Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What hours/level/act is everyone at?

The game’s story returns to a semblance of quality after reaching Wyrm’s.

The story is at its strongest when not focused on convoluted plots, but when it is a choice-driven character study of our companions. Act 2 was plotty bullshit. Act 3 has some of that good character development crack I’ve been craving.

It’s clear to me that so much love has gone into our Origin Companions. Each and every one has a quality personality and characterisation (that makes me wish for more… especially banter), but the story and side characters leave much to be desired.

81 hours, having reached the Lower City. But that’s more like 60-70 hours of content and 10-20 hours of backtracking, double checking areas, and reloading outcomes.

Something that would be nice is if in Act 2, to compensate for the lack of character development (except for 1 character), is if the PC goes on a one-on-one adventure with each companion. Something short, with a cinematic sequence with each companion to solidify the relationship as friendship, rivalry, or romance. Like a short two person quest before Gale’s starry night, but with each companion.

Two runs:

Paladin, 60 hours, Act 3
Bard, 35 hours, Act 3. With the bard I intentionally skipped a lot of side content in Act 1 (Ethel, gith patrol, Waukeen rest and went straight to Grymforge) and a lot of things in Act 2 (basically went straight to moonrise after a short stop at last light).

167 hours just before the final blow was struck, so that's 70 hours in Act 3 and the endgame. And only 28 out of 53 achievements unlocked.

Can't believe I've finally finished! My first playthrough at least.

I loved the game, of course. It's buggy as hell, especially Act 3, but I still adored exploring Baldur's Gate. Can't wait to get back there with my new characters, by which time hopefully some more of the kinks will have been ironed out.

And it's going to take a bit of time to process the ending for my character and party, which all went a bit Shakespearean tragedy, and I can see why folk are saying that there's not enough tying up of loose ends. I don't mind the tragedy, but am definitely now part of the horde hoping for at least some more closure.

Right, here I go again ...

570 hours, with EA. I don't know if you can see the hours since the release of the full version, but I played a bit every day.
I'm at the finale of act 2. Not sure if I will pass it.

If you look at your savegame info in the load screen, it gives a Play Time and that's what I cited. That obviously wouldn't include time reloading after TPKs (I had a few!), or presumably faffing around in the character creator

270 hours, includes early access. One character in Act 2, about.... six? in Act 1.

Gonna do Grymforge and Mountain Pass on bard later today, after I've slept some.

I've spent probably 10-15 hours since launch just faffing about with the character creator.

I've restarted so many times, deleting many characters, but it takes me about 45 minutes to make one. They must be perfect.

My steam says 485 hours right now. Probably 100 in early access.

I am playing 2 runs simultaneously, the first with the good paladin actually in baldurs gate act 3. The other run with a more selfish (evil but not murder hobo) strategy right now in act 2.

There is just so much to see, to explore and to find out... <3

595 hours (most of that's EA, about 100 hours since full release.)

I've reached Act 3, though I've hit what may be a game stopper, or may at least need to revert back several hours to an earlier save.

I'm playing with a Sword Bard, aka a Blade, the same subclass I beat BG2 with.They don't have quite the damage output of other martial classes, but can get an insane ROF with Haste + Flourish + dual-wielded hand crossbows. And they get access to a large pool of skills, along with the 'Jack of All Trades' feature which gives a bonus to all skills they are *not* proficient in. And some very useful spells, though typically not damage monsters like Fireball.

But they do get Cloud of Daggers, which is a crazy amount of fun. Experiment to try at home: Have your mage cast Grease (or other 'difficult terrain' spell) and have the bard cast Cloud of Daggers at a choke point. As the enemy comes through they take damage from the cloud and/or slip on the Grease (and take more damage when they get up.) If they do make it through, knock them back through the Cloud with a Flourish or Thunderwave. Or have Karlach toss them back into/through the Cloud of Daggers. Rinse and repeat.

106 hours of release content and still not done. Sometimes I just like wandering the city even though I’ve seen it already. But I do that in other games too. And in real life. And in my dreams.

A lot of my narrative complaints about characters in prior acts are put to rest with some narrative beats in Act 3, which is nice, and the themes of the game are finally falling into place.

Third playthrough.

1. Duergar Battle Cleric ( Chaotic Good / ingest every parasite )

2. Half orc barb/Monk ( staled out, wasnt having fun with this build.)

3. Drow Warlock ( So far my favorite, Chaotic Evil playthrough, no Parasites)

Don't have much time for playing, and doing everything down to the last rotten tomato; about 100h in, not counting around half more of that in early access; almost finished exploring the mountain pass, rest of act1 done, should be entering act 2 tomorrow or day after

According to my save I am over 80h in, in act3 exploring the city. Have done a lot, but there is still quite a bit to do. Have been lvl12 for a couple sessions now.

197 hours. I didn't play any EA.

1st playthrough with High-Elf Moon Druid

Now playing with Drow (Seldarine) Sorc

Looking forward to 3rd playthrough with Halfling Barbarian.

Lots of ways to enjoy this game which is good cuz there's lots of shortcomings too.

307 hours and am in Act 2 with two characters, Act 1 for the rest... I have more than one character to play, eg: Bard, Paladin, Sorlock, and a Dark Urge Theif. I play them all differently with different alignments from good to evil.

It includes the hours I played in Early Access...

Finished The game yesterday, I was extremely thourough, so finished at 182 HRS I think (savegame that is). But I did reload a few times due to tactician. And reloaded several times to see different outcomes, achievements etc. I think my total playtime was at about 240-260 hrs. Mind you thats steam, so a few hrs of The latter was me having game on whilst looking a few things up etc. I also fell asleep with it on one time (reloaded though), lost 3-4 hrs due to forgetting to save, and one game breaking bug, that had since been fixed.

Also had 247 hrs in Early access. So total time game running since EA launch 510 ish hrs :P.

For Acts: Approx 70-80 hrs act 1. 35-50 ish hrs act 2. And 60-80 hrs Act 2 (dont have my manual saves in front of me.

Certainly emotional last night finishing The game. Will wait a few weeks/couple of months before I head back in. Act 3 needs some fine tuning still, But still absolutely great.

Game of The year certainly, and maybe decade. Ive played A LOT of RPGs, and this is prolly in my top 3. if not at The top.

Hats off to you Larian .

People are clocking so many hours. I just hit the beginning of Act 3, I feel I have been quite thorough, and I’m at ~55 hours.

80 hours with oathbreaker pally/old ones warlock just got in act 3 yesterday.
Fight at the end of act 2 actually had me on the edge of my seat.
Having fun with this one despite all the bug tracing and reloading I've had to do on this save.

Finished my first playthrough at roughly 80 hours. The playtime counter on my saves reset after I installed mods, so I'm taking a rough guess.

I've got 120 hours of playtime total between the 4 other characters I've created.

I think my first playthrough took about 60 hours altho I restarted a couple of times in act 1 because I didn't realize I could respec and wasn't happy with my character ( whyyyy is there no recustomization for your character? ).
So if we add those hours into it too then maybe 80 hours, but the character I actually ended up sticking to was 60 hours.

I am trying to do a second playthrough and go evil because Minthara was fixed and she's the one I was the most excited about.
But I am honestly struggling quite hard, the gameplay just feels tedious ( and is too easy, which adds to that feeling ) and I find myself just skipping dialogue unless it's some evil option I want to see.
It's kinda annoying tho how a lot of the dialogue options are '' too nice '', like I can't tell someone I don't care but I have to apologize for not caring lol the dialogue does really feel like it was written for good characters too often even with the '' bad '' choices so far.
I am just 2-3 hours in and am already losing interest ngl, I dunno why but I just feel like it's a slog to replay especially when thinking about what's to come and doing side quests again and clearing out areas etc.

I really wish the game had a real-time mode like in Pathfinder WoTR it would make a lot of the combat more bearable, I prefer turn based when there's actual challenge and danger involved but there's just so much ( in WoTR too ) where I wish I could just rush through it because there's almost no way to lose.
I dunno why I am feeling so unmotivated about it tho I am not exactly new to RPG's and have replayed many RPG's countless times but I really do think that the gameplay is a major culprit.