Having one Game Of The Year contender that promised to take up anywhere between 50 and 150 hours of my time last year was pretty daunting. And 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom launched right in the middle of a year where it felt like five new games were dropping every week. Like everyone who wanted to play everything, something had to give, and for me, that something was 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur's Gate 3. Also promising to demand 100 hours plus from me, playing it alongside everything else last year simply wasn't an option.

I also didn't anticipate Baldur's Gate 3 becoming the juggernaut it did and goin൩g on to beat Tea🐓rs of the Kingdom for Game of the Year. I watched on as everyone played - even some of my very casual gamer friends - 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:worried that I might miss the boat. Patiently waiting for a window in which to finally start playing, my wife forced my hand in the new year, buying Baldur's Gate 3 so we could play it together.

Baldur's Gate 3 was comfortably voted 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:TheGamer's Game of the Year too, even without my backing.

As we created our characters and began our adventure, the excitement was palpable. The initial encounters and story beats were great,🌄 meeting characters I had heard so much about. However, that feeling of excitement faded more quickly than I expected. Getting to grips with the combat, trying to decide where to go next, exploring a massive world I assumed would become my video game home for the next few months. All things I assumed would pull me in and keep me there but wound up doing quite the opposite.

I feel like most of my first few hours with Baldur's Gate 3 have been spent wandering around with no idea where I'm going, those blind adventures abruptly being brought to an end when we encounter enemies who easily overpower us. That has resulted in our playthrough being put on pause, neither of us excitedly suggesting we fire the game back up after work like I thought we would. This is the part where many of you reading this will say wandering around and making those discoveries is kind of the point. I get that. I understand that the beauty of Baldur's Gate 3 is the endless possibilities, everyone going on a unique journey and stumbling into situations you are wildly unprepared for. It's that realization that has me worried after six months of anticipation, Baldur's Gate 3 might not be for me.

There is a glimmer of hope in my journey across The Forgotten Realms, and it comes in the form of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Breath of the Wild. I played Breath of the Wild years after its release, largely uninterested in a game I assumed just wasn&rsquo💎;t for me. When I finally played it, those suspicions were confirmed. I quickly became frustrated with not knowing where to go or what to do next, the idea of the player being theꩲ one who calls the shots completely wasted on me.

There was a happy ending to that story, though. Months after I gave up on Breath of the Wild, swept up in the hype for Tears of the Kingdom, I gave it a second chance. I still don't know what it was that happened, but something clicked. I fell in love with it, finished it in time for Tears of the Kingdom, and now the newest Zelda game is comfortably nestled in my top five of all time.

My hope is that whatever switch went off when I gave Breath of the Wild a second chance will click at some point while I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3. That I will finally appreciate the game for what it is, what makes it so special, and understand why millions of people have fallen in love with it. That every time I don’t know where to go next I’ll be reminded that mystery awaits, and every time I’m flattened by an enemy I’ll make a mental note to come back and get my revenge later.

It will likely take a single-player campaign alongside my co-op one for me to realize that. Being pulled in a different direction by my wife, or me doing the same to her, makes it feel like we're not having the experiences that we might like as we make accommodations for each other. There have also been moments I've missed, and again vice versa for my wife I’m sure, where I've forgotten to listen in while she's doing something important.

I wrote about my fru♊stration at not understanding the hype surrounding Breath of the Wild. Like Baldur's Gate 3, it was a complex game that captured the imaginations of hardcore and casual gamers alike. Seven months later, my opinion had been flipped 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:and I wrote about that too. Here's hoping that before the end of 2024, this feature will have a sequel detailing my crystallizing realization moment with Baldur's Gate 3 and my unproblematic virtual relationship with Shadowheart. I'm only a few hours in but she seems nice and not at all problematic.