Baldur's Gate 3 PS5 has some frame rate issues - but is still an incredible game
Baldur's Gate 3's long-awaited PS5 version is fine, but it's definitely not as smooth as it could be compared to PC.
So, you've been waiting for Baldur's Gate 3 to finally come to consoles. It's going to be a little while yet before it lands on Xbox, but the PlayStation 5 early access release is already here.
Jim, too, was one of those couch casuals who's been eager to step away from his office PC and experience the magic Larian Studios created from the comfort of his own couch; controller in hand. Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5 certainly checks off those boxes, but not without a few compromises.
In the video below, Jim walks you through his experience playing Baldur's Gate 3 on PS5, the differences between Performance/Quality modes, and what you can generally expect when you start playing it yourself.
Baldur's Gate 3 suffers from framerate dips (Performance mode targets 60fps), especially in busy areas. It doesn't help that the game does not currently support VRR, which makes those hiccups feel worse. As Jim already predicted, the game looks comparable to the Medium preset on PC (with a few settings on High), and has an internal render resolution of 1440p - which is then upscaled to 4K.
Unfortunately, the upscaler of choice here is FSR, which struggles in all the usual ways FSR upscaling does in other games (hello, Starfield!), such as poorly resolving detail at a distance, not dealing well with sharp edges/surfaces (such as hair), and so on.
In short, Baldur's Gate 3 is perfectly playable on PS5, especially if that's your only way of playing one of the year's biggest games - short of spending at least three times as much on a PC. If you did put some time into it on PC, you'll be happy to know that save transfers between platform work as advertised.