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Baldur's Gate 3 Man, this one came out of left field and totally surprised me. I honestly can't say enough good things about it. It's one of the best, if not THE best western RPG I've ever played with such care and attention to detail that it honestly puts other games to shame. EVERY character is fully voiced, conversations have vibrant body language instead of emotionless puppets, the voice acting is top-notch, the characters are memorable and likable, the environments are HUGE and full of surprises, and it offers tons of player choice. The turn-based combat is extremely strategic and when you get good at it you'll find plenty of opportunities to pat yourself on the back for being so clever. On more than one occasion I managed to end a boss fight by just shoving them off a cliff after they made the mistake of following me to it. You'll figure out how to effectively use choke points, objects in the environment, and even the terrain to your advantage. When you can be fighting up to 12 or more enemies, simply hitting them with your strongest attacks will not be enough. A personal favorite tactic of mine was backing up into a corner and then setting the space in front of me on fire, forcing enemies to walk through it to get to me, and once they got through I'd just have my physically strongest party member shove them right back into the flames. Worked wonders, I tell you. Criticisms? I suppose I have a few, but they in no way diminish my recommendation of this game. This is GOTY material right here, but I suppose I wish the level cap wasn't set at 12. Even for D&D that's pretty low, and I hit the cap well before I finished the game. I can only hope they chose that cap because future DLC is coming that will raise it. Each act of the game is also separated into its own region and once you move on you can never go back so you'd better make sure you complete everything you want to do on the map before you continue the story. There are also a handful of battles where there are SO many enemies that you could probably make a sandwich while waiting for your turn to come up. The final act also loses a little bit of steam at the end. Not a whole lot, but some of the quests and storylines just end kind of abruptly and feel unfinished. It makes me wonder if there's cut content that needs to be added back in. If you liked Dragon Age or Witcher than you owe it to yourself to try out this game. A friend talked me into buying it and we were constantly comparing notes and surprising each other with just how differently we approached certain situations. That's the mark of a great game right there. Oh, and if you play it make sure you have at least one party member who can talk to animals. Trust me, it's worth it.

Starfield I had mostly stopped playing it when MK1 came out but I knew I was close to the end so I made an effort to at least finish the main quest monday night. I just didn't have time to do a write-up about it until now. I'm nowhere near done with the game, I haven't done any of the main faction quest lines and I'm excited to dig into NG+ and everything that entails. But right now I just wanna get started on a new Cyberpunk playthrough along with Phantom Liberty, so Starfield gets put on pause again. That being said, I ended up enjoying the game way more than I expected to. It's probably my favorite Bethesda game ever. The main quest is probably around 20 hours long or so but I still logged over twice that amount of time. I genuinely enjoyed exploring the galaxy, going into the occasional detour because I randomly encountered some shit that had a quest for me and even just messing around with the ship builder because goddamn it I need more cargo space! I could see myself easily sinking over a hundred hours into this game. It just came out at the worst time imaginable. The early access coincidentally started at the same time I had planned time off from work but I spent half of my vacations finishing Trails to Azure and then, the week after that, MK1 took my attention away from Starfield. And now it's Cyberpunk 2.0 and Phantom Liberty that I just can't wait to get to.... just as soon as I finish Legend of Nayuta... I'll definitely come back to Starfield at some point and really lose myself into its universe. I just have no idea when I'll take the time to do so. Hopefully by then they'll have added all those QoL updates they just promised to patch in.