Share your positive experiences with Siege of Dragonspear! (spoiler warning)
Kitteh_On_A_Cloud
Member Posts: 1,629
Hey everyone!
I've been away for quite some time from these forums and ever since the release of Siege of Dragonspear I've decided to return here, mostly because I've always liked these forums and the members here. I also kinda consider them the spiritual successor to the old Baldur's Gate forums before they finally got closed down and disappeared for good.
I admit the controversy surrounding this expansion has caught me off-guard. I read lots of negative reviews and the astounding amount of negative thumb-downs on SoD's Steam page also made me concerned. It seems the backlash hasn't left these forums unscathed either, further worsening my worries.
In order to hear the other, more positive side of the forums and its members in hopes that they could prove my prejudices wrong, I therefore decided to make this thread. I hope I put it in the right subcategory of the forums, if not, please move it where it belongs! So please, I ask of you, those who have played this expansion, did you like the expansion? Could you share some of your positive experiences with Siege of Dragonspear? Was it memorable to you? Do you think it's worth the money you paid for it? Mabye give it a rating on a scale from 1 to 10?
Obviously I haven't played the game myself, so I must ask you to keep spoilers to a minimum (also as to not spoil other curious people who are still in the Doubtzone concerning this game and who might be reading this thread). If you really have to or see no other option, please use spoiler tags.
I hope you all will be able to convince me and lots of others who might still be worried or on the fence regarding this expansion!
I've been away for quite some time from these forums and ever since the release of Siege of Dragonspear I've decided to return here, mostly because I've always liked these forums and the members here. I also kinda consider them the spiritual successor to the old Baldur's Gate forums before they finally got closed down and disappeared for good.
I admit the controversy surrounding this expansion has caught me off-guard. I read lots of negative reviews and the astounding amount of negative thumb-downs on SoD's Steam page also made me concerned. It seems the backlash hasn't left these forums unscathed either, further worsening my worries.
In order to hear the other, more positive side of the forums and its members in hopes that they could prove my prejudices wrong, I therefore decided to make this thread. I hope I put it in the right subcategory of the forums, if not, please move it where it belongs! So please, I ask of you, those who have played this expansion, did you like the expansion? Could you share some of your positive experiences with Siege of Dragonspear? Was it memorable to you? Do you think it's worth the money you paid for it? Mabye give it a rating on a scale from 1 to 10?
Obviously I haven't played the game myself, so I must ask you to keep spoilers to a minimum (also as to not spoil other curious people who are still in the Doubtzone concerning this game and who might be reading this thread). If you really have to or see no other option, please use spoiler tags.
I hope you all will be able to convince me and lots of others who might still be worried or on the fence regarding this expansion!
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Comments
About your concerns, there is a kernel of validity in each. SoD is not a perfect game. It is not the world's worst game either.
It is no better and no worse than any other recent game release in the past 20 years with regards to bugs at release time. The concerns about "game-breaking bugs" were overstated to say the least. Many people finished the game successfully with the initial release code. I don't believe I read a single story here or elsewhere that claimed that the game was unfinishable. And BeamDog has in fact already delivered on the first of a series of patches which has resolved a great many of the issues. They are working on the next patch now. Multiplayer does still have some issues, but again, not so much as to make it unplayable. BeamDog is aware of this and has committed to fixing it.
The writing is excellent in some areas, good in some areas, adequate in some areas, and lacking in some areas. Again, it is not significantly better or worse overall than most games, and with regards to BG1, TotSC, BG2, and TOB, I find that it fits in pretty well so far with the series. it is somewhat linear, but to some degree that is unavoidable due to the fact the BG1 ends and BG2 starts and you can't go too far away and you can't gain too much experience. I read another commenter here make a good statement, "It is a good story. But it isn't *your* story". Take it as you will. To me it wasn't a problem as I simply treated it as a side adventure, an extended quest. It is nice to not have everything be all about the Bhaalspawn.
The "changes" to characters mentioned in some posts on the Internet have been ...overstated... to make them appear more drastic than they actually are. I did not notice any differences in gameplay and experience with Safana or Jaheira so far that deviated drastically from my knowledge or expectation of their personalities from BG1. They were fun to me. YMMV.
With regards to Mizhena, I found almost all of the criticisms from teh internet to be unfounded or not based on reality. It is 100% optional to even talk to her, and if you do it is 100% optional to choose the first dialog option and 100% optional to choose the second dialog options to finally get the line that people criticized. She even has quests, so is more developed than any other merchant in the game really. I did not view it as a major problem, however, again, BeamDog has committed to listening to the community and working to improve this aspect of the game.
I know the 2.0 UI changes were controversial to some, however, the fact that nearly everything in the UI is now moddable is something I never ever expected. And not just by dedicated modders, anyone will be able to hit F11 and move things around and find the code behind it and change it to how you really want. This is something which I feel will make the game truly *mine* in a way that was never possible before. I am going to flog Pecca's widescreen mod again here
But I also like this which I mostly did with some help. Just took a few hours to learn the Lua language a bit, get some free tools, and gain priceless knowledge and experience. And it was FUN.
As far as social justice stuff, to me that has always been a part of DnD, since my earliest PnP days. All the modules were about causes and helping people. DnD - SJ = Diablo. Not that Diablo isn't fun. But it isn't DnD. Many of the quests in BG2 seem to fall into this category, so to me it is a non-issue.
BeamDog could have taken the safe way out for SoD and just mirrored exactly what BG1 did with tiny incremental changes. I think the game would have panned for the most part that way. They were very constrained by the fact that this was in the middle, and there was a fairly small needle to thread. I am glad that they decided instead to go big, and in such a way as to make it possible for the modding community to go even bigger for years to come. And they have publicly committed multiple times to working with the community to make things better.
Overall I found SoD to be an excellent value for $20 and I am happy with it. I figure I will get at least 35-40 hours on a single playthrough, and I expect I will be playing it through multiple times with different character groups to include all the new NPC's. 8/10 overall, and I expect that will move up to close to 9 after some more patching.
Btw, does anyone know the reason Jaheira didn't get voiced lines? Was her original voice actor unavailable? Due respect if she was, of course.
Sure, the reviews made me wonder but after I did some checking here and other sites, I found that many of the negative reviews were basically copy/pastes and weren't based on actual gameplay. Some of the ones with the kernel of truth were overstated to make them sound much worse, like the bugs which beamdog is working on now.
I too missed Jaheira's voice. I guess the voice actress retired and could not be found. I wondered if they had enough old dialog to digitally stitch together, but I guess it wouldn't be the same.
That Beamdog tries to close the gap between the two games. I like the story overall. As everything else some is better than other, but I enjoyed the storyline a lot.
And you have the possibility to choose different paths depending on playing style.
Also you can ask your companies for advice in some quests. I like how you can include them instead of waiting for them to interrupt.
I wasn't pleased with the ending. Will not spoil it here, but to me it felt out of touch with the rest of the saga and definitely out of touch with the first character I took through SOD who was a goody goody pally.
The humorous parts match the other game and for a reason they will again try to kill the mouthy one. Well I am again packing steel and carrying a hamster.
So I am going to play this a lot. So many groups to try. And I have missed some quests that I need to figure out in time to come.
I'm writing a walkthrough while playing it... that means it's taking me 10 times longer to get through it. And you know what? I'm quite enjoying it.
I've played the IE RPGs since their inception, too.
The story was suitably epic. The ending was okay, though it felt a bit rushed to me. The new characters were delightful; playing with the returning characters made me feel like a kid again. Khalid and Skie were hidden gems. I enjoyed Safana. Honestly, I would have paid $20 just to hear David Warner as Jon Irenicus again. Gave me chills.
For me, my number one concern with any Baldur's Gate reboot or expansion is 'Is it nostalgic? Does playing this make me feel 12 years old, discovering Faerûn for the first time?' Siege of Dragonspear accomplished that in spades. There are things I would change, but on the whole I was very happy with it.
My biggest issues were bugs and a lack of fighter-types for evil parties. 8/10, well worth the money, maybe wait for a few patches.
Thanks for the game Beamdog. I really enjoyed it despite some shortcomings which have been mentioned elsewhere, particularly the journal and quest progression not being correctly triggered. I imagine this will be ironed out with patches. However as this thread is about positive experiences I will say no more on that here.
I really enjoyed the game overall. I particularly liked the level of effort that went into the NPC's. I think this is what stood out the most. David Warner is one of my favourite actors, I was obsessed with Tron as a kid and I think Warner was central to the original success of SoA. He is one of the all time great enemies in my life of gaming - up there with Sephiroth (FF7) Lan Di (Shenmue) and Kain (Soul Reaver) as my all time great villains. Amazed that Beamdog pulled it off in getting Warner on board for Dragonspear, very well done on that.
I also really liked Baeloth (who wouldn't given that Sorcerers are a tad OP.) I always play as a Conjurer, although I have also done play throughs in the originals series as a Swashbuckler from SoA onwards. I always liked having my protagonist as a Conjurer and then getting Edwin in a party of 6 as well. I will openly admit that Conjurers are a little OP with the only school they are unable to use being Divination, but I just love them to bits. But having recruited Baeloth I realized that Edwin wasn't necessary and really enjoyed his rather superfluous conversation contributions. The rest of the voice acting - also very well done.
I really hope that you continue to progress more tales from this fantasy world and bring us more games over the years. I say years as I appreciate that it must take a huge amount of time and effort to create games like Dragonspear. I think that the story of this protagonist is somewhat spent, we have had TotSC, SoA and ToB, with Dragonspear now filling in the only real gap. I think the next step is to create a game which will still be set in Faerun, but with the same engine and just tweaks/developments to things like spells and items so that its still BG but with enough new content to keep things rolling. I hope Beamdog are in a position to bring us this or something similar.
Thanks again.
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/51184/my-amateur-ish-review-of-siege-of-dragonspear-and-some-more#latest
... But if I have to go with TL;DR:
- New UI is beautiful
- Majority of enhancements are welcome
- There are more oportunities to roleplay (more dialogue options based on class/race and I think abillity scores)
- Main plot is linear, but interesting
- New characters are good
- The "controversy" isn't affecting anything important in gameplay
- No new spells and the Shaman class dissapointed me
- Really delivers on connecting BG1 and BG2 together
Given that, I'm not sure there's too much cause for hesitancy; the game is cheap and most people who have actually played it seem to generally like it. If you find that you don't, that's totally ok – I believe you can get a refund for both Steam and Beamdog purchases up to a certain amount of playtime.
If you are a long time fan of Baldur's Gate for the same reasons that I am, I think you'll be able to look past a few lines and the mostly patched bugs to find a game that recaptures a lot of the spirit of the originals. You get to talk to a fully voiced Minsc and Imoen again - who would have thought three years ago that we as fans would ever be able to do that? It's sad to see people potentially driven away from a game over so little... I really hope you try it and enjoy it.
I loved everything really.
I had a few minor bugs but nothing major. Once every few days the game would crash, but it takes 30 sec to restart.
It's linear-but-not-too-linear, which is fine for an expansion of that length. The new dungeons are beautiful and well designed. It was both fun and frustrating to try new areas and have no idea what to expect. Like playing the old games for the first time so long ago. When I first did the Dwarven dig site I expected a little cave like the dig site in BG so I went in without preparing. Then I see it's a large map. Then I see there's another floor. Then I see books about liches.
Having new banter with Minsc is probably the most enjoyable thing. Glint is an excellent new character.
I like that it has monsters from IWD and Planescape Torments. It adds variety and kind of ties this universe with other favorites. There's a bit of an unbalance as, near the end, the monsters and equipment feels way more epic than what you get at the beginning (or even in the middle) of BG2.
I liked the main antagonist and the story device to bridge BG to BG2.
I loved that combat was quite hard on "core rules" (to me), but loving Mass Effect-series as a rather poor shooter-gamer, I am really happy there was a "story mode." Well done on that, Beamdog.