One of the best games of all time. And that's saying a lot!
Baldur's gate 2 is very simply put a masterpeice. Every detail and option is perfectly planted within a massive easy to navigate world filled with quests and charactors you will accually want to come into contact with. The attention to detail plot wise and charactor wise is top notch and the world does a great job of unfolding itself as something you want to explore as you progress through the game.
So basically starting off Baldur's gate 2 picks up right where Baldur's gate left off with a few advancments to the story. You you that you are a bastard child of the lord of murder baal. This was hidden from you by your foster father
growing up and he was eventually murdered trying to protect you from a killer who was after your blood for unkown reasons.
You and a young girl named Imoen (a thief/mage) escape from the battle and with no where left to go begin a journy to find out who you are and who killed your foster father.
The game pretty much has an interesting plot from that point on but I'll not spoil it. Eventually you do meet and slay your fathers killer after uncovering a plot that would have thrown the entire sword coast (the world your exploring) into war.
You leave the city when people begin to whisper about your heritage fearing a mob. You end up captured by a shadowy group that you have no clue who they are and end up in a dungeon being tortured by a mage.
Thus begins baldur's gate 2. :)
The game is set with the AD&D ruleset and the controls are very simple. Point and click. You can pause a game during a battle and issue commands to all your charactors or let the Ai run a bit wild and assign other npcs scripts to follow in terms of prioritys in battle. Ultimatly what this sums up to is a system that lets you have as much or as little control as you like and proves to be refreshly deep but simple.
The soundtracks as well do a great job of rushing up the combat feeling when in a tough fight and feels right for the diffrent enviroments you will encounter. Everywhere from forests to big citys to old ruins. Even the romance music is done well here which is something rarely seen in gaming today. :)
The game while stunning when all is said and done is likely to take about 20 hours to complete the first playthrough if you stick to just the story and the occational random travel encounter.
However the nice thing is the game can play VERY very diffrently on multiple playthrhoughs as you can change your allignment and class and there are always mutiple ways to complete a quest not all of them "good" being an evil charactor is not only very possible but there are some stiuations where it's much easier to be evil then good and vise versa. The multiple ways to handle a situation on any one playthrough can be vast indeed especially when you have quests mix with each other to alter the others outcome.
The only bad part about the game if you can call it that is the graphics. Make no mistake they have aged very nicely and don't really feel as old as they should but by this point they are a bit out of date and while you will notice it it's vastly overshadowed by the great gameplay and world at hand.
All in all Baldur's gate 2 with it's very cheap system requirements and tons of replay value in such an interesting and diverse world should not be missed by anyone who is a fan of hack and slash or RPG games.
This game is just in a league of it's own.