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Jun 15, 2023

Baldur's Gate 3 Is Surprisingly Comfortable With a Controller

Although built with a keyboard and mouse in mind, Baldur's Gate 3 still feels surprisingly comfortable to play with a controller. Baldur's Gate 3 has been a massive success for Larian Studios, and

Although built with a keyboard and mouse in mind, Baldur's Gate 3 still feels surprisingly comfortable to play with a controller.

Baldur's Gate 3 has been a massive success for Larian Studios, and much of that comes down to how densely detailed the entire game is. This level of care translates to almost every area of the game, putting pressure on every DnD game that will come after it.

With this success, pre-orders have spiked for the PS5 version of Baldur's Gate 3. This is even more great news for the game, but since it is part of a genre traditionally played with a keyboard and mouse, it does raise a couple of concerns regarding how controller support has been handled. Larian Studios' care translates to this department as playing Baldur's Gate 3 is surprisingly comfortable on a controller despite having some quirks.

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Perhaps the most impressive thing about playing Baldur's Gate 3 with a controller is that the game's UI operates differently from its keyboard and mouse counterpart. From how movement works to how player players look at the inventory, the game does its best to accommodate the needs a controller player might have.

This is most evident with how everything is presented to anyone playing with a controller, who might be sitting on a couch or playing on a Steam Deck, and it might be harder to see text descriptions that keyboard and mouse players could easily read since they are likely sitting far closer to the screen. In-game this translates to inventory screens taking up the full screen with large text boxes giving the stats to an item or piece of equipment. It also extends to character stats as the text boxes are far larger than with the other UI, and information is also easier to read since everything is displayed in a bold font.

The movement also feels radically different as players take more direct control over their avatar instead of pointing at a place to go. A decision like this arguably gives the controller some legitimate advantages over the alternative since misclicks can happen, and it can be a pain sometimes to get the party to move if any terrain blocks the camera.

Baldur's Gate 3 does still feel like it was built with a keyboard and mouse in mind, even with the advantages a controller has, which makes sense given its genre. The developers did an overall excellent job, but there are times a controller can be slightly clunky thanks to the concessions made to accommodate the alternative control method.

Since players of all classes have a wide range of skills they can use in and out of Baldur's Gate 3's combat, command wheels were implemented to allow fast access to all of them. The issue comes into focus as players gain more wheels are added, making it feel somewhat wonky sifting through them. Having every option listed in categorized menus could have worked, but the wheels might have been the best idea in practice.

Another oddity that can hopefully be addressed in a patch is the lack of remappable controls with a controller. Every key is about to be rebound on a keyboard and mouse, but this is not the case with a controller. Given how the jump command is mapped to up on the D-pad and there is no dedicated button to access the character sheet, allowing players to change what controller inputs do would have solidified its viability.

With how controller support is being handled now, they are great at making players feel comfortable throughout Baldur's Gate 3's incredibly lengthy campaign. There are some strange quirks with this control method but for anyone wishing to play the game in a more relaxed position, it will still be a wonderful experience worthy of its acclaim.

Baldur's Gate 3 is out now on PC and will come out September 6 on PS5. A version for Xbox Series X/S is also in development.

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Andrea is a freelance writer who graduated from Portland State University with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She has been playing games her entire life, having grown up on platformers and RPGs. When not playing games, she watches anime and writes short stories.