Baldurs Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn - Review
Title: Baldurs Gate 2 - Shadows of Amn
Genre: RPG
Platoform: PC (there are some conversions to consoles but not of this exact game)
Maker: Bioware
Players: Up to 6
My Grade: 4/5
It is time to leave the NES for a while and jump into something slightly more modern. I started playing BG2 in my early teens and basically got hooked at once. This was the first D&D based RPG I played and is also why I fell in love with this particular genre. Through the years I have spent way too much time on this game, it is one of the few games that beats my in-game time spent in WoW.
Story:
Baldurs Gate 2 is basically a continuation on Baldurs Gate 1, the story still surrounds the fact that you are a child of baal and some very powerful people take a very keen interest in your progress in this world. There is so much more to say about the story but there really is no good way of telling it without creating massive spoilers (sorry).
What I can tell you is that you start the game in a dungeon... :P
Game Play:
This is a real RPG (not fake like final fantasy and shit like that) which means the features of the game are very numerous. There is of course the mandatory character creation where you can choose between a number of races and then a number of classes including most things from Dungeons & Dragons. Since this game is based on Dungeons & Dragons it also has the features of being played in a "turn-based" environment. Time is measured in turns and you can pause at any time throughout the game in order to be able to choose movement, attacks, spells etc in your own time.
combat things such as Damage, Hit and Saves are rolled by Die (amazing feature is that you can actually turn on the dice rolls and see them in the combat log window, very cool and useful).
If you have never heard of Dungeons & Dragons there is only one thing to do to enable you to understand the combat system, just play the game, it is way too advanced to be explainable in a few lines. (Have you seen the actual rule book for D&D? massive mate... massive...) Thankfully, BG2 is easy to learn, just incredibly hard to explain.
When it comes to the freedom of the game I believe it is very free, you can not go anywhere you want, but you can do anything you want where you are. However you will also have to deal with the consequnces. Basically everthing in BG2 is based around you taking missions for various people and collecting either gold (you need gold in order to progress in some parts) or Items that may be needed for other reasons to progress in the game. But yeah, missions will take you all over the world and is the way to discover new areas, new areas may also bring even more missions. I have played through this game maybe 6-7 times and I doubt I have done them all.
What I think:
As I said, I am very much in love with the Genre and if I hadnt already given a five this week there would have been a 5 in store for this game. With the incredible amount of missions and the various ways of building, first your own character and then developing the entire party it makes for a very very varied game. Basically every time you play it you will have a different experience which is exactly what is missing in new games.
(Yeah im gonna kick new games in the nuts now) New games tend to have a ridiculous price tag, and be stupidly short making them extremely useless on a long term basis. This is not the case with BG2, as I said I have been playing it on and off for probably 6-8 years. And the last time I bought it (yeah I tend to lose discs) I got BG1 + Expansion and BG2 + Expansion for just 99 SEK (thats less than £9).
Thats it, time to go in-game and play my sorcerer for a few hours.
Genre: RPG
Platoform: PC (there are some conversions to consoles but not of this exact game)
Maker: Bioware
Players: Up to 6
My Grade: 4/5
It is time to leave the NES for a while and jump into something slightly more modern. I started playing BG2 in my early teens and basically got hooked at once. This was the first D&D based RPG I played and is also why I fell in love with this particular genre. Through the years I have spent way too much time on this game, it is one of the few games that beats my in-game time spent in WoW.
Story:
Baldurs Gate 2 is basically a continuation on Baldurs Gate 1, the story still surrounds the fact that you are a child of baal and some very powerful people take a very keen interest in your progress in this world. There is so much more to say about the story but there really is no good way of telling it without creating massive spoilers (sorry).
What I can tell you is that you start the game in a dungeon... :P
Game Play:
This is a real RPG (not fake like final fantasy and shit like that) which means the features of the game are very numerous. There is of course the mandatory character creation where you can choose between a number of races and then a number of classes including most things from Dungeons & Dragons. Since this game is based on Dungeons & Dragons it also has the features of being played in a "turn-based" environment. Time is measured in turns and you can pause at any time throughout the game in order to be able to choose movement, attacks, spells etc in your own time.
combat things such as Damage, Hit and Saves are rolled by Die (amazing feature is that you can actually turn on the dice rolls and see them in the combat log window, very cool and useful).
If you have never heard of Dungeons & Dragons there is only one thing to do to enable you to understand the combat system, just play the game, it is way too advanced to be explainable in a few lines. (Have you seen the actual rule book for D&D? massive mate... massive...) Thankfully, BG2 is easy to learn, just incredibly hard to explain.
When it comes to the freedom of the game I believe it is very free, you can not go anywhere you want, but you can do anything you want where you are. However you will also have to deal with the consequnces. Basically everthing in BG2 is based around you taking missions for various people and collecting either gold (you need gold in order to progress in some parts) or Items that may be needed for other reasons to progress in the game. But yeah, missions will take you all over the world and is the way to discover new areas, new areas may also bring even more missions. I have played through this game maybe 6-7 times and I doubt I have done them all.
What I think:
As I said, I am very much in love with the Genre and if I hadnt already given a five this week there would have been a 5 in store for this game. With the incredible amount of missions and the various ways of building, first your own character and then developing the entire party it makes for a very very varied game. Basically every time you play it you will have a different experience which is exactly what is missing in new games.
(Yeah im gonna kick new games in the nuts now) New games tend to have a ridiculous price tag, and be stupidly short making them extremely useless on a long term basis. This is not the case with BG2, as I said I have been playing it on and off for probably 6-8 years. And the last time I bought it (yeah I tend to lose discs) I got BG1 + Expansion and BG2 + Expansion for just 99 SEK (thats less than £9).
Thats it, time to go in-game and play my sorcerer for a few hours.
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