Amazing looking roguelike, very gritty and has a hunger/thirst system that doesn't suck.
It's really hard to imagine a better CRPG than Baldur's Gate 3. - Story made by Larian Studios, with all its quirks and foilbes. Talk to dead people, talk to animals, get quest from random pond frog, etc. Win a chicken race with goblins, etc. - Best graphic bar none. Really Larian put all the glitz into it, It's beautiful to look at and even dialogue uses cinematic A/B style framing. - Gameplay from previous Larian games but refined for D&D audience. Now with big friendly dice! - Setting: Baldur's Gate and Sword Coast are famous and familiar to DnD beginners and veterans alike. That said, gameplay of their previous games was much innovative and flexible. Builds in DOS 2 in my opinion left much more place for creativity and combination.
Imagine if Fallout fucked Lovecraft in the nearby Meat and Meth packing factory. The unholy spawn would be this game. This is a recommendation. I played it for a couple of hours and the game is superb. Visuals are nice, there are many ways to approach an encounter and the number of skills is pretty amazing. The combat is real-time, but there are moments, when you want to pause. Most notably while in the dialog menus when hacking. Other than that the game's been spectacular, from random naked vegan man following you on your adventures, to finding a friend for the friendly local Fleshkraken.
If you expect a perfect gem, hyper-polished with zero bugs and amazing stability. Go away, this is an Early Access game. Not all early access games are stable. If you want an authentic 5e simulator for the Forgotten Realms DnD campaign - just get RollD20 and write your own one. We all know what happens when you are hyper-tied to your setting or system, you get Temple of Elemental Evil. A game so mindbogglingly complex only three DMs that have read and memorized the books can figure out how to actually play it. No, this game is made by Larian, but the setting, the lore, and systems are in service of the game, not the other way around. And while it's a buggy, glitchy and sometimes crash-prone mess. It's a gem and I'd honestly buy it again. But ok, why should you want to play this game? Graphics? Well, it's pretty but it's not some kind of Raytraced marvel that needs RTX 5120. No, where this game wins is story and system: - Do you want to provoke a frog into wiping your party? - Do you want to snipe that frog from a billion light years? - Do you want to interrupt a mating between an Ogre and a Bugbear, with tragic consequences for you? - Do you wish to talk about philosophy with an Undead? Or discuss shape changing with an Ox? - Do you want to have even the stupidest choices matter - like say betting on a chicken race influencing whether you miss or get a quest? - Do you wish to dispel the illusion cast by a witch only to realize, you should have kept it. Then BG3 is the game from you. I played this game for 20hrs, only to realize, I didn't scratch the surface of what it's story brings.
At first, I thought. Oh an auto attacker, this will be boring fast. I saw the review on https://www.youtube.com/c/ClemmyGames/videos and was, why not - graphics looks cool. I was disapointed, but since I bought it, might give it a spin. 15hrs later that day. Well, if I don't eat or sleep, I might have to cram 1hr more. Game is fun, too fun. It's premise is simple, but its very good and the unlocking aspects and balancing current run with the risk of dying at the boss or just progressing is too fun.
CoQ review here. Game is a brutal, relentless cavalcade of my own self inflicted disasters. I love it. Do you want to play as a six-armed mutant, able to dismember six limbs at once? Do you want to play as a horrific psyker able to summon rifts in time and space? Or perhaps being the racial purist, augmented with the latest and greatest in cybernetics, is more your shtick? Did you ever want to turn back time to erase your mistakes using quantum mechanics? Did you dream of being hungry, finding a grove of bananas only for the bananas to skin you alive and eat you (we've all been there once)? Then CoQ is the right game for you. You must be asking yourself, why not 5 stars then? Simple. Modding in this game doesn't work, and devs seem to be actively hostile to the community.
Do you enjoy drugs? Do you enjoy beating other crackheads with a stick over the best bench in a park? Do you enjoy stealing another man's squirrel, then beating him to death with it, once he protests? Do you enjoy dueling in crackhead chariots (aka shopping carts)? Then this game is perfect for you. This game is a simulator of everyday London in the far-flung future of 2008, after the NHS budget cuts and other austerity measures, left London barely functioning. So, not much different than today.
Ok, so some pros and cons: + Wacky mood - D:OS2 still has that a bit unhinged adventure charm. + In addition to PetPal, you now have SpiritVisions, so you can talk to the Dead. + You still get PetPal, so expect a lot of cool, animal-related hijinks. + Sir Lora. Everything about him is awesome. + They combat system has been changed significantly + Lone Wolf is a great talent for solo or dual finishing campaign + Cheese. Barrels of it. From summoning infinite planes of Lava and/or Deathfog, to just abusing talking to NPCs for fun and profit, to wielding highly gravitation barrels, this game has it all. + Skellingtons. You can become one of them. Poison heals you, life damages you. Overall a great race because - they get access to infinite lockpicks. + Lots of viable builds. Because of how damage is affected by attributes, it's sometimes much better to specialize in Warfare, than to specialize in respective related Spell-schools (e.g. Necromancer spell causes Physical damage, and Warfare impacts that damage way more than necromancy). ---------- - People dislike the current dual armor system because it favors team comps specializing in one attribute (i.e. physical or magic). They are, however, really wrong. A hybrid approach is best to approach, because sure, you might have all Physical God Team, but your opponent often come in 3000 Physical and 23 Magical, making hybrid or even semi-hybrid still the best comps. - Debuffs only work when your respective armor reaches 0, which turns these effects from highly useful CC to a semi-useful CC. I won't argue this is a bit of a downer. - I think Huntsman is a bit underpowered, it only gives small buff to high-ground and not much else. - Source skills are nice but feel shoehorned in. So the difference between Source and non-Source skills is just that Source skills are a tiny smidgen stronger?
Until Disco Elysium came to my life, I never realized I desired to become a drunken, drugged-up mentally deranged cop, that simultaneously preached the benefits of libertarian capitalism and radical Marxism, while proclaiming that End Is Nigh. Now, I no longer have that Disco shaped hole in my life. As for the review itself. Visually the game is pretty but not impressive or hard on the hardware. It's very impressionistic, which fits the theme of a washed-up cop, recovering from a bender that gave him amnesia. The gameplay is relatively simple. Time passes when talking and reading books, otherwise, it stands still. There are a few days for you to finish your investigations but most quests don't have a strict time limit. You have Skills Check you can pass. Some skills are Once Per Lifetime (Red checks) and Once Until I Level the Skill (White checks). There are critical fails and successes that you can win regardless of your skill level, just don't bet on those two sixes. Your skills are also characters that will drive most of the story, providing hints and commentary. Be careful about leveling them too much or they might decide to take over. There are also "Upgrades" AKA Thoughts in your Thought Cabinet, where you can internalize certain thoughts, to get a permanent boost. While internalizing your thoughts you may experience some adverse effects. Also, some thoughts may unlock some White checks. Not all thoughts are created equal, but you can discard them, at the cost of 1 Skill point. A skill point you could have used to level up one of your relevant skills. Additionally, there are different items you can equip, that can help you pass some skill checks, but it very quickly weers into absurd. But forget about the review. The reason this game is great is that its writing is stellar. No, I take that back. The writing is a neutron star going supernova. It along with a great soundtrack carries this game to be my personal Game Of The Year.
