My first impressions (and my second impressions)

Adul

I've finished SoD for the first time just two days ago, and my playthrough gave me a lot to think about. I've played and loved the Baldur's Gate series since the original game's release, but up until I started playing SoD, I've never really put much thought into what the games' overall themes were.

I first played Dragonspear back in early April just after its release. I played it with two different parties, but neither has gotten past the starting stages of chapter 3. I think part of the reason why I didn't put much effort into finishing these playthroughs was that my initial experience with the game jarred with my prior expectations.

For me, Baldur's Gate represents many things, but two of the ones that typically come to mind when I think of BG are adventure and mystery. And I think the first two chapters of SoD, the ones I've originally played, gave me a false first impression of what the whole game is like. It seemed like adventure was gone, and it had been taken over by war and misery. I realize why these chapters are necessary from a storytelling standpoint, and they're certainly delivered competently, but they're not a good indication of what the player should expect from SoD going forward.

While the war theme is, of course, heavily present throughout the entire SoD story, luckily in the later chapters adventure returns and restores that happy equilibrium of tones that I think any successful Baldur's Gate game needs to aim for. While my first impression gave me reasons to worry, I'm now happy to say that I think SoD gets stronger as it goes along.

The game has also turned out to be a lot longer than I had thought, which, given my satisfaction with the middle to end parts of the game, is a good thing as far as I'm concerned. The third time around I played a solo character in order to be able to get through the game more quickly and actually finish it that time, and now that I'm done, I can't wait to return with another character to give some of those companions a try.

Overall I think Beamdog did a great job with SoD, and even though I was a bit discouraged at fist, after giving it a fair shake I think it might even be my favorite one of the Baldur's Gate expansions. I think it's more substantive than Tales of the Sword Coast (and not just from a play time perspective), and it gets closer to the essence of "the Baldur's Gate experience" than Throne of Bhaal ever managed to. (Though Watcher's Keep is still a kickass dungeon, for sure.)

So, to cut this rambling mess of a post short, I'm grateful to everyone who worked on this game. You all did a great job, and I'm really glad I've finally played it. It's now officially part of my BG head-canon, and I'm certain I'll return to play it many times in the coming years.

Adul

And here's a mini-review-type-of-thing that I wrote for another forum:

TL;DR version: the game is good, I haven't run into many bugs, there was no overbearing political agenda as far as I could tell.

Now, the details. The reason it took me this long to actually sit down and play SoD through, even though I had highly anticipated it before its release, is that my first impressions weren't exactly great. Starting off, the game felt too restrictive and like it was missing the tone of the originals. In particular, there was a certain lack of a sense of adventure that bothered me. Instead, the focus of the story seemed to be war.

Luckily, a couple hours in, the game remedies this by introducing a fairly developed exploration element. After this, while the war theme is still present (as suggested by the game's title), the tone is much closer to what I'd expect from a Baldur's Gate game. I'm happy to say, the game gets stronger as it goes along. And it's not a short game, so it has plenty of time and opportunities to blossom into a great experience, which it does on many occasions.

The story is closely tied to the game's antagonist, the Shining Lady, and it's very focused. As I said, there is exploration in the game as well as a good number of side quests, but most of it is at least somewhat tangential to the main story, so it doesn't feel extraneous. Overall, it's a well told tragedy with some mystery to keep the player interested.

I haven't yet had the chance to try many of the companions, but the fact that they've managed to hire most of the original voice talent is frankly amazing. Some of the actors do a better job at imitating their 18 year old voice work than others, but there's even a couple that I thought were doing a richer and more impactful portrayal of their characters than they originally had. One particular reoccurring character had chills running down my spine, which is a credit to both the voice actor and the game's writers.

Irenicus is back, and he's incredible in SoD!

Some people didn't like the ending, which I'm not going to spoil. I thought they did as good a job as can be expected, considering the story is forced into a very specific outcome, namely the one at the beginning of BG2. Still, SoD suffers from a mild case of The Return of the King syndrome, where it doesn't end at the natural satisfying ending point, and instead chugs along to arrive at a less satisfying one. But as I said, there was not much they could do there, and I'm actually glad there was a satisfying closure point in there at all.

I haven't run into any bugs in single player, although I know bugs were one of the main criticisms of the game at release. Maybe they were addressed in the three patches since then, or maybe I got lucky, I don't know. I've played a little bit in multiplayer and I have run into a few issues there, though none were game-breaking.

All in all I really liked SoD, and I think it's my new favorite of the three Baldur's Gate expansions that are currently out there. It's a lot more substantial than Tales of the Sword Coast, and better than Throne of Bhaal in many ways. If there's one thing that I wish SoD had, it's a Durlag's Tower/Watcher's Keep style dungeon for high-level parties to tackle that each of the other two expansions had, but I do understand that they wanted to make this expansion more story-focused, so sacrifices had to be made.

There's still some dungeons in there, so it's all good.