked in uncertain about how I would engage with a turn-based game, but after the singsong of morning birds heralded the rise of the sun and demanded I leave my PC and go to bed, I would do nothing but think about my next quest, the next conversation, and the next battle I would invariably find myself in. It’s not often that a game changes the way I perceive a genre.
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