Who likes Throne of Bhaal? (Spoilers Abound)

Sliceofhell

What is your opinion of Throne of Bhaal? I have only completed it once compared to about 5 full SoA runs (during the last 10 years). After completing SoA I just lose interest to continue playing. For me there are a couple of reasons. For example my party has already reached it's maximum potential and left over progression seems very linear and predictable. Also overall gaming experience lacks some magic feeling which is present in SoA. Which can be explained by weaker plot and less developed NPCs.
Another reason why I stop playing is that I'm getting burned out after long and throughout SoA run. Then I decide to take a break, but never choose to return to it. And when I do, I prefer to start new party, since I've already lost immersion of the previous run.

Silverstar

I don't know. Never actually completed it or even gotten very far (some city under siege). I've been wanting to complete it, but I always get distracted by other games whenever I'm just about finished with SoA. Then upon returning sometime later I feel completely out of sync with what's going on, restart and eventually end up with history repeating itself. With BGII:EE I'll definitely manage though.

ajwz

I wrote a post a long while back explaining why it shouldn't be included in bg2ee. It wasn't very popular

Coutelier

I don't hate it, but it feels very rushed and hurriedly cobbled together after SoA. There's also an inconsistency between what the Solar tells Charname about their birth, and what Gorion tells you through letters in BG1.

Inconsistency irks me, even though I'm the most inconsistent person I know. But it's okay for me, because I'm a hypocrite. It's great; I can say one thing and do another. More people should try it.

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Eudaemonium

I'm actually hoping that they flesh out the ToB section with optional quest-lines and extra stuff. I know they can't alter the weak plot, but they can add distracting stuff.

DarkDogg

wow
I thought I'm the only one, who hates Tob...
To be honest the highend content of the BG saga is the weakest part of it, if compared to other rpg games.

personaly, I play TOB only because of Sarevok and boss battles.

shawne

I really enjoyed it - admittedly, I played it with the Ascension mod, but the storyline was interesting and brought the focus back to the Bhaalspawn plot (which, to be honest, SoA didn't really do anything with), the final battle was climactic and exciting, and, of course, Sarevok joins your party.

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RedGuard

I don't think it deserves quite the hate it gets. It does have its flaws and it doesn't really measure up to SoA... but then that's not necessarily a fair comparison. SoA was such a great game and ToB is an expansion to that. Though I expect it would still have a hard time trying to surpass SoA even if it were not.

shawne

@Bhaaldog: To be fair, the Ascension mod only changes the final battle with Amelyssan - I liked the rest of it too.

Eudaemonium

I think it was the fact that it followed SoA. SoA was (BG1 fans excuse me, please), a huge step up from BG1 in terms of narrative content and characterisation, and while it didn't have the same 'open world' feel BG1 had, it also had 16 tonnes of extra and hidden content. People were expecting the conclusion to be a similar step up, I think, which it probably would have been had it been a full third game, rather than an expansion pack.

(Of course, the plot might still be kinda wonky).

Honestly, if Overhaul were able to cut ToB completely, re-jigging some of the Watcher's Keep and other content to be a kind of 'TotSC' for SoA and do BG:Next as a radically altered form of ToB, I would be more than happy. Unfortunately, they won't be able to.

Shrimp

I always continue through ToB after finishing SoA, but I don't think I've I've completed it more than once or twice. It's not that it is bad, just... I usually start getting bored of the game, in a broader sense, after playing it that much. Then when I want to get back into it, I just start over with a new charname.

Rohndil

I usually stop playing after Watcher's Keep.

Chow

It's rushed, linear, lacks sidequests, and is generally pretty simple and not particularly good when compared to the rest of the series. But it has its moments, and I usually complete it regardless simply because I wish to see the story to its end.

I would love to see it replaced with something more proper, though.

atcDave

I think it's well designed for what it is. Some of the battles are interesting and fun, and I think it's a pretty good conclusion to the Bhaalspawn saga. But I don't really enjoy such high level characters. I think everything works best from about 3rd to 10th level, at least that's when the character development is most interesting to me.

Lifat

The reason I fail to do TOB at times is that SoA is quite a long game and I loose focus. I don't dislike TOB... It's greatest weakness is that it is after a very long and epic questline and thus I always take a break after SoA and don't always return.

Ulfgar_Torunn

The only thing keeping me from selecting the 'dislike' option was the Watcher's Keep. Of all dungeons in the Baldur's Gate saga the Keep was my favorite. It did an excellent job of balancing combat challenges with puzzles and stood out from the others. That having been said, there were a few quests and NPCs out of ToB that I found interesting as well.

Concerning my reasons to not like it, I share many of the complaints of the other forum members. The story of Throne of Bhaal is lazy in comparison to SoA and it is extremely short. It's short duration compounded with the volume of events covered highlight the expansion's very poor pacing.

While not a bad addition to SoA, the designers missed a lot of ToB's potential.

moopy

It isn't exactly that I choose to stop after SoA. I always roll over into ToB, but a lot of the time I simply lose interest before the final boss.

Montresor_SP

I like it for the conclusion to the Bhaalspawn saga but the story seems forced and you are obviously being railroaded through the extension. I didn't have too much trouble figuring out at the start in Saradush who would turn out to be the final boss. ;-)

Nooooo!!! Say it ain't so, Mellisan! SAY IT AIN'T SO! :-D

Aasimar069

The main problem of ToB is that our party is so powerful that only high level encounters are a threat to the PC's party.

When you are level 1, you can easily go out and defeat the hobgoblins to bring back the stolen chickens to the farmer.

When you are level 30, you don't care any longer of these kind of quests (somehow retrieving someone's soul from the dead hands of a lich is a bit more heroic).

With these epic levels you except epic encounters, and unless there is a great job in the writing of the quests, you are strong enough to deal with most of the opponents with the strength of your arm/mind (and not by dialogue, diplomacy and wisdom).

Even Elminster says that you have become stronger than him and that he would not dare stand against you...

Wilbur

I like it, but it's not as good as BG2. I generally like playing low level D&D parties a lot more than high level parties.

Doom972

I like it. The war of the Bhaalspawns was hinted at from the very first game, and it was good to see it play out.

It has its flaws but the plot makes is worth it. Also, I love Watcher's Keep.

Chow

Aasimar069 said:

The main problem of ToB is that our party is so powerful that only high level encounters are a threat to the PC's party.

When you are level 1, you can easily go out and defeat the hobgoblins to bring back the stolen chickens to the farmer.

When you are level 30, you don't care any longer of these kind of quests (somehow retrieving someone's soul from the dead hands of a lich is a bit more heroic).

With these epic levels you except epic encounters, and unless there is a great job in the writing of the quests, you are strong enough to deal with most of the opponents with the strength of your arm/mind (and not by dialogue, diplomacy and wisdom).

Even Elminster says that you have become stronger than him and that he would not dare stand against you...

Agreed. Even during the levels explored in Baldur's Gate 2, the tabletop game would largely switch focus to a larger scale, politics, intrigue, and all that sort, where you no longer do everything by yourself. The stronghold quests explore these a little bit, but they never really become anything more than that - and frankly, it probably would easily become very boring if they had tried to bring it to spotlight.

In the second game it doesn't become too much of a problem, but by the time of ToB it kind of starts to be glaring.

Silverstar

Darn it, seems I really shouldn't read the longer posts here as some of them are spoilery as hell, heh. Anyway, I'm a bit surprised people were expecting an expansion to be as good as, or better than, its base game. It's very rarely the case.

The strength of expansions is usually in its additions and improvements upon the core game. There are of course exceptions to this, Hordes of the Underdark comes to mind, which was one of the best expansions for any game ever; the additions, updated gameplay mechanics and surprisingly story made the game infinitely better.

Aasimar069

Silverstar said:

Darn it, seems I really shouldn't read the longer posts here as some of them are spoilery as hell, heh. Anyway, I'm a bit surprised people were expecting an expansion to be as good as, or better than, its base game. It's very rarely the case.

The strength of expansions is usually in its additions and improvements upon the core game. There are of course exceptions to this, Hordes of the Underdark comes to mind, which was one of the best expansions for any game ever; the additions, updated gameplay mechanics and surprisingly story made the game infinitely better.

I concur, I liked Hordes of the Underdark very much because it sent you to some very "exotic" places and you had some dramatic choices to make.

Base NWN (bad) and shadows of undrentide (not that bad) were very bad compared with it.


TOSC is another good expansion pack, tough.

Cuv

@Silverstar I LOVED HotU... but the rest was just okay.

I also always play through ToB, but with Ascension and the tougher battles. There is more added in that to complete the story than just the final fight.

ajwz

HotU > The whole of the NWN series up to this point

Djimmy

I do

FinneousPJ

Mask of the Betrayer is also very, very awesome.

I think ToB suffers from the inflation of magic like most high level settings, which makes it less interesting than the other games. In BG1 finding a +2 weapon is cool and awesome. In ToB everything's at least a +5 of überness.

bigdogchris

It was an OK expansion. All of the special abilities, and just characters of that level in general, have a walking god-like feel to them, which really turns me off to it.