Baldur's Gate 3

I sank just over 90 hours into this game during early access, and saw the game steadily get better and better, with more and more content added in all the time. And I had tons of fun, it was better in EA than a lot of games are when they are finished. And I went into the full version of the game at launch thinking that it'll be roughly the same, but with more content. I was wrong. They added so much, improved so much. And the game is so good, and more importantly, it runs smoother than melted butter on whipped cream. At launch. I don't even remember when I'd last seen something like this. The reactivity in the game is amazing, the quests are really well written, very engaging, and the incredibel amount of reactivity combined with the dice roll mechanic ensures you'll get a different experience with each playthrough. An absolute masterpiece of a CRPG, and overall the best RPG I've played since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. And for negatives: there really aren't many. Post launch I've only ran into a single bug, and that too was a multiplayer-specific issue and was resolved by saving and reloading the save. A rare type of game. 5/5

For about 100 hours I had a feeling that I am playing one of the best RPGs ever. The gameplay is extremely addictive and gives a lot of freedom. Music is great and voice acting is top notch. Visually, the game is also pleasing, especially the character models are very detailed. The story, up to the end of Act III, was wonderful with extremely well written characters and an abundance of intertwining threads. Unfortunately, the very end of the game simply dissapointed me. It feels very rushed. Some important plot threads ends abruptly or are discontinued at all. Moreover, in the last 5 hours of the game, I have experienced more bugs than through the rest of the game and they spoiled an overall great experience. I wish, the end of the game was more polished, then I think it could be one of the best games of the last decade.

I was and still am a superfan of the classic Infinity Engine cRPGs, particularly Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Having said that, you need to expect Baldur's Gate 3 to play more like Larian's recent Divinity Original Sin titles and less like the oldschool cRPGs, or recent Owlcat and Obsidian games. If you go into Baldur's Gate 3 with those expectations, I can almost guarantee you'll have a blast. Baldur's Gate 3 perfected Larian's party focused, turn based RPG formula. The combat is amazing and experimenting with different tactics and builds should tell you how compelling and addictive the combat is. I wish the level cap was 13 or 14 instead of 12 because I reached that cap approximately 15 or 20 hours before completing the game. It sort of discourages you from completing the last batch of quests you'll run across. On the other hand, the game quickly became pretty darn easy on Balanced mode once you became very familiar with the combat. I imagine I'll have a blast trying higher difficulty modes as it changes a lot besides enemy health. The visuals are extraordinary but not incredibly demanding on hardware. Even with high-end hardware, I easily surpassed 60 frames per second on 1440p. So all mid-end hardware should easily be able to run this game, especially with DLSS or FSR. Additionally, this game is incredibly stable and didn't crash once during the 117 hours it took me to complete it. The story is great for what is presented. Granted, everything is voiced, even the narration, which is top-notch quality by the way. So you won't experience anything incredibly deep like in Planescape Torment with its endless walls of compelling, unvoiced text. But all the characters are fleshed out very well with complete stories and interesting motives. I was left with strong feelings and impressions of all the main characters. Baldur's Gate 3 is an phenomenal RPG that I'll definitely return to every once in a while. Earns an easy recommended from me.

This is the first time I've paid such a high price for a video game (I usually don't pay more than $25-$35 as a rule) and one of the very few times I've bought a game OFF sale. Yet it was completely worth the cost for me, so I don't regret it. There's so much variety and numerous options on hand for dealing with situations. Characters have many variations to their reactions and demeanor depending on your words and actions and people will remember what you've done, not conveniently forget. Nobody has plot armor so you can kill whoever you want for whatever reason you want as long as you're willing to deal with the consequences (except one character but it makes logical sense that you can't kill them). Some of the precious few other games which compare to this one in terms of similar gameworld depth would be Dragon Age Origins and Planescape Torment.

I've played Baldur's gate 1 and 2 and the expansions (2+the expansion was my favorite game for a long time) and while this game has a different feel to it, it is just as amazing. The story is great, your choices affect future outcomes, you can play it many times and still not see all the content, there's relatively no major bugs as long as you don't use too many mods or try playing saves from a modded older version with a newer modded version (in which case you can encounter some pretty weird bugs), the graphics look amazing while not being too demanding on your computer (I have a ryzen 5600x, a radeon 6600 and 32GB ram and can play just fine at 1440p using fsr (before fsr 2 was added in one of the patches fsr 1 did look pretty bad, but fsr 2 looks fine) while still looking good and having decent fps).... obviously with a faster computer it would look better and run faster but you don't need some crazy expensive gpu/cpu to play it). Now it does have some flaws too and the review wouldn't be complete without mentioning them: - the evil play-through isn't as well done as the good/neutral and you do miss out on many quests (and thus experience, items and characters) + you can't be that evil - act 3 does feel incomplete and unfortunately the developers have decided to leave it that way and not make a dlc which would make it complete and tie up all lose ends, add some content for what happens after and raise the level cap - your level is capped at 12 which is annoying compared to bg2 + tob where you could get to 30+, especially considering you're supposed to be this epic hero fighting for the fate of Faerun. Imo it should go at least to 20. There are a few mods that unlock higher levels, I've only tried one which sets the level cap for all classes combined to 20, while each single class can still only go to lvl 12. It works pretty well and doesn't introduce any major bugs. - your camp clothes are pretty limited until act 3