Tag Archives: Role Playing Games

Baldur’s Gate 3 – Video Game Review

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TL;DR – A stunningly beautiful game full of wonder and bugs

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Disclosure – I paid for this game.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Review –

Well, 2023 is the year that Dungeons and Dragons [or D&D] continues to build on its growing success brought on by the Critical Role/Stranger Things pandemic boost. After seeing the genuinely remarkable Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves that gets better on each re-watch, I was musing that there is one pop-culture realm it seems to be absent in: video games. Back in my day, before my beard went grey, there were classics like Neverwinter and Baldur’s Gate, but it has been 23 years since the last game. Has it been worth the wait?

So to set the scene, [insert your character here] was going about their day in the grand city of Baldur’s Gate along the Sword Coast of Faerun when an enormous nautiloid ship appears overhead. It dives across the city, snapping up citizens as they run, teleporting them and you inside into the lair of the Illithids. These tentacle-bearded creatures reproduce by putting one of their parasites behind a victim’s eye and waiting a week or so for them to transform the victim into another Illithid. This is your fate, or at least this is what should have happened. But destiny had different plans as your ship gets attacked by Githyanki flying on the back of dragons. Your ship crashes, and you survive, escaping a painful death. However, your fate may now be linked to the survival of the entire Sword Coast.

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Video Game Review – Divinity: Original Sin II

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TL;DR – Both brutal and fantastic, it is a return to form for a genre that has not seen a lot of great games recently.

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Divinity: Original Sin 2. Image Credit: Larian Studios.

Review –

Back in the day, I use to love Role Playing Games, escaping Taris, becoming the Dovahkiin, finding my favourite shop in the Citadel. However, over the last couple of years, I have found it harder to get into RPGs, into the wonderful worlds that would have ensnared me in the past. I never finished Fallout 4, Witcher 3, or Diablo 3, and I have to admit my love for Mass Effect Andromeda (see review) may have just been a desperate want to be back in that universe. So when I heard Divinity: Original Sin II was out I was hesitant to pick it up given my previous track record, however, I happened to watch Stephanie Bendixsen stream a little bit of it and it looked like a ton of fun. So twenty hours later, I have just left the introduction island of Fort Joy and I thought it would be a good time to put down my first thoughts. Now there may be some [SPOILERS] for the first section of the game, but we only talk about the events up to Driftwood.

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Video Game Review – Mass Effect Andromeda

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TL;DR – Andromeda takes Mass Effect in a new direction whilst still remaining true to its roots, though some areas did need a bit more polish.

Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars

Mass Effect Andromeda

Review –

I can remember the first time I ever got to play Mass Effect, it was back in 2008 and my brother had to trade his Wii for his friends Xbox 360 and we had only one week to binge through the first game before we had to give the Xbox back. We were looking for something to rise to the same standard as Knights of the Old Republic, and Mass Effect exceeded them in every way. Since then I have played through the whole trilogy a couple of times, I’ve played as Male-Shep and Fem-Shep, I’ve reunited the Geth and the Quarians, watched a galaxy burn because everyone ignored me, helped a despot reclaim control of a smugglers headquarters, fell in love several times, told Kaidan to go jump when they accused me of cheating on them when they were the one who said we should be on a break, found friendship in one who is many yet still one, brought more than one race back from the dead, watched a trusted crew member sacrifice their lives with a song on their lips to put right the demons of the past, and explored ever single planet that the Milky Way had to offer. So to say I was excited about a new Mass Effect is a bit of an understatement, and now it is finally here I was more than ready to jump back into this universe, taking one more ride into this great space opera that BioWare created. But even though I was excited, that excitement was measured with a bit of hesitation, Mass Effect 3 was brilliant, one of the few games that have ever made me cry¹, however, that final decision left a lot to be desired, now I know that a lot of people liked it, but for me it was a letdown. So I had this combination of emotions going into this new game, but now I have played through till the end let’s look at how well they did with Mass Effect Andromeda.

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