Last week I finally finished Baldur’s Gate 3. It took me over 100 hours. What a journey it’s been! I’ll first recap the things I did after my previous post: After wrapping up some companions’ quests, I went back to the foundry and found out more about the hostages. Then I tried the Iron Throne again. This time I knew what to expect and I had more levels under my belt. I figured I could open up cells by shooting the switches from afar. Sadly I didn’t manage to save the loyal Mind Flayer and I also managed to not get my main character back in time. Luckily (and very cool) he washed up on shore and I could revive him.

I went back again to the foundry and killed the oppressors. I almost succeeded in keeping the workers alive. It’s moments like this that keeps you wondering what could have happened if I had approached things differently. I constantly promise myself that I will “do better” in a next run. After the foundry, it was cool to see people standing by the collapsed watchers. Some were happy and some wondered how they would be save now. Cool attention to detail!

Then I went for the endgame. I choose to become a mind flayer myself. I was a warlock after all and one who welcomed the pact he’d made with the fiend. He figured he could become so much more as an illithid. And he still didn’t fully trust the Emperor. The endgame was very cool. It took a couple of tries and when my main character fell into the abyss (which later turned out to be just a lower level, because he turned up unharmed), Astarion once again managed to save the day by delivering the killing blow. What a character!

The ending was great. The way people reacted to my transformation was fun. Especially Minc was hilareous. And I couldn’t help but wonder how else it could have turned out. What if I’d made other choices? Made more of a connection to my companions, or had chosen other ones?

So I immediately started over with a new character. I wanted to try a more melee build. The Dark Urge as a monk with Lae’zel as a fighter and Karlach as a Barbarian. Wyll also had to be there. All the characters I didn’t play with the first time. It was weird encountering Shadowheart and Astarion for the first time and pretending that I didn’t know them and not be friendly to them. Before I knew it, I was almost halfway through act 1 again. I don’t know if I’ll continue or let it rest for a while., but I do know I want to explore more content I missed the first time around at some point.

The game definitely deserves all the praise it has gotten. I enjoyed it very much and it sucked me right in. I wanted to play it at every spare moment I got. It’s a rare game that keeps me interested right up until the end. I find that most long games drag on too long. There are some aspects I didn’t like as much, such as the isometric view and having to rest every time to access your spells. And the game started to lag a bit in the latter half on the PS5. But those are only minor quibbles. It’s a 5 out of 5 game for me. I liked it more than Baldur’s Gate I and II, but that probably due to me having played those only in the last couple of years and not when they were released. It’s goodbye for now and onto some shorter games before the next big one.