YMMV / Baldur's Gate III

• Adorkable:
  • Karlach, despite being the barbarian of the party and having an infernal engine in her chest, is a bubbly woman who enjoys dancing with herself when idle, and will crack jokes when doing certain tasks and activities, such as whispering "Entering Stealth Mode" when set to hide/sneak. She's also a huge fangirl of Minsc and Jaheira, and begins squeeing with excitement upon meeting and joining forces with them. On top of that, romancing her has her just so overjoyed with emotion when you start expressing interest in her, bringing out even more dorky qualities.
  • Shadowheart, which becomes very apparent when romancing her. She attempts to flirt when you start dialogue with her but quickly admits she's bad at it, privately enjoys reading, flowers, and animals, and if you gift her a night orchid she'll attempt to convince you its dangerously poisonous to touch with your bare hand before immediately declaring "joking!" while giving you finger guns. Even the love scene on a good playthrough, involving going skinny dipping and sex on the beach, will include her squealing about how cold the water is, squirm after sitting on a pebble, then follow it with turning "sandcastles" and "swimming lessons" into code for sex, all of which makes her just extremely endearing.
  • Gale loves his books, his cat, his mother, and infodumping about the Weave. He all but nerdgasms upon reaching Sorcerous Sundries bookstore, and he's fond of puns and chess references. If actually attempting to flirt, his normally polished speech derails into blurting out that he likes your (unwashed!) smell or that he's very turned on watching you in battle. These are all among his most endearing qualities, alongside the fact that if romanced, Gale turns out to be incredibly softhearted and loyal (even remaining just as firmly in love if his partner becomes a mind flayer.)
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Lord Enver Gortash is an out-and-out villain, who has schemed his way to the top of Baldur's Gate's hierarchy, and who can be easily be read as a standard Lawful Evil politician/schemer-type villain. However there are a few things that hint at potential layers being present in his character. In the Lower City you can find Gortash' parents, who he has tadpoled into submission, and they reveal that they sold Gortash as a child to a warlock. If you visit Raphael's House of Hope, you can find out that it wasn't a warlock but rather Raphael himself that Gortash was sold to. You also learn that Gortash escaped on his own. Then there's how Karlach is implied to have thought well of him prior to his betrayal, as well as his (as the Emperor reveals completely genuine and upfront) suggestion of an alliance against Orin. Taken together, it paints a picture of a man who, while still villainous, self serving and perpetuating a cycle of abuse, nonetheless cares for those he deems worthy. The Karlach situation specifically could be seen as Gortash either testing her in a crucible similar to his own (which is how he justifies himself to her, and working with him shows that he has a habit of putting his allies to SecretTests), or him trying to get one over Zariel by expecting Karlach to escape as he had (which she did).
  • Shadowheart gives Viconia deVir some of this In-Universe, noting that she could never quite tell whether her mentor was proud of the gems she earned for saving Suldanessellar. Was the memory of her heroism an Old Shame, or a point of pride she could never reconcile with her Sharran faith?
  • Is Mystra actually intending for Gale to kill himself by ordering him to do a Suicide Attack on the Absolute or is it a Secret Test of Character? The Absolute is an existential threat to the realms that justifies a Fantastic Nuke but it doesn't actually solve the problem. Gale working with the Tav/Dark Uge can potentially find a more permanent solution. Also, testing to see if Gale is willing to die for her may also show he's learned his lesson about pursuing power at all costs. Another possibility is that she's testing him to see if he's learned his lesson by not pursuing the grandest gesture he can think of, and instead look for smaller and significantly healthier solutions. It's also possible that she's simply so worried about the danger posed by the Absolute that she's regretfully willing to sacrifice Gale when that appears to be the most viable option.
  • Gale's original downfall with the orb, for that matter: how much was he driven by wizarding hubris versus genuine love for Mystra? His encounters with certain artifacts show that he is still enthralled by items of great magical power, and even after the disaster with the orb, he remains convinced he deserves to wield them. On the other hand, a romanced Gale also falls in love hard, to the point he is willing to suicide bomb the Netherbrain to prevent any chance his love interest might die or become a mindflayer, so a willingness to do extreme and self-destructive things in the name of love is also very much in keeping with his character. The truth is likely somewhere in between.
  • The fact that the companions are so quick to romance you has been the subject of this as well. Some interpret them as being creepy Yanderes. Some think it's a trauma bond. Others however interpret the ease of romance as being them coming to terms with the fact they're living on borrowed time and are trying to experience what little joy they can in their final days.
• Alt-itis: With 11 race options (some of which drastically change dialogue), 12 classes (and 46 subclasses between them), and several more specific build options (tadpole powers, weapon loadouts, known spells, etc.) it can be very difficult to play the game to the end without getting distracted by the prospect of a new character.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: While they weren't necessarily expecting a failure, Larian was expecting it to be a niche success for a certain type of audience, not helped by the delayed release leaving some people to ignore it. The fact that it blew up with other demographics into one of the best selling and arguably most critically acclaimed^*even outscoring The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom in user score, at the time widely believed to be the virtually uncontested shoe-in for most end of the year awards, on Metacritic game of 2023 took them completely by surprise.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • If you choose to turn Karlach into a mind flayer, she's over the moon about it since it means her infernal engine isn't going to kill her anymore and she doesn't have to go back to Avernus, having to eat brains for the rest of her life a mere afterthought.
  • If the player makes the Dark Urge a morally-good character who tries to resist their murderous impulses (and at least managed to suppress it at the absolute worst moments), Bhaal will kill the Dark Urge for their defying his will and "their rightful place" as his Dark Messiah. You would think that the party and especially their romanced companion would have some kind of reaction, especially after Withers revives them, but they barely act as if they didn't just get a front-row seat of the Player Character dying.
• Captain Obvious Reveal:
  • Even as soon as it was first revealed, people were already correctly calling that the Dark Urge is a Bhaalspawn. Even though the developers stated that the Dark Urge's secrets would have to be found once the game came out, the signs were everywhere. Even the Dark Urge's introduction at character creation screams the reveal, with the blood drops appearing at their feet, an instantly recognizable element of Bhaal's icon.
  • That the Absolute is an elder brain. It's obvious, as what else would have such close ties to mind flayer tadpoles? That said, the real twist is that it's actually a Puppet King, enslaved to its "chosen" - and it was using you the whole time to free itself.
  • Fans of the original duology will probably have guessed whose face lies beneath the Mother Superior's mask long before she demands Shadowheart to speak her name: Viconia DeVir.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: The PC version of Baldur’s Gate III is best known for its immense and active modding community. For players wanting to experience more of Dungeons & Dragons within the confines of the game, there are a plethora of mods that add new features and player options from the tabletop game (whether from official sources or homebrewed) into the game such as spells, classes, subclasses, feats, magic items, etc. There are also mods that provide several quality-of-life changes such as bug fixes, adjustments to the game’s UI, and extensive translation for non-English speaking players. And given the explicit nature of the game, there’s definitely no shortage of Not Safe for Work mods, either. In February 2024, Larian announced plans for a first party modding solution, including bringing mods to consoles, to arrive later that year.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • By Larian's own statistics, the three most popular classes on launch (paladin, sorcerer and warlock) all share one thing in common; Charisma being their most important ability. Given the abundance of dialogue checks in the game and how charisma directly influences the player's skill at the various speech-related skills, many players went with the classes for which high charisma gives them the most gameplay benefit.
  • As far as combat magic goes, Kill It with Fire works against just about anything, meaning Fireball and Scorching Ray are really the only offensive spells you'll ever need. Both are great for crowd control, Scorching Ray is also incredibly powerful against single targets like bosses, both are acquired relatively early, and both can be upcast for continuously escalating damage as your caster gains levels. The only reasons to use any other damaging spell is because you only have level 1 spell slots left, or because you ran into one of the extremely rare enemy types that are weak to a different element.
  • If it's not fire, many players will build around lightning damage instead especially if the enemy is suffering from the Wet status effect due to lightning damage dealing double damage to enemies who are wet from water.
  • One that follows from the tabletop itself, but playing a warlock will generally result in the player falling back on Eldritch Blast for most combat rounds. Though not the most exciting spell, it's an extremely powerful cantrip that scales rather well as you level up (1d10 of Force Damage per blast, increasing up to three blasts each casting as you level up). Two Evocations, Repelling Blast and Agonizing Blast, which respectively allow you to knock a target back ten feet and possibly cause fall damage, and adds your Charisma modifier to the attack roll of each blast, are similarly recommended to add extra damage and control over the battleground. As a result, Eldritch Blast can be functionally more effective than most attack spells (outside of Area of Effect and Concentration spells), but is a cantrip, so it can be spammed as readily as any attack. Unless you're trying to cherry tap an opponent (or you're in a niche situation like trying to prevent healing or facing an adversary immune to Force), there's really no reason to use any other attack cantrip in the warlock spell list.
  • In terms of story choices, it appears that the majority of players have opted to romance Shadowheart over the others. There's a number of reasons why she'd be the most desirable (she's the most conventionally attractive female romantic option and her romantic arc does involve her getting Progressively Prettier, and reactions to her romance storyline generally consider it rather engaging and well done), but among them is probably the fact that Healer Signs On Early means she's one of the first companions you encounter, is useful to keep around, and she's comparatively very easy to gain high approval of by simply playing a hero and not being a dick to her. Even better, her largely neutral disposition means even evil players can keep her reasonably happy without too much trouble, making her a viable companion for almost any play style that doesn't revolve around brute force, as she tends to dislike getting into avoidable fights.
  • Unless your personal character has it, the only companion among all 10 trained with sleight of hands (which is used for lockpicking and trap disarming) is Astarion, meaning he's basically required as an active party member unless you go out of your way to give it to yourself, or get creative with respeccing companions. You can alternatively have one of your spellcasters learn Knock, but it takes up a spell slot meaning you'll have a very finite number of uses of it before you have to rest and have to sacrifice skills that might be more useful in combat.
  • Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians. Due to her having unusually bad stats outside of spells and being a cleric (who has the fewest damage spells), most recommend the best way to use her for combat is to just prepare Spirit Guardians and let enemies receive passive damage by being near her. It's a surprisingly effective strategy at earlier levels, especially as, if she has a high enough AC or the Blood of Lathander to blind nearby enemies, enemy AI will avoid attacking her, despite being hurt by her continued presence. Even later in the game, Shadowheart's Spirit Guardians make for a good AOE attack.
  • You could conserve your resources while playing and make good use of Short Rests to ensure you're topped off between fights while saving your spell slots and rest-based cooldowns for when you need them... or you could simply Long Rest after nearly every fight and get all your resources back, ensuring you are fully stocked for every encounter. This is something the game even seems to encourage in the first act with how many story beats are tied to Long Rests and how little penalty there is for doing so, with food being ample even in Tactician mode, which doubles the food cost for a Full Rest. The only reason you wouldn't be able to do this is if you're in one of the very few areas the game won't let you rest or fast travel in, or the (very) occasional Timed Mission.
  • Most players tend to reclass Shadowheart into either a Life or Light Domain cleric over keeping her a Trickery Domain cleric. This is because the Trickery Domain is a weak subclass that focuses on stealth and subterfuge, which tends to lead to Shadowheart being less useful in a fight and having trouble keeping up with other party members in terms of damage or utility, something the other subclasses do a better job of fixing. If you make her a Life cleric, its fairly popular as well to build around her party wide healing giving additional effects, such as equipping the Hellrider's Pride gloves so her heals give the target resistance to physical type damage, while a Light Domain Shadowheart is usually focused around using the Blood of Lathander and Spirit Guardians to make her a strong radiant damage dealer.
  • Any monk builds or characters who throw their weapons will inevitably take the "Tavern Brawler" feat even over an Ability Score Improvement. This is due to the feat being buffed compared to its pen and paper version where unarmed, improvised weapons, or thrown weapons will deal double damage without any attack roll penalities like Sharpshooter or Great Weapon Master.
  • It's almost unheard of for anyone to select a bard subclass that isn't Lore or Swords, as both have really strong class skills compared to the Valor bard. Swords makes the bard able to be a dangerous ranged fighter, while Lore makes them strong spellcasters.
  • While druids get a small but varied list of options to transform using Wildshape, the only one that ever is used by most players is the Owlbear, because it is the strongest option in terms of combat, has a lot of HP despite not having high AC, and can be a good tank that can hold down multiple targets if used right, on top of having a powerful AOE jump attack that makes them incredibly dangerous. The other options by contrast don't either work in combat, or aren't strong enough compared to it. As of Patch 5, the Earth Myrmidon has risen as the only alternative to the Owlbear, as it is the next most notable form to receive the full advantage of Tavern Brawler, higher AC than the Owlbear, and the Myrmidons' teleportation bonus action has a different sort of usefulness compared to the Owlbear's jump.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Continuity Lockout:
  • While playing Blood in Baldur's Gate isn't required and you can experience the whole game without knowing the full story of the Dark Urge and Sceleritas, the prequel does explain who the Dark Urge was and their relationship with Sceleritas.
  • The game seems to expect that the player has played the Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus module, as many of the things it references from it are given vague explanations or references that only make sense if you have played the module. Zevlor for example mentions a broad overview of Elturel ending up in Avernus, but said overview is vague enough that someone unfamiliar with the module wouldn't understand how it happened, who was responsible for it (outside of Zariel), and how they came back to the material plane. Karlach especially can be hurt by this, since a lot of her character is tied to things the module brings up or discusses, but are not given proper explanations in the game (infernal war machines, Zariel, etc).
• Creepy Cute:
  • The intellect devourers. In D&D lore, these foul aberrations are walking brains with tentacles and freakish clawed legs ritualistically extracted from unfortunate mind flayer thralls, and hunt by devouring and replacing a target's mind to control them as a meat puppet. The very first one you encounter in game can be bloodily and messily extracted from the lobotomized skull of a still-living human. When it speaks, it does so with a bizarre speech pattern that constantly and abruptly changes in pitch, speed, timbre, and volume. And yet... it immediately thanks you for saving its life and declares you a "FRIEND!", joining as a temporary follower for the rest of the tutorial.
  • If Us survives the tutorial, you can later find it caged in an enemy lair. Upon its rescue, it proceeds to call you FRIEND again in its creepily endearing speech pattern, and happily rejects its former masters to join you as a (pretty strong) summonable companion for the rest of the game.
  • Many are non-hostile, choosing to scuttle about minding their own business, and may even toss you passing words of encouragement.
    Intellect Devourer: You are beautiful.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • After defeating the Absolute, depending on your choices throughout the game, Lae'Zel may elect to part ways with the group. You can convince her to remain in Baldur's Gate with you because you're her friend or even her lover, and she will agree...only for you to have the chance to immediately leave to take Karlach back to Avernus.
  • Astarion being forced to eat rats by his former master? Horrible. The dryad asking during the love test what Astarion desires more than anything in the world, with the player having the option to suggest "A nice, tasty rat"? Hilarious.
  • Some of the mean/rude dialogue options available to the player character are so awful they loop around to being funny. For example, the breathtakingly mean response the player can give to Mystra tasking Gale with a suicide action to stop the Absolute:
  Player: So we'll be rid of the Absolute and Gale in one fell swoop? Win-win.
  • Regardless about how you feel about sleeping with the Emperor, the expressions of the companions unfortunate enough to see it thanks to the tadpole are nothing short of hilarious.
  • Astarion calling Cazador out for the centuries of pain he inflicted on him and countless others? Cathartic. Cazador responding by dropping this line: "I have known you for two centuries. Have I not suffered enough?" it's so unexpectedly snarky that it crosses into funny again.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Literal spiders in this case. Phase Spiders are seen as the most frustrating enemies to face off against in Act I due to having several tools to ruin your day: they can attack from a good distance, teleport around to attack, and when they do die, they release a pool of poison that effectively locks off the area they died in. They also can put damage over time debuffs on you and hit hard enough that a character leaning towards a Glass Cannon will almost die in one hit from their attacks. They can be encountered fairly early on too, which is important because in the tabletop, they are the kind of enemy you would throw one at a low-level party, and yet you can fight several of them at once.
  • Advanced gnoll types were a nightmare to fight in Early Access, mainly because they could attack three times per turn at levels as low as 4. They also had uncanny luck with their crit rolls even with the Karmic Dice option enabled, often dealing two or even three crits in a row, which was pretty much impossible to survive for anyone unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of the barrage. Oh, and they usually showed up in packs of three to eight. The full release dialed this back considerably so that only the singular gnoll boss has a comparably threat level, with normal ones being mostly on par with other humanoid enemies.
  • Shadow-cursed needle/vine blights and shambling mounds are lethal in Act II due to their ambush approach. While enemy ambushes are not uncommon, the perception DC to spot these particular creatures is so high (around 30) that it's common for your entire party to routinely fail the check, resulting in all characters being surprised. The Blights tend to bring a suitably large raiding party to boot, so you and your companions might take a sizeable hammering before you even get to act. Finally, Blight enemies tend to explode upon death for even more damage, which can easily affect multiple party members due to the small areas you tend to fight them in.
  • Mind flayers/illithids are not just central to the plot, but suitably dangerous too. Mind flayers are high-level creatures in general, but are doubly dangerous due to their signature ability combination of Mind Blast + Extract Brain. The first is a cone attack that deals sizeable damage AND stuns any targets that fail a tough wisdom saving throw. Stunned is an annoying status effect as it is, but also allows the mind flayer to use Extract Brain on such a target. This ability does not just deal ludicrous damage, it also instakills a target if it reduces them to 0 hitpoints. The game seems to recognize the illithids' might and rarely pits you against more than two of them at once. In the few instances where you do face more, better hope your party succeeds its wisdom saves.
  • All of the githyanki encounters on higher difficulties are brutal, demanding very strong party compositions and some lucky initiative rolls if you don't want to get immediately merced. They have superb mobility thanks to psionic Misty Step, AoE stuns/fears, attack multiple times per turn, parry the first hit against them, and the bosses as of Patch 5 summon even more chaff for the Legendary Actions. You basically have to alpha strike them, or die.
  • The Bhaal cultists that show up in act 3 because almost all of them have access to a skill called Unstoppable which reduces all incoming damage to 1 up to three times.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Doni, a member of Mol's gang of orphaned tiefling children, speaks entirely in growls and other noises, and using detect thoughts shows that he is overwhelmed by the noise and light outside of the gang's hideout. This has led players to theorise that he is on the autism spectrum.
• Disappointing Last Level:
  • Act 3 is this to some compared to the other two. The plot moves at a breakneck pace compared to the previous two acts, multiple quests appear to go nowhere or just end abruptly, some of the party members' personal quests (namely Karlach's) end arguably ending on an unsatisfying note, the antagonists Gortash and Orin being woefully underdeveloped compared to Ketheric from the previous Act, and the ending is regarded by many to be just as half-baked, particularly the Emperor's sudden Face–Heel Turn should you try to free Orpheus. Not helping matters is that players have datamined a lot of cut content, which many players felt should have been in the final product.
  • To add insult to injury: Act 1 and Act 2 feature unique music for every location and situation, including a unique song for the Last Light Inn that accentuates the location's special role as a friendly place of refuge in the middle of the shadow-cursed land. Cue to Act 3 not only reusing a lot of music from the previous two acts, but overusing the aforementioned inn's theme songs on the city's streets, making it lose its unique touch.
• Draco in Leather Pants: On the other side of the coin with Ron the Death Eater, characters such as Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Astarion, and Minthara often have their greater character flaws (racism, greed, cruelty, etc.) downplayed or outright erased by some fans, often with the excuse that they are "misunderstood" or that they can all be excused by their circumstances. Delving into the characters' stories shows where these flaws come from—tyrannical and propaganda-ridden socieites (Lae'zel and Minthara), lifelong brainwashing by a cult (Shadowheart), centuries-long enslavement (Astarion), and so on. However, following the "good" paths for these characters not only entails overcoming their abusers (Vlaakith, Shar, Cazador, the Absolute), but also also encouraging them to take accountability to better themselves, though this doesn't fully get through in the case of Astarion, and not at all to Minthara.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • By the developers' admission, Halsin was originally just an NPC in Act 1, but he became unexpectedly popular during Early Access as a result of compelling writing on his part (and being a handsome druid), so he became an Ascended Extra for the final release in response. Minthara similarly went through a cycle of being initially just an NPC that was a hit with players and expanded upon before full release, with many lamenting that recruiting and romancing her coming at the cost of a lot of content. Patch 5 has rectified the latter issue somewhat by making one still able to recruit her later on should they knock her out in act 1 in order to save the tieflings, thus recruiting her no longer means missing out on all the content for Halsin and the tieflings in the second and third acts.
  • Among the non-companion supporting characters, there's a few that many players wished were recruitable or even romanceable, with the tiefling refugees having quite a few. Alfira, the tiefling bard, is a particularly noteworthy example, whose status as this is actually weaponised against the player if they're playing The Dark Urge, but otherwise is merely a bit player in the story. Some have mentioned that, on a non-Dark Urge run, they wish she was a party member, given the lack of a default Bard amongst the playable cast.
  • Rolan is immensely popular, despite being very minimal in the overall story, and one of the most referenced characters players wish were party members. His Jerk with a Heart of Gold personality, relationship with his siblings, and his character development makes him likable, eventually peaking with him potentially joining forces with the player if they fight Lorroakan. The fact he aides the player in the finale does a lot to make helping him worth it, and his voice actor does a great job making him unique as well.
  • Also among the tieflings refugees, Dammon has proven to be a popular character in his own right, primarily for being the one to be able to help out Karlach with her infernal engine, and even getting a bit of Ship Tease with her based on some circumstances. Like Rolan above, he can also help in the finale, potentially making armor for the owlbear cub.
  • Many of the cat NPCs reveal over-dramatic and grandiose personalities when you cast Speak to Animals, befitting their feline nature. Players have particularly warmed to His Majesty, a vain and blustering Sphynx cat, Malta, who narrates his own life in a hard-boiled third-person monologue, and Myshka, a sweet little creature who asks the PC (in a trilling feline dialect) if they're its mother.
  • Barcus Wroot is an optional character you can meet in Act 1 and can be missed without any story issues, but he's fairly well loved by the community for being a somewhat cautious but brave deep gnome who wants to help his friends, yet is willing to call them out on their behavior in later sidequests. The fact he isn't a fighter but tries to help makes even more memorable, helped by his voice actor doing a good job making him stand out. Some have wished he was a Companion, given the lack of gnome, dwarf, or halfling Companions.
  • Both animal party members Scratch and the Owlbear Cub are extremely popular among the community. The Owlbear in particular gets a lot of love for being able to join you in the final battle, while Scratch is considered extremely important to the party by players, to the extent it's considered borderline taboo for anything bad to happen to him.
  • Despite being an antagonistic Hate Sink who has little major story impact, Auntie Ethel is quite popular due to her evil, yet charming personality, as well as her strong performance by her voice actress. Like the Owlbear cub and Rolan, she can also join you in the final battle.
  • Many fans have an affection towards the kobold trader in the circus, Popper, due to being a rare non-hostile kobold, on top of him being hilarious and genuinely being excited when you agree to trade with him.
  • There's also a bit of a fanbase for Omeluum, primarily for being an unambiguously friendly Mind Flayer who helps you out with your tadpole.
  • Out of all characters, Karniss is popular within the fandom, primarily for being the only drider in the game, on top of him actually not looking that bad for one.
  • Inside Grymforge, Stonemason Kith was proven to be pretty popular for being the only Nice Guy of the otherwise selfish or Jerkass duergar.
• Epileptic Trees: With explicit nods to Gorion's Ward and Imoen and in-person appearances of Jaheira, Minsc, and Viconia DeVir, Edwin Odesseiron, Red Wizard of Thay is the only party member in both the original games entirely absent from 3. Or are they? The Forgotten Realms supplement Minsc and Boo's Journal of Villainy, though of dubious canonicity, gives an interesting account of what became of Edwin: he usurped Ramazith's Tower from Lorroakan, whom he killed and replaced, and conjured a simulacrum to send out into the world (and also provide himself with intelligent conversation). The Lorroakan encountered in 3 practically radiates Edwin's Big Bad Wannabe, Insufferable Genius, and Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain energy, operates out of Ramazith's Tower, clads himself in Edwin's trademark colors, and interfaces with clients through a pompous simulacrum. Attention is never drawn to this, even if Minsc and Boo come face-to-face with the relevant individual, but those are a lot of coincidences.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Raphael in spades, thanks to his suave yet smug mannerisms that are buoyed by Andrew Wincott's deliciously evil performance. Him breaking out into a Disney-esque Villain Song during what many consider to be one of the best boss fights in the game is the icing on the cake. It's a common sentiment among players that he serves as a better antagonist than the Chosen of the Absolute, who are considered to be rather underdeveloped.
  • Auntie Ethel is a minor character overall, but she's considered memorable for her evil and sadistic nature that is elevated by her voice actress, Rena Valeh, being able to effortlessly do a kindly grandmother voice, and then switch to a creepy evil tone. Her lair and the horrors she has in it do a lot to make players love how evil yet charming she is for a hag.
  • Minthara has garnered this reputation for being the Token Evil Teammate who, in spite of her ruthlessness and ambition, possesses a charismatic and pragmatic personality that her voice actress, Emma Gregory, was able to portray very well. It really says something about her popularity among players when they even wish for a legitimate way for them to save the inhabitants of the Emerald Grove without killing her so that they can recruit her later on. Come Patch 5, the developers provided one, allowing players who knock out Minthara to fulfill the requirements to defeat the goblin leaders to still be able to recruit her later on at Moonrise.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation:
  • Several players familiar with the Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus adventure module expressed dissatisfaction with how this game handles the outcome of the module. While it makes sense that Baldur's Gate III would have to find a way to properly handle the different outcomes of it, the choice to go for as status-quo of an outcome for said module as possible (Zariel is not redeemed but Elturel is returned) has been criticized by some for being not only boring, but also unsatisfying from a story angle to those hoping to see the potential impact of the module on the game.
  • Many fans of the original game are about as thrilled by the extensive Happy Ending Overrides multiple returning characters have experienced as one would expect.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Starfield, due to the Dueling Works nature of the two, both being major AAA RPG games released weeks apart. Upon the release of Starfield, it became common to see people trashing one game in favor of the other.
  • A largely one-sided one erupted overnight with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 following the 2023 Game Awards. Some fans of Spider-Man 2 who felt the game received an Award Snub (particularly in the "Game of the Year" and "Best Performance" categories) were quick to direct their ire toward Baldur's Gate 3 and its fanbase.
• Fan Nickname:
  • In Early Access, after creating a "Tav", the game prompts you to create "who do you dream of at night". Lacking any other name, this character was then nicknamed Daisy when discussing theories about them. Subsequently, game files have revealed Daisy is the name applied to many of the Dream Guardian's files, leading to their armour model being dubbed the "Daisy Plate" with regards to mods for it.
  • The Dark Urge Origin Character is referred to by the fanbase as simply "Durge", given how their 'name' is already a mouthful.
  • Despite being almost universally liked, or perhaps thanks to her terrible luck with rolls (not helped by the fact her default stats and her default specs aren't well-suited to each other), many fans took to calling Shadowheart "Shart". Her voice actress, Jennifer English, has acknowledged this, and revealed that the nickname was actually used during recording, predating its internet usage. A more positive nickname that's cropped up to describe her after converting to Selune and dying her hair silver in tribute is "Silverheart".
  • Astarion has garnered several nicknames, largely due to Neil Newbon and the fans going with it in his streams and spread, but there are ones created solely by the latter and/or ping-ponging in influence:
    • "Bardstarion," as the name implies, is for when Astarion is respecced or heavily multiclassed into Bard. This is a very popular choice, particularly for rogue or rogue-adjacent Tavs; in addition to being a very powerful and flexible caster, the class well fits his flamboyant, charismatic personality. Special praise often goes to Neil Newbon's delivery of the Vicious Mockery lines.
    • "Goosestarion" or "Goostarion" came from a viewer question asking which of Neil's characters he played would suit being a chaotic goose the most. Thus, Goostarion was born- white plumage, red eyes, sharp teeth, and a mischievous and bloodthirsty attitude.
    • "Catstarion" is a result fans coming up with the nickname after seeing the vampire spawn's behavior being similar to not only a goose's, but a cat's as well- a sophisticated sneaky stealth hunter with a penchant for its own brand of chaos. Astarion suits a few cat tropes too. Astarion also approves you (potentially even twice) if you indulge His Majesty. Neil even said in a Dan Allen interview that one of the inspirations for his performance is a stray cat that took "three fucking years" to completely warm up to him.
    • "Bunstarion" is from Neil being requested to draw rabbit ears on his character's poster. He decided to add a fluffy white tail with the ears.
    • "Hipstarion" or "Gangstarion" is also coined from a signing stream involving a what-if situation of Neil imagining Astarion using modern slang. He spoke slang in his voice and hilarity ensued.
    • "Y'allstarion" emerged when Neil decided to say some of his lines in a Southern drawl.
  • Fans of Lae'zel and her romance arc have taken to calling her "Bae'zel".
  • Shadowheart's Spirit Guardian spell, which creates a ring of spinning angel-like figures around her, is often referred to as "the beyblade".
  • "Sheepthara" for a rather convoluted exploit involving the polymorth sheep skill that allowed players to recruit Minthara without having to do an evil playthrough. Patch 5 has since provided a way to recruit Minthara in a good playthrough, but players will always remember the insane exploit of how to get her originally.
  • Fans who find the spelling of Wyll's name amusing tend to go all the way with it and joke that it is short for "Wyllyam".
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content:
  • Some datamined content reveals that Minthara was at one point planned to become pregnant with the player character’s child very close to the end of the game. Those who like Minthara were upset that such an outcome was scrapped, as what remains suggest that it would have been a fairly positive ending to her character arc, and find it a potentially sweet ending. Some also find the concept especially interesting in a Dark Urge playthrough, as certain conversations with Jaheira and Sceleritas Fel do tease the possibility of Bhaalspawn having children of their own and whether or not they would end up inheriting Bhaal's taint.
  • Karlach had an ending planned which saw her no longer worry about her infernal war machine being an issue, and getting a happier outcome than her final fates in game, something the community felt was a choice sorely missing given how much of a downer her endings felt, and wish it had been kept in, though the Patch 5 DLC does remedy this somewhat.
  • Dataming reveals there was a cut companion named Helia, who was a halfling bard werewolf. Some player were disappointed she was cut, as they feel that a bard would fit nicely with the party, while a halfling would be a very distinct choice in a party filled with humans and elves/half-elves (Karlach notwithstanding).
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Enver Gortash is seen as this by some players, with his rather flamboyant outfit and unkempt hairstyle making him feel out of place in a Dungeons & Dragons setting and more like a Final Fantasy character.
• Franchise Original Sin: Halsin didn't pioneer the trend of upsetting the party's balance with a surplus druid: Faldorn and Cernd were also famously redundant alternatives to Jaheira in the original duology. The ability to re-spec party members on the fly mitigates this in 3, but the overlap between Halsin and Jaheira is still very apparent; and as far as some fans are concerned, two elf druids in an already elf-dominated party was a misjudgement on the developers' part born of Pandering to the Base during Early Access.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Divinity: Original Sin II, given that both games are made by Larian Studios, and have a number of similarities.
  • The Dark Urge Origin has brought a lot of comparisons to Camellia from Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
  • With the Dragon Age fanbase, as Dragon Age: Dreadwolf remains in Development Hell and Dragon Age fans seek a similar story-, character-, and choice-driven RPG.
  • With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as both are critically-acclaimed games based on beloved fantasy franchises. Even though they competed over many Game of the Year awards, both fanbases seem to respect the quality of each other's game and appreciate their differing approaches to game design, leading to Baldur's Gate and Zelda fans seeing each other as Worthy Opponents.
• Game-Breaker: See here.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Goblins in Act I for obvious reasons. If you choose to antagonize them, expect to fight many, many of the green buggers. As per tradition they're often relatively frail, but numbers more than make up for this. Especially true at their stronghold.
  • Shadow-Cursed Ravens in Act II like to appear in flocks. They deal moderate damage and can quickly overwhelm a character with numbers. Individual ravens have only a single hitpoint, however, making good AOE spells like fireball highly effective at taking out whole groups of them.
• Goddamned Boss: Kar'niss in Act 2. He's not an outright hard foe, as while being a Drider can make him a slight challenge, and he is generally fought in situations you can make it easy to beat him (such as working with the Harpers). However, he's one of the few enemies up to that point with access to Sanctuary, meaning he can No-Sell attacks or targeting effects, letting him move around while his allies fight for him. Without something like Silence or Counterspell to counter it, he tends to open a fight with Sanctuary while recasting it at the first chance he gets, giving you only have a few turns to attack him, and he has a decent amount of HP. While he can't attack back while using Sanctuary, it makes him an annoying fight because of how often he casts it, letting him potentially drag out a simple fight.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The animation does very well to account for custom characters with different sizes, heights, etc. interacting with the environment and other characters. However, some players who have chosen to be a custom character of shorter stature (gnome, dwarf, etc.) have run into a bug with kissing their romanced companions in which the animation for a taller PC plays. Meaning, the PC kisses their lover's midsection while they in turn kiss the air. Significantly rarer, but sometimes the opposite can happen, where the romanced companion will use the animation of kissing a short-statured PC, IE, kneeling down to meet them face-to-face, on a normal or larger sized companion. The result makes it appear they are kissing something else. It certainly makes the post-kiss smirk many of them have take on a very different light.
  • If you ask someone in your party to go back to the camp while you are in a dangerous area, such as the shore of a magma river, you can see them walking away without flinching while the terrain is killing them, and then appearing in your camp completely unscathed. Once in the campaign map again, some weird things can happen to them, such as being considered dead by the game but being still able to talk and move, but not to use some actions.
  • On a similar, if different, example; swapping out party members and then leaving camp will usually put your party back where they were originally, but if you are inside a building with multiple floors, the game will sometimes spawn your swapped out party member on top of the building or on a different floor, as if they were dropped from orbit unto the building. Usually it isn't that hard to get back together but it can be funny to watch someone get to a location they weren't probably meant to.
  • There is a possible glitch where Gale, should he sacrifice himself by destroying the Netherbrain along with himself, will inexplicably be by the player's side and the scene will play out as normal.
  • If you take Halsin with you to confront Oliver, and have him use Wild Shape, he'll remain in his animal form when Oliver's shield is broken and the automatic cutscene plays. If he's taken the Cave Bear form, this combined with the camera angles will result in the characters continuing normally with the scene while the screen is filled with nothing but fur.
  • There was an oversight involving the Chest of the Mundane which could be found in Act 1. It is a chest that turns any object placed inside of it into mundane junk like spoons or plates. The primary purpose of the chest was for the player to open it, see only junk, and walk away. But as when an object is taken out of this chest, it returns to its previous form, the chest is filled with multiple treasures worth grabbing if you are savvy enough to take them out. However, at launch, when objects were placed in the chest, their weight would be shifted to whatever piece of junk they were turned into which would inevitably be less than 1 pound. So players would carry the chest with them and essentially have endless carry capacity if they just put things in the chest. Eventually the chest was patched so even if an object was transformed inside the chest, it would retain its original weight, making the chest pointless to carry around except for the hell of it.
  • When Patch 6 was released, it added a few new pieces of Inspiration, including one for Acolytes (which includes Shadowheart) for freeing the Nightsong. This had a weird effect on saves that got to that point prior to the patch; if such a game was loaded after the patch was downloaded, that Inspiration would immediately be granted, followed by getting the Spear of Night. Consequently, if the save was already past the point of receiving the first one, you got a second for free.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When the player comes across a book of necromancy in Act 1, they either have the option to destroy it, or give it to Astarion in the hopes he can learn how to summon the undead with it. His voice actor, Neil Newbon, would later reunite with D&D to play the infamous lich Vecna in this trailer for the ''Vecna: Eve of Ruin'' adventure. Liches are known for their ability to summon the undead. Whoops.
• Ho Yay:
  • Following the end of Act 1, Alfira and Lakrissa can be seen together, with the former showing a lot of distress when the latter gets abducted by the Cult of the Absolute. Should the player reunite with them at Baldur's Gate in Act 3, there is even a dialogue option where the player can tease them about them being a couple, which leaves Alfira flustered and Lakrissa amused. Notably, interacting with either of them when they're on the roof has Alfira looking at the city, remarking that she could never tire of this view...and Lakrissa agrees while looking at her.
  • Your Companions tend to flirt quite a bit in their idle chatter, which results in this as they don't hold back with the same gender. Astarion and Wyll will often make backhanded compliments to one-another that come across as flirting, and will make comments to Shadowheart that imply he finds Wyll attractive, meanwhile Shadowheart and Karlach will playfully tease one-another and gush about the other's clothes, among other examples.
  • Minsc comes off like he has an one-sided hopeless crush on Astarion. He has long-winded reactions to other companions being downed, but Astarion gets a succinct Say My Name and Big "NO!". He's insistent that Ascended Astarion's "twinkly-eyed wiles" doesn't work on him, and that Boo should neither look into his eyes or think of nesting in his "thick and downy mane". In the epilogue, he keeps showing up to see Astarion, no matter how and where the latter moves his lair.
  • Even aside from the chatter, Lae'zel and Shadowheart's dynamic, should the player keep them both alive and engage with them enough for their character development, will evolve from bitter rivalry to making compliments about the other when they're not around, which as a side effect results in their banter coming off as Enemies-to-Lovers. Fuel was thrown on this fire in the announcement for Patch 8. Among the improvements, kissing animations were updated. The splash screen for the update is Shadowheart and Lae'zel making out.
  • Barcus Wroot and Wulbren Bongle. They're supposed to be childhood friends, but the way Barcus acts feels like he has a one-sided crush on Wulbren.
  • In fact, all three romances we see among the Ironhand gnomes are same-sex, though one ends dramatically, and one never connects as pointed out above.
  • After The Reveal that The Dark Urge was the original Chosen of Bhaal and an ally of Gortash in his scheme, many players have interpreted that The Dark Urge and Gortash had some sort of romantic history together based on their interactions. If the player's Dark Urge is a male, this trope applies.
• I Knew It!: When Shadowheart was unveiled in Early Access, many players correctly guessed that Viconia will make an appearance since both of them worship Shar.
• Inferred Holocaust: At the end of Act 2, if Gale detonates the Netherese Orb and kills the elder brain, all of the tadpoles under its control will complete their suspended ceremorphosis, unleashing a wave of mindflayers on the Sword Coast that will likely spell the region's doom.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • During the Iron Throne sidequest, you are given the choice between surrendering the submarine captain over to the Umberlee worshippers, who had asked you to find the one controlling the "metal sea monster" responsible for the death of their leader and polluting the waters. Handing him over to face justice for this is treated as the "bad" option, with morally good companions like Wyll and Karlach disapproving it, and the man responding with "Thanks for nothing, prick", while saving him nets you him as an ally for the final battle, indicating that overall handing him over is the "wrong" choice. However, he caused the death of a woman without any remorse (even if accidental), which was only because he was helping to ferry political prisoners to an undersea blacksight prison, something he was consensually taking part in^note he states he doesn't ask questions and looks the other way, but he's fully aware of the fact nasty stuff is going on down there; he also while explaining the situation acknowledges the prisoners are largely Gondions being held as collateral to make sure the ones working in the Steel Watch factory continue to work. He even holds the seamaidens in contempt because they were making the journey to the prison more difficult for him by swimming in the waters he travels through (they're worshippers of a sea goddess, swimming is part of their religious practices), and seems pretty proud of the fact he hit one of them. While he helped you rescue them, its largely only because you either tricked him or forced him to, and he still maintained a "I just look the other way" attitude to avoid taking responsibility for what he's done. By all accounts, he committed some nasty crimes with zero remorse and a refusal to take responsibility, yet the game seems to treat the fact they worship Umberlee as a justification for handing him over being wrong, which comes across as hypocritical considering Shadowheart's faith in Shar isn't treated with such scorn despite Shar being arguably more evil than Umberlee. On a whole, he could do with facing justice for his actions, making it strange doing so is the "wrong" choice.
  • In Act 3, Mizora traps Wyll into a Sadistic Choice: he can permanently escape his pact, or he can accept her help in rescuing his father. Should Wyll escape the pact, the other Companions will react as if he's crossed the Moral Event Horizon, remarking on it in the same glum, condemnatory tones they use for acts such as Shadowheart killing the Nightsong or Astarion sacrificing thousands of souls to ascend, and several of their comments imply they consider Wyll personally responsible for his father's death. There's little acknowledgment that Wyll was screwed no matter what he chose or that the circumstances of his father's abduction were totally out of his control. (Moreover, everyone acts as if Ulder dies right then and there and there's nothing you can do, when there's no indication of this; Mizora specifically says that if Wyll says no, Ulder will "fall to his enemies". This sounds very much like he's not going to be killed until later and you can go save him without her...because he's not, and you can, it's just really hard.) Many players also find it hard to imagine that Ulder Ravengard, if he is truly the moral and loving parent he's otherwise described as, would even want to be saved if it meant consigning his son's soul to the Hells for all eternity. Especially since it's been well proven that Mizora can and will twist the pact to send Wyll after innocents, and Karlach is implied not to be the first such target—how many more people will she force him to kill if he's bound to her forever? To add insult to injury, unlike other companion personal quests where the companion must make the difficult choice themselves or requires a speech check to change their mind, Wyll's "choice" is whatever the player picks for him, so it comes across as condemning him for a choice that didn't even fully belong to him. Stranger still is that the player can tell Wyll how they mean to find Ulder without Mizora's help after the choice is made, which makes it feel like the game condemns the choice without giving the player a chance to argue why they might want to do so.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: A variation. One common criticism isn't that the game itself is too hard, but that the easy mode is too hard, making it harder for newcomers to really get in and experience the game proper. This isn't helped by multi-classing being locked in said mode, meaning the mode that is meant for easier fights inherently makes the game harder.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: While the game has a plethora of villains who are either too complex or entertaining to truly hate, there are some characters who are simply detested by players for being terrible people.
  • The first is Wulbren Bongle, the Ironhand gnome whose bigotry towards the Gondians can reach genocidal levels. He's also an unpleasant Jerkass who is not only rude towards the player even after they save his life, but frequently belittles his friend Barcus despite the latter's frequent displays of loyalty.
  • Angry Mar'hyah, Scratch's abusive kennel master who you can encounter in Act 3, is universally despised by players (particularly animal lovers) for physically and emotionally mistreating the dogs under her "care". She's hardly better with people either, as she also abuses her assistant for showing concern for the dogs' well-being.
• LGBT Fanbase: The game has become popular amongst the LGBTQ community, thanks to the representative characters and creative team behind the scenes, not to mention that all of the romances can be pursued regardless of the player's gender.
• Love to Hate: Raphael has gotten a lot of appreciation for his truly over-the-top Smug Snake persona that alternates between Cold Ham and really chewing the scenery, and just how much he obviously enjoys oozing evilness. His launching into an epic Disney-style Villain Song just sealed the deal, so to speak.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Due to the game's ability to reclass characters, all of the companions are helpful in some form, but the subclasses vary in quality. For specifics:
  • Trickery Domain, like in the tabletop, is the worst cleric option due to the focus on stealth and illusions, which while marginally better than its tabletop version due to the nature of the game, means a cleric sacrifices healing, support, and damage in exchange for making stealth and tricking people easier. To top it all off, the Cleric's default weapon selection is mediocre, but it receives medium armor...which bestows disadvantage on Stealth rolls, meaning the Trickery Domain is counter-synergistic with the good part of a Cleric's proficiencies. It also gives little additional features that make it consistent. This is a contributing reason why Shadowheart is statically one of the worst performing party members by Larian's own statistics, as she starts off as a Trickery Domain cleric, and if kept to that lacks the extra features to make consistent. The other cleric subclasses are vastly more powerful by comparison, and unless the player really wants to make a stealth party (which is easily covered by other means for a cleric), it falls off extremely quickly.
  • Eldritch Knight fighter and Arcane Trickster rogue are considered the worst subclasses for their core class due to the changes to scrolls making them pretty much worse than other options. Turning both into Magic Knight focused builds on paper gives them more tools, but with scrolls being usable without needing to have spellcasting, both subclasses pretty much lost any advantages they once held, because a player can simply use scrolls on other subclasses, thus leaving the spell list and features of both feeling weaker and like the player gains nothing all that valuable. Both also have the issue of needing Intelligence on classes that are better off focusing on martial stats or taking feats to improve their battle skills. Arcane Trickster especially suffers, because the other subclasses are so much better than it, with some players going so far as to label it the worst subclass in the game.
• Memetic Badass: Swen Vincke and Larian in general. In the month leading up to the full release, fans have called them the kings of the RPG genre and made claims such as making Belgium relevant for once. Vincke's habit of wearing plate armour, including to award shows, certainly helps with this.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Wyll, at least in earlier versions of Early Access. Your first encounter with him is during the goblin combat outside the Emerald Grove, where he would announce himself by yelling "MAKE ROOM FOR THE BLADE OF FRONTIERS!" (without a cutscene like the final version) and jump down into the fray, and — assuming he didn't instantly die to fall damage, of all things — it was very easy for him to get immediately murdered by the rest of the goblins. Since you (obviously) can't recruit him if this happens and you can only resurrect already-recruited companions, not NPCs, many players were left confused about who this guy was or what he was trying to accomplish, and left wondering when the man with the demon lady on the loading screens would show up. There's also the fact that his patron is a Cambion which is in the lower pole of diabolic hierarchy. His personality and character arc were also considered by fans to be one of the most boring of the origin characters. Wyll's reputation got a little better with the full release as he received a complete rewrite.
  • Shadowheart, to a lesser extent. It's been reported that Shadowheart has unusually terrible luck with attack rolls, resulting in her frequently wiffing her attacks (both melee strikes and ranged spell attacks) at the worst time for a lot of players. According to Larian's statistics, she's also the companion most likely to die in battle, despite the cleric's decent armor proficiency and sharing a party with Squishy Wizard Gale. As such, there's been more than a handful of memes and jokes spring up about her being pretty bad at combat outside of healing, despite ostensibly being a battle medic.
• Memetic Molester:
  • Gale. As the requirements to trigger Gale's romantic storyline are particularly easy to stumble into (to the point many suspect it might be bugged, and was later confirmed to be bugged), Gale will proposition players who've barely interacted with them. Meanwhile, the storyline with him can lead him to being a manipulative creep towards a romanced player. As a result, he's gained a reputation for being the creep among the group.
  • Halsin has the some problem, albeit to a slightly lesser extent due to not being an origin character. Even players who never talked to him at all except for quest-related reasons, and explicitly avoided any even remotely romantic dialogue options during these conversations, can suddenly find themselves being propositioned by the hunky druid with the infamous bear sex scene. Not helped by the fact he responds to your rejection with confusion and hurt, claiming he felt you treated him like a lover, even if you barely paid attention to him and have spent zero time together outside of his sidequest.
  • Lae'zel is also memed as being hypersexual and hyperviolent, due to how quickly one can romance her (speedrunners have gotten to triggering her sex scene in two minutes of playing the game), and how githyanki custom involves a lot of violence mixed with sex and the design of her underwear resembling bondage gear, creating an interesting image.
  • Mystra. With the game leaving it ambiguous just how old Gale was when he first became her student^note although in-game books suggest her current incarnation is fairly close in age to Gale, that he was a wizarding Child Prodigy and that he describes the progression of their relationship as teacher-student before they became lovers, it has led quite a few fans to the interpretation that Mystra groomed him. This is not helped by a side comment from a different character that in his village, young boys gifted with the Weave were "hidden away" lest they catch Mystra's attention.
• Memetic Mutation: See here.
• Misblamed: While the game has been criticized for a number of contentious narrative decisions concerning the fates of the cast of the earlier Baldur's Gate titles such as the liberal use of Happy Ending Override and removing certain redemption arcs from the canon, these decisions weren't solely made by Larian Studios, and a lot of the blame lies on the Forgotten Realms license-holders, Wizards of the Coast, who have been adjusting the Forgotten Realms setting since the first two games came out. For example, the lengthy Time Skip between 2 and 3 wasn't Larian's idea. It wasn't even Wizards of the Coast's idea! The first two games use 2nd edition D&D, while the third uses 5th edition. The Time Skip came as a result of shifting the default setting from Greyhawk to the Forgotten Realms in the transition between 3rd and 4th edition of the tabletop game in 2008.
• Narm: The game's facial animations are fairly detailed and help sell many of the emotional scenes a player can experience, but for some reason your party members expressions change in conversations they are present for, but not actively part of, meaning you can have emotional scenes be made unintentionally comical because one of your party members is in the background making over the top expressions despite not being focused on.
• Narm Charm: The introductory scene featuring General Ketheric Thorm where he lets a goblin skewer him, only to rise again and taunt them to try again can come across as downright comical considering this spooky, undead necromancer's presently challenging an all-too-lowly, Level 1 goblin with no more than 10 HP to their name. However, Ketheric's cold demanding said goblin try again after showing the attack was ineffective, before killing them after it fails a second time, manages to make the scene work in spite of how funny the premise is.
• Never Live It Down: Most people point out how utterly horny and clingy the characters are when discussing Baldur's Gate 3. Part of this was a glitch that made characters want to start romancing you at rather low approval ratings.
• Older Than They Think: D&D players that are familiar with the fifth edition rules will notice that one of the various changes that Larian made when adapting the ruleset for this game was to make the level one spell, Grease, flammable. The rules as written in 5E do not have Grease as being flammable, however Grease used to be flammable in older editions.
• Popular with Furries:
  • The inclusion of dragonborn as a playable race has made the game rather popular with the scalie community. It helps that the default character for the Dark Urge origin is a tall, rather handsome albino dragonborn.
  • To a lesser extent, Popper had managed to hit it off with more than a few scalies himself, helped by being a kobold with an interesting attire and an openly-admitted hobby in corpse looting.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Despite being a good-aligned character and confirmed as such by Word of God, Gale gets this treatment from a lot of fans. Reasons include how easy it is to accidentally start romancing him (as detailed above) as well as annoyance with his need to consume magic items. A full relationship also requires the player to contend with his previous lover being a goddess, which would make any new paramour insecure. All these factors together have convinced some that Gale is a manipulative, selfish, wolf-in-sheep's-clothing bastard. This is especially prevalent when compared to 'Evil' companions, like Lae'zel, Astarion, and Shadowheart, who approve of evil actions (at least in act I) and are each responsible for huge amounts of suffering. Despite being redeemable, their crimes count genocide, fascism, and human(ish) trafficking, whereas Gale's predominant sin appears to be having an ex-girlfriend. While he does suffer a bout of Aesop Amnesia upon finding the means to reforge the Crown of Karsus, this is born out of his desperation to cure his magical ailment and his inner resentment over Mystra leaving him, and whether or not he actually goes through with it or realizes he's about to repeat his mistake and relent is up to the player.
  • The aforementioned 'evil' companions themselves, as some players will single them out as horrible, irredeemable jerks with no positive qualities. While they have their darker traits, none of them chose the path they took (Lae'zel was born into her pro-slavery society and raised on their propaganda, both Astarion and Shadowheart were outright kidnapped and forced against their will to take part in these evils, and Minthara manages to have both these things happen to her, as she was raised in the vicious Social Darwinist society of the Lolth-sworn Drow before being abducted by the Cult of the Absolute). The player's involvement can easily help them see the light and become The Atoner. They also all have a lot of good qualities even before their character development triggers (namely, honour, loyalty, and moral codes, with Even Evil Has Standards applying to each one of them). The problem is that, if the player refuses to engage with them or their stories, they'll likely only see the negatives and, doing so, the story conforms, and has the character develop negatively due to neglecting them (i.e. not helping Lae'zel learn the truth of Vlaakith's manipulations will result in her remaining loyal to Vlaakith which will result in her wanting to kill Orpheus, not taking Shadowheart to the Nightsong and giving her the choice to reject Shar results in her becoming hostile and choosing Shar over the players). Minthara suffers from this the worst due to many players being put off by the choices they would have to make to even recruit her because it not only requires players to perform one of the most monstrous actions in the game, but said action comes with a significant deficit in content. The result is that players would only see her as an Ax-Crazy cultist who they have to put down, something that Minthara herself lampshades should you actually recruit her. Patch 5 has rectified this a bit by allowing players who knock her out to fulfill the "defeat the goblin leaders" objective still be able to recruit her later on at Moonrise, meaning players who always make the "good" choices can still recruit her.
• Sacred Cow: Almost immediately. Even during Early Access, the game was being held up on high esteem, but upon full release it became, alongside The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, as a shoe-in for Game of the Year (2023 being a year with heavily stacked competition, this is especially impressive). As a result, anything but utter praise tends to get hostility from parts of the internet. The game's Reddit page in particular became infamous for how anything remotely critical or suggestions for changes will be met with at least some users becoming antagonistic and insisting that the improvements are technically unfeasible or would make the game worse.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Gale's personal quest begins by his asking the player to sacrifice magical items for him to consume. Not doing so will cause him to eventually explode, atomizing the entire party (and a city-sized area around him.) While ultimately you only need to sacrifice three, the fact that this is early in the game means that the player may struggle to come up with magical items they consider disposable enough.
  • The party cap of protagonist + 3 is often considered a little too tight compared to the previous games' protagonist + 5. If attempting to have a balanced party (archetypically consisting of a frontline fighter/tank, a rogue/skill monkey, an arcane caster, and a divine caster), it becomes very difficult to justify taking along a companion purely for their personality/reactions or the novelty of their class, and redundancies are especially punished (particularly annoying if your PC fills the same role as a character you really want to take along). This has been slightly mitigated in the full release version, as every character in the party can be respecced to a different class, but the 4 party restriction still is slightly disliked for the artificial difficulty it creates.
  • The complete lack of a means to change your character's appearance post-Character Creation. Given that other aspects of your character such as classes and stats can be fully changed later, and that Divinity: Original Sin II had such a feature, many consider its exclusion to be particularly glaring. Patch 3 has amended this with the inclusion of a magic mirror in camp that lets you change your appearance and pronouns of your Tav or Durge party members, but not the Origins members which was still something you could do in Divinity.
  • The party and inventory management is somewhat lacking in polish. For one, swapping items between active companions and ones in your camp requires taking the item from Companion A, dismissing Companion A from your party, swapping in Companion B, giving them the item, dismissing Companion B, then rehiring Companion A, and every single swap requires going through a couple lines of more or less friendly dialogue (though this was somewhat alleviated as of Patch 5, as now so long as you are in your camp you can swap items to not active party members, although you do still have to go to camp to do this). Also, you'll quickly accumulate dozens, then hundreds of items in your general inventory, many of which (like books, letters and quest-relevant trinkets) don't weigh much but clutter everything up, and you'll rarely know if or when it's safe to sell them, so they tend to stick around for quite some time.
  • While the companions are generally beloved and well realized, there's a frequent complaint about how out of 10 possible companions (barring hirelings who have no personality and are silent), 5 are some flavor of elf^note two half-elves (Jaheira and Shadowheart), a wood elf (Halsin), a high elf (Astarion), and a drow (Minthara), and since half-elves and tieflings are also part human, this also makes 6 of them being some flavor of human^note three humans (Gale, Wyll, and Minsc), two half-elves (Jaheira and Shadowheart), and a tiefling (Karlach). Meanwhile dragonborn, dwarves, gnomes, half-orcs, and halflings have no representative companion. Put it another way, among all 10 companions, the only one with neither elven nor human origins is Lae'zel (a githyanki). Her and Karlach at least comes across as exotic as opposed to "human-looking with maybe pointy ears" that the rest of the cast has going.
  • Similar to the above point, while the game does away with alignment, de facto, most companions are still clearly good-leaning, with a few being evil-leaning instead. Only Shadowheart seems to lean neutral and her personal questline still eventually forces her to towards either evil or redemption. This can be a bit disappointing compared to previous games, which offered a wider and more balanced range of good, evil, and neutral companions of various classes to assemble your party from.
  • There's some complaints online about the romantic encounters in the game. Unlike similar games, the onus isn't solely on the player who they romance, but on the character; you need to do enough to impress them to make them attracted to you enough to trigger the romance storyline to start, and it'll be up to them to make the first move (though, you can certainly flirt with them in order to encourage it). While this means players can lose out on romancing the companion they're interested in (according to Larian's player stats, this is a frequent problem with Astarion, the fan-favourite who nonetheless rejects most players for various reasons), it more frequently means accidentally earning the romantic attraction of characters you didn't intend to attract. Gale in particular has gained a reputation for being a yandere who falls hard for the player even if you've barely interacted with him, while Wyll is liable to trigger his romance by simply being supportive of him. Even outside of that, you'll be propositioned by a number of NPC characters on top of that, and while you can reciprocate these or reject them, some players have voiced being uncomfortable with the game basically sexually harassing you. Players on the ace spectrum particularly have voiced a wish they could have played a game that was far less horny.
  • On the topic of being less horny, some players, both in and out of the ace spectrum notice a lack of options in turning down Astarion's sexual proposition but still able to pursue him romantically the first date night with him. While this can be justified in that he's trying to manipulate you with seduction and will be frustrated if you don't go along with what he's used to, it can be a bummer for those felt forced to it if they want to continue romancing Astarion- especially due to his story's themes of choice, freedom, and bodily autonomy. This is even moreso the case if one is roleplaying as/or is someone who may either have similar issues, on the ace spectrum, and/or prefers to take things in the relationship slowly. This can be quite jarring if you compare an Origin run as Karlach and see that it is possible through her, but only due to her infernal heart burning people upon contact for most of the game, not out of full range of choice. Astarion even ends up apologizing and enjoying just talking through the night without having to use his body despite being initially frustrated with his forced method not being applicable. It wouldn't even be out-of-place either since this is early on in his story, he can still reason it as him emotionally manipulating you at first instead before he realizes and confesses his feelings. The writers, including Astarion's (Stephen Rooney) even make sex not as "the reward" for romance, rather, that there's more to the characters romantically and narratively aside from being fanservice.
  • The Autosave feature. The game has a finite number of autosaves it will make for a campaign, but rather than start offloading older autosaves in favour of new ones, it'll just stop autosaving outside of long rests and certain key events in a story. The game also lacks checkpoints in the traditional sense, so if you die, you have to reload from a save. A lot of players have voiced frustration that they lost significant amounts of progress because of this. Not helping matters is its very difficult and tedious to clean the unwanted save files off of a PC (even doing it outside of the game doesn't work, due to online save synching), so it's an issue that isn't easily mitigated unless you're playing it on a PlayStation 5. Fortunately later patches have mended this with the option to quickly clear all but your most recent save.
  • Multiclassing was a highly desired feature and is a very popular part of the tabletop experience, as it allows for greater customisation of abilities that wouldn't be possible otherwise. The game handles that rather well...except for the one stipulation that you can't do it while playing on the lowest difficulty. If you're not great at these kind of games but want to play a rogue/warlock fusion, or think that companions like Wyll or Karlach would benefit from a level or two in paladin, you need to be on the standard difficulty or higher.
  • Inability to select who makes skill checks in conversations. Whoever is the one that triggers a conversation is the one who has to make whatever skill check the player encounters in it, even if you didn't meant to, and you can't swap characters or have someone else make the roll. While some conversations allow you to leave and swap to try, more important conversations don't allow you to, making it more likely a player might go into a conversation and be unprepared to make certain checks they weren't aware were going to happen.
  • Much like the source material, using two off-hand weapons at once is a headache. Without the Dual Wielder feat, players are limited to only using weapons with the Light quality, meaning they can only use weapons of d6 or lighter and still get the extra attack, regardless of how well or poorly it would work in Real Life. Adding to the problem is that 5th edition handles dual wielding differently than 3.5 (the second-most popular edition) did, which can cause additional confusion from those who assume the mechanic works like it used to.
  • Often when combat ends an NPC will need to talk to you immediately about what just happened. However the NPC will not always default to your main player character but will instead speak to whichever of your party members is closest to them should your character be far enough away. This is frustrating for players who want their main character to be the one having these conversations as they might miss out on unique dialogue if it defers to someone else or be put into a conversation check that they're not specced for. Furthermore, if you're playing a Circle of the Moon druid this will happen a lot since you cannot speak to non-animals while in wildshape. Patch 6 attempted to remedy this by coding such conversations to prioritize the player character.
  • Astarion really wants to talk to Raphael any chance he gets. The problem is that Raphael has a whole bunch of possible spawn locations that the player may well not know about in advance even after multiple playthroughs, making it ridiculously easy to run into him unintentionally again and again. If this happens while Astarion isn't part of the active party for whatever reason, it makes gaining his approval that much harder, skips significant parts of his personal quest and character development, and gets you chewed out by him back in camp every time it happened for reasons mostly out of your control. While other companions may occasionally wish to be present at certain points in the story, they always clearly specify the when and where, leaving Astarion the only one to suffer from this level of randomness and unpredictability.
  • The Knock Unconscious ability to nonlethally defeat enemies has been heavily criticized for being useless outside of Minsc's recruitment quest where you have to knock him out to recruit him and prevent Jaheira from leaving the team. Even if you knock out enemies, the game will still register you as having killed them. This is especially egregious in quests where you want to go out of your way to spare enemies, such as Minthara or Auntie Ethel's brainwashed thralls, to the point that many players question why this mechanic is introduced if it has no purpose outside of a single, albeit important, quest. It doesn’t help that only melee attacks can nonlethally defeat enemies in fifth edition and the game decided to carry that rule over pretty straight, meaning several character builds will have a pretty hard time with it. Patch 5 did address this in the case of Minthara, allowing her to still show up at Moonrise and be recruited should she have been knocked out in act 1.
  • The actual situation isn't just a Scrappy Mechanic, it's a Scrappy Mechanic combined with Guide Dang It! and run-of-the-mill bugs. There are actually a number of situations in the game where players have reported alternate results by using nonlethal damage, but either the conditions to trigger them are incredibly specific, they're affected by bugs, or both. For example: it's possible to save Captain Grisly in Ethel's second lair... but even following the current best guess at how to do so (not attacking her until she is summoned by Ethel during the fight itself) has led to inconsistent results between players. It also really doesn't help that there is zero indication that most of these situations exist (did you know you get a special line from Hope after the Raphael fight if you KO Korilla?) and a knocked-out enemy is lying on the ground at 1 HP, will die if they take any damage from any source, and is still affected by area-of-effect and terrain effects. As such, even if you know in advance where the nonlethal content is, it's difficult to trigger and even more difficult to keep the enemy alive to do so.
  • The automatic selections for prepared spells can be quite annoying. The game's choices for spell preparation priorities can range from "odd" to "outright useless." It's always fun to, for example, reach level 9 with Gale and immediately see that the game has helpfully used his new prep slot for Witchbolt, a 1st level spell so weak that most guides recommend against preparing it at any point.
  • Gale's Act 3 personal quest. Rather than a single critical moment (such as Astarion choosing to ascend or not), the resolution of Gale's quest depends on a combination of Relationship Values and hidden flags, which will cause him to choose for himself how to handle his final decision. Theoretically this should be dynamic storytelling; however, Gale's flags are very easy to drive in a particular direction without the game giving any indication the player has done so, and can be affected by completely unrelated conversations, such as the dryad's love test. Essentially, if the player wants to keep Gale from pursuing the crown, they must hammer it home at EVERY opportunity that godhood is a bad idea and he needs to ask Mystra for forgiveness. Failing to do so even once, or even doing Gale's scenes "out of order" despite the game giving no indication there IS an order, will set Gale's flags to seeking godhood. The flags can remain set even if the player otherwise does everything "right", passes persuasion speech checks, and even has Gale explicitly agree that he doesn't want the crown. This has led many players to reasonably believe they have guided Gale towards a particular ending, only for him to do precisely the opposite. Adding insult to injury, the decision isn't made until after the final boss is defeated, meaning the player may have sunk a great deal of time and effort into beating the game before discovering Gale's decision isn't what they thought it was going to be.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Acid and poison damage are mostly a waste of time, resources, and character potential. No other elements have so many potential targets that are resistant or outright immune to them, and the surprising rarity of damage over time effects from either makes their damage output fall well short of almost any other element. If you have to choose between acid/poison damage or literally anything else, pick the other one.
  • When it comes to magical damage types, necrotic damage has a similar problem. It can deal huge amounts of burst damage if the target is susceptible to it, but there are so many enemy types that simply aren't that it's more of a liability than something to focus on. It's also a damage type that many enemies are resistant or even immune to, making it even more useless. It doesn't help that act 3 is where you really have the tools to use it better, but by then a player likely won't want to at that point.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Most commonly, players often refuse to use Long Rests as much as possible. Interestingly, this is only partially for the added challenge of managing health, spell slots, and short rests, but also because many feel it makes sense narratively given the feel that time is of the essence (ironically, long rests are tied with story progression triggers, so not resting regularly will actually ruin the flow of the story instead of better fitting it).
  • Some players have reported trying to do a "Murder Hobo" run, after the tabletop game stereotype of a player who has zero interest in role-playing or story engagement and just wants to fight and get treasure, which in-universe would resemble a homeless drifter going around killing everything in their path. The idea is pretty simple: kill everyone, including the companions when you come across them (making this a Solo-Character Run), steal everything you can, and try to complete the story while doing this.
  • On the flip side, trying to make sure every ally in some fights, such as The Goblins vs Tieflings battle in Act 1, the assault on Moonrise Towers in Act 2, and the Steel Watch Foundry in Act 3, gets out alive. Given how fragile these allies tend to be, not to mention their Artificial Stupidity in some cases (the Gondians in the Steel Watch Foundry are particularly infamous for this), trying to be a hero and rescue everyone can be much easier said than done.
  • In a similar vein, trying to rescue characters from a fate that happens offscreen or via cutscene - for instance, saving Wyll from being turned into a devil by knocking him out before each long rest, or teleporting past Mayrina's brothers, then killing all the redcaps and disarming all the traps, causing the brothers to disappear but not get killed.
  • Some players have also reported making a challenge run in which the player does not romance anyone... and this includes not getting propositioned by companions or NPCs either - and no using hirelings. Some people have joked that this is much harder than it looks since getting too high an approval rating means they'll start soliciting you.
• Squick:
  • Around the outskirts of the Blighted Village, it's possible to walk in on a bugbear and an ogre female getting their nasty on. Complete with moaning, door creaking, and actual thrusting animations should you decide to ignore your companions' warnings and barge in anyway.
  • When getting past the goblin outpost, Olak may try to trick the player into smearing Worg feces on their face. If you're playing as a barbarian, you can order him to EAT the poop as punishment for lying.
  • The fact that your romance with Halsin can involve him Wild Shaping into a bear to make love has made certain people uncomfortable, especially given the fact that the clip of that released during the launch stream circulated without context (like that the player-character can turn down the "bear option" and have Halsin remain in his true form for proceedings).
  • You get the option to have sex with your dream guardian/the Emperor, who is a mind flayer, i.e. a brain-eating tentacle monster. Similar to Halsin, you can make it a bit easier to stomach by requesting that he shift to his dream guardian form, but there's zero indication going in that this is an option.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Quite a few fans have compared the game to Dragon Age: Origins in nature. The gameplay is similar in design, but other elements such as being a group of adventurers tainted by a dark force that will corrupt you, but allowing you to use its power to fight back against it, has lead to similar comparisons. Given that the Dragon Age series was made by the same studio that worked on the previous Baldur's Gate games, it isn't too surprising.
• Stress-Relieving Gameplay: For those who don't like how Withers chastises you for seeking romance or not seeking romance, picking the option "My love life is none of your business, skeleton" is immensely satisfying.
• That One Achievement: The "She Cannot be Caged!" trophy to rescue the goblin Sazza three times in a playthrough. Nowhere is it mentioned that this trophy is locked to an evil playthrough where you side with the goblins and wipe out the druid grove. Siding with Halsin, even if you choose to only target the goblins' leaders and spare everyone else, Sazza will just randomly drop dead as soon as Ragzlin, Minthara and Gut are all dead, even if she's nowhere near the fighting. While it is possible to get it on a good playthrough, it requires a massive amount of luck or pre-planning with non-lethal damage to complete the steps for it, making it difficult to complete it no matter how you play the game.
• That One Attack:
  • Goblins using acid or fire arrows. Neither of them is too bad on their own, but the sheer number of goblins who have them can lead to parties being spammed by ranged AOEs.
  • Hunger of Hadar and Darkness, particularly prominent spells used in the bossfight against Disciple Z'rell and Mother Superior; both reduce your ability to make ranged attacks and give disadvantage to closed ranged attacks, but the former also has every character suffer constant damage while inside it and reduced movement, which makes escaping it rather difficult. You can't even Misty Step out as you need to be able to see where you're teleporting to. With the latter battle, there will usually be multiple casters casting it, allowing them to spam the attack to hit your entire party no matter how separated they are, and keep casting it every time you dispell it. Making matters worse is a Game-Breaking Bug that makes it so attacking a character that's Concentrating on Darkness will more often than not crash the game, so outside of some niche workarounds you're basically trapped as soon as a caster gets that spell off.
  • Ketheric has an AOE attack that hits in a large area, but also can inflict the frightened status on everyone hit by it. Not only is passing the save difficult given the wide range and the expected DC for it, but it locks those who failed in place and gives disadvantage on checks and attack rolls, making it hard to avoid and deal with the effects of. Worse, due to how the fight is designed, Ketheric will leave once he gets low on HP, but because he doesn't "die", the effect becomes bugged and remains for the rest of the fight, and doesn't end if you win the fight, meaning it can potentially cause a near unwinnable battle if the enemy is still standing before you can win, and requiring a reload. The bug was eventually patched, but it still is annoying to deal with being unable to properly react to the enemy if he uses it.
  • Steel Watchers in Act 3 have a melee attack that not only has farther range than one would expect, but also has a chance to inflict prone and maim on the target, causing the target to be knocked over and more vulnerable to melee attacks if prone, and have no movement speed and disadvantage on Dex saves if maimed. This makes them extremely deadly because they can trap an unfortunate person in place, letting them or other enemies attack without issue back to back. This is also why quests like saving the Gondians is so hard, as the Steel Watchers effortlessly can take out the Gondians thanks to the attack and effects, not helped by the attack itself doing a pretty hefty amount of damage even if they fail to inflict either status. And god help you if they inflict either debuff before they begin to Self-Detonate, which can potentially kill anyone stuck near them.
• That One Boss:
  • The golem in the Adamantine Forge can be rather frustrating. Due to its massive health, the expected way to destroy it is to use a pneumatic hammer in the middle of the arena, which will kill it after 2 strikes. The trouble is A: The boss is immune to all damage unless it spends time standing in lava, at which point it will be capable of taking damage for 3 turns. B: The entire arena is filled with lava, so your movement options are somewhat limited, particularly as far as moving the boss into position goes. C: The lava drains from the arena every few turns, requiring you to activate a valve to bring it back. This can lead to a frustrating scenario where you try to get the golem into the lava for it to heat up only for the lava to drain right when its turn comes up. And trying to get the robot to actually get on the pneumatic hammer can often mean essentially sacrificing a unit to stand on top of the hammer. The entire fight is a big Puzzle Boss, but it's more frustrating than interesting. What's worse, to get the "A Grym Fate" achievement, you have to kill it without using the hammer once.
  • Disciple Z'rell is an extremely difficult boss even if you have the Harpers on your side, partly because you also have to contend with her mooks as well. The most frustrating of her minions, the Adepts, can spam Hunger of Hadar that not only whittles away your health but blinds you as well, making it even harder for your characters to hit anything. Z'rell herself can also cast Black Hole which will reduce your characters' movements, making it even more difficult to get out of Hunger of Hadar's range. To make matters worse, the Warden and her mooks join the fight after you've already depleted all of your resources trying to stay alive. However she can be cheesed by talking to her while the PC is infiltrating Moonrise Towers. If the player avoids a fight then she'll go to her office alone, allowing the team to launch a surprise attack that has a good chance of killing her before she gets many (or possibly any) chances to cast spells. Close the doors first and it won't even aggro the rest of the tower.
  • Lorroakan is a pretty difficult boss to deal with if you're not at least level 11 and/or haven't pre-planned for it. To start, you'll have your whole party starting off in a single small corner where they're functionally trapped and vulnerable to AOE attacks. Secondly, Lorroakan has four powerful elementals who are not only tougher than he is, but each have devastating AOE attacks; in particular, the Air elemental can create a vortex that causes Silence and blocks spells in the area, and reduces movement to make escaping it difficult. Thirdly, Lorroakan has an ability called Elemental Rebuke, where any damage he suffers is repaid three times in one of the four elements, fueled by the elementals on his side. So long as these four tanky elementals are standing, attacking him directly is very unwise. It used to be even worse where he could still cast Elemental Rebuke even when silenced before a patch removed it, allowing silencing him to be an option.
• That One Level:
  • The attack on Last Light Inn in Act 2 can quickly become this if the player isn't ready, and even if one is, it can spiral into chaos quickly. There isn't any warning that the attack will happen when you speak to Isobel, as even if you expose Marcus as a mole for the Absolute, he'll flee but return if you trigger the conversation with Isobel. Once it begins, all your allies except for Isobel and Jaheira become stunned and surprised, letting the enemies that spawn downstairs have an easy time killing the defenseless NPCs before they can be stopped, potentially locking quests off that the player was wanting to do. On top of that, if Isobel is reduced to zero HP, she's taken away by the Cult of the Absolute in a cutscene so nothing you do can prevent it, and the barrier over the inn ceases, killing everyone but Jaheira, and cutting off several things for later in the game. As if that wasn't enough, she has a tendency to move past enemies during her turn, taking attacks of opportunity along the way, whittling down her already small health bar. Marcus isn't really a hard foe, but he has a lot of HP, and tends to spam attacks that can hit multiple characters, or focuses on Isobel, while the other enemies gang-up on Isobel or other characters. Unless you really focus on Isobel and leave the downstairs enemies for Jaheira (who isn't weak but not enough on her own) to handle, trying to protect Isobel and the other characters is very easy to fail at, and potentially a wall that can prevent progressing via interacting with the Last Light characters. Fortunately, you can even the odds a little by rescuing Halsin in Act 1, as he'll be present and will help in the fight as a level 5 druid, but you do have to check with an NPC to trigger part of his quest to have him spawn there; if not he won't be there to help.
  • Crèche Y'llek. It's impossible to do the primary sidequest there (which is optional but is part of Lae'zel's storyline, and she'll remind you of it frequently) without becoming hostile to the place, necessitating you to fight your way out. Since githyanki are a Proud Warrior Race, you can expect them to put up a hell of a fight, each of them getting multiple hard-hitting attacks per turn. If the warriors don't kick your butt, the archers sure will. This can be mitigated a little if you follow the Blood of Lathander questline, as you can evade most of the githyanki and fast travel from the room the mace is located in, but even this quest requires some exploration, puzzle solving, and trap-disarming to pull off. On top of that, the area has some valuable loot, but good luck getting any of it.
• That One Sidequest:
  • The Gondian sidequest chain in Act 3 gets a lot of flak. Rescuing the captives from the Iron Throne is bad enough, as it's a very difficult encounter you aren't given much warning for and is almost impossible to complete perfectly if you don't have the right party, builds, or equipment, especially if you're trying to save every prisoner including Omeluum and Wyll's father without Mizora's help; it's followed up by a fight in the Watcher Factory where some players' desire to protect every NPC helping them in a fight is sorely tested, as the allied AI seems determined to get itself killed as fast as possible such as by deliberately taking opportunity attacks then misty stepping back into melee, running into dangerous terrain which they often caused in the first place by spamming oil and fire spells, and not standing clear of Steel Watchers that are very clearly about to self-destruct. In the already controversial third act, it's often mentioned as one of the worst-designed parts. On top of that, the motivators the enemies activate can sometimes bug out and be at heights that are impossible to reach, forcing a reset.
  • The "Free the Artist" sidequest. In Act One, you have to pay a hefty sum of money (1000G) to buy Oskar's freedom even if you use a persuasion/intimidation check to significantly reduce the slaver's price (600G). Then, Oskar demands another hefty sum (200G) to travel to Baldur's Gate in comfort, and it's not made clear in-game that this payment isn't required to progress the storyline (it only impacts on companion approval). The problem is that in Act One, money is rather hard to come by and you would rather spend it on valuable equipment. The continuation of the sidequest in Act Three is even worse, as the villa that Oskar resides in is filled with cursed skulls that repel and deal damage to the player, preventing them from progressing further into the mansion. Worse is that these skulls are placed close to the stairs, which inflicts additional fall damage to players and their party members. The only way to destroy the skulls is with fire spells (until later patches), but the problem is that their sturdy nature means you will have to deal above 25 damage to destroy them. This, alongside the huge number of invisible enemies and the game's clunky camera control, and you have what many players consider to be the worst-designed level in the game.
  • "Investigate Felogyr's Fireworks" is considered frustrating by many players, not for its difficulty, but because the game does not specify what the player's objective is. Concluding the quest requires players to kill all the staff employees. The problem, however, is that there are Flaming Fist officers and a Steel Watch standing outside the shop, and getting into a fight with the employees has a high chance of attracting the Fist's attention, forcing players to fight them as well.
  • "Find Dribbles the Clown" is one of the more tedious sidequests in act 3, because unlike most sidequests, the game doesn't give any hints or direction for where each piece of Dribbles can be found, instead the player has to explore and find them, across two different zones, meaning at least three loading screens to finish the quest, and you have to pick up each piece of the clown, taking up inventory space. What makes it worse is that some pieces of Dribbles are in plot relevant locations like the temple of Bhaal, meaning you can't even get it done right away, while others are in areas you need to break into. The reward is a fairly powerful ring for magic users, so the reward is worth it for anyone wanting more magic items, but without a guide to indicate where you can find each piece, it doesn't seem possible to naturally find each piece due to some parts being in places a player wouldn't ever think to check.
  • Romancing Astarion. Since most players lean towards good, and Act I Astarion tends to disapprove of many heroic acts, a lot of players struggle to raise his approval high enough to trigger the romance—something directly lampshaded by Larian themselves, who released a statistic of how many players have been rejected specifically by Astarion. It is entirely possible (if not quite simple) to romance Astarion as a good player who is kind and helps everyone, however, it's fairly non-intuiative for a blind playthrough because he has no linear questline until act III. For example, one of his highest approval bumps in the game is allowing him to bite you, but only if you never threaten him. If you let him bite you, but threaten to stake him if he takes too much, you'll get only +1 approval instead of the + 10 you'd get if you didn't threaten him. There is zero indication of this disparency and zero indication of how much approval you missed out on if you made the wrong choice. Another high bump you get is from letting him kill Gandrel in self-defense, a character not at all foreshadowed anywhere and who is tucked away in a fairly easily-missed spot in the swamp. Another is letting him barge into the Ogre/Bugbear having sex, which is nearly impossible to even get the option for unless he is the only person in your active party, as other party members tend to speak over him. In general, nearly all of his highest approval bumps are stumbled across by pure chance or easily missable, making it frustratingly difficult to raise his approval to even evil players without a guide.
  • "Investigate the Beach" an early game sidequest will pit you against four harpies on a beach near the Druid's Grove. The harpies have quite strong attacks for early game and with their Alluring Song, which one of them will almost always be singing, your party will probably end up wasting your turns after being charmed. This on top of them standing across the water, difficult terrain which halves your movement range, making melee fighters take several turns just to get close enough to hit them. The harpies are of course unaffected by the terrain since they can fly. Making this even trickier is that the quest will automatically fail if you long-rest after triggering it (such as by, say, innocently wandering along the path out of curiosity), meaning you can easily be locked into completing it with potentially low spell slots and weak equipment.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The announcement that Baldur's Gate III would use Turn-Based Combat instead of Real-Time with Pause turned out to be rather divisive with hardcore Baldur's Gate fans. On the negative side, reactions range from being mildly disappointed but still excited about the game, to insisting that the franchise is now ruined with a game that's In Name Only. On the other hand, this is actually a case of History Repeats, since the original Baldur's Gate received criticism for having Real-Time with Pause combat instead of Turn-Based Combat like the previous Dungeons and Dragons games when it came out.
  • In the early access version of the game, the mindflayer parasites had a Power at a Price system, providing you with a Sadistic Choice of gaining more power at the cost of falling ever closer into The Corruption, with the entity in your dreams even being your ideal lover who would urge you on to slip further and further. You would have to carefully weigh your choices and be ready to suffer unforeseen consequences for your actions. The depiction of the tadpoles graphically burrowing into your brain, which turns a sickly grey and purple color, seemed to bode nothing good, but seemed to be bring some interesting ideas gameplay and story wise. In the final release though, this mechanic was gutted to the point of only impacting your appearance if you embrace your illithid evolution, and the choice to become a mindflayer in the endgame is a completely voluntary one where you can decide anything regardless of your prior decisions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal is perhaps best remembered for its handling of Sarevok, the Big Bad of the original game, who was Promoted to Playable for the final act of the Bhaalspawn saga. His potential redemption is considered some of the strongest Character Development across the series, and his return in 3 as a force against the Bhaalist resurgence rather than a husk in its service would've bookended his arc in a far more poignant way. His post-death Bhaalist zealotry and resentment over his resurrection also feel like mischaracterizations, as he aspired not to serve but to supplant, and the only reason he's still alive at all is that he entreated Gorion's Ward to grant him his second life^note though his epilogue in Throne of Bhaal implies that he eventually came to regret this choice. Even discounting his potential for redemption, Sarevok's canonical epilogue points to the sort of moral greyness and inner torment the alignment system was discarded to better explore; reducing him to a depraved, incestuous, Flanderized relic was perhaps the least interesting thing that could've been done with the character.
  • Minthara is romanced at a significant content deficit: no fewer than three playable characters will leave the group or outright revolt over the druid grove massacre which is needed to initiate her romance — potentially four, if Gale isn't successfully talked down from following suit. Not helping matters is that Minthara's romance path was initially faced with numerous bugs during release, severely limiting much of her dialogue options in Act 3. Minthara is such an interesting character once you scratch the surface, locking her behind a tradeoff so severe it almost feels like a punishment is a huge waste. This might be why later patches included an option to recruit her without massacring the druid grove.
  • Omeluum had some wasted potential for a mind flayer in the game as he does help the player with trading and side quests but his usefulness runs dry after rescuing him from captivity. This is considered a waste due to the ending as Omeluum could have had an impact on the game’s ending in scenarios where Orpheus is freed as if the option to ask Omeluum for help in beating the absolute was possible then that would have fulfilled the requirement of a mind flayer’s presence in facing the final boss as that would have helped the player avoid making the difficult choice of turning themselves, Karlach, or Orpheus into a mind flayer to maintain protection against the Absolute.
  • Many fans who played the older entries of the series found the return of Viconia DeVir to be pretty underwhelming, especially since she's portrayed as a maniacal priestess of Shar whereas her epilogues in Throne of Bhaal had her either turn over a new leaf if the player chose to romance her^note granted, she also died in this ending, or turn against Shar and strike out on her own. Much like Sarevok above, it feels like a wasted opportunity to not have Viconia be a potential ally against the forces of her former deity of worship.
  • Cazador and much of Astarion's vampire-centric plotline is wholly disconnected from the main plotline, and while Astarion's personal quest is among the (if not the) most well-developed, many found the vampire Big, Screwed-Up Family dynamic interesting enough that it could have supported more development if it had been better tied into the main plot. Cazador in particular, despite possibly being one of the vilest villains in a game with no shortage of bastards, only ever gets screentime just before he's fought and killed, which seems a waste for someone so central to Astarion's story. This feels like even more of a missed oppertunity when fans heard that in the (mostly) cut Upper City portion of the game, it was planned that Cazador had a role in the Cult and was actively quarrelling with another high up member of the cult.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • All three of the Chosen of the Absolute have a case. For Ketheric, there's a Persuasion option to attempt to convince him not to sacrifice himself to Myrkul. Even if you succeed at it, he does it anyway, even if his daughter is also standing right there begging him not to do it. Likewise, it's entirely possible to learn the Awful Truth about Orin the Red's Dark and Troubled Past, which causes her such a Villainous RRoD that Bhaal has to personally intervene to force her to transform into her One-Winged Angel form. Many feel that this would have been a great opportunity to explore more of her past, particularly while playing as the Dark Urge. But the worst offender here, by far, is Gortash, who makes an offer of We Can Rule Together with the player characters, which even the Emperor confirms he is completely serious about and isn't planning to double-cross them. Even if he survives to the climax, he's unceremoniously killed off by the Absolute with no possibility to save him or prevent it in any way. Many players have likened this to railroading, preventing players from working with the villains in any meaningful way, despite the option being teased in-game. This is especially glaring given the aforementioned dearth of content for an 'evil playthrough.'
  • Picking a warlock subclass will occasionally have you get a sense of your patron, but they never actually appear or have any baring on the plot (in fact, it will negatively impact the option of talking Yurgir into killing himself, as the warlock option replaces the insight check needed to figure out how to do so). However, the game has options in game for potential patrons for all three of the available patrons (Raphael and, after his defeat, Yurgir both cover the Fiend pact, Auntie Ethel and Thaniel cover the Archfey pact, and the tadpole itself covers the Great Old One pact), all of whom are actively tempting the player to make deals with them or embrace their power, so with a bit of tweaking to their initial introductions, they could have easily been depicted as the patrons for the three warlock subclasses with little rewriting needed for their overall role in the story.
  • Recruiting Minthara in Act 2 involves freeing her from the Absolute's control, at which point she has a My God, What Have I Done? realization of the atrocities she committed in their name and is clearly mournful of this. While she remains the Token Evil Teammate due to Deliberate Values Dissonance of Drow society, she still comes off as The Atoner and is no more evil than Astarion or Lae'zel, so she actually fits well with the good playthrough's larger theme about redemption. The problem though is that, until patch 5, without mods, Minthara could not be recruited in a "good" playthrough where the player defeats the goblins, despite the fact she's introduced in Act 2 after failing to find the relic for Ketheric, which still works narratively with the events of the "good" playthrough where the goblins were defeated and renders the option of siding with them pointless narratively. While it's expected that a "good" playthrough will involve killing her during the goblin arc, there's nothing stopping the player knocking her out instead, allowing her to survive while still "failing" the Absolute. The reasoning for this ostensibly is to provide content/companions exclusive for an evil playthrough, but this leads to the larger issue of the game not providing enough reason to do such a thing as she's the only evil exclusive companion, which makes the fact she could still easily fit into a "Good" playthrough's story even more apparent. Ultimately this was changed come patch 5, and knocking her out would still let her be recruited come act 2.
  • Lae'zel and Shadowheart's feud in Act 1 is a mini-arc the two have that is a recurring interaction in dialogue and at camp, building to the two nearly coming to blows, and can end with Shadowheart killing Lae'zel if you let her. However, if the player convinces the two to work together instead, their animosity and conflict is almost completely dropped save for the two snarking at each other, and shortly after treat each other as reluctant friends. While party dynamics are not a big piece of the story, theirs sticks out because it resolves around the prism, a key part of the game's story, making it strange the game built their feud up so much early on, only to drop it later.
  • Isobel's diary mentions feeling something off about herself after she was resurrected, and the nature of her return is presented as unusual even by the standards of the setting. On top of how she seems to be vaguely sick -as demonstrated by her coughing fits- the game seems to be setting up something about Isobel's resurrection having consequences or some form of effect that the story will need to address, especially given Myrkul's role in the game, but all of this is never addressed, and her diary is the only reference to her feeling something wrong.
• Ugly Cute:
  • Intellect Devourers are disturbingly adorable for what's basically a mind-flayer-aligned human brain with short legs and Combat Tentacles. The way they scuttle about and their cutesy voice and innocent demeanor while non-hostile might make you want to pet them rather than kill them on sight.
  • Lae'zel, as a githyanki, has the expected "alien" qualities, from greenish skin with raised, almost scale-like spots, to an unusually small nose, sharp teeth, and serrated ears. But many players have expressed that she's oddly cute by githyanki standards, especially those who view her as the best romance option, with her githyanki qualities giving her a more interesting look than the comparatively traditionally attractive Shadowheart and Amazonian Beauty Karlach.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Mayrina. While the game allows the player to call her out on her choice to listen to Ethel, who's revealed to be a hag, the game pushes the player to view her as an innocent woman deserving of sympathy, as most of the party save for the more "evil" aligned push for her safety, because she's emotionally devastated over the loss of her husband and discovering she's pregnant without any idea what to do. However, some players felt that her justification was hard to sympathize with, as her being willing to hand over her then unborn child to a hag is shortsighted and selfish, given she wants her husband back without care about her future child's well being, and without understanding the potential consequences of her deal. Even if the player points out the issues making a deal with a hag will bring, she gets angry and calls the party out for it, even if the player demonstrates what Ethel really was going to do as part of their deal (basically revive her husband as a zombie), instead demanding the rod to control her zombie husband, making her look more selfish as a result. While she later mellows out and apologies, even potentially freeing her husband once Ethel is truly defeated, some players still found it hard to view her sympathetically after how rude and selfish she comes across during Act 1.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • There are rare instances during conversations where party members will roll a skill, which can affect the conversation depending on the result. These seem to be safety nets to ensure character specific conversations allow for them to be represented even when not the main speaker. However, these are so rare that it comes across as an after thought or only created for specific conversations where the game really wants you to have a specific character with you. A player may never even see these instances because they are so rare due to multiple factors. The first meeting with Voss in Act 1 if you have Lae'zel in your party is one of the few times a player may ever see this feature.
  • Non-lethal damage is something a player can chose to enable when fighting, meaning you don't kill with melee attacks but leave them knocked out. As a mechanic, it not only has severe implementation issues but feels underdeveloped, since outside of only one instance where it is necessary, non-lethal damage basically functions the same as killing an enemy, and they often don't get back up after. The game itself doesn't seem to account for it either, since you can do stuff like non-lethally take out the people Ethel has under control, but nothing happens if you do so. Later patches have added a few more cases where this works, but it's still under-developed due to being extremely unclear who it can work on; non-lethally knocking out Minthara in Act 1 being one of the only known instances where it works as seemingly intended.
  • Players can select their character's voice out of several options when creating them, but they're all very similar posh English accents saying the exact same lines with slightly different enunciation, not necessarily fitting for the vast amount of character options the game gives you (i.e. gruff dwarves, savage orc barbarians, or street-smart urchins). This has led to confusion on the one hand why not just to have one male and one female voice, if they're all going to be that similar anyway, and on the other hand, to players wishing for more variety in tone/accent/lines. Adding to the confusion is the fact that some measure of voice variety had been a mainstay in many earlier D&D games, including the previous Baldur's Gate titles.
• The Woobie:
  • The tiefling refugees, good lord, the tiefling refugees. Not only did they live through the descent of Elturel, but they were cast out by Elturel's citizens out of racist Misplaced Retribution. As they travel to Baldur's Gate, they get attacked by gnolls and goblins. Although they found shelter in the druid grove, the majority of the resident druids see them as a burden and want to kick them out. And depending on the player's choices, they can be slaughtered by either the druids or the goblins. And even if the player saves them from the goblins, many of them were later slaughtered or abducted by the Cult of the Absolute. By the time Act 3 rolls around, only a fraction of the tieflings you saw at the start of the game managed to make it to Baldur's Gate, and that is dependent on the player's choices. Trauma Conga Line does not even begin to cover it.
  • Animals aren't safe either. Scratch, the dog, mourns for the death of a human, among other things in his past, and can even be returned to his abusive owner. A cat named Grub can also be this with his nervous personality only letting Yenna near. If Yenna is kidnapped by Orin, he'll be turned into skewered meat a disguised Orin can try tricking you into eating.

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