Back in 2023, Baldur's Gate 3 did not politely knock on the door of gaming history. It kicked the door off its hinges, rolled a natural 20 on Charisma, and helped itself to the crown. 🎲👑 Within a week, it had hit a peak player count of 800,000. Not bad for a game where half the player base spent the first hour arguing with a character creation screen. More importantly, it dethroned The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom as 2023's highest-rated game with a Metacritic score of 97. Yes, 97. The number that makes reviewers double-check their math and fanboys sharpen their keyboards.

That score did not just make Baldur's Gate 3 the year's top dog. It made it the second-best PC game of all time, according to the aggregate. It sat on the same level as Disco Elysium: The Final Cut, one spot above Half-Life 2, and in the same top-ten bracket as Grand Theft Auto 5, the original Half-Life, BioShock, Baldur's Gate 2, Persona 5 Royal, and Portal 2. If it stuck to that 97, or even just stayed in the top ten, it would push Skyrim into 11th place. Poor Skyrim. It had a good run, if by 'good run' you mean being re-released on every device short of a smart fridge.

But wait. Reviews were still pouring in. Critics had been given very little lead time, because playing a giant RPG in only a couple of days is not feasible unless you are a mind flayer with a deadline. New scores could knock Baldur's Gate 3 down a few pegs. They could keep it exactly the same. They could even push it up. Time, as they say, would tell. And time, as it turns out, had a lot to say.

At the time, Baldur's Gate 3 had four perfect scores from Gfinity, TRG, The Guardian, and IGN Portugal. The rest were nine out of ten or above. Its 97 was based on 14 reviews, with 27 still in progress. That is the review equivalent of a party where the guests are still arriving, the bard is still tuning up, and someone has already set the tavern on fire. Baldur's Gate 3 was shaping up to be an all-timer, coming hot off the heels of another all-timer. The Game Awards were going to be brutal. Two giants, one stage, and a host who probably needed a cleric. ⚔️🏆

As it stood, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom had a Metacritic score of 96 based on 145 critic reviews, and the site deemed it a must-play. One point separated the two. One. Point. In Metacritic terms, that is both a gulf and a rounding error. Further critic scores could have seen Baldur's Gate 3 drop to second place. But for the time being, it got to wear the crown. And it wore it like a wizard who had just discovered the spell 'Conjure Victory.'

Here was the full top ten list of the highest-rated games of 2023 on Metacritic at that moment, not counting DLC or repeats:

Of course, the busy back half of the year was still coming. Starfield, Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, Mortal Kombat 1, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, and plenty more were waiting to shake things up. Would they? Could they? Did anyone really think a new Bethesda space epic or a symbiote-powered Spider-Man was going to politely let a turn-based CRPG keep the throne? Well, yes. Some people did. Those people were called 'optimists with dice.' 😅

By 2026, the dust has long settled, and the 2023 release calendar looks less like a schedule and more like a museum exhibit. Starfield, Spider-Man 2, Alan Wake 2, Mortal Kombat 1, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder have all had their moment in the sun, their patches, their discourse, and their inevitable 'is it underrated?' threads. Yet Baldur's Gate 3 remains the benchmark. It is the game that made other RPGs check their inventory, tighten their dialogue trees, and ask, 'Wait, we can just let players do that?'

What made the crown snatch so funny was the timing. Tears of the Kingdom was a critical darling with 145 reviews and a must-play badge. Baldur's Gate 3 arrived with fewer reviews, a lot of faith from PC players, and the energy of a tabletop campaign that had gone completely off the rails in the best way. It did not win by a landslide. It won by a single point, then kept winning arguments in the years that followed. Who gives a goblin's left sock about one point? Metacritic does. The Game Awards do. And, secretly, every developer who has ever watched their score refresh at 3 a.m. does too.

In the end, Baldur's Gate 3's 2023 crown was not just a number. It was a signal. It told players that a massive, dense, choice-heavy RPG could still dominate the conversation. It told critics that a game could be generous, weird, horny, tactical, and emotional without collapsing under its own ambition. And it told the rest of the industry that sometimes the biggest release of the year is not the one with the loudest marketing, but the one that lets you romance a bear and then argue about morality for forty hours. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Mostly.

So yes, Baldur's Gate 3 took the crown. The question in 2026 is not whether it deserved it. The question is whether any game since has managed to pry it from Larian's surprisingly strong hands. The answer, for now, is a polite, dice-rolling, save-scumming no. 🎮