Baldur’s Gate 3’s robust combat system offers an equally stunning showcase for both brilliance and silliness, and in “The Biggest AI Move in History,” players share the best and worst moves they’ve seen from an RPG’s NPCs.
We’re going to be talking about specific in-game encounters, so here’s your warning that some Minor spoilers You’re going to follow yourself to fights. It all starts with a tale of a battle you’ll likely find at the end of Act 1, against the drow boss Nere in Grimforge.
When Reddit user DeyUrban did that battle, “Nere himself was pushed into the lava. Business as usual, I was preparing to reload the save so I could get his head for the Myconid sovereign, but then I witnessed the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. The game so far – his A crossbowman shot a push-back arrow at Nere, and he pushed him back to solid ground. I was so shocked, I wouldn’t have thought to do that. Something is different about the AI in this game man, I’ve seen a few cases where they’ve done something stupid. But even on otherwise balanced (difficulties) they are extremely capable.”
That anecdote is about how smart Baldur’s Gate 3 characters can be, the top comment below sums up the rest of the responses: “The duality of the AI is that they do this badly and go into their own AoE with only 4 HP left. .”
The most infuriating AI errors, of course, come from those friendly characters. The biggest heartbreak I’ve seen comes from ladollyvita84, who “finally managed to save Isobel at Last Light in after several attempts… then Zahira went into my static-active Moonbeam and the whole place turned violent against me.”
“I had an incident where Shadowheart caught fire, shockingly the friendly AI used their turn to dash and then push Shadowheart out of the fire. My mind was blown when that happened. Guess what? That friendly AI was now standing on fire,” says the aptly-named AggravatingRage.
A story about AI doing something really Clever and then sending something really Stupid is very common. DERH4UPTMANN says, “Jahera ‘wasted’ throwing a bottle of water at Shadowheart and my paladin/warlock tav,” which “set fire to the ground and extinguished the characters. In the same fight she healed and revived Le’Zel. Spell. She sent an archer to his death.” Used her barbs to pull away. And then she ran into my dagger cloud and died… reload…”
Baldur’s Gate 3 AI is grossly “I am a genius! …oh no!” appears to be an avatar of meme, which is a perfect summary of how I feel about my own combat tactics. Listen, if the AI ran through its own wall of fire spells as often as I did, you’d think it was completely broken.
If you want to see Real Baldur’s Gate 3 strategy at workYou can follow that link for a breakdown of one genius’s incredible method for conquering the game’s hardest chapter.