Baldur’s Gate 3 Proves That Quality Matters

The recently released game of Baldurs Gate 3 is getting more and more praise, day by day, and deservingly so. It has an increasing number of players and is beating all kinds of records. Finally, a game that is of the highest quality and sets the standard for many games to come. It is not like every game needs to be almost perfect, but there they should be at least finished products. You shouldn’t be forced to play unfinished games – never.

The Core Mechanic of Baldurs Gate 3

The game relies on a lot of RNG (random number generation). The core mechanic of the entire game is dice rolling. It is quite often modified by your statistics, attributes, abilities, skills, class, and other external factors. You might have a higher chance or a lower chance depending on all of the above. There are two types of random rolls, the first is transparent while lockpicking for example, or while talking with others. The other one is hidden, in combat or while throwing spells, there are attack rolls and saving throws that are calculated in the background but are also random. The entire game is a wild ride and a real gamble.

The amount of luck needed in some scenarios is comparable to those in the casino. The odds are often not on your side, but here you have the option of quick-saving and quick-loading. If you could only do that while playing poker online life would be so much easier. But the reality is that Baldurs Gate 3 is still just a game so you do not have to worry that much about all the random aspects of the gameplay, but maybe we are getting ahead of ourselves and should look at the basics and that this game actually is.

What is Baldurs Gate 3?

Baldurs Gate 3 is the third entry in a famous franchise of classic RPGs that started all the way back in 1998. It was developed and published by Larian Studios, people behind the recently acclaimed RPG games of their own in Divinity Original Sin and Divinity Original Sin 2. Opposed to the original two games this time it has turn-based combat, but it is nothing like you’ve ever experienced before. The game has been enjoyed by hundreds of players who usually are not fond of turn-based tactical combat, yet here it fits so perfectly, with so many possibilities. It allows you to think about many more solutions than you would have by playing a real-time action game.

The entire main mechanics of the game are based on the fifth edition of a paper Dungeons and Dragons RPG; however, it was modified to fit the video game world. Our goals from the beginning of the game are quite similar to those from Cyberpunk 2077. We are infected with some kind of parasite and need to find a way to get rid of it, and it gives us the motivation to go on adventures, explore, and fight or talk our way through hundreds or thousands of situations.

Critical Success

First of all, after over two weeks after it’s official release on August 3rd, the game got tons of reviews from all of the biggest journalist portals in the world. The Metascore for the game exceeded 97 and placed the game in the first place of PC video games of all time (Metascore is a score from the website Metacritic. It allows you to rate games and other media, similar to IMDB for movies). It surpassed all of the Half Life games and the previous leader in Disco Elysium.

Most of the reviewers agree that the game has little to no flaws, is a finished product with some minor bugs, which can be usually resolved by loading a previous save file, and it is a title where you will be saving a lot. It is finally a finished product on release that actually works, does not crush all the time, does not run in 5 FPS, and you get to actually enjoy the game without the worry of technical issues in general (of course there are individual cases with bugs and issues but nothing more than there should be on a day of release of a huge day).

Players Love the Adventure

Apart from the praise by the journalists and critics the game is heavily praised by the entire gaming community. The game has a steady score of over 9/10 on Metacritic in the category of User Score with over 7600 ratings being given to the game. On Steam the game has overwhelmingly positive reviews, and people are playing it, oh they are playing it all right.

According to SteamCharts the game is the second most played single-player game of all time, with the peak of over 875 thousand players at the same time. It is only beaten by Elden Ring. It is also overall seventh if you count multiplayer games like Counter-Strike, Lost Ark or PUBG. It means that it is in the top 10 most played games of all time with all-time peak. In addition to that, it was in eighth place, but the game did something unthinkable. It has beaten its own record in a week. It had over 813 thousand players at the same time, and a week later (2 weeks after the game’s official release) it was able to beat it previous record. It almost never happens, especially sometime after the release.

To add to that, the game was also released on GOG, not only on Steam. It means that the game does not have extensive anti-piracy measures. It is a bold move from the developers because it makes getting the game from an unofficial source quite easy, yet it still beats all these records, and people are paying for it and playing it from the official sources like Steam.

Overall, it is a success critically and amongst the entire gaming community. We need to praise games like this, and hopefully there are many more to come in the future from many various developers. Sometimes it’s great to be a gamer. Keep on gaming!