In brief: It's somewhat ironic that Baldur's Gate 3 moved its official launch forward to avoid being overshadowed by Starfield, given that Larian Studio's RPG is now the highest-rated PC game of all time on Metacritic and OpenCritic.
Unless you've been living under a rock recently, you'll likely have heard that Baldur's Gate 3 is good. The kind of good that can take over your life and make you forget all about family, friends, and work.
The universal praise has pushed Baldur's Gate 3 to the top of Metacritic's Best Games lists. Its Metascore of 97 makes it the best-reviewed game of 2023, putting it above The Case of the Golden Idol, Street Fighter 6, and Diablo IV.
The game is also one of those increasingly rare examples where reviewers and players agree on something. BG3's user score of 9.1 makes it 2023's best game among consumers.
Baldur's Gate 3 is also the Best PC Game of All Time on Metacritic. Disco Elysium has the same 9.1 Metascore, but its user score is 8.3. On the all-time user score table for PC titles, BG3 is at 10th – the nine games above it, including seventh-place Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, all have scores of 9.2.
It's not just Metacritic where Baldur's Gate 3 is dominating. The game's score of 97 makes it Opencritic's best PC game of all time, too. It also shares the 'greatest game ever' title (all platforms) with Super Mario Odyssey.
Last week brought news that Baldur's Gate 3's Steam concurrent player counts had beaten top hits like Valheim and Apex Legends just days after launch.
Like a lot of people, I'm deeply excited about what the lovely folks at Larian accomplished with Baldur's Gate 3, but I want to gently, pre-emptively push back against players taking that excitement and using it to apply criticism or a "raised standard" to RPGs going forward
– Xalavier Nelson Jr. (@WritNelson) July 8, 2023
1/10
Baldur's Gate 3 had an early access period of almost 3 years, helping it avoid a trend we've seen all too often this year in which PC games are released with a multitude of technical problems. The final version has proved so impressive that a developer warned players should not expect the same thing from all studios, or apply a raised standard to future RPGs – God forbid we expect things to get better.