Unsurprisingly, Baldur's Gate 3 is a game where the passion from Larian shows clear. Mechanically it functions as a mild blend of Divinity Original Sin 2 and DND 5e, taking the good parts of both to make a sequel for a series that has long since sat in Wizards of the Coast's IP vault besides re-releases. The player wakes up aboard a nautiloid after having been infected with a mind flayer parasite, simply tasked to cleanse themselves of it.

Story-
The core premise is established immediately aboard the Nautiloid, with little fluff getting in the player's way throughout the game, everything either linking to the main quest or character quests, with a few typical fantasy world quests. The world of Toril and Faerun are handled excellently, with references that information is established to those unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms and places and people those who have played any campaign in the Forgotten Realms or played older Baldur's Gate games would recognise.

The characters are all their own unique weird balls of personality, a complete group of absolute dorks who you will grow to love for their odd quirks and motivations. They feel personal to your character, interacting like actual people rather than exaggerated fantasy characters reciting poetry. Whilst some facets of them are tropey, it is handled well by allowing you to interact with their quest and help each character resolve their quest, which besides from cleansing their head from the tadpole, they have their own main goal.

Gameplay-
The open sandbox-style approach that Larian is very familiar with succeeded once again with Baldur's Gate 3, the different checks that one would make whilst in a dnd campaign adding to the charm of the game, the whole time feeling just like playing a campaign, where in honest truth, were someone to put enough hard work in to flesh out some areas and quests to work for an actual tabletop campaign, the game as a whole would translate to a playable module in my honest opinion. Being able to approach different situations based on what type of character you are is always fun, part of what makes the Immersive Sim genre so special, typically always being done well by Larian. Although some choices are a little hollow, I do expect a degree of illusion of choice from game developers as they are operating within the confines of software.

Combat-
The d20 system is pretty much translated by the word from the dnd handbook, with a few homebrew rules placed here and there to help video gamify the system or just because of Larian's preferences or potential balance. Classes do feel a bit mediocre at low level but, that's also a problem that translates from dnd, one which is a reason that a lot of DMs for dnd campaigns will start characters not at level 1. With the context of the tadpole, it makes sense why each character is set to level 1 but is a little bit of a gripe nonetheless, although levelling feels just as rewarding, with each level feeling like quite the bump up for the most part with each class. Enemies are all fun to fight, with general favourites from dungeons and dragons frequently showing up. Although, as it uses the d20 system, potential rng is a factor in combat, which for some may be an inconvenience.

Bugs-
Despite everyone praising how well the game worked at launch, I can say I agree with it, up through to most of act 2. Act 2 a few bugs started to show, mostly minor ones but it was only until getting to act 3 that everything started going downhill in that regard, and I am not sure that a couple more weeks in the oven would have prevented this, as the game had been pushed from the end of August 2023 to the start, Larian not wanting to compete with the release of Starfield.

The most notable bug was being stuck in an area past the final point of no return, halting all progression. I had to contact Larian support and send them my save data, which they fixed in a couple of days (I had sent my save data during a weekend). They addressed that they will fix the specific bug in Patch 1 (Released and the fix is featured within the patch notes) and it was quite a major bug.

Besides that, other bugs either would prevent certain sidequests from progressing or were purely visual, so ranging from mild to fairly severe still. I'd recommend going into this game and expecting not as many bugs as a common Bethesda release, but definitely where you will probably encounter at least a few until maybe after Patch 1 & 2.

Conclusion-
Baldur's Gate 3 managed to make a game that everyone is either talking about or playing, coming from an early access period where they took fan feedback to heart and made a game that basically anyone who likes video games would potentially want to pick up and play, whilst remaining faithful to the IP. It's not a perfect experience, but no game ever will be, but it's the closest to a perfect game that the games industry has seen in a while, hopefully shining a light towards other developers the amount of care that should go into their games. And with the level of quality and substance, I don't see why more game developers can't make games of similar calibre to Baldur's Gate 3 outside of greed. It shines a bright light of hope on what Larian can achieve if they maintain the same motivation and ideology behind their game design.