Last year Elden Ring won GOTY - and it was well deserved. It was deserved because a good game tests the person playing it. A good game can reveal the nature of the person who plays it.
Are they smart or dumb, clever or hapless, do they persevere or do they give up easily?
Do they see clearly or is the world an opaque fog to their mediocre organs of sense?
Can they think tactically, or do they just charge headfirst into every defeat repeatedly?
Can they laugh off adversity, or do they take everything personally and get angry?
Can they see and appreciate Art or do their eyes pan over such things without any comprehension?
Do they need everything handed to them or can they figure it out themselves?
Do they accept the consequences of their decisions or blame others for it? On top of that can they accept that they cannot always know what the outcome will be but stick to their moral outlook anyway?
BG3 deserves its GOTY wins, not just because it upsets the same people that would fail at Elden Ring - which I of course find highly amusing - but because the experience people have is dependent on the person playing it.
So one way to reconcile the more hyperbolic and silly critiques is to understand that it's not really the game they are complaining about.
