I’m immediately invested; I feel like every little choice I make is gonna come back to bite me (perhaps literally?) later 😅

Baldur's Gate is not for the faint of heart, that's for sure! Though I guess choosing to infiltrate an enemy stronghold, assassinate its leaders, then fight my way back out as my first quest is on me 😅 So good

Larian RPG protip: always Speak with Animals

I figured the nice D&D game would start simple, like saving a town from gnolls and romping through the countryside. But no, I fought my way through a fortress and now I’m in the underdark 😅

Baldur’s Gate update: clutched my way through a way-above-my-level boss encounter, after invoking a god’s wrath and permanently losing a party member, by pulling out a beholder in a genie bottle and throwing it at them 👀 I was a good 45 mins past what I figured would be a non-canon quicksave, but I guess this is my life now. If there were ever a moment to use the nuclear option, that was it

Baldur's Gate is relentless; every narrative arc seems to have the kind of stakes you'd expect at the finale of any other game. I had no real expectations going in, but I have been surprised at how focused its story is — I figured it would be more free-form and open-ended, with plenty of downtime and regular RPG things like collecting things and bringing them back to questgivers, but no. This is a dungeon master’s opinionated narrative campaign and you're merely participating in it. Real good

Also the action economy/combat system is so crunchy and fun to manage moment to moment that it immediately makes the Divinity: Original Sin games feel really oversimplified and lightweight. Give me ten more games in this engine and I would play them all. I hope it gets a bunch of expansions