BG3 camera is indeed very unhelpful at times, especially underground. I play on PS5 and picking things up can be a pita with the cursor since the camera moves along when you move the cursor often making it impossible to target things higher up. (Maybe there's a setting to stop the camera moving with the cursor, I need to check that). Also some places have so much clutter, press R3 to highlight items just clutters the screen with descriptions without really being able to see what's where. Thus targeting the one book or item you want to pick up in between all the junk clutter can easily get frustrating.

I do tend to play in isometric view, half zoomed out, most of the time. The 3rd person view makes it hard to see what's higher up since the camera still always looks down. Zoomed all the way out for top down view makes everything too small on tv. Fixed isometric view is a lot easier to work with since then the game is made and play tested for that view. In BG3 it's often a chore to find the right camera angle to do stuff.

My biggest gripe though is the party size. BG, BG2, Icewind Dale etc had a party size of six. I didn't follow the development of BG3 to play spoiler free so it came as a bit of a shock to me that I could only take 3 people along in my party :/ As much as I love BG3, the older ones are still superior.

BG3 gets so many things right but controls, UI and camera it does not handle well. No I don't want to start a conversation, I'm trying to loot this corpse, get out of the way. Where did the item I just picked up go, why does the sort on latest not put the latest items I picked up up front. I wanted to jump not end my turn without confirmation. (Same issue I had with TotK, associative mapping, in BG3 I tend to press triangle to jump which is end turn doh) And damn, wasn't this gen supposed to eliminate loading times, it takes so long to start the game then load a save game, I'm back to making a cup of tea while starting the game lol.

But all nitpicks aside, I'm still overjoyed to have a modern BG adventure and can't wait to play more :)

And putting it down to 1 is so hard. Tekken 3 on this list for example. Generally T3 is and might be considered the best fighting game ever and yet it's here because of arcade next to FF7, Goldeneye, Diablo?

Half the time, these threads are a great reminder of what came out when too. :P

So, I'll say the sam thing here that I did in the 1996 thread: if "Other" finishes 2nd then there should only be a run-off for 2nd. FF7 is so far ahead (22 votes!) that it is the clear winner already and the only question left to answer is what should be the runner up

Yeah, 5e is most balanced with 4 party members...not that Larian really cared about balance, giving how much they homebrewed and unbalanced 5e in the first place. I miss 6 party setup - as well as formations, which does not exist in BG3, which is extremely annoying at lot of occasions.

I think you'll enjoy BG3, but don't expect what most "journalist" are claiming to be - a masterpiece. It is good to very good game (so 7-8/10), but it suffers from some serious issues, both mechanically and design wise. (eventually, I will write that review I said I would..............)

Today BG3 crashed and burned unfortunately :( I'm still mad for it ruining our day (prepare for incoming rant...)

So my wife and I decided to give it a chance today, kids are at the grand parents and we have the house to ourselves.
First task, move the couch to 4ft from the 65" tv so we can both actually read the item descriptions with the screen split in half.

That done, err how do you actually start the game in split-screen. I started a new game choosing Dave with my wife planning to play a warrior or fighter. Finally after the whole intro again it responds to my wife pressing x, splits the screen and she gets to create a character. She doesn't have the option to choose a pre-made so we go through the long process of making a character, too many options. And little did we know that choosing genitals would be the most fun part of the experience and last laugh we had playing the game.

Anyway we start in the ship yet want to switch controllers. I log out both controllers so we can play with our preferred controllers, log em back in assigned to the right profiles yet the game slipped out of split-screen with no way to get it going again. Eventually we give up, choose back to main menu, reload the autosave but still just me. Restart the game, load the auto save, still just me. Restart the ps5, the game, the autosave, still just me, wtf.

So I go online to figure out what to do, which says you need to start the character creation together instead of drop in. So we choose new game and for some reason now it does work, screen splits and we can both make a character. Continue on, skip the intro, end up in the ship, "something went wrong". The game crashes and only option "report problem". It didn't save our characters either.

Third time creating characters, almost an hour later we can finally start the game. The ship part is horribly confusing still even though I played through it before. My wife has no clue what's going on, we leave Shadowheart behind and head for the exit, out of this mess. It's the worst start of any game I know, not the way to introduce your game. But since I persevered before by myself I knew it was worth it to press on. The real start is when you wake up on the ground.

Anyway we get our footing, start exploring, find some stuff and then my wife is suddenly dead? Apparently she managed to jump into the water and drown. Revify to the rescue. Next we get to some ruins which look interesting. I'm talking to the NPCs there persuading them to move on, then suddenly my wife falls through the floor and into combat. She blames me I dropped a giant stone on her, yet I was still stuck in dialog. Impossible fight below, I jump after her to help yet we both die quickly, game over.

Reload back on the beach lol. We go a different way this time and end up in the hollow. First an extremely disorienting battle. Sitting so close to the tv with that awful camera actually started giving me motion sickness. It jumps around like crazy when it's the enemies turn, no clue what's going on, zero overview. Targeting is a mess as well and hold R2 yet tap R1 to bring the radial wheels up is inconsistent and confusing.
We survive go in the town to sell some crap and find out still only one person can shop at a time even though our inventories aren't combined. The other can only listen?? Terrible game design.
I handle the shopping while my wife does something else, we get some upgrades, level up and finally can continue again. We decide to go back to the ruins we found earlier and run into err Gytanki? on the way. Good extra help yet odd thing in the ship I had to order her around, on the ground my wife had to do her moves. How do you change that, what decides that?

We get back to the ruins and this time make it to the door, shoot the guy trying to run for help and get to loot the mess on the table. Ugh this targeting with the cursor is so so terrible. Also still hard to see during the day time, really can only play this game at night. While my wife is looting the table I move to the door, someone apparently saw me and ran for help, next thing I know battle is initiated and the whole gang is on us again. We survive for 20 minutes of trying to target things and position in the right place but perish. Oh the game didn't save before the fight, back to outside ugh.

After getting back in, kill Donlan, loot the room again, we open the door and engage the battle with the person in that room. Miss, miss, miss, string of bad luck, he makes it to the next door, the gang comes in again. We survive a couple rounds but eventually one of use gets knock out, go to help which leaves both characters without a turn that turn so it only gets worse, game over again.

3rd or 4th attempt, we're both already sick of the game, the camera movements, camera obstructions, targeting problems, general confusion, tip boxes and other crap overlapping vital information, tiny UI, hard to see visuals, clutter everywhere, cumbersome controls. We did get the second person in time this time yet we're just not having any fun. So after 3 hours we gave up, closed the game, probably not going back. I don't even feel like continuing my own save anymore, what a terrible experience. (We played on Explorer mode btw, enjoy the story lol)

Do not play this game in split-screen on console, worst idea ever. Great way to tarnish my memories of Baldur's Gate (2) :(

Shopping wise: other characters can move their stuff to the inventory of the one doing trading. On PC it is just drag and drop (and you can mark multiple items). As prices are influenced by Charisma, in our multiplayer my friends drop stuff in my inventory while trading, as I am a bard with high CHA.

About the one ordering companions: it is the one talking them up. If you want it differently, then send them to camp and in camp the other one asks them to join.

Also personal opinion: I think for this game mouse+keyboard is far superior to game controller (on PC you can use both, but mouse makes a lot of stuff easier). The radial menus are fine I guess, but still mouse controls allow to choose among far more options faster.

Thanks, that makes sense. Although still doesn't make sense why we can't shop at the same time, moving stuff between players is also a pita on console :/ Yeah I agree, this game doesn't really work with a controller on TV, definitely not with split-screen on top.

Maybe one day we'll get another Dark Alliance game which worked much better on console. Or I guess we can replay the old ones instead. There are just too many hurdles playing BG3 on console, the tiny UI, the unwieldy radial wheels, and above all the terrible camera. BG3 turned out to be the biggest disappointment of the decade, it's just not fit for purpose on console.

I might plug away at it myself some time again yet this experience today has soured the whole game for me. I really have no idea anymore what we can play together, next to each other, on the couch. Last game we enjoyed together was Dragons Crown Pro.

Official voting is now over.  There was a very decisive winner this time, but this is the first non-Nintendo console game that has had such an overwhelming win.  The 1997 Game of the Year is Final Fantasy VII and the runner up is Goldeneye 007.

GoldenEye for me. FF7 would be second, and FF Tactics third.
For pretty much an entire year GoldenEye just took over the gaming world, everyone was obsessed with it. We were all playing it nonstop. Never experienced anything like it since.

I've never played SotN so I can't speak to that one but otherwise the rest of the games don't come close to those three, though they are all great.
GoldenEye and FF7 were two of the four absolute must play games of that generation (along with mario 64 and Zelda OoT).

I just tried split screen in BG3, didn't find it worth it, and abandoned it. It is not really game made to be played in 2, that's just and afterthought. If you want good exploration-survival-RPG experince in coop go with Outward, which was made for that. Yes, I know your wife has controller issues (just like mine), but maybe Outward is worth a shot (though be warned, combat is Souls-like).