Baldur’s Gate 3’s Metacritic Score Now Tops ‘Tears Of The Kingdom’

80 hours in, still not out of the starter area. 10/10.

Haven't played it myself but that sounds insane, what takes so long?
- Its VERY dense. Both in terms of things to do and things to think about when building your character.
  
  To be fair, I have very little dnd experience. Dnd vets probably have an easier time building their character/party.
  
  The maps are huge and they do a fantastic job of turning, seemingly small tasks into lavish questlines.
  
  I constantly find myself being like, "Ill just check out this little room in the back" Which turns into a 5 hour quest cause I discovered some button that opened a secret doorway behind a bookcase and took me to some whole new shit.
- Well first you need to pick a race, and build your character 7 times. Then you need to pick a class which leads to rebuilding your character more times. Of course then you realize that your main character stats and background would really be better a different way with a different class, which means you need to readjust your look.
  
  And Ect for 80hrs
- There's a lot to explore.
  
  It doesn't have to take that long by any means, but there's a lot to do, plus secrets all over the place. Some take a sharp eye; others you need to get a passive dice roll (affected by whatever skill) for your character to discover exists.
- The first area is really big. I think I'm about to move on to the next area after 40 hours or so but I also thought that 6 hours ago but keep stumbling into new areas.
I didnt play early access, which point exactly switches from act1 to 2?
- When you enter the cursed lands around Moonrise Tower.

Nintendo managed to make an open world action-adventure more tedious than a turn based cRPG

Get your downvote ready everyone, I haven't played the new Zelda but I did play and beat botw and it was just okay for me. I found it to be very over rated. It's not even close to my top 10.
- I definitely had to push to finish the game
  
  Have no desire to touch Total if I’m being honest.

This game made my F5 key get more use in one week than the previous 4 years combined

If you are talking about rerolling skill checks in dialogue, I urge you to embrace the failure, it will make for an interesting story anyway.

GotY

GotD
- Game of the Day? Not very high praise ^/s
- There doesn't seem to be a Game of the Decade award. I nominate Pacman for the 70s, Either Super Mario Brothers, or The Legend of Zelda for the 80s, Chrono Trigger, or Final Fantasy 7 for the 90s, Castlevania Symphony of the Night for the 00s, and Skyrim for the 10s

I realize on an intellectual level I live in a world where Zelda games are revered for some reason. Don't play them, can't stand console/j- rpg's and don't know anyone that plays them but especially online they seem to be the Alpha and Omega. THAT's why this is such a big thing, you can't compare games but to surpass the ultimate internet fanboy dream game by just making a great RPG is ballsy and just what gaming needed right now.

The reason they are revered is that over the last 27 years, the Legend of Zelda franchise has consistently put out one good game after the next with few, if any real blemishes on their record. After almost 3 decades of consistently putting out games that are fun, innovative, and kinda familiar all at once, the fanboys may have a minor point with their obsession of the games.
This is such a hot take I didn't know I shared.

Zelda games aren't bad by any stretch, in fact they seem great. But they're treated as sacred to an extent I'll never understand.
- imagine Larian keeps putting out banger after banger for decades... that's why Zelda is revered.
- Probably because they fill a niche that very few other games do.

The game still needs a lot of UX improvements to be considered perfect, but TotK did too. For everything TotK fixed from BotW it had new problems.

Is there a CRPG that is worshipped for the best UI in the genre? It seems like a UX nightmare to create a game that is so multifaceted.
- Solasta is probably the closest for a 5e based system.
  
  Solid UI for all of 5e's base actions with popup menus for items and spells. It also has significantly better navigation for vertical movement/aim.
- I dunno about worshipped but to me pathfinder wotr has so many good quality of life improvements and better ui overall. Pathfinder also feels more like a proper successor to baldur's gate mechanically and the old infinity engine. I am still enjoying bg3 though.

It’s wild that I’ve experienced two of what seem to be the best games ever in a span of a few months. I don’t have any D&D experience, but I’m really using BG3 to learn more about it and I’m really enjoying it. I’ve been a fan of the Zelda franchise since the original launched, and TotK is just incredible. Both of these games are amazing, even if they have different goals.

I haven't played this Baldur's Gate game yet, I will. Someone else will have to tell you if it's using 5th or 6th edition rules. Bear in mind that BG has always been a really good [battle section] simulator for D&D. The storylines are always interesting, but there's really no role-play, at least not like when playing with paper and dice. It should be a good primer for you though.
- 5th edition. Been in development too long to use 6th!
- There is not a 6th edition of d&d yet

Making a game that's feature-complete with no MTX sets a completely unrealistic expectation for the AAA industry! /s

I wish this was sarcasm, but I bet if you ask EA or Ubisoft it's exactly what they think. That's the issue if there's a business dude running a game company, not a game developer.

Meh, fuck Nintendo.

I took a huge break from early access and didn't like the UI changes. But got used to them.pretty quick and got sucked in.

I've moved from desktop to PS5 since early access tho, and if controller support is better on PS5 than PC (it will be, that's likely the cause of the different release times) I'm buying it again for ps5. Especially with cross progression

I haven't played early access, only release and the controller support is stellar
- That's been my experience as well on the steam deck. If anything I think the keyboard and mouse interface could use some work after playing with the steam deck.
- I waited for the PC controller support at release. I love the way the game plays with the controller. I like that the camera follows the player and looking around is easier. Hated mouse and keyboard. But I like to sit on the sofa and game with my PC on the TV.
- Yes, it is, but.. the DOS2 muscle memory is a big handicap, I have lost so many battles because Y is “next turn” here. Could have made it a bit more similar.
  
  This takes a 0.02/10 off my rating, game is 9.98/10
- I mean, I got early access like the day it came out, and was away from it for at least a year.
  
  So it's more like stuff just didn't work how I remembered it than it was bad. So I just went to mouse and binded what I used a lot to extra mouse buttons.
  
  If id have stuck with controller and relearned it, I'd probably be fine. It just seemed like too much work to go thru the menus for actions on a controller. If there's a way to bind a "default" action it wouldn't have been so bad.
  
  And it's entirely likely there's a way and I just didn't find it.
I played Early Access and thought it'd be lame/boring to start again, but it felt totally different. They've changed quite a bit and there are obvious improvements. It's really great. First game in a long time that I look forward to going home to play a bit more. Really does feel like an adventure in which you play a meaningful role.

I'm really saddened that they don't let me play a complete idiot. And it's a bit buggy, but not impossible. That's my criticism.

I crashed like 2 times in my 20 hour playthrough thus far since release in the grove. But that's about it as far as bugs go. I've seen much much worse games this close to release
- It had some bugs the first 2 days. And weird interactions. Like the UI would sometimes completely disappear when you switched characters so you had to reload. For weird interactions: when I was in the goblin camp and befriended the spiders I could talk to the guards behind the gate and they reacted like I was not on the other side of the gate. I also had to spam click the lever there to be able to pull it since it just wouldnt work with magic hand until I spammed the click

If you thought TOTK let you do whatever you wanted to destroy monsters, wait till you see what BG3 offers. 😃

I grab every explosive barrel I find out of combat to help when I get into combat. Little powder keg, a little fireball, poof. No more bad guys.

I fell in (more) love when I realized I could grab a goblin and attack another with it...but there was just the one goblin. So I attacked the ground. Gobbo took bludgeoning and fire damage because the ground was on fire.
- I've seen water can douse fire, and electricity synergizes with it; however with all the dark and undead, I was wondering if I might bless water and make it holy. The bless spell is only targetable on creatures, so that ain't it 🤷🏻‍♂️
  
  Also, it can be hard to see with the camera being so finicky but chandeliers and other hanging objects can be attacked to make them fall, causing massive damage or even opening holes in the ground.
  
  If I wasn't so deep in my playthrough, I would start over as a monk and just Jackie Chan my way through combat.

This game isn’t all… death and darkness everywhere like Divinity OS2 was, is it? In that game, it felt like I was fighting the undead and horrible meat monsters everywhere.

Well... it is a Baldur's Gate game (as much as I've seen claimed otherwise), so the story is centered around the usurper gods of death, their legacy and their attempts to gain power and influence in the world.

The first act is reasonably light (with exception of mindflayers and some light occular body horror :P), just normal dnd stuff, goblins, druids, etc.

The second... well, to avoid spoiling too much, let's just say it goes dark. :P Haven't seen the third yet, personally.
- I lost both my eyes in the game lmao

A fantastic game.