Review of Baldur’s Gate 3 for PS5

The following reviews focus only on the PS5 port and not the game itself. If you’re more interested in the game itself, you can read our review of the PC version.

This year is incredibly strong, perhaps every month a game comes out that is worthy of competing for the title of game of the year. However, he is mostly dominated by two titles. The first is the Switch exclusive The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and the second is the CRPG Baldur’s Gate 3. A game from the Larian studio that far exceeded the developers’ expectations in terms of sales and overall popularity. After all, in our review it received a full 10 out of 10. However, in this assessment we will look at the just released PS5 version and its technical side. So if you’re more interested in the title itself, read our review of the PC version.

• Platform: PC, PlayStation 5 (tested version)
• Publication date: 09/06/2023 (PS5)
• Developer: Larian Studios
• Publisher: Larian Studios
• Genre: CRPG
• Czech localization: No
• Multiplayer: Yes (co-op)
• Download data: 110 GB
• Game time: ~50 hours (main story)
• Price: 1659 CZK (PS store)

First of all, I want to praise the menu. It’s not a fact that you can customize the settings in detail in a console game, but in Baldur’s Gate 3 it is possible. First of all, the features in the areas of accessibility, camera and user interface are really great, such as detailed customization of subtitle size, which is quite an important element for a CRPG.

The control is also positive. Although we mostly associate this genre with PCs, you can enjoy the game without any problems even with a controller. It will take you a while to get used to the controls (which is largely due to the complexity of the entire game), but it does the job very well. Even in the console version, you can zoom in and out at will and can even enable a “click” mode for movement, meaning you use the controller like a mouse. It’s not very convenient for me, but it’s definitely nice to have this option and maybe someone will appreciate it.

Controls also involve the inclusion of DualSense controller elements, which Baldur’s Gate 3 actually supports. Adaptive triggers are almost always included, only haptic ones could use a little more use. On the other hand, I understand that for such a game this is not exactly a priority.

You’re probably most interested in frame rate and resolution. The PS5 game offers two modes. The first is the quality mode, which offers a native resolution of 1440p and 30fps, and in terms of detail, you can expect graphics comparable to Ultra settings on PC. The game looks very beautiful (especially the highly detailed character models) even on a 4K monitor, although it certainly deserves an even higher resolution. The good news is that, with a few exceptions, the game runs perfectly smoothly in this mode.

Things are a little worse with Performance mode, which is likely to be the preferred choice for many players. The detail settings are similar, however, to achieve 60 frames per second, the game is scaled to 1440p from a lower resolution using AMD FSR 2 technology. And unfortunately, as you can see at first glance, during the game I often encountered various aliases, flickering of vegetation and hair or halos of flying objects. This is definitely not the best implementation of upscaling, and you will have to put up with artifacts.

The advantage, of course, is the already mentioned higher frame rate, but unfortunately it is not always stable. Even at the beginning of the game, you will encounter several moments (for example, in some fights or cutscenes) where the frame rate drops lower. This may not be such a problem, but in this mode V-Sync is not enabled, so when the FPS drops, the image jerks, which does not look good at all. In the beginning, we are still talking more about exceptional situations, but in the third act in the city of Baldur’s Gate you will have to prepare for really big falls, where you will definitely feel it even in the flow.

Finally, I would like to note the downloads, which, unfortunately, are very long. Although you don’t encounter them often, for example, on PS5 loading saves could be much faster, the stopwatch during the measurement showed me 35 seconds, and this is the number we associate more with the latest generation of consoles. Hopefully there will be some optimization on this side.

Overall, the PS5 version of Baldur’s Gate 3 is a solid port. The controls on the DualSens work more than well, the customization options are great, the game looks great (at least in quality mode) and runs smoothly, although it’s just worse in performance mode. What’s important, however, is that you won’t be deprived of everything the PC version offers (including split screen), and you’ll enjoy the game just as well on that platform. You just need to consider whether you prefer image stability and frame rate or higher FPS. Hopefully Xbox players will get the game soon too.