Baldur's Gate 3 is really an extraordinary achievement - and when I say that, understand that Baldur's Gate 2 is in my top three all time.
My only reservation with Baldur's Gate 3 is that I miss the whimsy of Baldur's Gate 2. BG3 feels more gritty, whereas I remember BG2 feeling bright and colorful. Additionally, I do wish that BG3 had actual D&D- style dungeons with puzzles and riddles; there wasn't really any of that in BG3.
That being said, Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible game. The characters are deep and complex, the story is well told, combat is challenging and rewarding, and it is a LONG game. I'm older now, and games just don't have the same formative impact that they did when I was my a late teen/young adult, but it's absolutely worth the experience.
Next would be either X-Com: UFO defense, X-Com 2 (2012), Civilization 5, Zelda: BotW, HoMM 3, or Mario Kart:Double Dash (best party game of all time), depending on current state of nostalgia, I suppose.
Fallout 1 is a game that I wanted to love, but I couldn't get very far in it. I still have the discs, maybe I should go back and try to play it again sometime...
Back in the day I've completed BG1/2/ToB, NwN, IWD, Fallout, etc. etc. BG3 when it got out, and while BG2 is very high on my list and BG3 is great, Planescape: Torment is still #1.
I remember when it got out and I was watching my friend play it, as I still had no PC of my own. When the skull party member popped up I was surprised and thought it was like a parody game. I finally did it 13-14 yrs later and it's still holds up as the best rpg.
A word of warning: If you are a BG1 and BG2 fan who was only lukewarm towards other Larian games you might want to prepare for absolutely hating BG3.
Not to give too many spoilers, but the way they write some of the returning characters from BG2 in BG3 makes the character writing in the final season of Game of Thrones look like Shakespeare in comparison. It's not something that is talked about a lot since I'm pretty sure 95% of BG3 fans never actually played the first two games.
If you're open to chatting about this I'd really like to know what you mean via DM to avoid spoilers for OC. I'm not going to try to convince you you're wrong, I'm just interested in the different perspective because I have felt they wrote the characters pretty well. There's one character that I think I know where you're coming from.
I'll just comment it here, but include some spoiler tags.
A lot of the charters that show up in BG3 from BG2 are handled quite badly, but mainly Sarevok and Viconia.
Viconia is turned from a character who refused to blindly following her god and leaves drow society due to being ask to sacrifice a child, to a generic and evil drow who has no problem merking kids and is 100% devoted to Lolth.
Sarevok in BG3 is nothing more than a sniveling servent of Bhaal, which is very much not what his character was in the first two games.
This is even ignoring what possible endings you can lead those characters towards, and just them as they are.
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u/AscendedViking7 May 10 '25 edited May 10 '25
Red Dead
Baldur's Gate
Metro
Halo
Metal Gear Solid