Congratulations! You’ve conquered the Absolute and saved Faerun from sure destruction yet again! Larian’s gorgeous credit sequence starts rolling and you’re already thinking, “Wow, surely there’s another game out there with this same degree of world building, environmental reactivity, and a similarly vibrant cast of supporting characters.”
The sad truth is that there isn’t. Baldur’s Gate 3 was inspired by a whole slew of overly complicated, crusty CRPGs that basically feel like you’re playing a homework assignment. Sorry! Here’s a list of them anyway, so that you can nab them when they’re 75% off on Steam, boot ‘em up for 90 or so minutes, and then go back to playing a game with cutscenes.
Divinity: Original Sin II
This one’s a no-brainer! Larian’s last major release before BG3, Divinity: Original Sin II is chock full of complex lore and goofy side characters, talking chickens and grumbling dwarves. It also has like half as much voice acting, and you’re basically interacting with little thumbnails the whole time instead of actual people. Good luck staying immersed!
Planescape: Torment
The classic that started it all, modern video game storytelling couldn’t exist without Planescape: Torment. You inhabit the soul of the Nameless One, an immortal man with amnesia on a quest to learn why he was created immortal. Do you consider books video games? Of course not. You don’t play a book. And you don’t play this game either. You read it.
Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Editions
Holy Shar, there were two other ones?!??! Don’t get too excited, cowboy. You’ll get to hang out with Jaheira again, sure, but you’ll spend most of the 250+ hours required to beat both of these games transferring potions between different members of your party and wishing you were playing a game that wasn’t 30 years old.
Disco Elysium
Nice, something modern and lauded by critics and fans alike? Perfect! Wait, there’s no combat? You just play as some drunk loser? And spend most of the game arguing with your own brain? That’s awesome, man. I love booting up my PC at the end of a hard day and replaying my own life again.
Pillars of Eternity
This game was created by Obsidian Entertainment, whose founders had a large hand in creating the first couple Baldur’s Gate games while they were working at Black Isle Studios. They crowdfunded a large chunk of cash on Kickstarter to get this game through development and distribution. Very cool! It’s absolutely amazing to see gamers and developers working together to release a game that requires you to essentially do calculus in your head every time you fight a horde of goblins.
Wasteland 3
This one’s a bit post-apocalyptic! Interesting, no? No, it isn’t. You’ll be calculating percentages and AP costs in your head and just wishing you were just playing Last of Us. Clickers scary, Joel so cool!
Dragon Age: Origins
An absolute classic. Choices matter, unique high fantasy setting. Perfect, right? The NPCs look like blocks and it’ll take two and a half minutes to load every time you leave a town hub. Sounds like you’d better just give that Dark Urge playthrough a shot instead.
Tyranny
This is a fantastic game if you like clicking. You’ll click so hard that you’ll drive yourself mad. 50+ hours of clicking, minimum. That’s why we game, folks. The beauty of the click.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister
According to many, this game was the most faithful video game adaptation of the DnD 5e rulebook before Baldur’s Gate 3 came around. Unfortunately, everyone who’s ever played it was way too shy to talk to us about it, so we’ve got no clue what the game’s about.
The Mass Effect Series
Obviously, this is not a CRPG. But you can definitely bone down with a lot of sexy characters in your adventuring party and we figured that before we wrap this article up, we should suggest at least one game that could be classified, by any metric, as “entertaining.”
