Baldur-dash? No! This game really will blow your mind… PETER HOSKIN reviews Baldur’s Gate III
Baldur’s Gate III (PC, £49.99)
Rating:
Verdict: A fantasy made real
I finally know what I’d tell my nerdy teenage self, if I ever had the chance. ‘Kid,’ I’d say.
‘You may think that Baldur’s Gates I and II are the best ever games of fantasy adventuring now. But in almost a quarter-century, Baldur’s Gate III will come out — and it will blow your adult mind.’
For that is what has happened.
Yesterday, the proper, final version of Baldur’s Gate III was released, after a few years in the playable-but-unfinished phase known as ‘early access’.
This game really will blow your mind…
Baldur’s Gate III has many of the joys of the original games
This is what questing ought to feel like!
I’ve resisted and I’ve resisted all that time because, in a way, my teenage self was already talking to me: ‘You’ve got to have the full experience for this one.’ And it has indeed blown my adult mind.
Baldur’s Gate III has many of the joys of the original games, not least in its wonderful setting (the medieval fantasy world of Faerûn, ripped straight from Dungeons & Dragons) and story (involving the insidious threat of the Mind Flayers).
But it also offers tremendous improvements. Its fully 3D world isn’t just beautiful, it’s also packed with thoroughfares and secret places and hidden things — this is what questing ought to feel like.
And it also features surprisingly, though brilliantly, tricky combat. You’ll have to think creatively, as well as tactically, if your party of delightful misfits is to survive its encounters with bandits, brain-like bugs and worse.
Admittedly, because I held on till now, I’m still only about halfway through what I imagine is at least a 50-hour experience — so consider this star-rating provisional.
But I’ve already seen enough to know that teenage me is turning absolutely goblin-green with envy.
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