Baldur’s Gate 3 is full of unique challenges that other RPGs don’t offer, such as rescuing a leprechaun tied to a windmill. But for every mad quest I encounter a difficult encounter that forces me to strategize. This is especially true for boss fights; Larian absolutely loves to confront me with encounters that test my wits – and sometimes my patience. No two boss battles are ever quite the same, thanks to the range of boss enemy types and arenas. But the companions I walk around with also give me different dialogue options to deal with the game’s major drawbacks. These boss fights are a showcase Baldur’s Gate 3‘s ethos of creative freedom, even if they are sometimes tricky. And they made me a better player.
I play as an assassin, along with my true love Astarion, best friend Shadowheart and grumpy githyanki Lae’zel. I discovered early on how to utilize their combined talents. Lae’zel opens battles, hits enemies with Distracting Strike, giving everyone else on our team an advantage, and then Astarion and I stealthily attack all remaining opponents. It’s our bonding activity as a couple, and it’s also how I’ve waltzed through large parts of the game so far.
Image: Larian Studios via Polygon
But occasionally the game gets devious and I’m faced with a boss fight that forces me to completely rethink my strategy. Early on, the Spider Matriarch was the first lesson I had to stop messing around and actually use my brain. My usual strategy didn’t work due to the hypermobile swarms of baby spiders, and I ended up using a combination of Karlach’s sweeping attacks and environmental damage from falling rocks that made me feel like a genius.
The game has also consistently produced creative and entertaining boss arenas. One brawl takes place in the Underdark and everyone is surrounded by deep lava channels. Any player with even a crumb of ferocity will quickly jump to the conclusion, “Why should I use my traditional skills as a softy when I can simply use the recoil capabilities to outsource that work to lava? Knockback is actually a surprisingly useful and entertaining solution to some tough fights.
To be honest: I don’t to have to get into all these leftovers. I can often use persuasion (or trickery, if I’m feeling snappy) to get out of even the most embarrassing or awkward situations. Sure, the prison guard in Moonrise Tower may have trapped me deep in a hidden chest, but that doesn’t mean I am. guilty. With a little confidence, my elf can fight her way out of battle against an area boss she didn’t want to antagonize, as long as the dice don’t give me away.
Image: Larian Studios
But I adore my beautiful friend Astarion, whose whims betrayed me during a particularly nasty boss fight. I found myself up against a demon, a displacing beast, and a horde of infernal outlaws. To my pleasant surprise, I discovered that I could talk to the demon. But Astarion didn’t like that, and he hissed at me to shut up and just start killing. Relationships are about compromise, so I threw myself into that particular fight for the better part of a day before finally getting lucky with a series of critical roles. Even though I entered the fight reluctantly, the game rewarded me with inspiration from my satisfied party members, and the experience left me wiser in subsequent boss fights.
There have only been a handful of times in my playthrough where the boss fight conditions felt less fair – or where creative solutions didn’t seem to make much of a difference. The ambush at Last Light Inn in Act 2, where a failed situation involves a hapless cleric, was a particular struggle. She is overrun by gargoyles, which is not her fault, but her do flees them in panic – which then triggers multiple attacks of opportunity. In the end I got through this fight too, but it was a tough fight against the person I had to save.
It feels like leveling up is only half the reason I feel so much stronger; the other half is that I’ve come up with some ridiculous tactics that I can pull off with a basic set of supplies. Sure, I learned some of these tactics out of desperation after the game cornered me, but others I learned through wonderful revelations on the battlefield.
The power of Baldur’s Gate 3 lies in the 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 battling enemies I hold a legitimate grudge against, and bigger and weirder enemies pop up over the course of the campaign. As I head into Act 3, I’m looking forward to seeing what else the game has in store – and hopefully there won’t be any other Last Light-esque surprises in my future.