Baldur’s Gate 3is great on mouse-and-keyboard. It’s also great with a controller. But I can’t help but feel that the best version ofLarian’s sprawlingRPGwould, through some black magic, combine the two control schemes into one perfect piece of interactivity.
Let me explain. I first started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 back in August onPC, because that was all that was available. Unless a game specifically pops up one of those tip screens that says you really should be playing with a controller, I’m gonna play most PC games with a mouse and keyboard. I make exceptions for third-person action games, but that’s pretty much it. It’s just easier to use the same setup I use for work.
That means that I became accustomed to a certain standard of living. Baldur’s Gate 3 on mouse-and-keyboard has a really useful hotbar that you can make several rows tall. That means that on one screen, you can simultaneously see every move at your disposal. You can see all your attacks, all your spells, all your actions, and a selection of items you want to be able to access at all times. Once you get used to that level of working knowledge, it’s hard to give it up.
When I started playing Baldur’s Gate 3 onPS5, I missed that instantaneous readability. The thing I didn’t miss? The camera. When you play Baldur’s Gate 3 with mouse-and-keyboard, you need to rotate the camera manually with the Q and E buttons in order to get a good angle on the action. I’ve played enough PC RPGs that this isn’t too much of a problem, but for my wife, who has gone deep down the Baldur’s Gate 3 rabbit hole since we got the PS5 version, wrangling the camera makes the game significantly more difficult to play. She told me that after having to reload an earlier save, she was able to do something in 15 minutes on PS5 that had taken her an hour on PC. And the biggest obstacle was getting to grips with controlling the camera that way. And while I know how to use it, I certainly don’t prefer it either.
Plus, the ease of use presented by the hotbar is completely absent while playing with a controller. Instead of having everything neatly arranged at the bottom of the screen, your attacks, actions, and inventory items are now buried in an array of weapon wheels that you need to browse through for something as simple as a jump or melee attack. It makes doing everything a slower, more cumbersome process.
So, on the one hand, we have a fantastic quality-of-life feature in the hotbar. On the other, we have an easy-to-use camera while playing with the controller. I’m proposing that the game would be best if we could somehow combine the two control schemes together. Like handing Karlach an Infernal Iron or tilting your neck Astarion’s way, it would unleash the game’s full potential. It would probably be annoying in other ways. Using the D-pad to scroll through the hotbar isn’t exactly ergonomic. But, letting Astarion drink your blood isn’t without its compromises either. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.
