What a problem with reviews of Siege of Dragonspear gog/steam?
frostysh
Member Posts: 55
Clicking on SoD, on gog.com, and the first review that I see... is distracting me.
Extremely disappointed
Patch 2.0/Dragonspear made Baldurs Gate EE a worse game for a number of reasons.
-random crashes
-mods aren't working properly any longer
-questionable graphic update (they managed to make a 16 year old game look WORSE than on release) I know, these are optional, but when i first started the game after the update i just couldn't believe it how ugly it looked. Funnily enough, the preview screenshots here and on steam don't show the ugly new sprites.
-questionable difficulty changes. Why the f*** does the game lower the difficulty after a few reloads by itself, without asking. I realized this awesome "feature" when i reached the so called "Story mode" which sets all stats to 25 and adds a ton of immunity. Basically Godmode. Obviously i thought it was a bug and tried to reload my game again. Well, i figured it out eventually. What a terrible feature.
-Voice acting The voice acting in the addon breaks the feel of the original game. I know, many people hate to read and prefer voiced dialogues. But Baldurs Gate has its own style and if suddenly whole dialogues are voiced it just feels out of place and you know immediately that it doesn't belongs to the game. It just feels wrong. They could have saved the money for the (mediocre actually) voice acting and spend it on fixing bugs.
-Multiplayer Its working barely at best.
So far this addon has been a huge disappointment. The worst thing is: Even if i refund it, the terrible patch 2.0 will stay. I guess i will let the EE games rest and play the original games with mods for a while. Maybe Beamdog gets their shit together and fixes the issues and i can enjoy playing EE. Hopefully this time it won't take them whole year.
PS (kinda unrelated on GoG): Steam Achievments are buggy as hell too. Some won't unlock. Others do unlock for the wrong quest... its a mess.
the third
An unnecessary add-on that no-one wanted
Siege of Dragonspear is beyond mediocre; it's plain bad.
Let me address the good elements of the game: they got back almost all of the original voice actors for the companions, including having a large part for David Warner, who voiced Irenicus. David Warner actually voices a player voice set. That's the sum of the good elements of this expansion.
This expansion what completely unnecessary. The expansion's level cap is one higher than BG:EE's and you lose all of your money and equipment as soon as you start BG2, so the only concievable reason you are playing this expansion is for the story. Unfortunately, the story is poorly written and delivered. It has little sense of scale, and feels as if it is trying to one-up Throne of Bhaal in order to be "epic". The story is mostly told in little "scenes" told on cut up maps from Baldur's Gate. Often you are given a map the size of a single screen, with nothing to explore and no possible way to miss the plot. The experience spoon feeds you the content because it doesn't trust you to consume it in the proper way, which is a message reinforced by its mechanics. I was playing through as a murderous blackguard and had a habit of answering insolence by making a mountain of skulls from the nearby. Except, often the game would just teleport in a guard-wizard who casts an impossibly high level spell and kills me instantly. I wasn't playing the game the way they wanted, so they decided to take it away until I did it the way they wanted. This is the spirit of Dragonspear. It is a rotten, little attempt to cash in on a legacy of more talented people than themselves.
One hears often about an attempt to hammer in a SJW agenda, but that's not why this game doesn't respect BG. If a minor npc who is transgendered offends you and you were around to play the original BG in its day, then its far time to grow up. Dragonspear is a travesty to the BG tradition because it doesn't respect the spirit of those games it steals from.
and the fifth review on the main page.
An abomination of an expansion
Some people say this game hasn't aged well, but I play a lot of retro games, so visuals usually aren't terribly important to me. But this "expansion" is an abomination. The UI is terrible. They tried to fix things that weren't broken and ended up making them worse. Multiplayer doesn't work, and on top of it all there is a good deal of ham-fisted social justice garbage thrown in, and you can't even have any kind of negative dialogue to respond to it. DO NOT BUY.
I am frustrated of that ridiculous reviews... what the peoples want, I do not know, well I can try to predict.
I have googled few time this social justice, and I have found "civil rights" and stuff - which is standard norm of the modern society, and obviously those guys who wrote that anti-civilrights-social-justice stuff is mostly alive, and in health condition because of existing this social norms and laws. So the very popular culture of now, is that peoples want to kill an innocents in the Video-games, to torture, to murder, become a tyrant of somekind.. Very predictable branch of the popular culture, indeed
Cmon guys, SoD is just want do you expect when think about RPG of that kind - you gathering your party, entering dungeon, and then a horrible-horrible skeleton attacking your party, and you releasing a fireball... You have a good picture (if this is even possible with the game engine that is looks like some ancient artifact... !), you have a good gameplay (this D&D adaptation in PC is OK!), you have OK! story (I don't liked stories in BG-series, so I hope in SOD it will be better.), you have a good sound, dialogues, a fine atmosphere, etc... What do you need else? Just relax and play, and obtain your narcotic pleasure if you are gamer. Old skool RPG the SOD is. Nothin else, and nothin more. Perhaps if the SoD may released before BG2, for an example, the guys start shouting that BG2 sux and SoD was a mega-classic, or something like that.
I think almost the all of those reviews is the result of the campaing of the "pop-culture-warriors" nothin more, and this is a far from reality what a SoD is really is. Perhaps I should make normal reviews on that resources, after I will play in SoD for some longer time.
P.S. I am hardcore PC-RPG player, that have lot of experience with BG series, and started gaming in SoD.
Please, avoid the spoilers in your answers, if you can.
Extremely disappointed
Patch 2.0/Dragonspear made Baldurs Gate EE a worse game for a number of reasons.
-random crashes
-mods aren't working properly any longer
-questionable graphic update (they managed to make a 16 year old game look WORSE than on release) I know, these are optional, but when i first started the game after the update i just couldn't believe it how ugly it looked. Funnily enough, the preview screenshots here and on steam don't show the ugly new sprites.
-questionable difficulty changes. Why the f*** does the game lower the difficulty after a few reloads by itself, without asking. I realized this awesome "feature" when i reached the so called "Story mode" which sets all stats to 25 and adds a ton of immunity. Basically Godmode. Obviously i thought it was a bug and tried to reload my game again. Well, i figured it out eventually. What a terrible feature.
-Voice acting The voice acting in the addon breaks the feel of the original game. I know, many people hate to read and prefer voiced dialogues. But Baldurs Gate has its own style and if suddenly whole dialogues are voiced it just feels out of place and you know immediately that it doesn't belongs to the game. It just feels wrong. They could have saved the money for the (mediocre actually) voice acting and spend it on fixing bugs.
-Multiplayer Its working barely at best.
So far this addon has been a huge disappointment. The worst thing is: Even if i refund it, the terrible patch 2.0 will stay. I guess i will let the EE games rest and play the original games with mods for a while. Maybe Beamdog gets their shit together and fixes the issues and i can enjoy playing EE. Hopefully this time it won't take them whole year.
PS (kinda unrelated on GoG): Steam Achievments are buggy as hell too. Some won't unlock. Others do unlock for the wrong quest... its a mess.
the third
An unnecessary add-on that no-one wanted
Siege of Dragonspear is beyond mediocre; it's plain bad.
Let me address the good elements of the game: they got back almost all of the original voice actors for the companions, including having a large part for David Warner, who voiced Irenicus. David Warner actually voices a player voice set. That's the sum of the good elements of this expansion.
This expansion what completely unnecessary. The expansion's level cap is one higher than BG:EE's and you lose all of your money and equipment as soon as you start BG2, so the only concievable reason you are playing this expansion is for the story. Unfortunately, the story is poorly written and delivered. It has little sense of scale, and feels as if it is trying to one-up Throne of Bhaal in order to be "epic". The story is mostly told in little "scenes" told on cut up maps from Baldur's Gate. Often you are given a map the size of a single screen, with nothing to explore and no possible way to miss the plot. The experience spoon feeds you the content because it doesn't trust you to consume it in the proper way, which is a message reinforced by its mechanics. I was playing through as a murderous blackguard and had a habit of answering insolence by making a mountain of skulls from the nearby. Except, often the game would just teleport in a guard-wizard who casts an impossibly high level spell and kills me instantly. I wasn't playing the game the way they wanted, so they decided to take it away until I did it the way they wanted. This is the spirit of Dragonspear. It is a rotten, little attempt to cash in on a legacy of more talented people than themselves.
One hears often about an attempt to hammer in a SJW agenda, but that's not why this game doesn't respect BG. If a minor npc who is transgendered offends you and you were around to play the original BG in its day, then its far time to grow up. Dragonspear is a travesty to the BG tradition because it doesn't respect the spirit of those games it steals from.
and the fifth review on the main page.
An abomination of an expansion
Some people say this game hasn't aged well, but I play a lot of retro games, so visuals usually aren't terribly important to me. But this "expansion" is an abomination. The UI is terrible. They tried to fix things that weren't broken and ended up making them worse. Multiplayer doesn't work, and on top of it all there is a good deal of ham-fisted social justice garbage thrown in, and you can't even have any kind of negative dialogue to respond to it. DO NOT BUY.
I am frustrated of that ridiculous reviews... what the peoples want, I do not know, well I can try to predict.
I have googled few time this social justice, and I have found "civil rights" and stuff - which is standard norm of the modern society, and obviously those guys who wrote that anti-civilrights-social-justice stuff is mostly alive, and in health condition because of existing this social norms and laws. So the very popular culture of now, is that peoples want to kill an innocents in the Video-games, to torture, to murder, become a tyrant of somekind.. Very predictable branch of the popular culture, indeed
Cmon guys, SoD is just want do you expect when think about RPG of that kind - you gathering your party, entering dungeon, and then a horrible-horrible skeleton attacking your party, and you releasing a fireball... You have a good picture (if this is even possible with the game engine that is looks like some ancient artifact... !), you have a good gameplay (this D&D adaptation in PC is OK!), you have OK! story (I don't liked stories in BG-series, so I hope in SOD it will be better.), you have a good sound, dialogues, a fine atmosphere, etc... What do you need else? Just relax and play, and obtain your narcotic pleasure if you are gamer. Old skool RPG the SOD is. Nothin else, and nothin more. Perhaps if the SoD may released before BG2, for an example, the guys start shouting that BG2 sux and SoD was a mega-classic, or something like that.
I think almost the all of those reviews is the result of the campaing of the "pop-culture-warriors" nothin more, and this is a far from reality what a SoD is really is. Perhaps I should make normal reviews on that resources, after I will play in SoD for some longer time.
P.S. I am hardcore PC-RPG player, that have lot of experience with BG series, and started gaming in SoD.
Please, avoid the spoilers in your answers, if you can.
2
Comments
Back to the reviews, the first one overal feels strange, because author is well aware that he can turn of the features he/she complains about and have the experience closest to the classic Baldur's Gate as possible. Therefore, I don't think that majority of his complains are valid. There were crashes before they were patched up, I am aware of that, but they are not here anymore. And this is the first time I've heard about decreasing difficulty feature as you play. There were battles I had to repeat multiple times and I don't recall anything like that happening. What that person writes is probably dishonest.
The second review is distracting for other reason. I had an impression that the person who wrote it didn't progress much from the city of Baldur's Gate. The only valid complain I see there is that the whole city of Baldur's Gate (your starting point) is in those few small almost 1 screen-sized areas. But the rest of the expansion doesn't have this problem. I also disagree about SoD disrespecting Baldur's Gate as a franchise in general. It's just made by another team of people, because ufnortunately, these were only people who were interested in doing something for the series in years. This is a fact.
I think if one really wants to see how source material can be disrespected, look at Fallout 3 and 4. Bathesda's "writing" doesn't respect earlier established lore at all, yet plenty of people are satisfied with it. You can't say Fallout 3 and 4 are bad games, because fanobys will boycot you. Oh, irony.
The thrid review is just made up by someone who's potential intelligence quotient appear to me as be;low avarage. Or just someone who's nostalgia brings the worst in his conclusions. UI is changed, yes, but it doesn't take much to get used to it, and I believe that not mentioning how beautiful is is graphically wise is dishonest. One an say that the UI is less functional than it used to be, and there are valid reasons for that argumentation. But disregarding the work put in this is wrong. Also, about SJW thing. This is another person who is utterly bothered by a OPTIONAL interraction that lasts like 1-2 minutes in a expansion that took me like 10-12 hours to beat for the first time. Meanwhile, girlde of sex change and Edwin's subplot in BG2 is utterly OK! How stupid is that.
What I can say about Siege of Dragonspear is that majority of reviews are uterrly useless and therefore it is hard to decide whether the game is worth your time or not. Unfortunately, the best way for person to see whether it is worth to play or not is playing it and making your own conclusions. This is unfortunately something that SJWs and their opposition are unable of doing.
The game is far less a bridge between BG and BGII and much more of a rail road revolving around some brand new antagonist with neither the staying power nor charisma of either Irenicus or Sarevok. The loot is pretty abysmal for a game where you know you're losing everything at the end of it. The ending is a half hour epilogue where the player's choices don't feel like they matter.
There is just so much wrong with SoD that everything they got right seems dimmer in comparison.
I have realized a few things, after I have take my efforts to use a help of a mighty GOOGLE.:
1) Most of reviews is not a random - this is a well directed campaign against SoD that has been made by some mc-ideologically-well-directed guys
2) Most of random reviews is almost totally useless too.
3) About the source of the problem: the mob-effect play it's dark role... somebody saying something (creating the enemy), and the mob following, this is the simplest way to "unite" a mob
4) About transgender char that I have read into Wikipedia - In BG2:EE I witnessed the cloth made from the human NPC-skin and body parts, and nobody saying that it is unnatural, or it is "too much", and many other moments...
But in the world of magic, of transformations, where char can totally change it's genetic structure and become an animals for an example (only the mind is left), the transgender npc is unnatural
5) The solution, frostysh edition: Next time when the BEAMDOG will build a new project or something, just give to the pnp-mob just what they want, but with some little satirical inclusions ^_^. This will help to avoid the "angry-mob" predictable reaction, internal and external including
6) The situation is truly different from the situation with Fallout 3 or 4, in this case, you can just compare reviews on STEAM and GOG.
P.S. Don't worry about another "SJW" discussion - I guess so, counting my experience from the other forums, pnp-guys usually avoiding to start discussion with me, they PM each other, with a warning that I am a troll, and a discussion with me will take a bad effect on their "mind purity". Nevermind...
Bad reviews: "The developers are disrespecting the source material, you can only play as they wish you to!"
As you can see, there is utterly different feel to the two statements, even if they both are about the same thing (the campaing/main story being linear).
I think that good review should mention the fact that the game is linear and the author of said review should state how he feels about it an why. One might say that this linear plot is bad, because for him Baldur's Gate was always about exploration. Other person can say that while plot is linear, it makes sense because your character is following a military campaing, and therefore visiting Waterdeep for a cup of tea is rather bad idea and wouldn't fit overall plot.
For myself, I appreciate the possibility of exploration, as long as the areas you explore are interesting (BG2 does good job at that). However, after being throught hundreds of hours playing BG1 alone, I see those many wilderness areas as chores rather than having feeling of exploration. One, there is not enough interesting events or encounters there (and in fact, most of mini quests you see in them are quite linear themselves. Woah, hipocrisy!) and second, any feeling of exploration is gone the moment I've seen and explored those areas multiple times already. My enjoyment in Baldur's Gate lies elsewhere than exploration. In role-playing, actually.
I think that it is okay for you to dislike Siege of Dragonspear and I won't judge you for that. However, regardless of your opinions facts are facts. SoD is a bridge between Baldur's Gate 1 and 2. Its own story aside, it explains how you are leaving Baldur's Gate in dark circumstances, why you are ending up traveling with people you end up in Irenicus' dungeon (regardless of your alingment) and resolves (or at tleast makes strong attempt to) the community conflict about "canon party".
On a side note, I disagree about two things you mentioned. First of all, I think items are interesting and worth using, since many of them have properities that I never seen in any Baldur's Gate game before. Such as raising caster's level, raising priest's turn undead level or items that works better with certain classes/kits that can still be equipped by everyody, but with the lesser benefit, which doesn't make them wasted.
About characters, I found Caelar interesting and charismatic, but I will admit that there are flaws in the writing and that her character got weaker later on. Her obviously evil counselor is another topic entirely. Same for actual final boss.
@O_Bruce, I think you really hit the nail on the head.
It's funny how people get pissy about being forced to play a certain role, in roleplaying games. Hell, Planescape: Torment (while it's writing is superior, imho) forces you to be cast in a preset role with very little choice in what you, beyond "Do I do this quest first or that one? Do I bring along Annah or Dak'kon?" It's considered a masterpiece of a roleplay game, because the story and the role the player acts out are so well done. The choices there matter, but there really are way less choices than a game like Baldur's Gate 1 or 2. Why? Because those are sandbox campaigns. SoD is NOT a sandbox campaign, and that's 100% ok.
The first one give semi-fair but dated criticism of the game.
The Story mode bug was annoying but was fixed after he review was written and some didnt like the look of the new sprites. Both of those are fair points.
He voice acting of some minor characters (and usually the first ones you talk to) are very sub par. Add it with Corwin's monotone (but in character) delivery doesnt make a good first impression on the VO.
The point about mods isnt however, as modded generally need to update thier work to reflect any update. I believe the reviewer knew this bit added it anyway.
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The second one is misleading as you dont lose all your equipment, in fact with clever inventory management you can keep it all.
However, exploration was a big part of the BG series and that was taken away with the smallr maps. Quests on those maps had mulitple paths to completion however, but a first glance it can seem underwhealming.
I do despise when someone mentions subpar writing, yet doesnt provide examples.
His point about "being able to play hos way" is also against the spirit of BG as both one and two do the exact same thing if you attack innocents, and both have "play this way or else elements with Belt and he shadow thieves.
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The last review is a good example of the typical review posted about SoD and should be ignored (much like anything like it). Vaguely written and only highlighting SJW or Gamergate.
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If you are looking for better reviews, it is better to read the most recent ones as they were probably written after the patch. Do a word search for SJW on it and if the phrase appears more than once, skip it.
SoD is far from perfect, but it os still worth playing IMO jist let the haters hate and miss out on the experience. It is their loss only.
Caelar and the crusade are cliched and hackneyed, constantly telling you to give yourself up and join, but any attempts to do so result in them saying "never mind" or "kill 'em!" It gets particularly ridiculous when you show up at the crusader camp outside dragonspear, you bluff your way in, and then there is a quest that amounts to you approaching a commander, offering to solve the issue of one soldier accusing another, and he just accepts whatever you tell him. Or the fact that you are recognized by mooks on sight who panic and blow a bridge, but later some other mooks let you freely wander the camp running errands. Twice.
And then there's the matter of the epilogue, which amounts to the player standing trial for a murder they were sort of forced to commit but not really, but it doesn't matter because you escape anyway so you can run out and get captured by shadowy attackers to lead in to Baldur's Gate II. The whole thing is a mess that would make more sense if you return after the siege and, given all the spooky stuff you directly caused along the way, the dukes exile/ask you to leave so you don't accidentally open another portal to hell or inscribe Bhaal's brand in to the pavement or anything else. Instead, we got a useless subplot about Skie and a rigged trial.
Bonus points would apply if they actually referenced that Baldur's Gate should have been in a pretty good position militarily once the Iron Throne's stash of weapons was discovered, and that you are leading a huge war effort just like Sarevok was planning to do himself. Even MORE bonus points if you can evilly revel in the slaughter, effectively stealing Sarevok's plan just like one of the responses available during the final battle in the undercity. Unfortunately we got none of that.
Nope. The reviewer was/is right.
Steam and GOG versions of the game broke mods not because of the need of the mods to be updated, but because the GOG and Steam versions of the game are different builds of the game with the DLC packed inside of a ZIP file (that's why the "modmerger" tool is needed). The build that you can access if you download the game directly trough beamdog doesn't have this flaw.
Beamdog told several times that they had to do this because GOG and Steam (yup, they said steam instead of valve) DEMANDED the DLC to be packed in a zip. That is utter BS of course.
Steam is a distributor, not a publisher, and certainly not a developer (that would be valve).
Steam can refuse to sell a game based on it's content (but they don't, just look at many of the games that go trough greenlight.
Steam under NO circumstances will tell developers how to code or pack their files; that would make them responsible for any possible bugs or problems that customers may face. try to make a bug report to steam customer service and tell me how it goes
I have 1050+ games on steam and 175 on GOG. The ONLY game that haves it's DLC packed inside of a zip is BG:EE.
I have the witcher 3 on gog. The witcher 3 is made by CDProjekt Red, the company that owns GOG. Their DLC doesn't come packed on ZIP. But let's not go so far
Let's look at another example: Skyrim. Skirym has it's expansion packed yes... BUT NOT AS ZIPS. They have them packed as BSA and BSM files. If beamdog had to pack them as ZIP because steam told them to, why doesn't skyrim (a game that also packs their expansions) pack them as zips?
Just thinking a little proves that steam won't tell devs how to pack files or code their games.
But you want hard facts I guess:
Look here: https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/comment/748523#Comment_748523
This discussion already happened. I may agree with subtledoctor that thinking this was intentional would be nuts if it wasn't for this:
https://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/bg_siege_of_dragonspear_modability
Please look at jaketward's comment. He decided to buy it twice because of this.
Now let's look at steam:
https://partner.steamgames.com/documentation/welcome
https://partner.steamgames.com/?goto=/home
Note 2 things:
NOWHERE is any word of you having to pack a game or DLC, not in zip or any form. As I already argumented: That would be nuts and make steam support have to answer bug reports.
Also note how steam api is clearly optional
Just think about all this. It's very strange... I don't know why beamdog has 3 builds of the game (the gog version has a different file directory structure (or at least had)), but at least it is clear that nor steam nor GOG demanded the DLC to be zipped or even packed.
No need to point out the ''PC-RPG Gamer'' part , coz there are no other than PC RPGs.
Thanx for advises, both you and @O_Bruce is helpful in some way. Voices - cmon! Voices of Officer of FFForces - guys, this is ridiculous! - as for myself I have no single care about her voice, and in addition it's looks OK! This is PC RPG, and if the voice is there (not just a text
Exploration - I have explored almost 99% of BG1:EE map, the all Wilderness etc, and I have explored first location of SoD by ~week of real time, of course I have not spent to many hours of playing per day, but still that was enjoyable. I playing on max possible difficulty, so the any next corner and room that filled with deadly enemies usually means a long preparations and tough battle. In this way, slowly, corner by corner, quest by quest I have explored first dungeon, and it was much more better than start location of BG2 (well this is a very subjective, coz' I don't like all of those tortures etc.. and in addition developers of BG2 has been made horrific changes in companions
Now my avatar on Baldur's Gate City stage, and I see nothing critical, bad, or something like that there. Quests as usually have many paths to comlete it, and all stuff with humor, and the streets even more "alive" than in previous series that I have played, normal enjoyable PC RPG, at least for now - what can I say for more.
Heehehee!
Like all our great modders here, ppl can pick and choose to go through SoD or not.
I played through it using the EET mod, meaning that 1, SoD and 2 were all one big game that flowed into each other.
SoD is literally ToB for BG1. The voice acting for returning characters was like they never left, and their lines never felt "off" to me. No, the big thing that made me feel that SoD didn't fit, that it wasn't part of the series, was how darn polished it was. The backgrounds are gorgeous, especially coming off of BG1. The score is epic and sweeping, more so than the rest of the series. The encounters are built around the new engine being able to have massive armies, which is something neither 1 or 2 do.
Even if I thought the writing was bad, which I don't, or had some vendetta against Beamdog, the actual gameplay of the expansion is fun and refreshing and distinct enough from the rest of the series to make me want to keep playing it whenever I go through the EEs.
Kind of ironic, really, because Baldur's Gate never really was much of a "gamer" thing--BG2's two most notable audiences at the time of release were old-school D&D nerds and...young women who felt alienated by male-centric hyperviolent action games. How the wheel turns!
That said, on my second playthrough, I do find the writing and especially the voice acting a bit awkward at times--it's too enthusiastic and over-earnest and wants to take itself super-seriously while also being silly and jokey. I think the expansion could be improved by cutting much of the voice acting and letting you read Glint's lines in silence instead of hearing his grating, squeaky voice.
Also Hephernaan and his whole evil plan damages what could have been an otherwise incredible antagonist in Caelar Argent. It could have been a tragedy about well-meaning people coming to violence over irreconcilably opposed goals and values, but instead--surprise! It was actually about a Bad Guy doing Bad Things all along! He doesn't need to be there. Behlifet doesn't need to be there (he was a cool boss fight though). The entire thing should have been Caelar's story and flowed out of her character.
I still like it, but without the initial wow factor of a whole brand spanking new Infinity Engine campaign and Beamdog showing what the Enhanced Editions can really do, it just feels like an almost sort of thing. It's almost great. It's almost a true middle chapter of Baldur's Gate. It does give me high hopes for future Beamdog products though--with an original production with a more big-picture outlook instead of the hyper-enthusiastic, laser-focus love of what is basically a really expensive, masterfully crafted fan work (not to mention the inherent impossibility of recreating a cultural zeitgeist from 16 years ago), they could accomplish great things.
People who say it's a betrayal or defilement or some horrible thing are just full of it though. It's good. Everyone who plays Baldur's Gate should play it.
This was one of my few issues. Caelar is a fantastic character and entirely unlike the other major antagonists in the series, but it feels like Beamdog wasn't confident in her, so at the last minute they fell back on cameos and generic evil villains. It's a shame.
At least the writing can't get worse and if it's there own stand alone game and not an EE things would be far more acceptable for most.