Baldur's Gate 2 (Enhanced Edition)
I'm surprised at how little I remembered of the game - including pretty much the entirety of the Throne of Bhaal expansion. It really makes me wonder if I quit the game partway through back in the day. That isn't impossible, given it's a pretty long game (I think Steam clocked me at around 120 hours, though some portion of that would be paused while doing other things), and there are some pacing issues. The game holds up pretty well as a "classic," however, and a solid representative of that era. I'll try not to spoil too much, but really I feel the "statute of limitations" on the game's secrets is well expired, so there will be some.
There are a lot of potential party member characters spanning a wide spectrum. I really probably only touched on half or slightly more, whether due to interest or alignment/class makeup for the party. Yoshimo's pretty cool, his traps are potentially powerful, but the way he gets yanked out from under you during the game leaves a notable lack in the thief department. Jaheira, Viconia, and Imoen are nice carry-overs from the first game. Minsc (and Boo) are truly epic and memorable characters. I've always liked Aerie, though she does a painful amount of feeling sorry for herself early on. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing her (in ToB) recognize she had become one of the most powerful spellcasters in the Realms (as a high-level cleric/mage). And there are plenty more. There are also cameos of other NPCs like Elminster and Drizzit, though I don't consider those a huge plus. The early Bioware romances are there, if limited (female characters have one potential interest - well, two I think with an Enhanced Edition character). Most of the party characters have side quests, some leading into a stronghold and some just adding depth to the story.
The villains... eh... they're okay. Since BG2 was a direct sequel, Bioware couldn't pull a twist like "you are a child of Bhaal," so they seem to have tried to shift that elsewhere, with declaring Imoen Bhaalspawn as well, and building up a big mystery around who Jon Irenicus, the big bad of the game, really is. Frankly, I found the latter to be a bit of a letdown. His story is somewhat convoluted (not to mention fantasy-racist and insulting if viewed in a certain light), but really he just feels like a ridiculously powerful plot point rather than a person. I found Bodhi slightly more interesting.
And maybe that's part of the problem with the pacing. I found I enjoyed playing around in Chapter 2, pursuing various "side" quests to build up the resources to get to Spellhold most than following the main story itself. The game is so wide there, with all sorts of things going on and different threads to follow. That's so awesome. When it winds back together into a "race" to defeat Irenicus, it's all just less interesting. Throne of Bhaal didn't fix that by any means, providing you with a convenient, but lifeless, hub where you can summon in party members before venturing back out into a pretty linear journey through mowing down big, bad Bhaalspawn. I like some of the explanation offered in the expansion, and it's nice to see some closure with some characters, but there's really no exploration, no major branching, and it just feels like a slog through a bunch of fights to reach the next little checkpoint in the story. Also, and this is a technological/stylistic issue of the era, traveling around is pretty boring - either too easy in ToB to jump back to the hub or too lengthy a process to get out of the map zone to go somewhere else in BG2.
There's a lot going on in some of the fights, which is both good and bad. It's good that sometimes you need to do more than just click attack, definitely. Sometimes the micromanagement required gets unwieldy, though, when you need to have mages stripping defensive buffs off a target just to be able to hurt it at all. And the insta-death effects are a pain - a couple lucky rolls from a mind flayer and you're reloading because your main character just had his/her brain sucked out. Level drain (lotsa vampires) is just a true annoyance - I never had a character die to it, but after restoring levels post-battle, you have to go back and fill out memorized spells for any caster who was drained. Later on in the game, it feels like many of the spells that should be fun and useful aren't due to magic resistance. So... ups and downs there. The dragons in the game make up some of the hardest fights, which is probably as it should be, and many of them are even optional. All in all, the combat feels like a decent implementation of D&D 2E rules, but it really goes to show how parts of those rules don't work very well in this sort of game.
Overall, the story and characters are good enough that the drawbacks are still overshadowed these days - and they were more unavoidable back when the game was made. Baldur's Gate 2 stands as a pretty solid classic Western Bioware RPG.
There are a lot of potential party member characters spanning a wide spectrum. I really probably only touched on half or slightly more, whether due to interest or alignment/class makeup for the party. Yoshimo's pretty cool, his traps are potentially powerful, but the way he gets yanked out from under you during the game leaves a notable lack in the thief department. Jaheira, Viconia, and Imoen are nice carry-overs from the first game. Minsc (and Boo) are truly epic and memorable characters. I've always liked Aerie, though she does a painful amount of feeling sorry for herself early on. At least I had the satisfaction of seeing her (in ToB) recognize she had become one of the most powerful spellcasters in the Realms (as a high-level cleric/mage). And there are plenty more. There are also cameos of other NPCs like Elminster and Drizzit, though I don't consider those a huge plus. The early Bioware romances are there, if limited (female characters have one potential interest - well, two I think with an Enhanced Edition character). Most of the party characters have side quests, some leading into a stronghold and some just adding depth to the story.
The villains... eh... they're okay. Since BG2 was a direct sequel, Bioware couldn't pull a twist like "you are a child of Bhaal," so they seem to have tried to shift that elsewhere, with declaring Imoen Bhaalspawn as well, and building up a big mystery around who Jon Irenicus, the big bad of the game, really is. Frankly, I found the latter to be a bit of a letdown. His story is somewhat convoluted (not to mention fantasy-racist and insulting if viewed in a certain light), but really he just feels like a ridiculously powerful plot point rather than a person. I found Bodhi slightly more interesting.
And maybe that's part of the problem with the pacing. I found I enjoyed playing around in Chapter 2, pursuing various "side" quests to build up the resources to get to Spellhold most than following the main story itself. The game is so wide there, with all sorts of things going on and different threads to follow. That's so awesome. When it winds back together into a "race" to defeat Irenicus, it's all just less interesting. Throne of Bhaal didn't fix that by any means, providing you with a convenient, but lifeless, hub where you can summon in party members before venturing back out into a pretty linear journey through mowing down big, bad Bhaalspawn. I like some of the explanation offered in the expansion, and it's nice to see some closure with some characters, but there's really no exploration, no major branching, and it just feels like a slog through a bunch of fights to reach the next little checkpoint in the story. Also, and this is a technological/stylistic issue of the era, traveling around is pretty boring - either too easy in ToB to jump back to the hub or too lengthy a process to get out of the map zone to go somewhere else in BG2.
There's a lot going on in some of the fights, which is both good and bad. It's good that sometimes you need to do more than just click attack, definitely. Sometimes the micromanagement required gets unwieldy, though, when you need to have mages stripping defensive buffs off a target just to be able to hurt it at all. And the insta-death effects are a pain - a couple lucky rolls from a mind flayer and you're reloading because your main character just had his/her brain sucked out. Level drain (lotsa vampires) is just a true annoyance - I never had a character die to it, but after restoring levels post-battle, you have to go back and fill out memorized spells for any caster who was drained. Later on in the game, it feels like many of the spells that should be fun and useful aren't due to magic resistance. So... ups and downs there. The dragons in the game make up some of the hardest fights, which is probably as it should be, and many of them are even optional. All in all, the combat feels like a decent implementation of D&D 2E rules, but it really goes to show how parts of those rules don't work very well in this sort of game.
Overall, the story and characters are good enough that the drawbacks are still overshadowed these days - and they were more unavoidable back when the game was made. Baldur's Gate 2 stands as a pretty solid classic Western Bioware RPG.
Comments
Post a Comment