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.'"

Best combonation...

[steveo777]

EVER! Minsc, Boo (the Miniature Giant Space Hampster) and Lilicor (the talking sword). It never gets old listeng to their banter! Okay, Boo doesn't say much, but Lilicor's occational outburst never fails to bring a smile to my face.

The romances were always kind of stange, though. The one with Jahiera was just wrong. Her husband died not 4 days before she starts macking on you (I know the patch fixed this, but still...). Aerie is too annoying to complete because she's got a consitent mindset of a 14 year old. Never got around to doing the one with the drow. (Now that I think of it, all the male romances were with elves...). I haven't played a female charecter, but I've listened to some of Anomen's rants and he complains about everything.

I think the best part about BGII was the Infiniti Engine's, well, infinite ability for mods. There's a whole community devoted to modding it. So, now, there isn't any lack for content. I would, however, love another iteration. Good work Bioware!

meh...

[Jurrasic]

Even though I am a huge old school RPG gamer (if you haven't won Ultima IV, you have no RPG cred with me)and player of AD&D from age 10, I really could not get into Baldur's gate (or BGII) in the slightest. The first time I loaded BG with high expectations, the first thing I see is that annoying 'hehe, it's me Emowyn!' girl giggling and following me around. I started to grate my teeth right then, she's the only fictional character I disliked on sight more then Jar Jar Binks and after she followed me again after the death of my mentor, I told her to piss off and stop following me and she called me a 'rum duke' so I killed her and deleted the game off my HD and never looked back.

Re:NPCs to warm your sleeping furs at night?

[fm6]

I had a friend who was very fond of the sex thing in BG2. Her only complaint was that her female character was only allowed to get it on with guys....

Re:meh...

[2008]

Ha, that would be a cool thing for an evil character to aim for - scorched Earth, no living things left in the entire game.

I think a lot of the enemies respawn though :(

Maybe there should be a mod to prevent enemies spawning more than once and track how many kills to go? Something like in Doom where it would give you "25 of 37" enemies but with "1124 of 30095".

And of course you can't get past 99.997% and win without suiciding...