Recounting Bioware's Baldur's Gate II

radicalskeptic writes "In the latest installment of Gamespot's series modestly titled 'The Greatest Games of All Time', the editors review Bioware's RPG classic from 2000: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn. The article is a broad overview of the game and touches on the game's innovations, comments on its historical significance, and includes a section devoted to BGII's romantic subplot. Gamespot concludes that 'all in all, Baldur's Gate II is a towering achievement in the history of role-playing games, giving you a huge world to explore, plenty of well-drawn NPCs to argue with or get romantic with, and an engaging story that's simultaneously epic and personal.'"

Re:There will never be another BGII ...

[dyslexicbunny]

The original is just as good. I recently bought the Icewind Dale Collection too so when school finishes up in five weeks, I can start playing it. Plus I have KotOR 2 as well to play. And potentially Neverwinter Nights and those modules... I wish these other games had modules that could be played as well.

I really wanted to go through and replay the game again but considering the time it took me, I don't know if I would be willing to. But at the same time, the game is so open-ended that you could almost play forever if you wanted to and just do all the side quests instead.

I just wish that more RPGs like this would release soon. Bioware's Dragonage looks great but if they never release it, we may just make as much fun of it as we do DNF.

Re:meh...

[Aglassis]

Did you also throw away the Lord of the Rings books after the Tom Bombadil section?

BG2 is like the LotR in that it has silly parts. But those parts in no way trivialize the epic nature of the story. You should try BG or BG2. Perhaps warm up by playing Planescape: Torment. If you like Planescape: Torment, then you will probably love BG and BG2.

Baldur's Gate & Multi-CD Drives...

[__aaclcg7560]

I remembered when Baldur's Gate came out with 5 or 6 CDs. It was a pain to be switching CDs every so often unless you had one of those multi-CD CDROM drives where you could load all the CDs into a magazine and the transition time between CDs was minimal. That was the hottest toy to get if you were playing that game. I was working at Accolade (which eventually became Atari) at the time. Most of the QA testers would stay until the early morning hours playing that game together. The game was eventually banned from the lab since too many zombies were living on three hours of sleep.

Re:Baldur's Gate & Multi-CD Drives...

[fm6]

Having misplaced my original copy, I just bought a replacement. The best change in the final version is that they found a way to compress it down to 3 disks, and even those can be cached on your hard drive if you have the room.

The worst change is that the manual is now available only on PDF. And the current distributor doesn't even bother to tell you where to look for it!

Re:meh...

[VStrider]

From what I have heard from a LOT of people, I should really give Planescape Torment a go.

Add one more in that list of people. Planescape: Torment is the best RPG you can get on a pc. The BG series was very good, though not up to par with torment.

The story is very original, the game is very well written. It seems they had DMs on the design team.
You get quests, not your typical fedex quests(you know, go fetch this and bring it back then take this to this guy etc), but quests where you'll need to think. It's not like BG, you don't have to finish all quests to continue, and some you never will. Some quests you won't discover at all. The ones you'll solve, some you'll solve them right away and some after a long time. You can pick up any items you'll find, some of them might have something to do with a future quest or they might be totally useless. But you cann't carry everything with you. And you cann't be certain which items are useful. Sometimes, even garbage might be of some use.

You don't choose an alignment for your character, it chooses you. (soviet russia comes to mind) Depending how you play your alignment will form accordingly.

I could tell you alot more but I'll let you see the game yourself. As you probably realised, this isn't for gamers but for D&D players. ie. if you expect and demand to open every door, solve everything, collect everything and see everything there is to see, then you might be dissapointed. If on the other hand you are a D&D player and you've been dissapointed before by the rest of hack'n'slash mighty magic pseudoRPGs, then you're in for a treat with this one.

I've talked in the past with friends who finished torment and each one's gameplay and experiences was totally different.

Re:one of my favorite games!

[meringuoid]

Anybody got tips on how to beat Mind Flayers? I can't seem to do anything to stop the Psionic Blasts. The gnome is fine usually, but everyone else is near vulnerable, especially Jaheira (she's lvl 14).

Summon stuff. You've got Jaheira with you? IIRC, Fire Elementals made short work of most of those illithid nests..