Recent reviews by Ethonodon

Baldur's Gate 3 really does live up to the hype. Overall, this game is absolutely incredible. That's not to say it's completely without flaw, but overall it has easily cemented itself as one of my all-time favorites. This game does so much so incredibly well.

First and foremost, the characters. The writing in this game is nothing short of fantastic, and the performances are absolutely wonderful too. It's difficult to concisely articulate, but BG3 does just an amazing job creating interesting and complex characters you care for.

The combat. The turn-based combat is genuinely quite enjoyable (save one or two fights, but I'll talk about that later), but I found it constantly engaging and judging by the game's widespread success I'd say it's in a good place regarding its accessibility- there's no steep learning curve or confusing mechanic that prevents the game being fun to a very broad audience.

The gameplay in general. Adventuring around the world, discovering new areas, interacting with NPCs, stealing, looting, etc. was always exciting. I can count the number of games that evoke such a strong feeling of joy and whimsy on one hand, and BG3 is one of them.

The visuals. The game is pretty! It just looks great, especially considering how absurdly expansive it is.

And finally, the music. The soundtrack is just fantastic.


These aspects of BG3 are what motivated me to label it "one of my favorites", but if I'm to give an honest review, I need to also point out the few small spots where I felt the game was a little weaker.

There are two fights in specific that I experienced as not very enjoyable. In fact, these two specifically I disliked quite a bit. I'll spoiler tag them because they both have a large impact on the story.

The Orin fight. I don't tend to like damage contests in general, but Orin's fight felt particularly poor. The fight's gimmick is that you have to out-damage her infinitely-replenishing invulnerability. But unfortunately, she's got underlings capable of stunlocking multiple party members at once. Orin does so much damage per turn, she's capable of sometimes downing a stunned party member in just one turn. The effect of this is having to reload the fight over and over again, until your party members are able to resist getting stunned and killed off the first round. Because if then a party member dies, you HAVE to revive them, because you need all four to out-damage Orin's invulnerability. But the problem is while you're reviving one party member, the others will get stunlocked and then killed by Orin in one turn. Even doing this fight at the maximum level with a well-rounded party this fight just felt like it wasn't really of the same quality that all the other fights in the game were.

The Netherbrain fight. Yes, I'm one of those people that disliked the Netherbrain fight. My personal opinion is that generally speaking, in story-driven games such as this, a less difficult final boss is more fun. In BG3's case especially, that whole ending segment of the game feels very tense and like you're running out of time. You need to kill the Netherbrain as soon as possible. That's a good thing! It was invigorating and thrilling, but then I got to the actual final bossfight, only to get my whole party repeatedly stunlocked in a fight that gets exponentially more difficult the longer it goes on. And the second phase is just another damage contest. The effect of this was that it completely killed any momentum the story had. This epic final encounter to slay the great evil turned into a tedious chore, an obstacle I just had to get past to advance the story. Now, the content after the fight more than made up for it (and all the content previous, because my GOD the rest of the content in this game is so good), but that fight just left a sour taste in my mouth.

These two examples are not to say hard fights cannot be fun and that all of the fights should be easy. Raphael's fight gave me an incredible amount of trouble, but I was thrilled and enjoying the hell out of it the whole way. A difficult fight just needs to be well designed.

Besides those two fights, my only complaints are very minor ones. A buggy animation or two (out of like 100,000 so really impressive how few there were), a slighty-too-annoying enemy here and there, and the rare irritating puzzle.


Overall, BG3 is easily one of the best games I have ever played. It masters every dimension a good video game should and more. It is absolutely worth every penny and every hour. It is very, very rare a game like this comes along, so it'd be a shame to not take advantage of it and enjoy it.

Takes pretty much everything the first game did well and makes it better. Some areas feel frustratingly lacking, but only because the game keeps introducing so much incredibly cool new content it leaves you constantly wanting/expecting more. The story is great, the writing is fantastic, the game looks absolutely gorgeous, and the combat is a huge improvement over the first game. There are minor performance issues here and there, but besides that, it's an absolutely wonderful game.

♥♥♥♥♥ I KNOW you got mah gold

Hunt is good. Like, really good. The guns handle amazingly well, and the game revolves largely around stealth, deception, strategy, positioning, etc, which makes it an extremely engaging experience; a free loadout can be just as fun/effective as an expensive one in the right hands. The game makes ammo feel valuable, your shots need to count, you need to tread lightly, but also with haste to outspeed the other players. Truly fantastic pvp.

I just bought this game for Galactic Contention, and honestly I have little interest in the base game. That being said, GC is incredibly fun, and the game is worth it for that mod alone.

4 player

Knights, guns, stupid horses, and a rose. 10/10.

PIRATES VIKINGS AND KNIGHTS 2

there's a vehicle named "your mother" and it's labelled as weighing 200 tons and requiring a minimum crew of 20 people + 1 forklift

I can't stress how good it is, if you don't have it, get it. It's the best story I've played in a game.