Poll: Best/Favorite Minor City in BG2

LathandersVanguard

Best/Favorite Minor City in BG2

Balrog99

I chose Ust Natha for all the cool side quests and the story arc of having to pretend to be a Drow. Trademeet is a close second.

StummvonBordwehr

Trademeet.
Nice rural town with some nice shops - not like the other Dark places filled with psycho murder hobos.

DinoDin

Love these polls as forum content, btw!

Yeah, Ust Natha was just brilliantly conceived imo. I love that they tried to do a few things that pushed the game engine to its limits at the time, like trying to create a sense of verticality. IMO, one thing BG3 did well was expand upon this attempt, with a highly vertical underdark design.

Ust Natha keeps much of the noir theme that game had established in Athkatla, just very very well designed characters. If you try the typical path, there's a great constant sense of danger about every single NPC, it has an almost movie-like suspense quality to it.

I do think Brynnlaw (the island town outside of Spellhold) deserves an honorable mention here. Not much to do, but also does a fine job of keeping the same noir vibes going.

Amkethran was always a huge shame, the final town and it doesn't even include an interesting shopkeeper.

Aerakar

Trademeet is a really cool place in early and mid game. Good shops, some interesting quests start from there, some great weapons in and around the town, and you can eventually have your own statues.

Ust Natha is a close second for the reasons already articulated above.

Isewein

I picked Ust Natha for the story relevance, NPC interaction, branching content and great visual design.

I second Brynnlaw too. That place has got a great atmosphere which has waited neary two decades to be taken up again by PoE Deadfire.

I never quite got the point of Trademeet. Don't get me wrong, it's a charming little place with interesting content such as the gypsies, the feuding families, etc. But it just seems like nothing there warrants the inclusion of an entire new city. I always wonder whether they were originally going to tie it in more with the Sythilisian invasion the town criers keep talking about.

DinoDin

To me, Trademeet was almost a bit of a throwback to the design of BG1, it's like a better done Beregost in that regard. And even the quests associated with it involve some similar wilderness hiking that you did in BG1. Obviously has some clutch items for certain character builds as well. But I did always feel it was a bit out of place with the rest of the game's plot. That being said, it does hint at a larger world beyond where most of the main story takes place, so I do like that. But it has some downsides too, it has quite alot of filler-type NPCs, empty and uninteresting areas (again similar to BG1 in this way).

messy

Trademeet for the fun quests, great shops, and a statue of the protagonist. 😁

Ust Natha is second for the tension of exploring such a dangerous city in disguise.

Joan_Daro

Saradush because the barmaid casually checking her storage after a freaking fireball hits the building somehow got herself stuck in my mind.