“Baldur’s Gate 3” is quite simply a magical experience. The video game developed by Larian Studios was released in early August of last year and took the world by storm. Recently, at the Game Awards (a large show put on to display the top games of the year), “Baldur’s Gate 3” swept through their competition, winning Game of the Year, Best Role Playing Game (RPG), Best Multiplayer Game, and several others. I first heard about it after it did so well at the Game Awards, and decided to give it a shot. I knew the game was very heavily based on Dungeons and Dragons (DnD), which is a huge interest of mine, so I expected a lot out of it. And boy, did it deliver. Even after playing DnD for almost six years now, it is already one of my favorite DnD experiences I’ve ever had.

The gameplay is fairly straightforward, with a vast fictional world for you to explore. There are towns and cities, large swathes of monster-infested wilderness, and a very engaging storyline for you to play through at your own pace. Your main opposition throughout this game is a race of mysterious beings called Mind Flayers (not the one from “Stranger Things”, they are alike only in name). They insert little parasites into your head at the beginning of the story which give you strange powers, and a telepathic connection to others with a parasite. However, nothing is known about why they did this was for handing out such power seemingly at random. You travel along through this story with a few others, two to three characters in the story that help you. These other party members can also be your friends, should you choose to play through the story in multiplayer. Other people can join you over the internet and play along with you, which is such a cool feature. 

I embarked on my journey with my cousin Eli and two of his friends. The character creation is very similar to how it is in DnD, so we ended up with a very diverse group of characters to play as. I currently play a Gnome Sorcerer, a short man of about four foot, five inches. I can use a myriad of spells either to help the group as a whole or do lots of damage with lightning bolts and fire spells. Eli plays a Dragonborn Paladin, a tall man with white scales and a dragon head. Instead of breathing your typical dragonfire, white Dragonborn can breathe ice, which contrasts with the large fiery sword that he uses to cleave opponents in two. We also have a Tiefling Barbarian, which is a strong, fury-fueled fighter that can do massive damage by throwing pots and pans at very high velocities. She’s also half-demon, which is cool. Our fourth member is a Dark-Elf Ranger, who uses crossbows to fire all different types of arrows. Flaming arrows, net arrows, poisoned arrows; you name it, she’s got it. This shows the diversity you can get when making a character to play in this game, as well as the flexibility to fit any playstyle. 

This game also allows you to interact with a large number of things in the world, and that’s not just with the non-player characters (NPCs). You can pick up most anything and throw it, and even carry it with you, which is a huge amount of interaction that you don’t get from most other games. For example, if our Barbarian wanted to pick up the Gnome Sorcerer (me) and throw me at an enemy to deal damage (help) then she could, which is both terrifying and incredibly funny when it happens.

Overall, this game is incredible, and really pushes the bounds of what can be done with video games. The amount of scrutiny and detail that went into making this game is extraordinary, and there’s so much to explore and do. I’m only about a third of the way through the storyline, and I already have over 25 hours invested into this game. I can very easily see why it was crowned Game of the Year, and I would encourage anyone who likes action, adventure, and killing lots and lots of goblins to give it a try.