I am saying 7.5-8 for now, but once the patches are more complete and it runs like 1.3, and BG2 is adjusted a bit to accommodate for the new changes I don't believe I will have any problem with 9/10.
I do wonder what the score would have been if the game would have been released after patch 2.0 was introduced (and bugs ironed out in subsequent patches). Say the first of June instead of the original date. I realise that's not the only problem with the game but I think that if SoD and 2.0 were released independent of each other the scores might have been a bit different.
I also wonder if Beamdog as a company evaluated this internally.
Patch 2.0 has had a negative impact for sure. A lot of the negative Steam and GoG reviews point this out too.
It hasn't had as much REAL negative impact as people think. It added more robust and improved features. What people can't see (missing the forest through the trees) is that, exactly. The improvements to customizability alone make 2.0 just pure gold. People can complain about a few things here and there, but most of those complaints boil down to "I don't like new thing" as opposed to actually giving the new features a chance. There are SO MANY folks (on this board and elsewhere) who complain about what are undeniable improvements to the quality of life when playing the game, to the graphics presentation, etc.
Hell, look at all the UI complaints. "I don't like how it looks". Great. But it's cleaner and presents the information more efficiently. It's ALSO now moddable; you heard right. You dislike how the UI looks? Mod it.
You have so many more options and so many more QoL improvements since 2.0. Yes, there's bugs. Those bugs are being worked on. 2.0 is less buggy than 1.3 was, so that in and of itself is an achievement.
The off hand weapon slot change alone is a huge improvement, the new interface is great, as are the graphics tweeks.
And the shaman is a high value addition for free content.
Not too many "Brilliant" reviews I've seen anywhere, maybe exaggerating.
Haven't heard too many praises about the Shaman either, but since I have not played it I wont comment further.
There is definitely some great features in the new UI, however calling the graphics changes great is a bit of a stretch, even though I know there is not much that can be done with the existing 18 year old engine.
The journal and Maps are atrocious as are the mage scroll page. Full of bugs and unwanted redundancy.
The Story definitely left something to be desired and just didn't give me the dungeons and dragons immersion I had with BG1 and BG2. Maybe its just my nostalgia, but thats how it is. Also the NPC's could have been so much more developed and polished than they were which also killed the immersion for me at least. But we will always have the NPC project!
There is definitely some great features in the new UI, however calling the graphics changes great is a bit of a stretch, even though I know there is not much that can be done with the existing 18 year old engine.
The biggest UI change is the ability to MOD UI, as I mentioned before. The second biggest UI change is that the character sheet no longer requires you to scroll down through a whole load of text, but rather allows you to just click a button to see the relevant information. Want to see "Combat Info"? Click the button. "Class Info"? Click the button. It's so much easier than scrolling down for several seconds to find out what you wanted.
The journal and Maps are atrocious as are the mage scroll page. Full of bugs and unwanted redundancy.
The mage scroll page is unchanged. The map change is optional. You can uncheck that option, and it will looks just like it did before 2.0. The journal is organized in a much more efficient manner. It used to be that you had to scroll through every journal entry, and quests were just considered another journal entry.
The Story definitely left something to be desired and just didn't give me the dungeons and dragons immersion I had with BG1 and BG2.
The SoD story is actually quite well done, when you consider the constraints that were in place due to the prior existence of both the BG1 story and the BG2 story.
Patch 2.0 has had a negative impact for sure. A lot of the negative Steam and GoG reviews point this out too.
It hasn't had as much REAL negative impact as people think. It added more robust and improved features. What people can't see (missing the forest through the trees) is that, exactly. The improvements to customizability alone make 2.0 just pure gold. People can complain about a few things here and there, but most of those complaints boil down to "I don't like new thing" as opposed to actually giving the new features a chance. There are SO MANY folks (on this board and elsewhere) who complain about what are undeniable improvements to the quality of life when playing the game, to the graphics presentation, etc.
Hell, look at all the UI complaints. "I don't like how it looks". Great. But it's cleaner and presents the information more efficiently. It's ALSO now moddable; you heard right. You dislike how the UI looks? Mod it.
You have so many more options and so many more QoL improvements since 2.0. Yes, there's bugs. Those bugs are being worked on. 2.0 is less buggy than 1.3 was, so that in and of itself is an achievement.
You are forgetting the cartoony blobs that replaced the character sprites.
Left: BG2EE v. 2.1 Right: IWDEE v. 1.4 I truly don't understand what people are so upset about with the sprites. Is it just that they don't know how to turn off outlining, or am I completely missing some awful difference?
The journal is unusable because they overwrite map points and duplicate each other over previous entries deleting your other entries.
I am glad you are completely happy with the story line, but I have no doubt that the modders will come up with a pretty good story transition between BG1, SOD and BG2, so why couldnt Beamdog do the same. This is one of my main gripes, Beamdog seemed to rush the story, rush the NPC development, rush the patches and it shows a lack of responsibility to the customers and a lack of reverence for Dungeons and Dragons / Baldur's Gate.
Where as the modders clearly love the genre and put forth immense effort and time to produce wonderful NPC's and fixes to the series. All for free, that is what I thought we would get from Beamdog.
Certainly Beamdog will improve and really do what the game series deserves. And we will pay good money for it.
Left: BG2EE v. 2.1 Right: IWDEE v. 1.4 I truly don't understand what people are so upset about with the sprites. Is it just that they don't know how to turn off outlining, or am I completely missing some awful difference?
It is just a taste difference to me, but it is significant enough that I can see why making such a change unannounced without a toggle back would make people unhappy.
Left: BG2EE v. 2.1 Right: IWDEE v. 1.4 I truly don't understand what people are so upset about with the sprites. Is it just that they don't know how to turn off outlining, or am I completely missing some awful difference?
They look terrible with the backgrounds and the surroundings. Kind of like if someone copied a sprite from the early 90s, and pasted it into BG. I dunno. they just stick out in a bad way. They make it hard to focus for colourblind people too.
Left: BG2EE v. 2.1 Right: IWDEE v. 1.4 I truly don't understand what people are so upset about with the sprites. Is it just that they don't know how to turn off outlining, or am I completely missing some awful difference?
It is just a taste difference to me, but it is significant enough that I can see why making such a change unannounced without a toggle back would make people unhappy.
The journal is unusable because they overwrite map points and duplicate each other over previous entries deleting your other entries.
I am glad you are completely happy with the story line, but I have no doubt that the modders will come up with a pretty good story transition between BG1, SOD and BG2, so why couldnt Beamdog do the same. This is one of my main gripes, Beamdog seemed to rush the story, rush the NPC development, rush the patches and it shows a lack of responsibility to the customers and a lack of reverence for Dungeons and Dragons / Baldur's Gate.
Where as the modders clearly love the genre and put forth immense effort and time to produce wonderful NPC's and fixes to the series. All for free, that is what I thought we would get from Beamdog.
Certainly Beamdog will improve and really do what the game series deserves. And we will pay good money for it.
Plus now people can't buy the classic versions anymore either. You can only get them if you buy the EE versions. I see a term called "Beamdog-Tax" has popped up. I suspect Hasbro is the culprit here, though.
Just to show exact differences between linear and nearest neighbor, here is something I put together a while back for myself when this came up. I still don't know which one I prefer more, I don't play zoomed in like that of course.
I never realized before how much leg Aerie is showing in the Robe of Vecna...
The Journal is still a bit dodgy, but it's a whole lot more useable than the old journal.
As for the story, I wasn't really talking about that with my comments on 2.0. Was simply referring to what you get for free.
I really like the SoD plot and characters, and rate it just ahead of BG1 and a very long way ahead of ToB (and ToSC if you include that, and PoE). I do accept that more could have been done to disguise the linearity, simply by taking a leaf from BG1 and including huge zones full of empty space. Beamdog packed every corner of every map full of content, and that wasn't really necessary. I also think the selection of NPCs available wasn't well thought out. Plot is always a matter of taste though.
And I don't think you can not mark down SoD because of bugs, even though it was a lot less buggy than certain other recent games, such as Pillars of Eternity.
Overall, I would consider 7.5/10 a fair mark for SoD, but 9/10 for the free stuff added in 2.0.
Out of curiosity, where exactly are these bugs? I see a lot of people saying that they are terrible in SoD, and even the people defending it concede that. When I was nearing the end of BGEE I expected to have to wait for the next update or something to make it playable before continuing. Yet I went through SoD with maybe 1 or 2 crashes (I've had more than that in BG2EE since).
There have been a few minor things such as journal entries with no header or multiple shamans interacting in strange ways, and admittedly I only play single player (I understand multiplayer has more issues), but the bugs I've found seem far less notable than pretty much any game I've played in recent years. Have I just been incredibly lucky?
Out of curiosity, where exactly are these bugs? I see a lot of people saying that they are terrible in SoD, and even the people defending it concede that. When I was nearing the end of BGEE I expected to have to wait for the next update or something to make it playable before continuing. Yet I went through SoD with maybe 1 or 2 crashes (I've had more than that in BG2EE since).
There have been a few minor things such as journal entries with no header or multiple shamans interacting in strange ways, and admittedly I only play single player (I understand multiplayer has more issues), but the bugs I've found seem far less notable than pretty much any game I've played in recent years. Have I just been incredibly lucky?
Possibly. There's definitely bugs (as evidenced by the fact that we've fixed a whole bunch of them), but they're going to affect every player differently based on your party make-up, your character build, and your choices during the game. I'd say that if you didn't encounter (or didn't notice) any bugs in your game, that's certainly a good thing. If you did encounter bugs, we've been working (and will continue to work) on fixing them.
The Journal is still a bit dodgy, but it's a whole lot more useable than the old journal.
I remember my 1st time playing BG2. (I bought BG2 before 1. I know. How terrible. lol) I opened the journal and immediately was like, "WHAT THE FUCK?!". Even to this day, I vehemently dislike the old journal. In the new journal, I can at least find my quest without clicking through 100 pages of stuff, including things that don't really matter...like what that bartender said when I got drunk at his tavern.
Out of curiosity, where exactly are these bugs? I see a lot of people saying that they are terrible in SoD, and even the people defending it concede that. When I was nearing the end of BGEE I expected to have to wait for the next update or something to make it playable before continuing. Yet I went through SoD with maybe 1 or 2 crashes (I've had more than that in BG2EE since).
There have been a few minor things such as journal entries with no header or multiple shamans interacting in strange ways, and admittedly I only play single player (I understand multiplayer has more issues), but the bugs I've found seem far less notable than pretty much any game I've played in recent years. Have I just been incredibly lucky?
@Sids1188 You encountered crashes to desktop and are asking where exactly the bugs are? Eh, what?
Chorus: There are so many cracks in this town's sidewalks! More like gaping chasms, really! They're everywhere, and it's an unwalkable disaster. Obviously the government doesn't care about us and isn't even trying!
Person 1: Where are all these cracks? I keep hearing people complain about them, so I had assumed it was really bad out there. But then I walked all the way across town yesterday and only came across one or two, and they were just normal cracks. Actually, it seemed like the sidewalks are in uncommonly good shape. Did I just get lucky with my route?
Person 2: So you admit you saw cracks! How can you ask where they are?
Well, CTD is not something we should accept as normal for a released game.
That said, I did not encounter any crashes myself. Only a funny graphics bug where a gray mist would slowly cover the whole map... :P (But was gone again after reload.)
Comments
I also wonder if Beamdog as a company evaluated this internally.
Hell, look at all the UI complaints. "I don't like how it looks". Great. But it's cleaner and presents the information more efficiently. It's ALSO now moddable; you heard right. You dislike how the UI looks? Mod it.
You have so many more options and so many more QoL improvements since 2.0. Yes, there's bugs. Those bugs are being worked on. 2.0 is less buggy than 1.3 was, so that in and of itself is an achievement.
The off hand weapon slot change alone is a huge improvement, the new interface is great, as are the graphics tweeks.
And the shaman is a high value addition for free content.
Haven't heard too many praises about the Shaman either, but since I have not played it I wont comment further.
There is definitely some great features in the new UI, however calling the graphics changes great is a bit of a stretch, even though I know there is not much that can be done with the existing 18 year old engine.
The journal and Maps are atrocious as are the mage scroll page. Full of bugs and unwanted redundancy.
The Story definitely left something to be desired and just didn't give me the dungeons and dragons immersion I had with BG1 and BG2. Maybe its just my nostalgia, but thats how it is. Also the NPC's could have been so much more developed and polished than they were which also killed the immersion for me at least. But we will always have the NPC project!
Still sounds like a 7/10 for me as well.
Ok...smh... The biggest UI change is the ability to MOD UI, as I mentioned before. The second biggest UI change is that the character sheet no longer requires you to scroll down through a whole load of text, but rather allows you to just click a button to see the relevant information. Want to see "Combat Info"? Click the button. "Class Info"? Click the button. It's so much easier than scrolling down for several seconds to find out what you wanted. The mage scroll page is unchanged. The map change is optional. You can uncheck that option, and it will looks just like it did before 2.0. The journal is organized in a much more efficient manner. It used to be that you had to scroll through every journal entry, and quests were just considered another journal entry. The SoD story is actually quite well done, when you consider the constraints that were in place due to the prior existence of both the BG1 story and the BG2 story. That's fine. You can have that opinion.
Right: IWDEE v. 1.4
I truly don't understand what people are so upset about with the sprites. Is it just that they don't know how to turn off outlining, or am I completely missing some awful difference?
The journal is unusable because they overwrite map points and duplicate each other over previous entries deleting your other entries.
I am glad you are completely happy with the story line, but I have no doubt that the modders will come up with a pretty good story transition between BG1, SOD and BG2, so why couldnt Beamdog do the same. This is one of my main gripes, Beamdog seemed to rush the story, rush the NPC development, rush the patches and it shows a lack of responsibility to the customers and a lack of reverence for Dungeons and Dragons / Baldur's Gate.
Where as the modders clearly love the genre and put forth immense effort and time to produce wonderful NPC's and fixes to the series. All for free, that is what I thought we would get from Beamdog.
Certainly Beamdog will improve and really do what the game series deserves. And we will pay good money for it.
Fortunately we are getting a toggle for this in the UI graphic options.
I never realized before how much leg Aerie is showing in the Robe of Vecna...
As for the story, I wasn't really talking about that with my comments on 2.0. Was simply referring to what you get for free.
I really like the SoD plot and characters, and rate it just ahead of BG1 and a very long way ahead of ToB (and ToSC if you include that, and PoE). I do accept that more could have been done to disguise the linearity, simply by taking a leaf from BG1 and including huge zones full of empty space. Beamdog packed every corner of every map full of content, and that wasn't really necessary. I also think the selection of NPCs available wasn't well thought out. Plot is always a matter of taste though.
And I don't think you can not mark down SoD because of bugs, even though it was a lot less buggy than certain other recent games, such as Pillars of Eternity.
Overall, I would consider 7.5/10 a fair mark for SoD, but 9/10 for the free stuff added in 2.0.
There have been a few minor things such as journal entries with no header or multiple shamans interacting in strange ways, and admittedly I only play single player (I understand multiplayer has more issues), but the bugs I've found seem far less notable than pretty much any game I've played in recent years. Have I just been incredibly lucky?
Chorus: There are so many cracks in this town's sidewalks! More like gaping chasms, really! They're everywhere, and it's an unwalkable disaster. Obviously the government doesn't care about us and isn't even trying!
Person 1: Where are all these cracks? I keep hearing people complain about them, so I had assumed it was really bad out there. But then I walked all the way across town yesterday and only came across one or two, and they were just normal cracks. Actually, it seemed like the sidewalks are in uncommonly good shape. Did I just get lucky with my route?
Person 2: So you admit you saw cracks! How can you ask where they are?
fin
That said, I did not encounter any crashes myself.
Only a funny graphics bug where a gray mist would slowly cover the whole map... :P (But was gone again after reload.)