The closest thing to perfection you will ever see... and it isn't even that flashy.
User Rating: 10 | Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn PC
This is THE RPG. Its story is darkly engadging. Its story is amazing. You could really go on forever about how special the game's story is without even going into the gameplay or anything else. Without the benefit of any of the fancy new-fangled graphics which allow a charactor's appearance to change based on their alignment, you still feel like you are your charactor. The Infinity engine could not be more perfect for this game, as it allows a player to have 5 charactors with them at any time; all of these charactors are garanteed to be intresting and entertaining, and their interconectedness is simply awsome. This is the game from which all other RPG creators have tried to learn. How good is the plot and charactor developement in this game? So good that one is entirely happy to ignore the fact that the graphics are, while really quite cool with things like the underdark and dragons and demons, really nothing special. Why, I gave the graphics a 10 despite the fact that by 2006 standards they dont deserve one, but you know what? The rest of the game is so great that it can lend points to graphics. This game does not represent a video game revolution; it represents the beggining of a gaming evolution: this RPG altered the RPG kingdom so much that fans now expect the feel like they are their charactor in every way; they expect to have *at least* two possible endings to their RPGs. We can thank BG for KOTR and Morrowind to name a couple of widely loved games which learned the lesson of plot and personality from Bioware. Baldur's gate is pretty much the equivalent of the opposable thumb; anything that doesn't incorperate some of its features will likely go extinct.
