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Guessed by @UnderwaterFunktown

So, Baldur's Gate 3 opens up the top 10 as the highest-ranking new entry this year. In fact, it's the highest a new entry has placed on my list since 2021.

It's hard to sum up in words the impact this game had on me. Admittedly for much of its running time, I was too immersed to even realize how special this experience was. That was, until the moment depicted in the screenshot above. After a climactic story moment, it was time to rest for whatever lay ahead - I directed Apno, my main character, to this cliff and as I stared at the beautiful view, a breathtaking song started playing, making for a soothing experience as I wondered what more crazy adventures lay ahead.

Let's just say, none of them disappointed. In fact, nothing about this game was disappointing. Which sounds obvious when talking about a game I'm putting in my all-time top 10, but no, really, nothing disappointed. My playthrough of this clocked in at roughly 200 hours, and not a single moment of those 200 hours was spent on something I wasn't thoroughly enjoying. Every single area felt new, every single quest felt meaningful, every single dialogue felt significant. Everything mattered.

By the end, I was so invested in the lives of these fictional characters, that I started to genuinely dread the ending. I wanted to see how the story finished of course, but I was genuinely afraid of moving on from this world. I'd grown especially attached to Karlach (it's why she's also depicted there), and it genuinely felt to me like she and Apno were inseparable besties, to the point where I had him leave everyone behind (even his then-partner) to be with her 'till the end.

And when the end came, well... I did enter a mini-depression for like a week. I desperately craved an "Act 4" or something, like for the love of god please I need to keep going!! It was so weird to leave this game behind, but that's also a testament to how much it meant to me. Well, that's without even mentioning how I had to take a one-week break during my playthrough because the ending of a certain quest completely and absolutely broke me (it's the end of Wyll's questline, if you know, you know).

I think a big reason why Act 3 hit me so hard was because, after getting to know these characters for like a hundred hours, now I had to start making the tough choices. Whereas the choices in the previous acts usually boiled down to "you can do the good thing or the evil thing!", in Act 3 there is genuinely a lot of ambiguity, there's no clear right side or wrong side, and you ultimately have to decide which characters you'll side with and which ones you'll betray - and I personally didn't have full trust or distrust in either side. It was tough, and... It mattered.

Baldur's Gate 3 mattered.

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