I’m at the final boss fight of Divinity: Original Sin II, I’m pretty sure. At this point, I’m quite ready for the game to be over. It’s largely very good, but Baldur’s Gate 3 this game is not. I used a lot of my best moves up front in the fight, only for the boss to transition to a phase 2 and regen all of its health while those good moves were on cooldown. Then the game pulls out one of its favorite tricks, which is that the map transition automatically clumps up my entire party in one spot, and the boss’ initiative is always higher than mine, so I just get hit with AoE attacks until my whole party is dead or nearly dead. Larian got much better at encounter design in BG3.

I’m also a stone’s throw away from finishing The Rise of the Golden Idol, which is probably my favorite game released this year, and there were a lot of very good games this year. I think controller support might be worse in this game than in its predecessor, The Case of the Golden Idol, but I really like the way they integrate the story throughout this one rather than sort of surprising you with a pop quiz at the very end like the last one did.

I’m still addicted to the new factorio expansion. 125 hrs on my current save and counting. The factory must grow!