This thread’s on Baldur’s Gate 3, that’s one of them. I should have specified the other of the two most highly-rated games this year; it’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both games are more or less running last-gen graphics tech and are ahead of the pack on review scores. Zelda looks good for a Switch game, though.
You could probably ask a dozen gaming enthusiasts and get a dozen different answers on why this year has been exceptional. I’d say it’s because we have a lot of big releases from venerable franchises arriving all in the same year (Baldur’s Gate is one, plus Diablo, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, Resident Evil, Star Wars, Street Fighter). There are hits from new IPs like Cassette Beasts, Dave the Diver, Hi-Fi Rush, and maybe Starfield in a few weeks if it’s not a disaster.
It’s a nice mix of old and new worlds and plenty of surprises. On top of all that, it’s only August. I think there’s a sense that the industry is starting to leave the pandemic behind, too.
Heh, yes, I still have fond memories of the late 16-bit generation and early fifth-gen games that didn’t get on board the 3D bandwagon. Sprite-based games started to look mighty sexy until everyone decided that untextured polygons were the way to go for a while. 😑
Since we’re dealing with very small niches still, I also recommend participating in genre communities. I’m not really seeing an active one for RPGs but something like Dragon Age would get some run on !pcgaming and !pcgaming (with the usual caveat that kbin currently isn’t always great about getting all their content out to federated instances).
Grow the genre/archetype communities enough and eventually they will naturally break out into individual property niches for sure.
What’s particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren’t using state-of-the-art graphics.
Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn’t mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.
Still playing Baldur’s Gate 3. I really enjoyed Divinity: Original Sin 2 and I’m quite happy that this is an improvement in virtually all respects (the soundtrack being the only letdown so far). I’m especially happy that my biggest problem with D:OS2–the insanely tight level curve–is mostly gone here. It’s still a bit tight in Act 1, but I just started Act 3 and I’ve skipped a entire zone and a half now without being underleveled. I cannot overstate how important it is for roleplaying to not be required to comb the map or do nonsense like getting XP for persuasion successes and then turning around and killing to squeeze out every last point.
There are some negatives here, especially with bugs. Biggest one is Lae’zel simply vanishing from my camp. I found her wandering around a zone later but she wouldn’t join the party even with the dialogue indicating she was. Pretty sure she’s permanently gone now. A bunch of random skills and gear are either outright broken or are inconsistent. Fortunately there are workarounds for that part, but I’m honestly a little surprised to see a game lacking polish like this score as highly as it has in reviews.
I’ve finally moved on with the main story, with the plot progression essentially pausing for 50 hours while I poked around. What’s standing out to me now is that this game is a prime example of “great script writing, mediocre story writing.” The core narrative does hit on some of my personal favorite tropes, like shifting pantheons and otherwise huge stakes, but this story desperately needed more from the antagonists early on. There’s no reason one of them couldn’t have shown up in person to harass the party in Act 1. Merely dealing with underlings of varying narrative quality feels limp. That said, so many of the dialogues are absolutely fantastic, right up there with the best of Bioware’s work that the game is emulating. Better yet, they are paired with engrossing motion capture and impeccable voice acting. Still a shame not to be hearing Alix Wilton Regan in a Larian game, though.
If you already don’t like 5e, I don’t know if the game will change your mind. It’s not a 1-to-1 adaptation, which might help, but there are also still some bugs here and there (such as the Lucky feat not working correctly).
Hmm, I haven’t seen that particular message. I’m still early on plus I have little experience with D&D 5e. I suppose it could go either way at higher levels. Right now it feels challenging but doable. Two levels was definitely pushing it in D:OS2.
I’ve been in two encounters with enemies two levels higher and both resulted in a party member death. Not nearly as big a deal as it was in BG2, but not something I’d recommend allowing every fight. Party comp might play a role here: maybe some are better able to handle it than others.
That’s good to hear, thanks. I’m not gonna say I did a speedrun on the first area but I was definitely skipping around.
I’m going to finish up these two quests and just leave from that point. If it’s too hard, I can always drop down to Explorer difficulty. As much as I’m enjoying the challenge right now, I’d rather do that than stop roleplaying because I’m XP hunting. I felt like I had to do that a lot in D:OS2 and it was one of the few major negatives in the game.
Baldur’s Gate 3, naturally. I was enjoying it until I reached the zone border and I got a warning I was underleveled. I was like, really, Larian? We’re doing this again?
My biggest complaint with Divinity: Original Sin 2 was that the level differences were so stark and the XP was so tight that it felt like the game was forcing me to comb through the entire map. Absolutely kills replay value, and BG3 is a game I’d really, really like to save something for a replay.
This ended up being a constant issue in D:OS2 but turned out mostly okay in the first D:OS after a really tight first act. I hope this ends up being more like the latter. Or there’s some way to grind this time around.