Since April, my brain has been wholly and happily occupied by thoughts of magic, 20-sided dice, and words with far too many apostrophes.
Baldur’s Gate 3 (BG3) is the latest instalment in the role-playing video game series based on Dungeons and Dragons, released in 2023 to massive acclaim. I, being embarrassingly late to the party, decided to try it out for myself on a whim when the final update was released.
And because it’s my blog and I make the rules, I’m going to talk about my experience! Be warned that this will be rife with plot spoilers.
How did I get here?
I didn’t even set out to play it for real at first, I’d only wanted to look at the character creator. I love finding knitting inspiration (knitspiration, if you will) in media, and thought that I could sift through clothing options there to find something knit-worthy. Even after I realized that you couldn’t change clothes in BG3’s character creator, I still found myself poking around.
The next thing I knew, I had created Centuria Porphyra — a purple-haired half-elf warlock and utterly shameless self-insert. “Centuria” being the Latin word for century — which is what my name means in French, and “Porphyra” being the ancient Greek word for purple.
What little I knew about BG3 came from niche pop culture circles — memes, gaming channels on YouTube, and the rave reviews from folks like my husband, my dad, and my brother — all of whom have logged hundreds of hours playing through the game multiple times.
Nothing could prepare me, however, for the sheer scope of this game. It’s truly a feat of engineering, with tens of thousands of possibilities — even the most innocuous player decision has ripple effects throughout the story, for better and for worse.
I’ve heard BG3 described as a “dating simulator with extra steps,” and I would agree with that assessment. It’s more than collecting a merry band of misfits in a fantastical realm. Each companion is a richly-developed character with complex motivations and backstory.
Oh, and you can romance most of them.
Romance: Oops, I fell in love with pixels
Astarion was the only character I knew anything about going in — and even then, it was surface-level stuff: a handsome, unbelievably sassy, vampire spawn rogue. I knew I was done for immediately when he called me “darling,” and it made me sink into the couch and kick my feet like a lovestruck teenager.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is a wild departure from the games I typically reach for. My wheelhouse is more along the lines of life simulators, sandbox games, and puzzle-heavy mysteries. Story-rich romance doesn’t happen in those (at least not in the same way). To say I was out of my depth was an understatement.
Case in point, I accidentally became the centre of a love triangle by Act Two. Besides Astarion, Centuria also caught the attention of Lae’zel, a Githyanki warrior from the Astral Plane. Strong, intimidating as hell, and charmingly intense.
When Lae’zel’s romance scene kicked off, I yelped so loud it startled our cat. I agonized for real-life hours over which paramour to choose. I even texted my husband in a blind panic about it while he was at work:
After several strategic saves and reloads to weigh my options, I decided to return to an earlier save from just before Lae’zel and Centuria’s relationship moved to the next level. Thereby circumventing any broken hearts, and remaining faithful to Astarion — lost gameplay progress be damned. Although, I am already planning on replaying once more, but under the “Centuria x Lae’zel” timeline. And if I’m honest, even more times to eventually romance everyone.
Battle Tactics: Apparently I like strategy now
I’d never been very good at combat, which was the main deterrent that kept me from trying BG3 for the longest time. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the combat system very forgiving.
As a ‘spell slinger,’ I developed a strategy that I was quite proud of: maximum damage, maximum chaos. I became a big proponent of spells like Eldritch Blast and Cloud of Daggers very quickly, especially for crowd control. This method also extended to my party members, and I’d choose the most damage-dealing spells and feats upon levelling up.
My party usually consisted of Astarion — because Centuria seemed the type to take her boyfriend everywhere, and there were a lot of locks that needed picking; Shadowheart — an austere, gothic cleric who became the unofficial healer of the group (before I even knew I could change her specification to be an actual healer); and then in the final slot, I’d swap between Lae’zel and Karlach — a tiefling barbarian with the personality of Clifford the Big Red Dog, but on fire — for the muscle.
I’d feel bad about leaving out my other companions, so I was delighted when my husband installed the Adjustable Party Mod for me. Family means nobody gets left behind! From that point, I would typically play with at least five party members, rounding out the roster with Wyll — a veritable Prince Charming of a warlock, and Gale — a highly-intelligent wizard with a literal hunger for magical artifacts.
And for the big fights, I’d bring everybody. Is it cheating? Maybe, but I don’t care! My whole crew rocking up to boss fights, decked head-to-toe in every powerful piece of armour and jewellery I could find, was a sight to behold.
Some of my favourite combat moments included: Giving Shadowheart the Spirit Guardians spell and sending her sprinting across the battlefield like a holy linebacker; Gortash being immediately felled by Gale with an Ice Knife, in time for the rest of my party to beat the crap out of him before he even had a turn himself; and launching Cazador into the abyss with Telekinesis (followed shortly thereafter by rolling a Nat 1 when trying to convince Astarion not to ascend. I screamed and reloaded).
I went into Baldur’s Gate 3 looking for knits, and came out 70-something hours later with rewired brain chemistry and a deeply abiding appreciation for fantasy role-playing.
In fact, the only thing I asked my husband for on my upcoming birthday was a Cameo message from any of the BG3 cast. And there’s a infinitesimal but non-zero chance whoever he chose might be reading this — in which case, I will need to lay on the floor about it.