Baldur's Gate 3 delivers a richly immersive RPG experience where combat is just one facet of its intricate gameplay. Throughout the journey across Faerun, players encounter numerous puzzles, riddles, and non-combat challenges that test wit rather than battle prowess. Baldur's Gate 3's puzzle design demonstrates remarkable range-from brilliantly conceived chess and chamber challenges that reward intelligence and observation to simplistic or frustratingly cryptic obstacles.
The best puzzles integrate seamlessly with the narrative and setting while providing multiple solution paths that respect player agency. Even when the puzzles occasionally miss the mark, they contribute to BG3's commitment to varied gameplay. From cryptic moon patterns to deadly chess games, these puzzles range from brilliantly designed brain-teasers to frustratingly obscure obstacles.
One Baldur's Gate 3 Class is Not For Everyone
The twelve new subclasses added in Baldur's Gate 3's final patch have been a delight, but not every subclass is for all players.
S-Tier: Masterful Mental Challenges
Wyrmway Chamber Puzzles
The four Chamber puzzles beneath Wyrm's Rock Prison epitomize Larian Studios' best design. Justice, Courage, Wisdom, and Generosity require different approaches that test player knowledge and character abilities. Of these, The Chamber of Justice stands out from the crowd, requiring players to dispel shadows from paintings and make moral judgments. Courage's combat echoes are not far behind either, and combined with Wisdom's riddles and Generosity's resource puzzles, the Chamber Puzzles all feel like organic extensions of the Underdark.
Chess Puzzles
The chess challenges in Balduran's tower translate conventional chess tactics into the BG3 framework. Each board presents a "checkmate in two moves" scenario that rewards strategic thinking. What elevates these puzzles is how they accommodate both chess enthusiasts and novices– experienced players can solve them conventionally, while others can ask companions like Gale to handle the heavy lifting. This elegant design respects player choice while maintaining challenge integrity.
A-Tier: Excellent Enigmas
Moon Puzzle in Selunite Temple
The puzzle involving moon phase patterns strikes an ideal balance between difficulty and satisfaction. The solution requires careful observation of environmental clues and knowledge of lunar cycles. Although esoteric on the surface, visual hints are scattered around the surrounding architecture, which allows attentive players to scale through without external knowledge. Its integration with Selunite lore and clear hints makes this puzzle satisfying without being obtuse.
Gauntlet of Shar
The multi-stage nature of the Gauntlet of Shar creates a compelling sequence of challenges requiring players to interpret murals depicting General Thorm's life. The Mausoleum puzzle's "splendor, tragedy, infamy" sequence echoes Shar’s domain, and the environmental storytelling elevates the mechanical tasks into a cohesive narrative journey through the goddess’s darkness.
B-Tier: Solid Stumpers
Find The Missing Letters
A light-hearted quest where players recover a villager’s missing correspondence leads to conversations with a pigeon captain and Gale's winged cat, Tara the Tressym. While mechanically simple, it shines through its whimsical approach and low-stakes problem-solving that showcases BG3's lighter side.
Defiled Temple Floor Puzzle
This environmental puzzle effectively uses visual cues to guide observant players, who must reproduce a floor pattern visible through a cracked wall. Although the riddle is similar to the Moon Puzzle in terms of mechanics, its relatively straightforward solution and non-mandatory status lower its rank in the grand scheme of things.
C-Tier: Middling Mysteries
Overgrown Ruins Entrance
Equipped with multiple solution paths (including the sewers entrance), the puzzle at the Overgrown Ruins Entrance has a lot of narrative flexibility to play with. However, it's missing the environmental hints that so many puzzles in Baldur's Gate 3 fluidly display. Coupled with the fact that the core puzzle itself isn't markedly different from what one might expect from a regular RPG mystery, the riddle is one of the more "regular" experiences in the game.
Nettie's Antidote
More of a dialogue-driven choice test than a puzzle, this challenge is thematically appropriate for the druid setting. The multiple paths to resolution (persuasion, intimidation, theft, or combat) and serviceable but unremarkable design are reminiscent of the Overgrown Ruins, and thus confirm its middling status.
Necromancy Book and Traps
Spotting and disarming floor traps requires perception over logic. While tense in the moment, it’s closer to a reflex test than a cerebral puzzle, making it neither irritating nor memorable.
D-Tier: Frustrating Puzzles
Locked Chest in Nautiloid
This early "puzzle" barely qualifies as one. Finding a key near its corresponding chest teaches basic search mechanics but offers minimal intellectual engagement. As a tutorial element, it serves its purpose, but compared to BG3's more sophisticated puzzles, this simplistic key-and-lock scenario feels perfunctory.
Witch's Hideout Door
This challenge suffers from obscure solution requirements and inadequate feedback. Many players resort to brute-forcing or looking up the solution online since environmental clues are too subtle. Its low ranking stems not from difficulty, but from an unintuitive design that often results in frustration.
Baldur's Gate 3
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 96 /100 Critics Rec: 97%
- Released
- August 3, 2023
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Larian Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Larian Studios
- Engine
- Divinity 4.0
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
- Cross-Platform Play
- Full cross-platform play.
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- RPG
