When I first got my hands on the original Baldur's Gate, back in 1998, I must admit I was completely overtaken by it. I could not leave it for days to come, as I am somewhat of an addict concerning CRPGs. Fortunately, I managed to use this time-consuming addictive hobby and even make some money off it, working as a game reviewer all these years. Indeed, some really good titles wore the magic letters "AD&D" in the past, but none of them could be compared to Baldur's Gate. Well, OK, maybe one - Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. Those of you with less imagination and experience may just pass a comment "yet ANOTHER RPG in the Forgotten Realms setting". Baldur's Gate II (BGII) is in fact much more. It is all you may have desired from an RPG, a real jewel, elven song of excellence, and a true paradise for all RPG players (Whoa, I hope you don't plan to have a one handed fiesta with the box cover, or do you!? - Ed). As you might have concluded from this introduction, I have no intention of being objective and I'll praise the game as much as heavenly possible.
The ads promised a lot, but they were not true to reality. BGII is actually much better than it was advertised (Ahhh, this is too much - Ed). The game is veeeery long (Now this definitely sounds like a porn movie one-liner! - Ed), and it will take about 200 hours to finish the story with a fighter class character. And when I say "finish the story" I mean just doing the major quests and ignoring the plethora of details and sidequests. There are few games that actually managed to surpass their prequels this much. BGII is something truly spectacular, and you just have to have it regardless of weather you are a hard-core RPG fan or merely like the genre...
We all know how it started: The hero is a descendant of Baal, the Lord of Murder. After he defeated his brother Sarevok at the end of Baldur's Gate, he saved Sword Coast from the potential war with Amn region.
The story continues several months later. Our Hero awakens in an underground dungeon. Jon Irenicus, a seemingly insane sadistic wizard who performs ludicrous experiments on his prisoners, imprisoned him. Our hero is imprisoned with several of his friends from the first BG: Imoen, Jaheira and Minsc (with his hamster Boo). Irenicus is quite thrilled about the fact that he can actually "play" with a child of the God of Murder. You and your friends clearly have to escape from his clutches before the experiments get out of control.
Once you gathered some basic equipment, you can beat several guards up, and escape from your prison. The first impressions and scenes you get from BGII are far from captivating. I was quite surprised and disappointed when I saw the little dungeon and its simple mechanisms and puzzles. But, as soon as you break free, the sights and sounds of Athkatl will overwhelm you. You really will feel like someone who just broke out of a prison. This is where you get the first taste of what's coming. You'll have to fight Irenicus, but at some point during the fight some strange wizards appear kidnapping Irenicus and Imoen, who lost control and threw a couple of spells at one of them. Imoen and Irenicus were taken god-only-knows-where and it is up to you to find them. This is all a scripted sequence, and you assume control at the end of it.
This game will give you all the enjoyment you could get from classical Pen & Paper AD&D Roll-Play. Infinity engine has been modified to make even more events in the game dice-dependant, giving you full reports of what it's doing with the dice in a bottom window. Any action you might now undertake will depend on the dice roll, making the computer act mach like a real GM.
Character creation is one of the most important elements in any RPG where you determine traits that will follow your character all through the game. BGII features three new classes, a lot of new sub-classes, and even some new races. I found the Half-Orcs to be most fun. They're big green and nasty, and anyway, who wouldn't like to be the Incredible Hulk? Half-Orcs are exceedingly strong. The game also features character fine-tuning enabling you to create truly unique personalities; i.e. the fighter class now features several kits: Berserker, Wizard slayer, Kensai... My Dwarf, ToGrim Bane became a Wizard Slayer. That made him highly spell resistant and gave him big to hit bonuses against all sorts of spell casters and a possibility to dispel protective spells of his targets while hitting them. Unfortunately, that also made him unable to use any magical item apart from weapons and armor. My choice of kits proved to be quite interesting and challenging. All through the first part of the game Jaheira had to baby-sit the poor dwarf and heal him constantly in combat, but once he grew stronger and found a magical armor, he had no problems of going in to battle alone.
BGII contains everything you might wish for in an RPG. The action sequences are as intense as they were in Icewind Dale, whilst the conversation remains as complex and exciting as it was in Planescape Torment. The excellent atmosphere in BGII additionally spiced the perfection of this mixture up, requiring a lot of your time for careful consideration and planning. You won't even notice how much time you spent on the game and one you finish it, your life will be some 200 hours shorter. The hard-core fans will then try to finish the game with another class or race. This gives BGII immense replay value. Your hero will start with a higher level than in BGI making the fights effective and interesting from the very beginning. On the other hand that doesn't mean the fighting will be any easier - most situations will require strategy and serious planning in order to survive them. This will make you frequently load saved games until you figure out your perfect combination of spells and cold steel. Still each type of monsters will require a different approach, so Diablo fans, you either change your style of play or forget about this game. Conversation with NPCs is the most important element that influences the storyline. The game is completely non-linear, meaning that the plot development depends solely on the decisions you make. BGII will also let you create an evil coterie, and even though the plot develops mostly on heroic deeds, there are some quests meant for darker characters. Of course, this doesn't imply you should act like a psychopath, as no type of society looks kindly on mass-murderers (A few words of wisdom -- If a mass-murderer moves into your neighborhood, don't go knocking on his door late at night, and whatever you do, don't ask about those screams coming from his basement. It's probably nothing. - Ed). Only the answers you give during conversation and how you act afterwards will make you good or evil. If you become a villain, you can forget about your coterie, because they are mostly good and are bound to leave you if you change your alignment. Many NPCs will follow you through the game, and all of them will influence the story. The worst thing is that sometimes you won't be too sure if you did the right or the wrong thing. You will often be given many choices and whichever way you choose you will have to face the consequences of your deeds. It's all up to you!
Pre-rendered animations and scripted sequences provide the continuity of the storyline. They will both give you hints about your enemies' forces and explain epilogues of some events. The main hero keeps having nightmares in which he meets the evil wizard, and the ending sequence is one of the best I have ever seen in a CRPG.
Besides the brilliant campaign, BGII also supports multiplayer mode. One GM and five other players can play on all types of networks. I only had the chance to play on LAN, and it did go somewhat choppy, but it was still great fun.
The graphics have been much improved. Just like they promised the game supports 800x600, which didn't matter much to me because I played it on 1024x768. How? Well, the game has unofficial support for resolutions up to 2048x1056, for, as the developers put it, players with extremely powerful hardware. Higher resolutions make the characters pretty small, but if you have a 17" or bigger screen, you are bound to try some of these resolutions. The graphics are crisp and detailed. As I already said, the first part of the game in the dungeons would hardly impress you, it is only when you break free and start questing about that you will feel the true power of the Infinity engine. Each object has been drawn with utmost care and precision, and the surroundings are abundant with details. All the characters have been much better drawn and animated, and seem somehow livelier. All the citizens of Athkatla look great providing an atmosphere of a small town full of its own mysteries and marks. The races have also been properly animated: the dwarves waddle, half-orcs have a slow gate leaving an impression of heavy muscular bodies, the female characters (especially elven female characters ;-) are graceful and slim even under heavy armor. BioWare really went into extreme details when working on this segment of the game.
The game supports 3D acceleration, which basically makes the spells look somewhat better, and provides the lighting and smoke effects on the terrain. All this really improves the overall impression and helps you live through a great adventure in a graphically perfectly designed world.
The sound is another upside of the game. The multimedia is not that important for a good RPG game, but in BGII, this element defiantly influences the entire gameplay. The game supports EAX, which could have been expected. Voice acting is fantastic, and the characters and their sayings are something to remember. The background music is much better than the music in the first part and it is now context sensitive, so you can expect each exciting action to be followed by a symphonic orchestra. It'll sure ring in your ears for some time.
Overall, BGII is an incredible game. It's certainly my favorite runner-up for the title RPG-of the year 2000. It is also sure to become a classic game that will set standards for the games to come. BioWare did it again! They made a revolutionary game and outdid themselves! The question is will anyone else "outdo" them in near future? We can just look forward to seeing more games of such quality.
