Baldur's Gate 3

I am new to DnD and Have played the last Baldurs Gate only for a few hours so lore wise I cannot say much. However, what I can say is that you feel everywhere this game is made by passionate folk. The choices and paths you can take are plentiful. Alot of what characters would say or how they'd react in a given moment has been thought of. And I would easily have given it a 5/5, if it wasn't for the lack of polish in acts two and three or some rather questionable design choices: - performance is atrocious in acts two and three even with fairly recent hardware (4080, 64GB RAM) and after 2 patches and 5 hotfixes in. - text, icons, stats etc. is microscopic in size. You basically can not read any info from the user interface or find items in the inventory when playing on your sofa 2m away from the TV. - the inventory management is a crime and has a look and feel of the early 2000s to it. I can "warp" any loot magically to my chest but I cannot auto sell junk, nor does the game tell me which books I have already read. Just two name a few annoyances. - loading takes way too long, even from an nvme drive. I have start up times of several minutes. Reloading savegame could also be faster. - weeks after release there are still several quest related bugs (e.g. Voss not moving) or dialogues that shouldn't be playing at that time (e.g. Shadowheart asking about her parents when they have been already freed)

RPG of the year.

I've played this game for roughly eight hours at this point and thus far I'm impressed. It captures the feel of D&D while also giving it a modern, state-of-the-art feel. I haven't run into any real bugs, and everything seems to work as well as many launch day games. This is an amazing feat for so large, and complex a game. I should not that it is not quite feature complete at this point, as it looks like there may be additional classes and races added later, and you cannot currently play the pre-made character stories. Otherwise it's all here. Pros: Beautiful graphics that appear to have jumped right out of the official books. This game looks better than it really needs to for an RPG, but it definitely helps the immersion. Gameplay is intuitive and nuanced, with a lot of tactical options for your characters. The game rewards experimentation. For example, I ran into a difficult encounter in the early going with my rogue, and ran away to hide. However, I didn't want to give up so easily, so I located some high ground and proceeded to snipe my superior opponent from the shadows until they were defeated. So far this is one of the most detailed and rewarding RPG's I've ever played. And yes, I have played this studios other works. Thus far this is superior. Cons: It makes my PC (AMD 3900X, 32 gigs of RAM, GTX 1080) run like a vacuum cleaner on steroids. It s so loud my wife complained from the other room, and I am using extra quiet fans. Hopefully this is due to the game running in an unoptimized state. Also, it is not quite feature complete, but there is still a lot here to chew on. The inventory needs a drag and drop option. Currently you have to equip the gear from a separate screen and toggle back and forth. Overall this looks promising, and can't wait to see the finished product.

Yes, it's Early Access, but it's remarkably polished and we can look forward to a fantastic full game. The animations are smooth and the game feels very solid, with no crashes. Apart from gorgeous scenery, the facial animations truly stand out. Each face is different and well-animated. The voice acting is spot on. I haven't got very far in the story, but having leveled up a couple of times, I can now see differences from the original games in how the character skills will progress. Even at level 3 there are skill path options to choose from, giving you some interesting choices right off the bat. One other huge difference from the originals is the ability to climb and use the physical environment more fully, giving tactical advantages in combat and wider exploration options. Skill check rolls are front and center, showing the actual roll take place. Respecting character interactions, this is clearly a full-on Baldur's Gate experience. Dialogue choice do matter, only here you can see how characters react to what you say. Obviously the things you say and do matter here, as they did in the original games. So far, so good, and I'm looking forward to the full game.

Unfortunately, this game was made by a studio which fundamentally does not understand (or appreciate) what made the Baldur's Gate games so critically acclaimed. I don't doubt this will be financially successful, in the same way that The Big Bang Theory and Big Brother were.