Easily the second-best RPG of 2023.
I don't think it's really worth doing a deep dive into my opinions on BG3 because even though I didn't play it until December, I can kind of already feel it not really making much of a lasting impression on me. Like, it's good. I think it actually says a lot that BG3 is one of the very few big choice-driven/immersive simmy WRPGs I've been able to enjoy at all, which is why I'm not making this review a weird, intense rant about the genre as a whole.
But like... I dunno. That's just kind of all. It's Good. A well-above-average execution of a pretty old set of ideas about game structure and progression that I've always thought were radically overhyped. I guess it's kind of like Breath of the Wild in that respect, where a game comes across as revolutionary mostly just because it combines the basic appeal of its genre with, like, actual decent game des--oh I'm doing my WRPG rant AND my open world rant, I'm terribly sorry. Anyway.
Yeah, I had a lot of fun with BG3. Got messier in the third act, as everyone says. The combat can hit great highs, the game does make it feel really rewarding sometimes to solve a problem in an unorthodox way, and there's some decent character writing elevated by phenomenal performances. The plot is... certainly the events of the work devised and presented by writers as an interrelated sequence. (I couldn't, like, tear it apart as something fundamentally broken in construction, but the more they revealed about what was actually happening the more I kind of checked out in terms of personal investment.)
I'm almost inclined to call a shot that a few Larian games from now, a lot of people are going to turn on them and form oddly angry opinions about how overrated they've always been, with BG3 as a major sticking point. I'm not wishing for that or anything, I just feel like it's usually the fate of AAA games that become huge, huge critical darlings for high art value despite... kind of clearly being more of a really solid popcorn movie affair. That's kind of where I'm at with Baldur's Gate 3: it's the best MCU movie.
play Octopath Traveler 2
I don't think it's really worth doing a deep dive into my opinions on BG3 because even though I didn't play it until December, I can kind of already feel it not really making much of a lasting impression on me. Like, it's good. I think it actually says a lot that BG3 is one of the very few big choice-driven/immersive simmy WRPGs I've been able to enjoy at all, which is why I'm not making this review a weird, intense rant about the genre as a whole.
But like... I dunno. That's just kind of all. It's Good. A well-above-average execution of a pretty old set of ideas about game structure and progression that I've always thought were radically overhyped. I guess it's kind of like Breath of the Wild in that respect, where a game comes across as revolutionary mostly just because it combines the basic appeal of its genre with, like, actual decent game des--oh I'm doing my WRPG rant AND my open world rant, I'm terribly sorry. Anyway.
Yeah, I had a lot of fun with BG3. Got messier in the third act, as everyone says. The combat can hit great highs, the game does make it feel really rewarding sometimes to solve a problem in an unorthodox way, and there's some decent character writing elevated by phenomenal performances. The plot is... certainly the events of the work devised and presented by writers as an interrelated sequence. (I couldn't, like, tear it apart as something fundamentally broken in construction, but the more they revealed about what was actually happening the more I kind of checked out in terms of personal investment.)
I'm almost inclined to call a shot that a few Larian games from now, a lot of people are going to turn on them and form oddly angry opinions about how overrated they've always been, with BG3 as a major sticking point. I'm not wishing for that or anything, I just feel like it's usually the fate of AAA games that become huge, huge critical darlings for high art value despite... kind of clearly being more of a really solid popcorn movie affair. That's kind of where I'm at with Baldur's Gate 3: it's the best MCU movie.
play Octopath Traveler 2
garie
3 months ago