Let me preface by saying this is my first CRPG. That being said, in terms of story, characters, roleplaying, and player freedom, Baldur's Gate 3 is an incredible feat of game design. The combat however, I do not vibe with. Perhaps it's because translating D&D combat into a video game is not especially intuitive or perhaps it's my relative uninteresting in D&D. Most of the time it feels cumbersome, tedious, and if I can avoid it through dialogue, I will do that 99% of the time. Giving me a plethora of spells, attacks, and options in combat quickly becomes overwhelming as the game doesn't really explain anything to you as if it expects you to be an expert in D&D or to just experiment with everything, a truly impossible feat. Even on the easiest difficulty, my wife and I would constantly get frustrated as enemies would do things so abruptly, we'd have no time to even register why we were suddenly almost dead or what a particular debuff was doing to our character - do they expect us to check out the D&D wiki mid combat? It really is a shame. I imagine if the combat were more engaging for me, Baldur's Gate 3 could have been an all-timer.

Regardless of these frustrations (which led to many a save scum), playing through BG3 with my wife in split-screen co-op (a feature I'm thankful was implemented, otherwise I probably would've skipped out on it entirely) has been an enjoyable and memorable one.

"When I'm not Helldiving, I'm thinking about Helldiving."

In an era riddled with egregious live service games and dime a dozen multiplayer shooters, Helldivers 2 is a rarity that manages to do everything right.

The amount of freedom and agency given to the player during missions was a pleasant surprise and keeps some otherwise repetitive mission objectives fresh. Side objectives are a fun distraction and never feel like a waste of time given the rewards they offer, some of which being the game's premium currency. Speaking of which...

Not only does it feel and play fantastically (diving is so much fun), it's non-predatory and generous progression system that doesn't solely rely on a battle pass feels like a breath of fresh air in our current greedy gaming climate.

Little touches like reloading early causes you to throw the mag away losing all those unused bullets in the process or respawning giving you a fresh loadout forcing you to travel to your point of death to pick up any dropped resources and equipment you may have had add to the chaos as well as the immersion.

Tying the game's narrative to the player's and their performance gives a whole new meaning to "live-service game." The unpredictability of it all is exciting. It also gives a bit more weight to completing missions.