If, for some reason, you have yet to play Baldur’s Gate 3, then your patience has finally paid off. In celebration of the exceptional RPG’s first anniversary, developer Larian Studios is discounting the game on Steam, and it’s now at the lowest price it’s ever been. To make the deal even sweeter, Larian is actually holding a weekend-long sale on their entire catalog of games, so even if you’ve already spent hundreds of hours with Astarion, Shadowheart, and Karlach, there’s still something for you to pick up on the cheap.
To get the obvious out of the way, you should absolutely buy Baldur’s Gate 3 during this sale if you don’t already own it. The discount lasts until Monday, September 9, and the 2023 RPG is a whopping twenty percent off, bringing the price down from $US59.99 to $US47.99. If you’re at all a fan of RPGs, you’ll find something to love in Baldur’s Gate 3. The game, which takes place within the iconic D&D setting that is the Forgotten Realms, is full of compelling characters, incredible writing, deep systems, and an unrivaled sense of player freedom. Seriously, if you even think you can do something, the game will likely give you a way to execute it. It’s also a worthwhile investment for how much time you’ll spend playing it, as just the main story will take you nearly 100 hours to complete, which doesn’t account for multiple playthroughs and all the wacky hijinks you can get up to between major narrative beats.
And even if you do already own Baldur’s Gate 3, there are other great Larian games on sale as well. Before BG3, the studio already had a reputation for creating wonderful RPG worlds with loads of deep, highly reactive systems. If you want to try these out you should go straight for Divinity: Original Sin II, the game that immediately preceded BG3. Many will call BG3 Larian’s masterpiece but for my money, Divinity: Original Sin II represents the studio at their most inventive.
At first glance there isn’t much differentiating the two: they both have complex companion characters, expansive epic narratives, and interactive TTRPG-inspired systems. However, Divinity: Original Sin II has the advantage of not being based on the existing D&D world and rule set, which allowed Larian to create a more compelling world of their own, both in terms of narrative and combat rules. Much like a TTRPG player may tell you D&D isn’t the be-all, end-all of the medium, and in fact has a number of long-running issues, I’m here to argue that BG3 falls short in some ways, and that Divinity: Original Sin II outshines it because it lacks the drawbacks inherent to D&D. If you want to see what Larian can do in a sandbox of its own, grab Divinity: Original Sin II.
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