I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on console, on PlayStation 5, and I warn you, I’m becoming dangerously enthusiastic about it. There are even ways in which I – and I can barely bring myself to say this – prefer it to playing on PC. I did warn you!
It’s not what I expected. I expected to prefer the PC version, the lead platform, the of Baldur’s Gate. But I cannot shake the feeling that, while lazily thumbing my way around the game on PS5, this is a more pleasurable way to play.
It’s to do with the controller and the environment, and before you say it, yes I know you can achieve the same thing on PC. You can plug in a controller and BG3 will seamlessly switch to the controller UI (this is the case for Steam Deck too); it will even switch to split-screen co-op if you plug a second controller in. And if your PC is hooked up to your television, the environment will also be the same. So what the console is doing isn’t theoretically exclusive, though I’d argue it’s because of consoles any of it exists.
Anyway: Baldur’s Gate 3 plays differently on a controller in small but profound ways. The main one is to do with movement. Instead of pointing and clicking to move around, you move a character directly with one of the thumbsticks, while controlling the camera with the other, as in so many other games. And the repercussions of this are larger than you might think.