Whether you’re a longtime fan eager to return to Baldur’s Gate 3 or someone who’s been waiting for the right moment to dive in, now’s the perfect time. The final patch of Larian’s magnum opus has finally been released on all platforms, and the recent hotfix #30 is finally fixed on the Mac.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most acclaimed games of the decade, but it also demands a serious time commitment. The only practical way to play it these days is on the go. My first playthrough clocked in at over 130 hours — and that was with me unintentionally skipping much of Act 1 and losing sleep more nights than I care to admit. With a packed release schedule this year, including massive RPGs like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and the return of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, it’s tougher than ever to settle into a sprawling epic from a few years ago.
Although playable on Steam Deck, it’s a less-than-favorable experience due to the platform’s hardware limitations. And despite the game being available on Mac day one, efforts to improve stability and performance took a backseat for the majority of its lifecycle. It took over a year for performance issues to be addressed, especially after a later patch impaired performance even further.
Fans playing on Mac created a loophole fix called “renice” to recoup some lost frame rates. It consisted of users opening up the terminal command before every launch and inputting the PID, which could be found in the Activity Monitor. Now, the latest hotfix takes this into account for all M4 Macs and essentially does it for you.
So, if you’re looking to see what the big deal is with this game or just ready for a second playthrough, perhaps as The Dark Urge, now is the best time to do so, especially if you own an M4 Mac. It is truly the best way to experience it on the go, at least until Larian figures out a port for the Nintendo Switch 2.
