Baldur's Gate 3 - Finished a second playthrough of BG3 with the Dark Urge. It was mostly an evil playthrough, but I did a lot of talking my way out of problems/lying to people rather than fighting everything I encountered.
I was a Lore Bard, Expertised all the Cha skills and used them extensively to slither out of fights or just to be a pain in the ass. Also Insight and Perception.
Spoilers ahead!
Some highlights:
-I chose the “fantasize about cutting off Gale’s hand” option, which ended up with me actually doing it. RIP Gale I guess.
-Sided with Minthara/goblins over the grove. Feels bad, and the plot is less rich after that due to not having tiefling NPCs, Karlach, Wyll, or Halsin. I only had Shadowheart/Astarion/Lae’zel for a lot of the run, until Minthy joined in Act 2.
-One advantage of that, though, is that you get a lot of those characters’ unique dialogue with each other!
-Did Lae’zel’s sidequest which i managed to skip first playthrough. Good stuff! I really enjoyed the plot there. One thing I didn’t like though — Lae’zel still says “for Vlakaaith!” even though I betrayed her. Feels kinda silly.
-Act 2 again is a bit depressing because I had the dark urge to kill Isobel and did it. Bye Jaheira and Isobel and Isobel’s gay wife. I feel like this part of the game is the part that feels much emptier than it did first playthrough. No saving the rot. feelsbadman
-Did the Shar path for Shadowheart this time. My culty little pal. Again, objectively the worse route but I figured I’d pack it all into the one playthrough.
-Minthara is fun; very pragmatic and driven, and has basically no moral qualms about anything. I wish she had a little bit more, especially since her camp dialogue is glitched to talk about Gale all the time, even though I didn’t even meet anyone called Gale. LOL. She could be a GOAT character but she ends up falling short thanks to the decreased dialogue and lack of a character quest. I was surprised that she didn’t have more dialogue during the Orin fight. I needed my fix of toxic yuri. Her voice acting is super super super good.
-Also, did her romance. it is very brief and doesn’t really reveal that much about her. Very disappointing.
she’s still my hot, evil wife though.
-Did Vampire Ascendent Astarion. Again, objectively bad choice, but it’s very fun to watch him chew scenery in the lategame.
-I accepted Bhaal into my heart.
-I gave Raphael the Crown of Karsus in exchange for the Hammer. Nothing could go wrong
-I sided with Gortash. I think it would have been cool if he was a PC, instead of him just dying. I really liked the Dark Urge’s tie with both Gorty and with Orin. It really adds an extra dimension to their stories, especially Orin who didn’t seem to have much in a ‘regular’ playthrough.
-One random highlight is when I lied to the projection that Lorrakon set up and told him I was a tax collector and he gave me his tax money. LOL
-It felt pretty good to tell the Emperor to fuck himself. Stupid slimy bastard.
-Speaking of which, I used my one shot of Power Word Kill from being Bhaal’s Chosen on him in the final boss fight after chipping him a bit.
-Ending was ‘make everyone thralls, except Minthy who will help me usher in a reign of darkness’. Definitely not a great ending or very fleshed out compared to the regular ending, but it was honestly what I deserved. Sadly, Raphael didn’t come and try to take my crown. I could have taken that bitch.
Gameplay notes:
-Still did the base difficulty. I think I’d want to have a full party to play Hard.
-Bard is a fun class. Cutting Words is quite cool and made a lot of things that were hitting miss. I mostly used the Inspiration on that. Having to determine that you will use Inspo at the beginning of the turn makes its offensive capability less useful than normal.
-For my extra spells, I took Fireball and Counterspell the first time (because I was missing Gale and Wyll, and Counterspell rules), and Misty Step and Shield the second time. Teleporting is good, as it turns out!
-Went with a Rogue/Ranger multiclass for Astarion, which is way better than just Rogue. The extra attack on turn 1 at level 3 + extra attack at level 5 really adds the DPS element that Rogue desperately needed. I did Thief/Gloomstalker. Two bonus actions a turn is pretty swell for stabbing and hiding and dashing. He could really shoot down enemies a lot better than the first time.
-Did Tempest Cleric with Shadowheart. Much like first playthrough, she peaks midgame with max damage Shatter and Spirit Guardian, but she’s always pretty good. GOAT against Ketheric.
-I did Champion Lae’zel. Generally worse than the Battlemaster because of lack of options to increase accuracy, but once she gets rolling with Great Weapon she’s still solid. Action Surge is also sexy, especially with the ease of Short Rest in BG3 vs. 5e DnD
-Minthy is generally very solid; high AC, divine smite, Vow of Enmity. All around very good.
-Using a smaller party makes long rests more common. Didn’t really push my resources, but might have on the higher difficulty!
Final thoughts:
Gameplay is engaging and compelling; combines turn-based/grid-based tabletop gameplay into a game format quite well. The luck aspect is a bit of a damper on otherwise excellent combat. I liked how they took some of the weaker spells and abilities in 5e proper and buffed them. Definitely not an easy game, even on base difficulty, and has a lot of tricky bosses that you have to adjust your strategies to beat. Raphael was probably my favorite fight (and not just because of the music, although it helps), but I also really liked Cazador, Orin, Gortash, the goblin leader, and a lot of other random encounters which ended up being quite challenging and fun to beat. I want to revisit the game on Hard at some point.
I also like how customizable your party is and how you can play around with different builds if you want. I used Bard and Paladin and they felt like they played very different roles in the party while both being incredibly useful. The combinations of characters and classes you could play seems like it could lend a lot of replay value and tinkering around with the multiclass system is something I am interested in.
Plot is a mix of standard DnD flair with mindflayers, which adds an extra supernatural/horror element that I really liked. I wouldn’t say the plot is amazing and I think there’s definitely some parts that could have been done better, but overall I was satisfied with the progression. It starts a little slow, and Act 2 does feel a little fillery at times, but I thought Act 3 does a great job of tying together the threads.
Characters are the highlight of the game. All of your party members have fleshed out motives, backstories, and opinions on the journey. I like how the game gives you a built-in excuse to have party members of varying philosophies and alignments, which allows you to have Astarion and Wyll, two people whose life philosophies and moral codes are diametrically opposing, together in the same party without it feeling stupid or out of character for either. My faves are Lae’zel, Astarion, Karlach, Wyll, and of course Gortash, who revels in being the slimiest tyrant. All of them have compelling backstories and fun interplay with the other PCs. Gortash is a weird mix of power-hungry tyrant and actually a bit optimistic compared to your average character of his archetype?
I think all of the PCs are pretty good, though; I ended up with a positive opinion of all of them, even Gale who is the whitest white man to ever exist.. Halsin and Jaheira are a little less compelling but still likeable. Raphael and Mizora are two of the other highlights from the NPC cast, but a lot of them are quite good. Isobel and Dame Aylin are a great couple <3. Really enjoy their defying fate energy and Dame Aylin is suuuper fucking hot. Really missed them on this most recent run.
The voice acting really lends a lot to this! The game’s voice acting is almost universally very good (aside from Cazador, who sounds like my trying to impersonate a generic villain); Astarion and Lae’zel and Minthara are all great, and Gortash and Orin and Raphael have the right amount of villain pizzazz to make them compelling. I also really like the character designs and the outfit choices, and I really like that you can use not to wear a goofy helmet if you get it.
Some less good things would be
1. the load times and crashing on the steam deck is definitely a problem. I had a few cutscenes also fail to run properly, especially in the Astral Plane/Shadowfell. there are some times when things glitched out, and sometimes spells would take a minute to kick in.
2. the music. way too much of the game has barely noticeable music which is a shame. raphael’s song being a big exception.
3. some weird glitches, especially involving minthara’s dialogue. she repeated this line to me about gale like four times and he wasn’t even in my party. very odd and immersion breaking. really should be fixed.
Overall, though, I had a great experience! Really enjoyed this game and its characters!
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