The 2023 release date of Baldur's Gate III is quickly approaching. Luckily for eager fans of the epic party-based role-playing game, Larian Studios has released an early access version of Baldur's Gate III on Steam that allows players to get their hands dirty with an unfinished but fully playable first act. But is it worth playing right now?
Today, I’m exploring whether or not it’s worth buying Baldur's Gate III in early access right now at its £40 price tag. I'll go over the pros and cons as well as my experience with BG3 in early access so far, all with the hope of helping you make an informed decision on whether it's worth picking up right now or if you should wait until it's fully released next year. As a quick preface, I started playing BG3 in early access this year, therefore, my experience will reflect the majority of the recent 2022 patch updates like the addition of the Barbarian and Bard classes, and so on.
Taking this away, briefly let’s explore what Baldur's Gate III’s early access content encompasses and what players can expect.
What Can I Do In Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access?
Since October 2020, Baldur's Gate III has been in early access, receiving constant updates over the years, allowing players to create characters of different races and classes while exploring the majority of the game's first act either solo or with up to four other players online. Solo players will love the chance to team up with up to three playable companions on their adventure, while coop players can share the mayhem of questing together. Either way, Baldur's Gate III offers a variety of ways to play, adapting to many different play styles.
The first act of Baldur's Gate III in early access is extensive, offering players at least 20-30 hours of content with a meaningful story and plenty of roleplaying opportunities. Of course, there are flaws and bugs that still need to be worked out, but the early access build for BG3 provides plenty of content including exploring lands, questing, conversing with NPCs, killing monsters and general roleplaying.
So, should you play Baldur's Gate III right now in early access? Let’s go over my own pros and cons in an attempt to help you decide.
Should I Play Baldur's Gate 3 In Early Access?
Character Creation Is Fantastic
Starting on a positive, one of the best aspects of BG3 in early access is the chance to create your own distinct main character, exploring a wide variety of races and classes In the game’s fantastic character creator. You can customise your hero at a very meticulous level suiting many different facial features, hairstyles, backstories, sub-classes, perks and so on—truly defining your own character. And that’s just the start, the character creator will have even more additions and customisable aspects when fully released.
Essentially, the early access offers a sneak peek into what each race and class combination is all about. You are able to discover which play style you prefer the most before the official game releases with its entire content. For example, my first playthrough was a solo Eldrich Knight noble, and I’ve grown overly fond of Jackete Bogaerde. I created an entire background for him and I’m excited to continue that playthrough when the game fully releases. And that goes for many other characters I’ve experimented with in the early access content. It really does provide a space where you can create whoever you’d like and evaluate so many potential playthroughs.
With a vast open world, custom characters with unique skill sets and a branching narrative based on choices, consequences and constant dice rolls, you can play through the early access a hundred times and never have the same experiences twice. With so many systems to toy with and explore, this game has been developed by some of the industry’s best and can be enjoyed by RPG gamers of all types.
Character Save Doesn’t Crossover
However, one of the massive drawbacks is the fact that the custom characters that you create in early access won’t transfer to the full game, in fact, they won’t even transfer to major patch updates throughout the early access’s development. You can only play as your character in the update state they were created in.
Like I legit can't go back and play as my Eldritch Knight noble because he was created prior to the latest bard update. And so those 20-plus hours of content are just gone and I can't experience any of that again; I have to create a new playthrough if I want to enjoy BG3 in early access.
This is very frustrating for many reasons, one for RPG fans who love creating many different OCs and enjoying as much of them as possible like me. I made a whole backstory around Jackete Bogaerde, my human noble, and now I can't even play as him anymore. I’ll have to wait until the finished game is released in order to recreate him and play the game throughout. And two, when there’s new early access content following a massive patch, I can’t hop on a previous save and experience the new content, I have to restart the game with a new playthrough, always.
In that case, the early access is more like a glorified demo because you can't continually play as the same character throughout each update; you always have to create a new character and play from the start each time there is an update. It is very frustrating, however, I understand why. This game is in early access for a reason: The developers are ongoingly developing it and therefore a hard reset is required for new content.
Like I said before, early access helps players experiment and play around with different types of characters they could create before the final game does come out. I know for a fact, that if BioWare did this for Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, I wouldn't be complaining; it's a great way to solidify the main character you'd like to play before the game does come out properly. So in that light, I can understand both sides of this. Let’s move on.
Multiplayer With Friends Is Great
One of the most fun elements of BG3 early access is that you can play the game with up to three friends, enjoying the adventure as a party of illithid-infected heroes. The game is built to support vast choices and consequences each of you can make, and there are many systems in place to encourage a collaborative playstyle is maintained, for example, the combat is tactics-based and requires thought and attention for each scenario with the vast amount of classes and characters you can make for fighting enemies.
In dialogue, there's a sort of pining system in which your friends can vote on the dialogue they would like you to say, and you can see that. It doesn't do anything beyond showing you what they think—it's not like a Telltale game where it's a voting system, it just allows for your friends to have a slight opinion on the discussion you are having and maybe sway you differently.
And there are many more beneficial systems in place for navigating the sort of playthrough you'd each like to have together. Alternatively, you could all just be bastards and ruin every chance you have at making friends and building allies. Instead ending up killing everyone..... cough, like me, Lisa and Lambo, cough.
I highly recommend playing the early access content solo first so that you can enjoy the first act more substantially. Once you've played through the early access content once, I encourage you to play again in coop mode because you'll have an idea of the story and can do things that you wouldn't have done on your first playthrough by yourself. For example, I made a macabre, nihilistic Drow bard who ended up doing a lot of evil, mean shit; whereas on my first playthrough, I was a nice and friendly knight helping everybody and gaining a lot of brownie points with people.
Playing with friends is an excellent way to enjoy early access content—it’s a completely different experience from any other playthrough, and it’s the best way to experience Baldur’s Gate 3 right now. You and your friends can share your own unique banter as you navigate a unique playthrough.
Supporting the developers with feedback as they progress through development
A huge positive of early access is that you’re actually helping Larian Studios excel and develop the game for the better. You can offer genuine feedback as the studio progresses through development. Yes, you are paying to get this advantage, however, your purchase will provide the full game at launch, you’re not just paying for the early access content and the privilege to offer feedback to the devs. As someone who cares about the games industry, I really like this and support Larian’s early access method.
it's not the full game (obviously)
With that said, one of the major disadvantages of the early access content is that, of course, it's not the fully-finished game. You are only paying for act one of the game at the moment, with the full game promised once officially released.
This is obviously a disadvantage for those who don't want to wait to experience the rest of the game, and to those who understandably want to enjoy this game in its full entirety without deleted characters, bugged levels and only a select amount of content, I would say you should hold off on early access and wait till the full game is out and you can have a very much enjoyed playthrough.
However, to those like myself who love creating new characters, messing about with friends in an RPG, and just want to support Larian Studios as they endeavour to create one of the best, most definitive dungeons and dragons' experiences in a video game, I would wholeheartedly say you should check out Baldur's Gate 3's early access content.
While I can understand your desire to wait until the game is released before playing it, I encourage you not to pass up the opportunity to play Baldur's Gate III when it comes out. As a fan of Dragon Age and BioWare games, I know you will enjoy this one as much as I have.