Baldur's Gate 3's bosses are brutal and awesome at times

How I learned to love challenging boss battles

by

Cass Marshall
on Aug 24, 2023 at 11:00 am

Baldur’s Gate 3 Filled with unique challenges that other RPGs don’t offer, like having to rescue a gnome tied to a windmill. But on every goofy mission, I’m faced with a tough challenge that forces me to strategize. This is especially true of boss battles; Larian certainly loves to pit me into confrontations that test my wits – and sometimes my patience. No two boss fights are exactly alike, thanks to the range of main enemy types and arenas. But the guys I’m hanging around with also give me different dialogue options to deal with the game’s big bugs. These boss battles appear Baldur’s Gate 3A spirit of creative freedom, even if it hurts at times. And they made me a better player.

I play an assassin, along with my true love Astarion, my best friend Shadowheart, and grumpy Githyanki Lae’zel. I figured out how to exploit their common talents early on. Lae’zel opens battles, pummeling enemies with a distraction blow, giving everyone else on our team the advantage, then Starion and I attack any opponents left standing. It’s our bonding activity as a couple, and it’s also how you’ve beaten large parts of the game so far.

Photo: Larian Studios via Polygon

But sometimes, the game gets twisted, and I’m faced with a boss battle that forces me to completely rethink my strategy. Early on, Spider Matriarch was the first lesson I had to stop wandering around and actually use my brain. My usual strategy wasn’t working due to the swarms of tiny, hyper-mobile spiders, and in the end I used a combination of Carlash’s sweeping attacks and environmental damage from falling rocks, which made me feel like a genius.

The game has also consistently delivered creative and entertaining main arenas. One brawl occurs in the Underdark, and everyone is surrounded by deep channels of lava. Any player with even a bit of ruthlessness would quickly come to the following conclusion: “Why am I using my traditional abilities like sucker When can I simply use the knockout capabilities to outsource this work to Lava? Knockback is actually a surprisingly useful and fun solution to some tough fights.

To be fair, I don’t Owns to access all of these snippets. I can often use persuasion — or deception, if I’m feeling excited — to get out of even the most awkward or difficult situations. Sure, the warden at Moonrise Tower might have caught me in a hidden box, but that doesn’t mean I am. sinner. With a bit of confidence, my elf can claw her way out of fighting the district boss she never meant to antagonize – as long as the dice don’t betray me.

Photo: Larian Studios

But I do adore my sweet friend Astarion, whose whims betrayed me during one of the nasty boss fights. I found myself facing a demon, a displaced beast, and a horde of infernal fools. To my pleasant surprise, I found that I could talk to Satan. But Astarion didn’t like it, and he yelled at me to shut up and start killing. Relationships are about compromise, so I threw myself into that particular battle for a good portion of the day before finally getting lucky with a series of crucial rolls. Although I started fighting reluctantly, the game rewarded me with inspiration from my happy team members, and I got through the next boss battles wiser from this experience.

There have only been a handful of times, in my game, where boss fight conditions have felt less fair – or where creative solutions didn’t seem to make much of a difference. The ambush at the Last Light Inn in Chapter 2, where the failure case was related to an unlucky cleric, was a particular struggle. It’s overcrowded with gargoyles, and it’s not her fault, but it is Do Flee from them in a panic – which then leads to multiple attacks of opportunity. I got through this battle in the end too, but it was an uphill battle against the person I was supposed to save.

It’s as if leveling up is only half of the reason I feel so much stronger; The other half is that I’ve discovered some silly tactics that I can pull off with a basic set of supplies. Sure, I learned some of these tactics in desperation after a match had put me into a corner, but I learned others through exhilarating discoveries on the battlefield.

power Baldur’s Gate 3 lies in its dialogue, its branching choices, and its characterization. But I also enjoy the gameplay, and the memorable boss fights are a big part of that. I’m fighting against enemies I have a legitimate grudge against, and bigger and stranger enemies keep popping up over the course of the campaign. As I head into Chapter 3, I’m looking forward to seeing what the game has in store as well – and hopefully there aren’t any more Last Light-style surprises in my future.