So how is this game really? To much controversy to get a reasonable perspective.
d00der82
Member Posts: 21
I would like to begin by stating I despise gg and sjw's both. This modern society where loudly spewing your views on social and political issues at all times is more than a little disgusting (especially regarding a game for cripes sake). Grow up!
Now that that's out of the way, I am looking for an honest perspective in this game from a gameplay and story line stand point. I've seen reviews thay claim the writing is amateurish and the game itself is full of bugs, but I can't tell if it's honest or just children with nothing better to do but burn calories on a pointless crusade. Sorry if thus rubs some folks the wrong way but I'm just looking for some honest perspective on a video game
Now that that's out of the way, I am looking for an honest perspective in this game from a gameplay and story line stand point. I've seen reviews thay claim the writing is amateurish and the game itself is full of bugs, but I can't tell if it's honest or just children with nothing better to do but burn calories on a pointless crusade. Sorry if thus rubs some folks the wrong way but I'm just looking for some honest perspective on a video game
2
Comments
If you want another adventure in the IE engine, then you should go for it. Just don't expect too much from the story or the writing. If you don't want to fight with the bugs, you could always wait before playing it, they will patch the game in time.
I want to repeat that I'm not saying it's a bad game, but it just doesn't live up to the originals. Siege of Dragonspear is a 70-75, Baldur's Gate 2 was a 90-95.
The combat I think had a good balance - it's quite challenging on core rules, at least if your party is more about characters than exactly perfect party balance. The scaling down of difficulty is generous though, had to for example do it in one duel because my rogue was not yet exactly a killing machine.
Liked the new NPCs actually, even if one gets to know them of course relatively less than NPCs of main campaigns. The biggest kick was of course getting more of Minsc, Imo, Viconia etc. Voice cast is really impressive, in terms of getting almost all major fan favorites back. Even the narrator!
It's linear like ToB - with a couple of maps opening up at a given time. And it's substantial campaign as promised. Clocked 30+ hours myself.
I am one of those who thought the writing team did a fine job actually. The story device to bridge BG & BG2 was really to my liking. I could not predict the ending, so had to play through to find out what was driving the main antagonist.
Summa summarum: I like it, because it feels organic in BG world, and I'd take any amount of BG gaming joy.
On the whole though its similar to BG2 writing wise in a lot of ways. Some great bits, some not so great - for BG2 ie Jan and Cernds personal quests, Anomen etc etc.
Gameplay wise its good fun and mostly well balanced to your level though massed combat plays a bit more of a role in this. Fireballs galore in this one.
I enjoyed the main antagonist Caelar and also thoroughly enjoyed hearing and playing with some of the old fan favourites with their original voice overs back.
Structurally Id say its like a bit of a better version of ToB but a lot more grounded and less epic world shaking stuff, as it should given its place in the overall saga. It feels more like a short military campaign whereas ToB feels like a series of smash'n'grabs.
By and large I found the technical improvements great. Some will vary due to personal taste but some are just straight up improvements.
Technical issues - well each account has to be taken on its own. Ive probably got somewhere between 60-80 hours in this game and all Ive got to show for it is a couple of areas that send the frame rate in either direction, slowing or speeding up and also 2 crashes to desktop. Thats it.
Considering all the limitations placed on it because its an "inbetween chapter" I think it stacks up remarkably well against ToB and blows TotSC out of the water.
If I had encountered more technical issues Id probably say 8 or 8.5 but for me its a straight 9 on par with ToB.
I only got a bug once, and it was not game-breaking. Just had to reload. BTW the multiple quick-saves is a nice new feature.
Another detail I like is that the random encounters are more elaborate; often like a tiny mini-sidequest.
The area artwork is outstanding, each area is beautiful and brought to life by many little touches which really enhance immersion. There are several 'you have been ambushed by enemies and must defend yourself' scenarios - however these are all different so far and are interesting, often giving unique treasures.
There appear to be multiple ways to solve pretty much everything which is great, something both BG1 and BG2 were not quite so hot on.
My biggest beef and sore spot for this is some of the combat scenarios. Often you are forced to enter a cave etc with your entire party where upon entering you are instantly rushed by a horde of enemies. No real tactics possible, just prebuffing and a hack and slashathon. You can't even retreat out of these combats to a more favourable terrain as the enemies don't follow.
It's important to remember that this is a DLC/expansion, not a full blown game and as such should really be judged as such. So don't compare against BG1 or BG2. Compare against TotSC or ToB instead.
It's early days so there are some bugs. I would wait until the first patch is released which should be in the next few days to address the most glaring ones.
It probably would be wise to wait until they release the first patch before purchasing, unless you are like me and can't physically wait because I might die if I don't play more Baldur's Gate.
The internet drama is childish, depressing, and should not be worried about. If you can't deal with a fantasy video game introducing a concept that you might disagree with then you not be playing fantasy games in the first place. The particular content that people are so loudly objecting to was actually an element in the original games.
It turns out I can play and enjoy Baldur's Gate while acknowledging that there were sexist elements in it, and if someone wants to release DLC for it that tries to make that less of a problem, I can also enjoy the game even if I don't agree with a social agenda they might be pushing. Though, as social agenda go, I find it hard to be vitriolic about someone pushing for less hatred of people that are different from me.
Still too early to tell you how the story is, but so far it's got some very impressive scripting by Infinity Engine standards. The voices measure from really bad to OK. The music is OK. Nothing outstanding.
I agree that this whole controversy thing is really childish lol. It's pretty funny to watch though. I'd wager a lot of those voicing concerns never played or completely forgot about Dragon Age, which pretty much did the exact same thing less than two years ago.
coughCREMISIUSACLASSIcough
Alright, I'm through with the sarcasm.
If you scroll through the pages here in the SoD forum, you'll find several player review threads that were buried in the controversy. If you're looking for information about the game from people who have actually played it, that would be your best place to start. Elsewhere – even in other threads here – you will encounter exaggerated information from those who have a political opposition to Beamdog.
Alternatively, you can purchase it, try it out, and get a refund if it's not to your liking. That's the only way to be sure whether SoD is right for *you.* If you do decide to buy SoD, I sincerely hope you enjoy it
peoplechildren butthurt probably is, in total, not bigger than thousand words of writing. The expansion alone has, according to Trent Oster, over 500,000 words of dialouge. So, in perspective:1/500 of the game writing made
peoplechildren rate the expansion in very unfair way. Let that sink.+ new areas are mostly pretty good
+ fights are also pretty good
+ the overall plot arc is quite interesting
- i didn't like the final reveal
- poor roleplaying choices, especially dialogue choices
- horrible railroading
- sometimes the way areas are constructed and connected make no sense
It definitely feels like bg and continues seamlessly from bg1.
I am having a blast playing this !
I thought the game was very good up until the end of the final battle with the Big Bad, then you're railroaded into pure DM fiat without a possibility to change or otherwise directly interact with the situation after the fact because the game ends very shortly after you regain full control over CHARNAME. I even reloaded a previous save to see if it was possible to use the command console to avoid the situation, no matter what you do the same end result still happens.
Here's the sequence: 1.) Victorious Final Battle against Big Bad 2.) Diabolus ex Machina 3.) Extremely limited control of CHARNAME 4.) Full control of CHARNAME followed seconds later by 5.) Ending Cinematic
No, I'm not exaggerating, it's that abrupt. It would have been a much better game if it had just abruptly ended right after the final battle against the Big Bad.
It did feel like a Baldur's gate game in a gloomy, dark way.
They really did good job in connecting Bg1 & Bg2