Baldur's Gate 3 is now 2023's best-reviewed game according to Metacritic
And yes, it tops the chart for users as well as critics.
Baldur's Gate 3 is now 2023's best-reviewed game.
According to review-aggregate site Metacritic, Larian Studios' hugely successful RPG has the highest combined score of any other game and yes, that includes The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
At the time of writing, Baldur's Gate 3 is sitting pretty with a combined score of 97, whilst Tears of the Kingdom is runner-up with 96.
Rounding out the top five are Metroid Prime Remastered and The Witcher 3 – Wild Hunt: Complete Edition, which both have a combined score of 94, and Tetris Effect: Connected with 93. Resident Evil 4 also boasts a critic score of 93.
However, whilst Baldur's Gate 3's 97 is aggregated from just 21 critic reviews, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's 96 score is comprised from 145 reviews, which means there's still time for the positions to change as more Baldur's Gate 3 reviews come in.
Interestingly, Baldur's Gate 3 is also leading the pack when it comes to user scores, too. Larian's highly-anticipated sequel has amassed 5000+ user reviews, giving it a score of 9.1. Pilkim 4 and Zool Redimensioned share the silver with 9.0.
Amnesia: The Bunker, Pilkim 1 + 2, and Tin Hearts follow with 8.8, 8.7, and 8.5 respectively.
On Friday, Larian released some Baldur's Gate 3 stats on Friday to celebrate its first week and that's where we learned that 368 players had managed to complete the game in the opening weekend.
In related news, Baldur's Gate 3 players believe they've identified an issue "halfway through Act 3", which some believe hint at "a weird error with the way [Larian has] designed the whole narrative progression".
In a post on the official subreddit that has racked up hundreds of up-votes, u/Neville_Lynwood has identified that although lots of players prefer to avoid Long Rests, failure to do so can impede progress, as Larian has "a lot of events, companion quests, romances, side characters, and even main story events to you having a Long Rest".
"Baldur's Gate 3 is a great game then, and unlike many recent PC releases, it launches in a polished state with no game-breaking issues, shaming the technical quality of other big AAA releases," Alex wrote in Digital Foundry's Baldur's Gate 3 tech review.
"I wish it did a few things better, like having FSR 2 at launch, fixing a few minor DLSS issues or improving frame-times when traversing NPC-populated areas on lower-end CPUs like the Ryzen 5 3600. Other than these minor aspects though, Larian has done a fine job on the technical side of things - and that's a genuine pleasure, given just how well this clear game-of-the-year candidate has been realised."