...the question was: "...is this truly Baldur's Gate III?" The answer is a resounding yes! It has its caveats and unfulfilled wishes, but no game is perfect, and some (editor included) have found that BGII lost some of the open charm of the original BG, so the value of each title must stand on its own. But were this to bear the the actual title of BGIII (and feature Elminster somewhere within) no one would find it to be out of place. Despite a slow-going mandatory set-piece at Ostragar immediately following the origin story, the game rapidly opens up to a much larger and entangled world, and every element one would look for in a new Bioware fantasy RPG is accounted for. It's rare that a game gets an absolute perfect score, at best, a 99% is warranted for a few minor flaws, but in this very rare case I'm issuing a perfect 100%. There was so much that could have gone wrong that didn't. So many places for fans to feel let down where they weren't. There's no such thing as complete perfection in a game, so 100% must stand, not for true perfection, but for attaining as close to perfection as any human can make it. Much like the Star Trek franchise reboot in theaters, this pulls in a new audience, pleases, even enamors old fans, and makes no serious missteps in the process. It even creates a fair console port of an old PC-centric franchise from the days when PC-centric games existed, while providing a true PC game experience in an era where such things are rare indeed....
