Baldur's Gate 3

I have played RPGs since the Infinity Engine days. Baldur's Gate 3 has broken my brain.

Larian Studios took the D&D 5e ruleset and built around it a world of such staggering reactivity that I genuinely cannot predict what any given session will look like. My first playthrough was a noble half-elf cleric trying to save everyone. My second was a Dark Urge origin with lore so disturbing and so brilliantly written that I had to take breaks.

The writing is the headline achievement. Every companion has a fully realised arc. Astarion's vampire story alone would be worthy of a standalone game. Shadowheart's resolution in Act 2 made me sit in silence for five minutes. These are not video game characters — they are people, rendered in extraordinary detail.

Act 1 and Act 2 are close to flawless. The Underdark, Moonrise Towers, the whole Sharran conspiracy — the pacing is masterful and the world density is absurd in the best way.

Act 3 shows the seams a little. Baldur's Gate city itself is less cohesive than the previous acts, a few quest threads resolve unsatisfyingly, and the final boss confrontation is spectacular in concept but slightly underwhelming in execution given how strong the journey to it was.

On PC with a high-end rig this is a stunning looking game. Load times are long even on NVMe and the final act has some notable performance issues in the city that a 4090 does not entirely solve. But these are asterisks on a document otherwise written in gold.