Finally finished my first, and definitely not only, playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3. It's a remarkable achievement in the history of videogames. The scale of it, the production quality, the characters, the writing - amazing. I did have to use mods to make the combat more interesting and challenging, because there's so much OP stuff.

Some developers commented when the game was released that BG3 shouldn't be used a a benchmark for future RPGs. It's a reasonable point in some ways. BG3 was not created in isolation - it's the culmination of knowledge and technology (and money) Larian developed over the course of creating Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2. The long Early Access period also helped a lot. It's unreasonable to expect every RPG developer to be able to draw on the same resources. I do think though that it should raise the bar for AAA studios that churn out a tweaked version of the same game every year.

The Messenger

As someone who loves Metroidvanias I was really looking forward to playing this game based on all the positive things I heard.

The story/witty dialogue and soundtrack are probably the only things that kept me going.

Everything felt very repetitive, especially towards the latter half of the game. It just kind of dragged on for me. Practically no variety in enemies and every boss with easy to memorize patterns.

I don't know if this will make sense, but the deaths felt really cheap. Like dying in a game like Celeste just feels different than dying in this game.



6.5/10

I enjoyed it, but I agree it was a bit repetitive and didn't feel too rewarding at the end. And the concept of switching between time periods felt too forced at times, meaning you didn't get a choice, you had to be in one or the other, making it more linear than it appears as a concept.

And the free DLC wasn't fun. I got to a part that was a race and just lost interest in trying to perfect my speed.

I really loved the messenger, but, it was 85% due to the mentioned awesome story/witty dialogue and soundtrack, plus another 15% due coming-of-video-game-age in the late 80s playing NES games like Ninja Gaiden and getting a big nostalgia hug from the graphics and controls. I do think it drags at the end a bit, and, 100% agree the free DLC just isn't fun for some reason. But it's still a 8.5/10 for me overall.

FF7: Rebirth

Just beat the main story, and took about 108 hours total. This was pretty much the sole reason I purchased a PS5 and it was worth every penny.

I would be shocked if it doesn't win Game of the Year.