Words like masterpiece get thrown around a lot, but in this case I'd argue it's no exaggeration. I've been playing video games since the 90's, and a wide variety of them too. I'll admit I'm already partial to Baldur's Gate III, since I've always been especially drawn to story, character and dialogue driven games like the old Bioware and Black Isle classics, and point-and-click adventures like the Monkey Island and Broken Sword series. Baldur's Gate II is probably still my favorite game of all time, so an amazingly well made sequel such as this is no surprise to be an instant hit with me. The writing feels just great in BG III. The story has a clever premise that makes completing the game with almost any kind of protagonist, in terms of morality and personality, a believable choice. Like most, I tend to play the helpful and heroic type of character myself, but if I wanted to be a b*****d, there's nothing in the plot (that I can remember) that would make it an incongruent choice. The language and dialogue is also written extremely fittingly for the story, and keeps the player immersed in the fantasy world. I'd probably not pay any special attention to the in-universeness of it, if it weren't for a few recent examples of the opposite, with very contemporary, non-fitting language taking me out of my immersion (Phantom Liberty, Eternal Strands come to mind). There's a bit more humor and levity in BG III than it's predecessors, but not overbearingly so, and most importantly, it's very well written, so that's another thumbs up from me. I'd go deeper into the outstanding soundtrack and some of the best voice acting work ever done, but after writing all this I'm figuring out there's a 2000 character limit. For friends of immersion and storytelling, I think you'll love this one. Especially significant in the modern environment, where culture has been rapidly taking the backseat to culture industry in most fields. One of the finest examples of video games as an art form.
