Where to even begin with a game as monumentally huge as Baldur's Gate 3? As someone who had not played the first two games, or any CRPG for that matter, I first heard of BG3 as many people did when it fully released to almost universal acclaim. Before that, I had never considered the purchase, as $90 was more than I had ever spent on a single video game, ever.

As videos began to trickle into my recommended page, I began to feel a pull towards it, emanating the same allure as The Witcher 3 had done when I first played it in 2020. Never before then had I understood what games could TRULY do, and TW3 had yet to be surpassed in my estimations, though my time with games of it's calibre has been admittedly limited. It has been difficult to open my heart to another RPG having started my journey of discovery at the pinnacle of its respective niche.

Deep Rock Galactic came and claimed the throne of the greatest game I have had the pleasure of playing, and Sea of Thieves, for all it's flaws, became a most treasured third place contender. With the freedom both games allow within their respective frameworks, they fulfilled my desire to cooperatively and independently hone my skills as a gamer in a sandbox of my own creativity and desire.

And thus we come to Baldur's Gate 3. At first, an intimidating beast, in a format that I feared I would not enjoy, in a setting that I had tried once and failed to immerse myself in. To that end, I recreated my character of Kleiger Bruhl, fashioning him a Paladin of Devotion rather than the more mindless Barbarian of the TTRPG, and embarked upon my first foray into the lands of Faerun proper.

It cannot be understated how different my experience of this game would have been without my friend and ever-patient companion, Zoraste. As both the bard and the veteran player, he guided and supported me through the trials and tribulations, both intended and unintended until the very end. Playing without him, though allowing for more character interaction, felt far emptier and less complete than when collaboratively working our way towards the destruction of the Absolute.

The depth and breadth of the game is hard to comprehend. How could actual people have created something so rich, complex, *ALIVE*? Tens of thousands of hours of work from thousands of people across years of their lives, and worth every second. The characters felt real, as did my relationships with them, romantic and otherwise, and this was in no small part a result of the stellar voice acting and physical performance work. Knowing that the cast and crew enjoyed the process almost as much as I enjoyed playing the fruits of their labour fills me with such joy.

The side questing never felt like a chore, with the exception of feeling the time-pressure towards the end of needing to kill the Absolute and achieve the catharsis that had been building for over 100 hours. Over the course of our journey, I developed as both a person and a player of games, and have developed a newfound appreciation for both turn-based and strategy gameplay.

The main questline was full of twists and turns and genuine moments of emotion of both ends of the spectrum, both happiness and horror. Seeing Myrkul rise from the bowels of Moonrise was only matched in it's intensity with the joy of seeing my Kleiger finally allowed to be happy with Shadowheart, the slow burn romance that had spanned all three acts.

To summarise my thoughts on this game would be to say that I have FINALLY found the true evolution of The Witcher 3 I have been craving. The freedom of character creation means that whenever I so choose, I may have another 100+ hour romp with an entirely different result leading on from an entire journey's worth of new decisions and actions. Geralt will always hold a special place in my heart, but now that space may be filled with any character I can devise, at any time I want.

I loved my time with Baldur's Gate 3, and it saddens me that I will certainly be hard pressed to find a game to match it in both scope and grandeur, but I will try. This game, and the people behind it at Larian, have restored my some of faith in the AAA scene. Through both their efforts in BG3, and their harsh criticisms of common upper level practises in the industry, Larian has earned a spot next to Ghost Ship Games in my esteem. Though they have faltered due to these same meddlings that Larian so despises, I hope that CDProjekt RED will continue their story of redemption that has begun with Cyberpunk 2077 to retake their place as developers who put their customers' loyalty and their games' quality above all.

10/10, no notes. This game is flawed, as every game is, but do NOT let that take away from the experience it offers. As free as you can be, just how free, you will have to see. It is a shame that there will not be a Larian-led follow-up to this masterpiece, but I agree with them when they say they have done their part and are happy to let it rest. Never has a game been more deserving of the GOTY award.

And thank you again, Zora. It wouldn't have been the same without you, brother.

On this account, I have an abysmally low amount of hours, so this review may seem a little weird, but before I had my own Steam account I played nearly 300 hours of The Witcher 3 on a good friend's account. This game got me through some dark times and was my first ever PC game - my "first love" as it were. I had dabbled as a pre-teen in PS2, Wii and Nintendo handheld games, but my friend let me use his PC for a few months while he went on vacation and BY GOD did this game come out swinging as a first experience.

I had heard great things, but NEVER could I have imagined the breadth of this game. Never before had I understood the phrase "magnum opus" but this is it. The greatest work of a thousand different people at CDPR, who all contributed their part to this absolute masterpiece of storytelling and roleplaying. The open world is beautiful, the setting is stellar, the characters are incredible, the script is unreal in its scope and depth, the voice acting is phenomenal and last but not least - it's fun. I played 2 full playthroughs of TW3 and can say with certainty that I don't think any other RPG will come close to how this game made me feel. That's nothing against other games, far from it, Fallout 4, though not the best RPG out there, still sucked me into its story and was an incredibly fun game to play regardless of its bugs and flaws.

But to START my adventure with the Witcher 3...it's almost unfair to anything else that comes after. Deep Rock Galactic will always be the game I love the most, and Sea of Thieves with its coop and more modern game mechanics may have swiped the second place spot from TW3 in recent times but this game...it shaped what I want a game to give me as an experience - it will always be my first love, my first true video game EXPERIENCE, the first game to bring tears to my eyes, to make me feel like my choices changed the story, to make me hungry for more lore, to make me hunt for those Steam achievements. To make me sit back and admire the beauty of the world, the complexity of the characters, even the NPCs, the beautifully paced DLCs, which in my opinion could be their own games entirely.

TL;DR - it's been said before by countless others - please buy this game. you won't regret it.