Recent reviews by Good Ol' Been

It's taken the devs years to get the game to a point where I'd recommend it over Crusader Kings 2. In a vacuum, the game is a fine grand strategy game. I have some issues with the performance of the game, as well as some balance issues like how good Administrative empires are. But most of my critiques of the game come from comparing it with all it's current DLC to the end state of Crusader Kings 2 with all it's dlc, and there are some glaring omissions.

Firstly, there *currently* are no nomadic governments, or republics that you can play. Nomads are coming in an upcoming dlc, so that part should be ameliorated. It's kind of shocking how it's taking them so long to reach parity with some of the basic mechanics from crusader kings 2, as from my point of view they twiddled their thumbs and made like, arabic clothing and crown dlc instead of getting to adapt a lot of the fun things from the previous game. I know this isn't a fair comparison, as they have been busy and have really improved the gameplay since launch.

Second is there are no supernatural events, or at least, not to the extent that crusader kings 2 had, which I find to be a great shame. I loved the hypothetical society events like making a handgun, or hearing the voice of jesus, or playing as a legendary conqueror, or even become the anti-christ. I understand that these may not be as broadly appealing as say playing as a merchant republic, but they are missed.

Third, the game really needs to get a religious DLC a la Holy Fury from Crusader Kings 2, as that was by far the best dlc that game ever had, and I'll be honest, crusades and their surrounding GHW are some of the most fun things in crusader kings. Yeah there was a lot of quibbling about it, but the loud "DEUS VULT" on crusade being called was amazing. A company doesn't have to espouse the ideals of a crusade or jihad to have them in the game, hell it's the name of the game, don't be shy to let players enjoy their crusading.

There are seemingly no societies, which while kind of mini-gamey, they had some really fun features like secret religious societies, the warrior lodges, the benedictine orders, the assassins, etc.

There are tons of other things this game really needs to do to become the rightful inheritor of CK2, and while it's not there yet, it's a fun game in it's own right, that has a lot of fun mechanics that ck2 didn't have, like cultural reformation, cultural hybrids, army automation, raiding without a coast, etc.

This program is amazing. Full stop worth the price of 7 usd. If you're sensitive to frame rate drops and otherwise choppy framerate, this program is for you. It removes so much annoyance from gaming and can triple or more the nominal apparent framerate.

Now it's worth noting for the ignorant that this isn't literally more frames per second, as the program is generating frames between real frames, so you still suffer some issues due to this, including but not limited to:

Cons:
Blurry textures, some textures, especially in poor contrast or lighting environments can start to blur like a fog at least on the LS1 and LSFG 3.0 setting. This one is pretty rare, but it's worth noting it can worsen graphical fidelity in the frame gen mode.
GUI Element blurring/Tearing: GUI elements, like menus, crosshairs, and otherwise static elements next to moving things can start to blur or get "torn" when they move quickly. This is most notable on a list being scrolled.
Latency: Not so much a con of the program, but just a reality. Despite going from say 60 to 120 fps, you still have the frame latency of 60 fps. This gets more and more noticible the lower the starting framerate. Ideally I think you want the game to natively run around 60 or so, but sometimes (escape from tarkov cough cough) you don't have that luxury and you just need to cope with it.

I should note that I pretty much only use the program for the frame generation, there is upscaling I think also offered in the program, but most games have that handled already these days.

Hands down the best PDX DLC in years. This has singlehandedly saved the game in my estimation.
It's naturally hard to disentangle the DLC from the Update, but foreign investment, nationalization, power blocs are all smashing successes.
The only bugbear about it is the great game, which feels really unbalanced as of hotfix 1.7.1.
I suspect they'll fix it soon, but yeah, if you like v3, or have been on the fence about it, now is absolutely the thing this game needed to get into it.

Best Fallout game since Fallout 2

Sony finally backed down, this is one of my favorite cooperative games in the last decade. Be vigilant in case Sony tries to pull more BS on us like they did with the PSN linking fiasco.

Great game, lots of fun, lots of friendly fire.

Tons of fun, mix of hades' leveling system with the formula of vampire survivors. As a plus, you can beat the 20 minute boss, so that's nice!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, this may well be the best RPG of the decade, and I don't think i'm exaggerating. The visuals are stunning, the music is great, the dialogue is expansive and feels organic, the combat is amazing. It's beautiful. At first I was skeptical of Larian picking up the mantle of Baldurs gate as a long time BG grognard, but hot damn did they deliver.
I haven't gotten to the second act yet, but i've played 35 hours since it released, and I have a job... So that should be some indication.
The game also features some pretty intense replayability value, from different origin character, different broad alignments you make in the game, different party comps, they all play substantially differently.
The game lets you pick up explosive barrels, and teleport them along with any other item in the game to you camp, which you can access at will. Letting you grab a pile of bombs from your camp if you ever need them pretty much at will, and I love it.

10/10, would throw a goblin child at another goblin child to kill both in my anakin inspired purge again.

If you like RPGs even a little bit, get this game, you will not regret it.

Cons:
Most of these are fairly minor but I think they're valuable to state.
Performance: It's good, but not incredible. WIth an RTX 4090 and a 11700k, I can get about 70-120 fps in most areas if i'm on DLSS balanced on 1440p. I fear that if you don't have the means to afford a big gpu like that, you'll have to suffer with lower quality, resolution, or frame rate. It's a bit disappointing to not see DLSS 3 frame generation, but it performs well enough on Vulkan for me.
Model Animation: While it's beautiful 9 times out of 10, the 1/10 involves some stilted model movement during dialogue. The rest of the time i'm marveling at the movement of characters in dialogue instead of just arms by the side generic style.
Item reach: Some items, including some fun paintings referencing previous larian games were just plain "out of reach" for my characters, and the only solution seemed to be enlarging the character, or the items being completely inaccessible.
General bugs: There are some bugs on the current patch, which i'm sure will get ironed out soon enough, but things like black boxes on vulkan, rare desyncs, and some achievement bugs are things to be noted as of 8/7/2023.
Co-op: So, there are a few gripes here, and my biggest ones. The dialogue system of BG3 allows you to have other characters help you in skill checks via a convenient button during checks, however, this only applies to characters you control. If you have a cleric controlled by a buddy, you have to have them pop out of dialogue, cast guidance on you, then re-join dialogue. It's pretty annoying. Companions controlled by other PCs don't seem to interject into most dialogues as if they don't exist. Conjecture, but i think the world chatter doesn't happen either. But the two big annoyances for co-op are that Tav's made by other players are permanently stuck in your party, and you can't remove them even by killing them. Second is that once a character starts dialogue, you can't swap them out for another more suited one. If you have a barbarian, but you accidentally clicked someone with your warrior, you won't be able to use their advantage on intimidation benefit they have. Or worse, get completely locked out of some character unique dialogue options.
Minor QOL: Please give me a short cut to pick up and add to wares, there are a bajillion random loot items like spoons, cups, plates that are worth carrying to sell, but having to do two click on every item is tedious.
Camp food supplies, which are a resource for resting, only seem to be usable when held by a player, this leads to some annoyance as some food items are very heavy. You can shove them into your camp storage, but to use them you have to pull them out again as far as i can see. Annoying but not game ending ofc.
I'm praying that Larian fixes these issues, but I still love this game, and heartily recommend it to others.

Cool game, It's a VN that's less on rails than traditional VNs that i've seen. My first run took me about 12 hours, but I read quickly. There is a fair amount of replayability in the game, but interestingly you don't need to start a new game to get most of the benefits. Some points in the story let you use knowledge from your previous runs to change fate, or make things easier. However, you can learn about something, and then just load back before the trigger and get the replay. This does not cover everything though, some stuff needs more or less half a dedicated run to have access to on a subsequent run.
Not a big fan of the exploration really, I would have honestly preferred it all be done via vignette than exploring the labyrinthine maps.

Music is good, but pretty limited in amount.
It's cute, and it's worth 25 usd, i got it for 20, and I'm not sure how much more i'll play of it, maybe another 2 runs?

Fantastic, by and away blows me away in world-building, difference/difficulty in combat, and the amount of different environments. Also, jet skis are amazing and I love them. I haven't finished it yet, but I consider this almost a must-have for underrail.

This game is amazing, it is everything and more I wanted from a CRPG in a desolate setting. The worldbuilding is very good, the combat is supreme, the crafting excels beyond any game aside from really niches ones like Cataclysm: DDA. This game would be basically perfect aside from one structural issue I take with the game's economy. On it's surface, trading is pretty simple, but putting it simply, merchants will only buy a small number of items per category per merchant refresh (90 in game minutes iirc), meaning that if you are looting everything, selling it can be a huge chore of wandering between settlements. If you're open to third party tools, there is a cheat engine script that lets you instantly refresh merchants.

With that aside, get this game, it's wonderful! 9.5/10 <3 <3 <3