I have fallen into the same trap that I always do with this type of game, and which I begged myself not to this time, to no avail: Roll a character, be having a good time. Suddenly think, “I wonder if there’s another way to solve this area if my character were any good at stealth…” Roll another character, replay the same 8-10 hours of the game. Think to myself, “that was interesting, but how would that play out if I took the bad guy path? Or if I was a magic user? Or if I had a mustache?” Replay the same 8-10 hours of the game, ad nauseam.

And this is even after the 100 hrs I sank in Early Access.

I didn’t even have any hype for this game because I don’t do anything DnD related and I typically don’t like how complicated CRPGs are, but this game has me by the balls and I constantly think about it. I find myself having to avoid some fights even on easy (those god damn phase spiders in the well at the goblin village) but it’s so freakin’ great either way. I played co-op on Friday with a friend who has been playing DnD for 30 years and he was impressed by my experimentation and creativity which is something I’m usually pretty poor at.

I haven’t been this excited to have a game ruin my life since I took 11/11/11 off of work. Unbelievable that that was A DOZEN years ago, jesus.

I’ve put almost 40 hours into this game since it came out, I’m only just finishing up Act 2.

And I have no doubt I’m going to do at least 2-3 more full playthroughs, plus a dozen odd partial playthroughs messing with different builds, permutations, modded content, etc. This game is going to be the death of me. :P