PC Game Reviews
Every score on this page was assigned after the credits rolled, not after the first weekend. We buy our own copies, we note the patch version and the test bench in every review, and no advertiser has ever touched the number at the bottom. If a game collapses in its final act or a driver patch changes the picture, we revisit and say so. Below: three big ones, replayed and rescored in 2026.
Baldur's Gate 3 — Revisited on Patch 8
9.4/ 10
Patch 8 was billed as Larian's last major update, and it lands like a victory lap. Photo mode, twelve new subclasses and — the part nobody expected to matter — a meaningful pass on Act 3's pacing, the one soft spot since launch. We replayed the full campaign start to finish on Tactician difficulty to see whether it holds.
It does. The turn-based combat remains the best in the genre: a telekinesis throw off the cliffs of the Rosymorn Monastery, a Spore Druid built around the new fungal subclass stacking necrotic damage — the systems keep rewarding curiosity. Honour Mode's legendary boss actions still catch cocky parties out, and Karlach's epilogue content finally gives her arc the landing it deserved.
What's still not great: inventory management remains a chore in act three, and the camera occasionally misbehaves in the Lower City's vertical interiors. Performance-wise the build is far better than launch — Lower City holds 75–85 fps at 1440p ultra on our bench, though split-screen still halves the frame rate and stress moments with heavy spell effects can dip briefly into the 50s.
Who it's for: anyone who wants a hundred-hour RPG where nearly every choice has a consequence. Who it's not for: players who want action combat or a linear story.
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
8.8/ 10
Shadow of the Erdtree is an expansion with the confidence of a full sequel. The Land of Shadow is denser than anything in the base game — the layered cliffs of Scadu Altus reward obsessive map-reading, and the vertical drop into the Abyssal Woods is FromSoftware's best environmental storytelling since Bloodborne's nightmare frontier. The new weapon classes genuinely change builds; backhand blades and perfume bottles aren't reskins, they demand new spacing habits.
The fights are the headline and the problem at once. Bayle and Rellana are peak spectacle. Promised Consort Radahn is peak spectacle and, at launch, peak frustration — patch 1.16's tuning pass softened his opener enough that he now feels hard-fair instead of hard-cheap, but he still punishes summon-reliant players brutally. The Scadutree Blessing progression forces exploration, which some will call padding; we call it the point.
Performance is the deduction. The 60 fps cap still stands, frame pacing on PC remains choppier than it should be on high-refresh setups, and ray tracing in dense fog areas costs more than it contributes. On our bench it's a locked 60 at 1440p max minus RT, and it stays locked through Radahn's particle storms, but the lack of an unlocked mode in 2026 is an editorial choice we can't defend for them — especially with the hardware headroom sitting right there.
Cyberpunk 2077 in 2026 — Five Years of Patches
9.0/ 10
Revisiting Night City in 2026 means reviewing a different game than the one that shipped in 2020, and that's the honest way to score it. The 2.0 perk overhaul — which rebuilt combat around meaningful builds instead of incremental stat soup — remains the best single patch a major RPG has ever received. With 2.3's vehicle combat polish and expanded metro traversal, the sandbox finally behaves like the living city the marketing promised.
What still sings: Dogtown's espionage-noir storytelling and Reed's arc are better written than most standalone games. The relic skill tree turns the back half of the campaign into a power fantasy that never gets dull. Driving, once a joke, now has weight — especially in the street races CDPR quietly made winnable without exploits.
What still doesn't: police AI remains a system you game rather than a force you fear, and the main story's short length sits awkwardly against the two hundred hours of open-world content around it. Performance, though, is the redemption arc — path tracing at 1440p with DLSS frame generation holds 90+ fps on our bench, and vanilla raster runs at a rock-solid 75 fps ultra.
Who it's for: players who wrote it off in 2020. Who it's not for: anyone expecting deep systemic reactivity on the level of an immersive sim.