Look, it’s Baldur’s Gate 3, and it’s on sale on Steam for less money than it has been at any point since launch. If you have somehow not checked out the BAFTA Beast, the gaming award show hat trick champion, PC Gamer’s own 2023 Game of the Year and 16-year review high score champion, what are you waiting for, hoss? Baldur’s Gate 4 ain’t coming any time soon, or from the same developers.
Granted, $9 isn’t exactly a huge sale given Steam’s memetic penchant for 50%+ off bonanzas, but given that it’s been less than a year since one of the best RPGs we’ve ever played hit us like a bolt from the blue, a 15% off sale isn’t too shabby.
And Baldur’s Gate 3 is just worth playing at any price: the union of classico hardcore CRPG crunch and reactivity with mega production values and a mass appeal that everybody always said was impossible—even people who live for this kind of game. As PCG online editor Fraser Brown said in his 97% review—our highest score in 16 years—it feels like a perfect melding of everything we’ve ever loved from the genre.
As a lover of this vintage and style of RPG born in the mid-’90s, it’s always felt like the party was over before I even got here: yeah there’d always be new RPGs, but they’d have to sacrifice Fallout 2 and Arcanum’s malleability for the sake of development time, or Planescape: Torment’s sheer wordcount and mind-bending encounters for the cost of expensive 3D cutscenes. With Divinity: Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium, and now Baldur’s Gate 3 all dropping in recent years, we’ve gotten new high water marks for a formerly backwards-facing genre, and that’s felt incredible to witness.
So if you’ve ever enjoyed Fallout, The Witcher, or Mass Effect, or even just been curious about RPGs in general, you should probably play Baldur’s Gate 3, and until May 23, you can effectively shave the cost of a nice sandwich lunch (with chips and a drink depending on your city’s cost of living) off the price of admission.
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