After a fairytale opening, Baldur's Gate 3 Act 2 is a miserable change of pace

The first act of Baldur's Gate 3 can get pretty dark. Depending on the choices you make, you can slaughter a bunch of innocent people, leave a woman trapped in a burning cage, and even punt a squirrel into a tree. But even if you choose to commit all of those atrocities, you do so against a fairytale backdrop. Go looking in the right places, and it's a Brothers Grimm-style adventure filled with humor and a substantial amount of partying. And I'm here to tell you that that all comes grinding to a halt in Act 2.

If you've spent more than a few hours with Baldur's Gate 3, you'll know that you're pointed to a place called Moonrise Tower, off to the west of the area you start the game in. Without giving too much away, it's a place that's been somewhat blighted by the questionable fantasy activities that have been taking place there, and I'm not having fun.

The Underdark Side

For one thing, there's a real significant difficulty spike. For my Baldur's Gate 3 review, I spent a long time in Act 1, examining pretty much every story thread I could find, and by the time I reached Moonrise I was worried I'd be overleveled. I needn't have worried – at one point I wandered into an abandoned building to find a miniboss three times the size of even my biggest party member, who could sprint at ungodly speeds and apparently feel no pain. I fled from there to another building, where a hideous armored creature – ostensibly the sister of the monster I'd just run from – attempted to extort me before smacking me around harder than anything in Act 1 had managed.

I bounced from miniboss to side quest for a while, hoping to continue my strategy of seeing as much of Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer, but eventually I just decided to head for the main quest. My hope was that perhaps I'd get enough gear or XP to push me closer to my RPG comfort zone – a place where I still have to engage my brain to win, but where I maintain a firm advantage over my opponents. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, and I spent what must have been hours in a dungeon that was taxing on both my party and my frontal lobes as it wove together tricky fights, complex puzzles, and harrowing character development.

All of that was attached to a frankly miserable world. While the sun shone brightly on the druid groves and goblin camps of Act 1, the second act takes place in a part of the Sword Coast filled with a literally all-consuming darkness. Wander too far off the beaten track and you'll be punished for doing so even before you've accidentally stumbled into a boss fight. In tandem, that killed my desire to explore, and while some of the best bits of the first hours with the game are the things you'll find almost by accident, I feel like I'll never know what secrets are hiding around Moonrise Tower, because I simply didn't want to spend any extra time there. Similarly, my beeline approach to the main quest has meant a bunch of interesting side quests have automatically resolved, meaning I'll need another playthrough if I want to see them at work. For now, though, I'm sprinting towards Baldur's Gate and never looking back.

Moonlighting

As much as I'm keen to put Moonrise Towers behind me, it does have some redeeming features. Those hideous siblings (and their brother) collectively offer some of the most interesting enemy mechanics and cutscene options I've seen in the game so far, and have certainly vindicated my claim that your first Baldur's Gate 3 playthrough should be a bard for their ability to be talked around rather than confronted head-on.

There's also a truly excellent dungeon, easily one of the best in the game. Again, I won't go into spoiler territory, but it seamlessly ties the main quest together with the stories of two of the game's origin characters. It's a lengthy, intricate gauntlet that tests all your skills if you want to get the most out of it; combat, puzzle-solving, speechcraft, treasure-hunting, skill-checks – you'll need to succeed at all of them if you want to get the most out of this particular dungeon. Its visual design is so clear and effective that it made me feel deja vu for an entire generation of CRPGs that I'd never played. And it all culminates in a complex boss fight and a potentially agonizing decision; I stumbled from that dungeon almost on my knees both physically and emotionally, pushed to the limits of what Baldur's Gate 3 has to offer.

Those moments – coupled with some classic fantasy storytelling – are just about enough to redeem Act 2, but I'm still a little disappointed. I'm literally racing to get away from Moonrise Towers, and I can feel how much of the game I'm missing in the process. It's obvious why this is happening – if Act 1 is showing you what this game can be, Act 2 is setting up the stakes ahead of Act 3. But after the joyful, fairytale tone of the former left me feeling like I'd seen everything it had to offer, I'm disappointed to know that I'm missing out on that experience in the latter. For now, the city of Baldur's Gate itself beckons, and I just want to get back to the full-fledged adventuring sandbox that Larian offered in those first few hours after that fateful Nautiloid crash.

The good news is that I accidentally made the best possible Baldur's Gate 3 party.