Baldur's Gate 3

Channeling all that they've learned from the Divinity series, Larian has struck gold with the newest iteration of Baldur's Gate.

Went into it knowing nothing about the various mechanics of DnD, and although there is for sure a lot to take in I've found the game to be sufficiently intuitive that one can be thrown in the bath without feeling lost... Runs pretty smoothly on a laptop version of a 1660 Ti, that's some good optimization right there :) The characters are nicely fleshed out, and feel well rounded; you just want to keep discovering more about them and explore all the possible interactions between them and with the main story itself. Exploring every corner feels very satisfying as there is stuff to do, uncover, interact with around every corner. It had been a long time a game had pulled me in like this, and I can't wait to keep discovering more of what it has to offer. Five well deserved stars, shiny and glistening like a squid's tentacles.

Dungeons and Dragons has been adapted to computer games many times since 1988's Pool of Radiance (and a few weirder ones even before that), and Baldur's Gate 3 has stood atop all their shoulders to become the truest and most faithful adaptation of the tabletop RPG that has ever, and probably will ever be put to the PC or console. There are necessarily limits. No amount of code will ever be able to match the improvisational ability of a real flesh and blood game master, but this is as close as anyone has ever come. Be prepared to spend a great deal of time on this game, as it is brimming with content. Worth every penny it costs and many more.

I've had this in my inventory since fairly early days in the Early Access years. I didn't play it much during Early Access as I didn't want to burn myself out on the early game. I'm glad I waited to really dig into it. This game is a gem. I've never liked this execution of turn-based combat as I feel that it makes every fight in a game with epic tons of fights turn into a full-blown RTS engagement every single time for every single combat encounter in the whole entire game, which was my general dislike about Larian's Divinity and Divinity 2 games. It's still such a great game that I have to give it 5 stars. My personal dislike of hyper-granular turn-based combat still didn't hinder my enjoyment of the game.

I was expecting Larian to make a nice game, but I did not expect *this* kind of game. It is definitely the best CRPG I have played in the last 10 years or so, and there have been a lot of games I have liked. Being a huge fan of the original BG games, as well as having played a ton of other CRPGs, including the previous Larian's games, this game is greater successor to the original BG games than anything I could imagine. The atmosphere is amazing. The level of attention to detail is mind blowing. The characters are very well designed, and not just the main characters and main NPCs. There is a vast amount of characters in every corner of the game you meet and interact around, and meet them again after several hours of gameplay and the decisions you took when you first met them *matter*. The side-quests and side-plots are all connected with the plot in one way or another, making it all extraordinarily engaging, instead of throwing tons of meaningless quests around given by boring NPCs. It is extremely refreshing game. They put effort in aspects of the game that really matter to me. The characters, the plot, the artistic atmosphere, all the details they have thought of. This game is a proof is that when a company decides to make a game and they really care about what they are creating, they can do beautiful things. Personally, I will never see CRPGs in the same way after this.