Baldur’s Gate 3 needed one more act to be the best RPG ever

Now that the dust has settled after Baldur’s Gate 3’s massive success in 2023, there’s no doubt that it can be called one of the best RPGs ever made.

This is why the few issues that do exist in the game are so frustrating. When everything else is perfect, the smallest issues that would barely register in other games seem much larger.

Everyone has a slightly different experience with Baldur’s Gate 3, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a player who doesn’t think that Act 3 is slightly worse than the first two; there’s a reason so many players restart a new save instead of finishing the game.

Act 1 is all about a new sense of adventure and settling players into the Sword Coast, while Act 2 is all about raising the stakes while exposing you to the darker side of the world’s lore.

Compare that with Act 3, which has a much wider brief. Not only does it need to resolve each companion’s storyline, but it also has to tie up every other loose end, establish (and kill) two of the Dead Three’s chosen, explain what Raphael is up to, and address the Emperor/Orpheus situation.

The end result is a much more bloated experience than anything that has come before. On top of this, it doesn’t help that the map is completely overwhelming. The titular city of Baldur’s Gate does a great job of selling the hustle and bustle of a dense urban area, but from a gameplay standpoint, it feels too claustrophobic. There are always a million and one things to do in Baldur’s Gate but Act 3 was the only time I felt paralyzed by the choices in front of me.

The solution? Split Act 3 into two more acts. Sure, you lose the satisfaction of a three-act structure, but you make up for it by streamlining the game. Contextual information around Orpheus and the Emperor, as well as setup for Gortash and Orin, could have been frontloaded so it doesn’t clash with the companion quests, which are the emotional core of the story.

At the end of the day, Baldur’s Gate 3 is still a stellar game, and even with Act 3’s flaws, it can still lay claim to being the best RPG ever made.