My third ever Zelda game.

For the first few hours, this had a lot of charm. I loved the creative ways it utilised the DS' features, even if they were a bit gimmicky, and I also loved the theme of sailing around the open seas and travelling to different islands. A lot of the puzzles were decently fun and so were most of the boss fights.

However, I would have preferred gamepad controls rather than wrangling with the stylus for movement and combat. Getting caught between switching items, dodge rolls being nigh impossible to execute at will, and struggling to maintain a grip on the salvage arm were all frustrating as hell. Also repeatedly returning to the Ocean Temple was a complete chore.

It started out on a high but I couldn't wait to wipe my hands of the game by the end.

It's weird to be that person who could never get into turn-based combat, bounced off most other CRPGs they've tried, never played DnD, and rarely ever replays games (and never back to back), but then Baldur's Gate 3 comes along and not only smashes each one of those barriers down, but becomes unequivocally their favourite game ever. It's just that good.

The appeal here for me was the similarities I saw to Bioware RPGs, which were the games that made you feel like you weren't just a lone hero with a bunch of stragglers tagging along to help, but like you were a group of adventurers (or space soldiers) coming together to take down the Big Bad because there was something in it for all of you. They had developed personalities, their own goals and values, opinions about one another, fun banter, and most importantly, they had agency.

That's exactly what BG3 delivers, but on top of that, there's also amazing mechanics that enable creative thinking (both in and out of combat), an interesting and dense world to explore, fantastic music, great characters (Auntie Ethel and Raphael are the best), and incredibly talented voice work and writers to breathe life into it all. No game is flawless, sure, but to me, BG3 is damn near close. It's top-notch in every possible way and I'm glad I took a gamble on it, because it absolutely paid dividends.

Reminded me a lot of Visage, which I felt was a much more unique game. This was fine, but there was a disconnect between the storylines of Luca's family, the church and Madison Hale. It's very linear and the puzzles are straightforward (I was almost always overthinking the solutions), and there were some annoying parts towards the end involving a fair bit of waiting around and baiting out an enemy. Every scare in the game is a combination of a really loud noise and something suddenly appearing in front of you, and sometimes the game would have the loud noise/object appear multiple times to let you know HEY INTERACT WITH THIS, which was unintentionally amusing. But overall, it felt polished and decent to play.