I have grown more attached to Shadowheart than I have to most people in my actual life and the fact that she's not real depresses me immensely.

Oh, the game? It's great!

The amount of ambition on display from Larian Studios here is absolutely staggering, to the point that it's actually surprising just how much of it pays off. The characters are all incredibly interesting, well-rounded and fantastically written and voice-acted. The gameplay kept me engaged for the most part, and despite my general dislike of turn-based action it was pretty easy for me to get to grips with it.

The story is great and there's enough side-quests off the beaten path that I feel like BG3 is well worth paying full price for. I went through the game at a fairly brisk pace and clocked up 85 hours in the end. If you were willing to explore different ways of playing the game (including the unique Dark Urge path) then you could easily lose hundreds of hours to it.

Sadly a few issues prevented me from giving BG3 full marks. The game's third act can be very overwhelming at first, and it can be difficult to know what to do and where to go without losing certain content. Some side quests feel unfinished, like Larian ran out of time before they could flesh them out properly. That's not to mention that a lot of the stories of your fellow companions, so beautifully developed in the first two acts, tend to fizzle out. Once you complete their personal quests they stop being the fully fleshed out characters they were and end up just being sorta... there.

There were also a few annoying bugs riddled throughout; characters sometimes being unable to jump, textures not loading properly or being stretchy, enemies taking almost a full minute to decide what they wanted to do in a turn. Nothing game-breaking but they added up.

I don't regret any of the time I spent playing this - in fact, as someone with absolutely no prior experience with anything D&D-related this has actually made me want to get into it more, whether that's through other video games or actually playing it with other people. Of course, for that I actually need to find some friends first...

P.S. I don’t care if the ‘Party Limit Begone’ mod is ‘cheating’, nothing feels better than running around the city with my merry band of ten adventurers. The easier combat is secondary to not having to miss out on any companion-specific dialogue with NPCs.

Although Tacoma does not have quite the emotional impact of Gone Home, it tells a compelling story about corporate greed in a rather realistic space setting in the year 2088. I love how the developers tell their story mostly through environmental clues, and sometimes it just takes one hidden letter or a well-placed object to evoke emotions and if u take ur time getting to know the characters and their small little stories u can't help but feel empathetic for everyone of them. Again, I like the song choices that make certain moments much more memorable. I can't wait to dive deeper into the tracks, just like I did with Gone Home, where I discovered bands such as Le Tigre and Bikini Kill. I'm quite eager to see what they have in store with their next game called Open Roads.

Waaay too long. Had a lot of fun with this for the most part, but really started to feel fatigued around the half way point. Combat just doesn't have enough variation to be consistently entertaining. The writing also leaves a lot to be desired. Still though, I have a lot of appreciation for how much passion went into this. The pixel art is truly beautiful and the developers obviously love and understand a lot about the games they took the inspiration from. Just a shame they didn't do too much to separate themselves from those old school JRPGs.