Baldur's Gate 3 | Critical Consensus

gamesindustry.biz:

We typically publish our review roundups within a couple of days of a title's release. But things have been a bit different with Baldur's Gate 3.

Developer Larian cut it pretty close to its PC launch date of August 3 when it came to sending review codes, plus Baldur's Gate 3 is a game of epic proportions – which means most publications have either waited to publish their thoughts, or published reviews in progress.

For the past ten days, the industry has almost been holding its breath to see whether Baldur's Gate 3's near perfect Metacritic score would drop down as more reviews were starting to appear. And as the dust is starting to settle, it's fair to say the verdict is unanimous: with a metascore of 97 at the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 is currently the best-rated game of the year.

This is based on 36 critic reviews. For the sake of fairness, we'll clarify that 2023's second best rated title, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, has a metascore of 96 based on 145 critic reviews. So things could still change as more articles pop up.

But it is unequivocal that Larian has managed a real tour de force with Baldur's Gate 3, crowning a very long development cycle and three years of Steam Early Access.

"Baldur's Gate 3 feels a little bit like Larian has accomplished the impossible," said Ali Jones in his 5/5 review for GamesRadar. "This is an entire, years-long pen-and-paper roleplaying campaign realized in beautiful fidelity. It's not just the borrowing of a ruleset, it's an understanding of what D&D is down to the most intricate detail, the result of a genuine passion for its source material writ large across the years-long work of a staff of hundreds.

"At a time when Dungeons & Dragons boasts a popularity