Here me out. I love democracy as much as the next guy, but this game has some serious stability issues. The number of not only game crashes, but computer crashes that this game has made me endure is genuinely concerning.
When the game does let you play it though, damn. It's surprising how well the first game was translated over to 3D (I know the first game was in 3D, I mean control wise). There are certainly things I miss, like how sniper rifles worked in a 2D plane, but its often things specific to the format, which to an extent does keep the old game from being made obsolete, like the Risk of Rain games.
In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it, I'm going to go back to playing my favourite rhythm game.

Great little time waster. It struggles a little when it comes to depth in agency, I feel the game is a little too random at times, with the main choice you have being rerolling the shop to hope for options that better suit your strategy. Perhaps a mode with some greater choice with the starting roster would be fun but I don't know how balanced that would be. What other modes are there right now are great though, with extra mechanics for the harder difficulties that I'm sure are made knowing that a lot of people wouldn't even bother play with. It's a fun time that needs a little work.

I may redact this review when I have the time to really sit down and think about it, but as it stands, this is my favourite game that I can't play.
It keeps crashing, disconnecting, or worse, softlocking. I played during a free weekend a couple years ago, and it was more stable back then. The constant restructuring and content additions just make this game a mess. I remember being so engrossed in the first few hours of just reading the lore logs and timing melee kills with my friends, until it was ruined by a softlock.
Now all those logs seem to be gone and in the past few sessions (each that ended in some kind of crash), I have found one log that relates to nothing I've previously read.
Genuinely, if it got itself together, it could be in my top few games of all time.

It's a tough sell but there are moments where it's fantastic. (66.1 hours at the time of this review; 2 playthroughs, first one failed halfway, second one midway)
I have barely more CRPG than the average landscape of current gamers, some Baldur's Gate 1 that I played prior to 3, and I'm really struggling to see how this game would fare for someone only having played the more recent. The game seems to be a bevy of fun ideas that fall short if you can't fully invest yourself in them, and even still tend to end rather anti-climatically. For example, I haven't had single a boss fight in the game that I would both consider challenging and satisfying.
The difficultly systems do allow for what seems to be extensive customization, but the tuning has to be up to the player, and as someone hoping that stock normal difficultly gives a fair challenge, it often resorts to very cheap methods of difficulty.
Despite all of that, the game has a progression system and variety that I feel puts Baldur's Gate 3 to some pretty depressing shame, given that this game is so much older. The ability to toggle between real-time and turn-based is insanely helpful, and for me, in my first run, I didn't even use turn-based and combat was responsive and enjoyable. Shared inventory management and the game collating all the loot you missed when you leave an area, all of that makes the game have great pacing during the typical mundanities.
To an extent, it feels true to the minimal that I've played and much I've watched of the old guard of the genre: a kind of game that makes you work to have fun, and when it feels like letting you have fun, it's really damn fun.
I can genuinely see the framework for something fantastic, and I hope that wrath of the righteous can deliver on that when I get to it after I finish kingmaker.

To be perfectly honest I was not excited for this game at all. I stand by that I think some of the trailers were pretty bad at showcasing the game even now with the score I am giving it that you can see. Seriously, if you were turned off by the trailers, I implore you to give this game your time, especially if you have a friend to accompany you. Baldur's Gate 3 is a near perfect digital adaptation of fifth edition D&D that is engaging both during combat and out of, delivering the best marketing for the soon to be defunct edition I've experienced in any capacity. Snark and jabs aside, this game has given me countless hours of enjoyment with my co-op buddy that I wouldn't trade for the world. Disclaimer: I personally was able to pull the Valorant addict in my life away from it to play BG3 but there is no guarantee it will work for you.

I'm writing this right after finally beating one run and being really surprised at that outcome. Holy crap how can you be so cool of a game dev. The usually excessive verbosity is going to be absent here because this game both is relatively new and I don't want to spoil the fun of discovering it for yourself. A very stripped down modern feeling deckbuilding roguelike, I sincerely hope this becomes a new standard of game to steal ideas from. It's pretty hard though, at least for me. (Not a downside per say, just a warning.) Also bloody toggle in the settings, I don't need that but its nice to have options that make me feel more comfortable recommending a game to a younger audience.

"It feels awesome" is probably one of the best ways to describe this game. The game's shtick works so well in not only setting it apart from other fps titles but acts as a dynamic difficulty in a way, giving those who need more time, more time. The execution so perfectly understands what to provide a player to give them a fantastic time in showing the player how to do the cool thing without having to spell it out. The flow of combat is unlike anything else I'll ever get good enough to experience. Accessible yet never feeling like it loses itself in that endeavor.

I'm surprised, to a degree difficult to be concise upon. I actually tried to cheese the Steam refund policy with this game; playing the game exclusively offline for the first two weeks, very much expecting it to be so bad I'd need to refund it... and now here I stand quite frustrated that my achievements from those initial unrecorded 10+ hours of gameplay are missing. It is not without fault mind you, buggy textures, wobbly writing, they somehow made Blade more annoying than Captain Marvel, weirdness like that. However, the gameplay is really sublime. I originally felt the card format would be a hinderance towards what I was seeing as the main innovation, the lack of tile movement, but have been proven quite wrong. The game so excellently subdues its RNG to a degree quite unlike the former X-COM devs I know and despise, the game plays like a card game of sorts, with the explosive always just off of OTKs you achieve and the deckbuilding I always appreciate. The difficulty scaling is for the most part, rather fantastic, with my current playthrough having just recently reached max difficulty. It's hard to go so in-depth without this all devolving into a bunch of disjointed points so I'll try to give my overall opinion: "It's a pretty good game that is so distinctly of this era. (writing/game design trends) However, where it trend chases, it feels weak, and I feel that it if it focused on the core of the game, it would be significantly better. However on that however, a part of me feels an over-tuned version of what I like in the game, could very likely make another X-COM2. (A game I'm not fond of, but maybe that could have been a good thing for those who do)