Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal

"Baldur's Gate 2:Throne of Bhaal. A review of a good game by a great reviewer"

How shall I put this? I put countless hours into Baldur's Gate 2:Throne of Bhall (PC): I played and played, leveling up and casting spells and picking locks, fighting monsters and demons and goblins and mind flayers and wyverns and beholders and liches and dragons and myconids and wizards and drow and dwarves and slaves and spiders and elves and sheep! I conquered my foes, found a few cool items, blasted through a few dungeons, but I found myself a little dissatisfied. There are a couple things that you can tell bioware put an effort into improving and some things that must have bugged me much more than they should have, because there was no fixing them. Read below:{:

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1:Graphics: 8.5 : Nothing too special here. The backgrounds look neat-0 but the characters clash too much. It's kindof difficult to see little things like chests and doors, unless you use the new handy-dandy alt-find chest function! The character models are okey-dokey, except for the wizard w/robe of good/neutral/evil archmagi robe on, that just looks cool. Magic spells look cool too. I actually thought the game was better on the LOWEST resolution!! Partially because it runs faster on my crappy comput0r, but i think it was easier to see characters and monsters (a big plus). I'm getting impatient- It's time to get on to the

2.Gameplay: 8 : Really, this game should shine here, but there are some things that are just too important to overlook. Listed below are the good, and the bad.

GOOD
a. Auto-pause function. This allows you to pause at any time and give orders. Really helpful in a tight spot

b. Two-weapon style : how can you argue with that?

c. Up to 6 characters in your party- best of all, you can create all 6 buy going to multiplayer and assigning control of all 6 to yourself (you don't need to be online for this).

d. Many abilities that you can use to your advantage and new super high level abilities which are super too.

e. Core AD&D rules and such. Easy to work by.
f. Elaborite Dungeons and things. They're cool, especially when they go elemental (this room's ice, that room's fire)

BAD
a. Auto-pause function. This allows you to pause at any time and give orders. It spoils you, and it makes it so that you don't really get into battles.

b. Two-weapon style : Severe impairment to THAC0 (reasonable i guess)and only one animation!! ARRGH!!

c. Up to 6 characters in your party- there should be more, I think. Even worse, all of the characters SUCK and are annoying! there is no such thing as a normal theif. the best you can get is Jan! boo!!! (not the mouse, another annoying diety)

d. Many abilities that you can use to your advantage and new super high level abilities. The problem with this is that most are useless and the high level abilities are not thoroughly explained. For example, what is the difference between Devas and Planetars, other than that planetars have more magic? Who SAYS you can't have more than 1!?!?!?

e. Core AD&D rules and such. Some changes were made (e.g. archer rate of attack) and stuff. Also, they are not well-explained to new-comers- for instance, What does it do?? Not ONCE does it give a good explanation of THAC0 (THAC0 is the roll of the dice that you need ToHitArmorClass0 (ZERO!!). What the computer does is it has a random number generator thingy that ''rolls the 20-faced dice'' and gives you a roll. If you get above your THAC0 then you get a hit. Additionaly, if you roll 1, you have a critical miss, which I'm not sure what it does (not well explained) I think it makes your next attack take a longer time to happen, and 20 is a critical hit, 2x damage. What is turning undead?

f. Elaborite Dungeons and things. It does get to the point that you're just killing one big guy, and a magical door opens up, then you kill another and you get a key which opens a magical door, then you kill another and a magic door opens up...

All these things, as you can see, can be good or bad, but it is good enough for me to give it an 8.5. Read on, my brother!

3.Sound: 7.5 : Meh. But you can import voices!

4.Storyline: 8.0 : You are the child of Bhall. You need to fight your way to freedom, or something like that. Sound familiar, from say... Baldur's Gate 2? This time you must fight other children of Bhaal, which I must say is a little more fun than a couple random Cowled Wizards and guild masters. It's just too similar to the first one, except instead of a rescue mission you're on a hunt. There are a couple turns and stuff in the story, but I didn't get a full ''twist'' feeling- I wasn't like ''OH MY GOD!!'' like I am in some other games, like FFVII and FFTactics. ANYWAY-

5.Replayability: 8.0 : Sure the story doesn't change, and the characters (mainly foes) keep saying the same stuff about your destiny and stuff, but there are SO MANY CLASSES (which I neglected to say before) with the new Wild Mage class, and the second time through, you can be EVIL! or GOOD, whichever. Try playing it through using only mages or something cool like that.

Something else? I don't think so. This game, however good or bad I have made it out to be, is HIGHLY ADDICTIVE! Be careful not to get too involved with 6 original characters unless you have a lot of time on your hands. Time flies. Fast. Have fun, and vote YES below!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/03, Updated 07/23/03