Baldur's Gate 3

Character writing and story telling belong to the best the gaming industry has to offer. Player's choice and engagement are unmatched. The game uses a deeply customizable class-based system for character creation. The chosen class affects gameplay, dialog options and ways to interact with the environment. NPC's react to the player in a meaningful way. The player can act freely in almost every situation and has to bear the consequences themselves. You truly feel like the protagonist in the game who carves their own story. The combat system is turn-based and very tactical. The combat system uses the DnD 5e rules set. If you are not familiar with DnD the combat system can take some time to get used to. Some encounters can be challenging and the game has some difficulty spikes, but the game 's diffculty can be adjusted in the options menu at any given time. The game is massive in content. It took me roughly a hundred hours for my first playthrough, although I missed large junks of content like the full underdark area in the first act of the game. The game is alos quite dense. Many quests, side activities, areas, items and other stuff to remember. So the game demands some engagement from the player and it can be hard to find back into the game when laid off for more than two weeks. So I can only recommend it for players who can commit the time. This is not the game for some non-commital 15 minutes sessions every now and then. But if you can commit to it, the game offers one of the best experiences in gaming at the moment

Amazingly immersive world + level design with a compelling story

So many things to do, so many things to be. Within the boundaries of a video game, Larian really succeeded at creating a sense of freedom of choice/action. I did the first playthrough mostly blind in co-op with my partner and we had a blast for well over 100 game hours. Replay value is very high as well. Even though the main story will of course remain mostly the same, seeing it through different perspectives and making different choices feels fresh for a while. Truly an excellent effort at bringing the spirit of modern D&D to a video game.

Amazing characters! If you're into D&D mechanics, that's a plus, and if you aren't, you can still play it for the great characters! Likeable, nuanced, well crafted, and amazingly animated and voice acted. Astarion in particular is a joy to listen to. And without wanting to spoil too much, I recommend taking Wyll into your party and doing his quest, but don't take his word for what is really happening. Oh, and beware of watching the character intros if you don't want spoilers. A game with a progression, but quite a bit of freedom besides. Many ways to take the story for the different characters, besides the overarching plot. A huge number of small worldbuilding details. A number of nice nods to the original Baldur's Gate series, most of which work quite well. My one complaint is that it feels a little crowded at times. In particular, you can only have a four-person team at a time, out of up to maybe 10 characters possible, and the rest will stay "at camp", but still frequently talk like they are making an active contribution. Besides modding, you can only avoid that by recruiting a smaller team, but that might lead to sadder endings for that character. And also, some changes from D&D work better than others. Whatever.

One of the best I've played.