Baldur’s Gate 3 Becomes First Game To Win Every Major GOTY Award

It's the best game ever made in its genre. If you don't like that genre you won't like the game though.

That's me with stealth, survival, 2d, soulslike genres

Absolutely! The voice acting, humor, and ability to make wildly different choices that have different outcomes make the game extremely replay friendly because you can do completely different things on subsequent play throughs.

That said, it is a turn based game based on the Dungeons and Dragons rules with a lot of environmental effects sprinkled in and a lot of cut scenes so if you don't like those things in your game it might not be fun for you. I recommend watching some game play vids if you don't generally play that kind of game to get an idea of what it plays like, and keep in mind that when you reach whatever scenes/fights you watch they will play out depending on what you choose when you play. You might not even come across whatever you watch unless it is part of the main story line!

It also is a pretty lengthy game which is good because there is so much that can be done, but is also not something you can knock out in 40 hours if you want to finish the game's main story line. Noting that since it matters to some people.

You get to fuck a bear

If you go to the right bar you can do that anyway.

IMO it's pretty dang great, closest I've ever seen to a TTRPG in video game form

Depends, if you're into dnd then you'll love it. It can be a lot of info since it's based on 5e rules of DND. But even still it's an amazing experience with all the choices you can do in the game, I sank 300 hours into it within the first two months easy and bg3 wasn't on my radar at all until release day. By far the best role playing you can get in a video game (that I've played)

It isn't in the fact that it's not unbelievable. But there's clearly a lot of effort put into the game and it's fun with some enjoyable characters and allows you to be stupid. The Presentation has also made a CRPG that seems to look accessible to a larger fanbase so experiencing this choice is fresh to many people.

If you liked the Divinity Original Sin games, you will probably like BG3. Me, I hated the DOS games because their gameplay and quest design choices didn't make the game fun for me.

I played BG3 up to Act 3, where the bugs and poor quest nesting screwed me out of content. It's one of those games with tons of options in decision-making, but you get quickly railroaded to an ending that you didn't want. Save scumming is basically a requirement to get through the game unless you spoil everything by following walk-throughs.

Ultimately, it's not for me. I enjoyed the dialog and characters, but they couldn't overcome the pure frustration of the game.

Hmmm good to know. I enjoyed DOS, but didn't get super far in it since I didn't find it that engaging either.
They don't outright forbid save scumming, but they were clear to say ahead of release that they made sure the make the game is fun and interesting regardless of passing a skill check or whatnot. As a result, outside of failing a combat encounter and my whole party dying, I didn't save scum, and I didn't need a guide to get through the game. It did force me to get creative with problem solving though, which the game gives you all kinds of great tools to do so.
- Ay least early on, there were quite a few options in the third act that really didn't do what you thought they would. I definitely had to reload some saves because of that.
  
  Hopefully it's better now
  
  What options were those? I thought it was pretty well telegraphed for everything I did across two playthroughs.
  
  There was one where I let the murderer dwarf kill someone because I thought I was stealthing closer when apparently I was stealthing away...
  
  That's the only one I remember off the top of my head. There were a few though, ended up quicksaving a lot in dialogs.

It is really good, but it's also over hyped. It is exemplary for its genre and for its price-value proposition. It's definitely GOTY, but really that says more about the competition than it does about BG3. It's filled with lots of intricate little details and is clearly a product filled with passion of its creators.

Its let down a bit by the lop-sided focus of development on the early acts, and poor combat design. It's a faithful implementation of D&D 5e and even does a good job of addressing the flaws with the system. But it's still a shallow system that ends up with far less interesting things to engage with than their previous titles in my opinion.

Some of its best content can only be experienced solo, but requires managing the combat of 4 mechanically complex, but tactically shallow units.

If you like RPGs and in particular D&D 5e it'd recommend it. If you're new to the genre or just curious I'd recommend other titles for your first entry.

mechanically complex, but tactically shallow

I haven't seen anyone else put my issues with the game this succinctly. The last time I played I was on normal difficulty, Act 1, and trying to do all the side content I can before heading to the goblin camp. My wife seemed to get stuck at the camp for a long time, so I'd like to try and be prepared. I think I'm somewhere between 16 and 26 hours in. I've played a decent amount of 5e and Pathfinder, but was never one for min-maxing.

In BG3, it feels like it doesn't take a major screw up to fail a combat, maybe two misplays, but it takes forever to find out if those minor mistakes are going to actually result in a full party wipe or not. Feels too easy to fail for how long it takes to fail.

So much comes down to how many attacks each party can hit with in a turn, and it feels like little else matters, which is absurd given how many options you have mechanically at any given moment.
- You don't even need to really misplay, the dice can just screw you. At a table with a GM you can get inventive and try some crazy stuff ( and the GM there doesn't really want a TPK) , but as a game those things are less apparent and less fun. The game is incredibly cheesable.
  
  Take all the talents you want, spend all the time you like planning your build, it'll never be better than tossing an explosive barrel down and just shooting it (for instance). And yet that's not fun for me, it feels like I'm cheating and not engaging with the game genuinely. But what else is there? The goblin camp is a slow slog and every time I see if done without cheesing it comes down to hiding away in a corner, building up your defenses and just slowly whittling them down and hoping they don't out roll you. (don't forget there's nothing bad about going down in 5e, since there's no lasting effects, just get back up, chug a potion and carry on.)
  
  I love the game for the effort that was put in, but the characters don't call to me the way they call to others, and the game's combat seems hell bent on wasting my time and being unsatisfactory.
  
  It's absolutely a great game, but I'd rather play with the Divinity: Original Sin 2 combat system.

I don't have enough superlatives for it. I'm > 300 hours in between three characters, and I'm still finding new stuff to do. Even at full price, worth every penny. Also an amazing co-op experience - played through the whole campaign with a friend, we both agreed it's probably one of the best games we've ever played, period.

It's also the first game of this genre that I've played, off the back of this I also picked up BG1 & 2, and Neverwinter Nights, which I'm excited to try out to see what I missed out on back in the day.

I recommend South Park Stick of Truth, as well.

It probably will be the best game that comes out this decade.

I'm just about to finish Act 1, amd this type of RPG isn't my usual thing. It is a great game, with far more choices than any action RPG I've played, by far. But it's also absolutely the buggiest game I've ever played, especially on Playstation. Seriously, there's big and small bugs at nearly every turn. It's unbelievable.

You know this isn't comparable to an aRPG I hope. It's more comparable to DnD on a computer, so a cRPG. They really have minimal in common besides leveling up and finding gear, though aRPGs make you grind for gear, a cRPG will let you find it through various means. It's a story game more than killing things game, some of the best outcomes happen when you don't kill. I don't play on PlayStation so can't comment on the bugs but haven't found many in my many hours on PC even through beta.
- Yes? Of course I understand that. My point was really about how fucking riddled with bugs it is. Which it is.
  
  But it's still a fantastic game regardless, that I can barely put down.
Getting downvoted for sharing your personal experience. What a classic.

I loved most of the game but I also experienced a TON of bugs. Although for me Act 1 was pretty much fine and the bugs slowly ramped up as I went through the game. I can give some of them a pass for how big the game is, but for others it is baffling they released the game in such a state.

Just look at the dozens of patches that have come out for it. Those wouldn't exist if the game was actually polished before it launched.
- I'm still in act 1.
  
  Some things I've experienced:
  
  Select an ability like dash, dash is never activated, I never use it, but resources are gone anyway, and pressing back does nothing. Turn is negated.
  
  Sometimes ranged attacks have required movement for no apparent reason, also negating a turn.
  
  Poison traps in Ethel's house don't seem to explode with fireball, but they're deactivated anyway. The Last one, some poison never dispersed, making it impossible to pass without taking damage.
  
  Save the dude in the burning house, and then it just goes to turn-based mode. I forget about that toggle, and we're fucking going a few feet at a time out of a burning room. After 5 reloads and me screaming at TV, I just let him die.
  
  Those are the big ones, but there's been so many small things, not to mention the terrible communication when things you have deactivate your spells.
  
  Or why sometimes bonus actions are available and sometimes not. I still have no idea.
  
  Or why I can be up on a ledge, bad guy is facing away from me on lower ground, and somehow they still have the advantage. That one seems to be a low character level thing though.
There really aren’t many bugs in this game (especially in Act 1). It has LOTS of interacting systems that may have unexpected effects if one is not paying attention to them, possibly?
- Ok, buddy. So which interacting system makes poison traps not explode when you hit it directly with a fireball, or on occasion, when you just select dash and not even use it, it somehow immediately deactivates and then no other abilities are available, so essentially that turn is wasted? This has happened a lot. Or for some reason ranged attacks require movement for a target directly in front of you with nothing in-between, so again, wasted turn.
  
  I'd still absolutely recommend it. It's a fantastic game. But if I were CDPR, I'd be kinda pissed.
  
  lol, the game wasn’t even made by CDPR. If you want a truly buggy game, play Cyberpunk 2077
  
  ...yes. that's what I'm referring to. And they've since fixed pretty much all those bugs because of public backlash, when I've seen nothing like that over BG3. That's what I'd be pissed about.