Subnautica legitimately made me stop and stare at my screen with mouth agape at the wonder and terror of a glowing undersea behemoth. I’ve never had a game provoke pure awe like it does.

I’m a Pathfinder fan with vague disdain for 5e as a ruleset and active loathing for Forgotten Realms as a setting. I love this game.

My life has been replaced with Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m partially into Act 2 but keep having to take breaks because the spooky atmosphere and crippling decision anxiety are stressing me out too much to continue playing long stretches.

Why is everyone acting like Dragon Age: Origins is the only fantasy RPG that ever existed? Baldur’s Gate 3 is the next step in a long legacy of genre defining games.

You can’t actually get the true ending on your first playthrough. You have to do the neutral ending first.

It is a wonderful little game!

My life has been completely subsumed by Baldur’s Gate 3. I spend all day at work thinking about it.

My husband called it a “tactical combat dating sim” and that cracked me up.

I’ve only gotten about 2 hours in, but I’m having tons of fun so far! The character creator has lots of options, there’s unique dialogue choices from your class/race/etc in just about every conversation, and I am a big proponent of turn based CRPGs.

Also starting a multi-player game this weekend, which should be fun!

Wolfheart seems like a nice guy, he’s put out tons of great content leading up to release.

I’ve only played a couple hours so far but I’m enjoying the game a lot! It seems like every conversation has at least one unique dialogue option based on your race or class picks, which is awesome. The companions I’ve met so far seem fairly interesting.

The entirety of Spiritfarer, really.

It feels like game development timelines are so long these days that there’s very few games per hardware generation. I look back at the PS2’s library (to be fair, it was enormous even for its own time) and everything on the Switch feels tiny in comparison.

Also, even if the “new Nintendo Switch(i)” or whatever is backwards compatible, the rise of digital sales means I can’t play my switch games on the new console anyway.

I’m just tired of having to buy new crap.

I know it’s an unpopular opinion, but I really love Dragon Age: Inquisition. It has huge flaws, yes. Chiefly having way too much generic filler sidequesting.

Do note that you’ll need the DLC to get the most important part of the story. (Thanks EA.)

To be fair, I am not the model series fan. I gave up on Origins in the 12 hours of identical dungeon corridors underneath the dwarf city. Never played DA2. Love KotOR, Jade Empire (still holds up surprisingly well!), and Mass Effect, though.

I’m here for the Disco Elysium memes. Kim must be protected at all costs.

Hey, I’ll have you know that after 1,000 hours of Total War, I have finished a whole campaign twice.

I’m so excited for BG3! I’m already over-planning my first character’s backstory.

Just finished Final Fantasy XVI and feel vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied. The story kinda fell apart in the last third.

2 weeks until Baldur’s Gate 3, no idea what I’ll do until then.

I am a huge Pathfinder fan (check my home instance) and have played both games.

Tl;dr, play Wrath. The plots of both games are standalone.

I hated Kingmaker. Incredibly frustrating experience. The game is difficult, buggy, the writing is beautiful in places and baffling in others, and the kingdom management is balanced poorly. It’s easy to get yourself into a death spiral on kingdom management that takes 50 hours to play out (which then gives you an instant game over).

However, Wrath of the Righteous is one of my favorite CRPGs. I have roughly 200 hours in it. The writing for companions is much better in this one and while the army management side game still isn’t good, it is a lot less frustrating and opaque than the kingdom management mini game. There are still some bugs… I had one game-breaking bug where I had to install a mod to teleport out of an inaccessible area after the game deleted an elevator. My only other complaint is that the ending was clearly rushed, but the campaign is about 100 hours and most of it is of excellent quality. Overall it’s very worth it. The different mythic paths have tons of interactivity in the world, so it really changes each playthrough when you make different choices.

Also kudos to Wrath for well written evil companions and choices! You can be a psychopath that kills everyone you come across if you want (and there’s even a mythic path tailored exactly to that), but there are also more subtle choices that allow you to twist the crisis at the Worldwound to your advantage (try Lich!). It is still satisfying to be a big damn hero, too.

I love FFXVI, and I understand the pacing and sidequest criticisms. I’m nearing the final boss battle, and let me tell you, the pacing gets worse as the game goes on.

The sidequests feel like all the budget was funneled towards the huge setpiece moments (which are cool), and then everything else was tacked on as an afterthought. They’re just so flat and boring. I do recognize the need for quiet moments in between the huge bombastic scenes, and sidequests sort of do that in the beginning, but they just drag. On. So. Long.

It’s hard to understand when there’s 5 high-octane boss battles in a row in between two 4-hour fetch quest sessions.

I do really enjoy the story and characters overall, though I have some criticisms here, too. (Like Jill being relegated to “useless damsel”.) I enjoy the reflection of the slavery themes in both the beginning and end of the game, the fact that the characters want to overthrow oppressive systems for the good of all (and are allowed to! Refreshing!), the dark tone, the political focus. I find Clive an incredibly endearing protagonist. I think the deciding factor for if you enjoy the game is whether or not you like the story, since it’s what holds everything together.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is coming out in two weeks (on PC, a month later on console) and has this!

Final Fantasy is a lot like Zelda in that a particular person’s favorite is going to be the one they played when they were 12 years old. Depending on the age of the recommender, you are most likely to get 4, 6, or 7 as an answer.

Personally, my favorite is FF10.

I agree, I like the variance in line weight on it. I’m a dirty serif-lover, though.