Recent reviews by Indorion

It took me a while to get into it, but if they can keep the PvE aspects over time, it has a fantastic community of players (at the moment) and long may that continue. Sound in this game is critical, bravo to the audio team. Can't wait to see how it grows over time, well worth the investment, even if you are not an extraction shooter fan.

What has not already been said, about this game?

Baldur’s Gate 3 stands as a triumph of modern RPG design. A richly detailed world, compelling characters, and deep narrative choices create an experience that feels timeless. Larian Studios’ respect for the Baldur’s Gate legacy and the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset shines through every detail.

The storytelling, shaped by player decisions, creates unique journeys. Characters, relationships, and alliances carry weight, with every interaction adding layers to the narrative. A blend of strategy, creativity, and risk defines the combat, offering depth without unnecessary complexity. Fantastic replayability.

Larian’s commitment to the IP and the community shows in every aspect. Transparency, active engagement, and an evident passion for the process elevate the experience. The result feels like a game made for the players as much as by the studio.

An evergreen title and a benchmark for RPGs, Baldur’s Gate 3 reflects the best of what the genre can offer. Few games achieve such balance between ambition and execution. Well done Larian, and congratulations for sticking to your principles with the IP owners. You are an inspiration and moral lodestone to an studios who frequently put profits over players.

It's like Red Dead Redemption but with cars instead of horses. Story, characters, polish, just... wow. Now if CD Projeckt Red and Rockstar teamed up, the internet would explode. Buy this game, play it, no regrets.

Massively disappointed in this game. Your ability to "control the battlefield" is marred by the idiocy of your NPC colleagues who I am convinced are sleeper agents for the enemy or under permanent mind control given their uncanny ability to get shot repeatedly while behind cover, sit on explosives and grenades thrown at them with the express purpose of killing them and generally run in the exact opposite or most compromising direction possible when asked.

You WILL have to personally oversee every encounter and will inflict at least 98% of the battlefield damage yourself. Fine, no problem with that, if you want to be a hero, but then please at least give him decent weapons, armour and lose the whiny "buddies" who need so much micro-management that you feel more like a babysitter than a commander.

And what gives with the base? The graphics and scenery in this game are great. The detail is brilliant and the atmosphere outstanding, so why make me rush from semi-circular battlefield to semi-circular battlefield and ignore everything in the middle? This is especially apparent in the base. Mind-numbing, non-developmental discussions with the cardboard characters, divided up by corridors to run between to achieve the simplest tasks that even in 1950 you could get done with a radio and large-buttoned tape-computer; …why? What’s the point? I constantly felt like the game was hiding the best bits from me and corralling me through set pieces in order to point my tinfoil-hat wearing team at the danger and then use them as the most ineffective distraction since Roswell’s weather balloon factory.

My final issue was with the “give you everything then take it away” bit at the very beginning. Without ruining the game, you start as a fully loaded badass. Everything is unlocked and you learn the ropes by kicking alien ass and taking names. Then you reach the base. You get access to your tinfoil-hat team armed with water pistols and flashy suits. Where did those other guys go!?! You know, the two bad asses you were working with 3 minutes ago? And what’s this? I suddenly contracted amnesia and forgot how to do loads of cool things? And tech tree is suddenly locked until me, the saviour of the modern world apparently who is working in isolation with the most inept government agency since the Bush administration, is forced to go after the invasion fleet with a tray of tea and crumpets? I despise games that give you early “educational power” and then take it all away once you stop walking into walls and jumping instead of crouching, as if trying to say, “Look how cool you will be later! We know the (many, many) glitches are irritating and the story line ludicrous, and the majority of the people you are working with have been lobotomised, but please don’t stop playing! Please?!?”

I love the Xcom series and was expecting so much more. This is one of those games you wish they opened up, and gave the dedicated community a chance to turn a confused, disappointing mess into the amazing game it could be. The development and launch, and changing of both platforms and teams is well known for this title, and dissapointingly, it shows.

So, went into B:AO having finished both B:AC & B:AA, both of which I thought were pretty great. City was a masterpiece, a counterpoint of amazing design, story and combat. Origins; sadly not as much. So why am I recommending it? Well, it is really good, beautifully designed, intelligent, but you can’t help feeling that the game is pushing you down the path of one beat-em-up to the next. The scenes are amazing, but certain environments feel completely underused. The have fantastic atmosphere but the inane radio conversations with Alfred, who for some reason in the game is a master hacker, spy, and psychologist despite being 75 and a butler… none of the canon suggests otherwise.

When Arkham City came out, it was what Assassins Creed 2 did for the original AC; built on a great idea and then took it somewhere better with the sequels (mostly.) The entire Assassins Creed series has been built on the idea of pushing the environment, the story and the combat styles. Now both AC and the Batman series have a lot in common in terms of gameplay, combat options etc. So why then did WB stop inventing when there was so much opportunity? The combat is IDENTICAL to Arkham City, very few additions have been made. For the first time, you feel Batman is underpowered in combat (until you get the gloves…) but even then, you feel anaemic in hand-to-hand as you hit some street thug for the 12th time and he still gets up for more? The combo’s are still pretty cool, and the unlocks are decent too (although no clear guideline as to HOW you should develop you character or options of gameplay (Hint: upgrade ALL your physical combat abilities as quickly as possible in your first play through, you won’t be doing much else but forced button mashing for the majority of the game, right up to the end.)

Spiderman 3 -proof you don’t need to cram in every super villain in a single story. So why do we have 15+ in this game? Is it because at the last minute, everyone agreed that there wasn’t enough story without it? And the combat with all but a few is more irritating than awesome. I REALLY didn’t enjoy most of the encounters, not because of the difficulty, but they just felt forced. Randomly, the game throws in another half-dozen “heavies” mid-boss fight who basically just get in the way. You spend a few minutes swatting them off you like flies before heading back to the main guy only to realise that 1 more well timed mini-game “press Y to counter” and he/she was toast?!?

My other pet peeve in the game was the tiny combat spaces. This game is huge, wide open spaces, but you will spend most of the game in micro-combat arenas trying to put some space between yourself and the group of 17 henchmen, all WAY to close to really open up and deliver some serious combo blows. This is with the exception of the “bird” side mission run-up where you have 20+ encounters in nice, open spaces. It feels great until the final “bird” fight which is massively disappointing.
Lastly, I have to mention the utility belt and amazing no-you-can’t-attach-there-right-now grapnel gun. Good game design dictates that you create natural feeling limitations and barriers to keep players in the sandbox environment you have created. And with good reason. It would suck to suddenly end up “IDSPSPOPD-ing” off the map. (That’s a Doom reference kids, ask you dad.) But why, when you are Batman, flying through the city and jumping from tower to tower does THAT tower suddenly not let you attach to the balcony, or that one, or that one?!?! What’s going on? Was it because the buildings are too high for the render, or is it because the developers through it would give an unfair advantage in tactical environments? NEWSFLASH – Batman punches people with sniper rifles and machine guns by the handful. The odds aren’t exactly stacked in his favour… Now I admit, in some scenarios, the limitations of the environment are necessary, but when one bridge strut allows you to power-grapple and the next one drops you on your ass, that’s poor design.

I have read a couple of other reviews of this game and agree with a lot of them. You get the feeling the studio and the game developers simply ran out of time to polish it quite right before deadline and so shipped out a slightly buggy, almost masterpiece that is aching for better treatment. A sad and experience ruining oversight. Batman: Arkham Origins is primed for some genius to mod the ever-loving sh!t out of it into something better, if WB ever lets them…