It appears The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom finally has some serious competition that could potentially take the ‘Game of the Year’ crown. As highlighted on social media, Larian Studios’ latest PC release Baldur’s Gate 3 has already skyrocketed to the top of Metacritic as the highest-rated game of 2023.
Yes, it’s actually surpassed Tears of the Kingdom’s critic score of ‘96‘ – receiving a score of ‘97‘, which sees it also enter the “top 25 highest-rated games ever” on the same website. Admittedly, it’s still early days – with the score for Baldur’s Gate 3 based on just 18 critic reviews right now, compared to Zelda which has been reviewed by 145 outlets.
In saying this, Baldur’s Gate 3 has already been praised as one of the greatest role-playing game experiences of all time and applauded for being a “complete” package on release – so it doesn’t look like the enthusiasm for it will be slowing down any time soon.
As for user scores on Metacritic, Baldur’s Gate 3 currently sits at 9.4 based on 3,500+ ratings while Tears of the Kingdom is 8.4 out of 10 based 8,300+ user reviews.
Some of the other games in Metacritic’s top 10 highest-rated games so far this year include Metroid Prime Remastered in third place with a critic score of 94, Capcom’s Resident Evil 4 remake and Street Fighter 6 and the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Wave 4 DLC in the 8th spot. And there are still many other major releases arriving later this year!
Here on Nintendo Life, we gave Tears of the Kingdom an “outstanding” 10 out of 10 score, calling it a “glorious, triumphant sequel to one of the best video games of all time”. And although Baldur’s Gate 3 isn’t on the Switch, you can still check out Larian’s “excellent” RPG Divinity: Original Sin 2, which was released on the hybrid system in 2019.