If you want to play an absolutely epic RPG...
The first question that comest to mind, is how does one improve on an already outstanding and probably classic RPG called Baldur's Gate (including the Tales of the Sword Coast expansion)?
The answer: produce Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn.
When I first played Baldur's Gate way back in 1998 (when it was first released), it ultimately became the game that got me hooked on the RPG genre, and possibly one of the best RPG releases up to that time, as well as a game that restored some credibility to a genre that was fast losing it's lustre.
After completing both Baldur's Gate and the Baldur's Gate: Tales of the Sword Coast expansion, I was rather tentative to invest in the second installment, because I simply couldn't see how the guys at Bioware could improve on the first installment, given the technological limitations five years ago.
I certainly wasn't disappointed!
The storyline in Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn picks up where you left off in Baldur's Gate, after killing Sarevok and having "explored" around the Swordcoast for a while, before some new evil became part of your life.
It begins with your main character as a prisoner in a dungeon belonging to a new evil guy called Irenicus - a guy that ultimately makes Sarevok look like an amateur.
Some of your original party members are automatically "written out of the script" at this point and it's up to you to build a new party, powerful enough to defeat your new enemies.
The storyline does however continue with the same, core thread, from Baldur's Gate, namely that you are a spawn of Bhaal and the entire storyline, including the main characters Irenicus and one or two others, are ultimately the consequence of that "condition".
The good news is that the character you developed throughout Baldur's Gate and the Tales of the Swordcoast expansion can be seamlessly imported and you therefore don't need to start developing your main character all over again. Some of the familiar party members you may have had in Baldur's Gate (including Tales of the Sword Coast) will also be there right from the start, and will also carry all their XP points with them from the previous games, with one or two subtle changes to their character classes.
On the subject of building a party powerful enough to defeat your enemies in Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn, the good news is that the XP limit on characters has now been lifted to 3,000,000 which equates to around Level 17 if you are playing as a Paladin for example. While this sounds rather high in D&D terms, you will certainly need every last one of these XP's towards the last chapters in the game to get anywhere.
Bioware has done an excellent job of adding a host of new powers, features and spells that will get you through the quests, albeit that most of them won't come easy if you leave the game difficulty settings on core D&D rules (the default setting). If there is any complaint that I could raise here, is that the huge number of new spells and their abilities, as well as the number of weapons and special items available during the game can almost become somewhat overwhelming. Perhaps that's not a bad thing either, since you really need to figure out what will work best in each encounter.
As far as the storyline is concerned, it's almost never-ending and absolutely epic in scale and length. This is especially so if you are one of those RPG players like me, who absolutely has to finish every known quest in the game before moving on. Some players may even complain that the main storyline is actually too long. Personally I don't know how a good story can be too long.
Suffice to say, the gameplay is very similar to Baldur's Gate and it's expansion from a technical point of view, but the story is absolutely epic in length and you can expect several 10's of hours just to complete the main quest, not to mention the literally hundreds of side-quests.
Some of the battles and encounters are rather challenging, but given the levels that you can take you characters up to, the game remains balanced with one or two subtle changes to the underlying D&D rules.
My Gameplay score for this one is 9/10.
Graphics:
In this department, Bioware obviously decided not to change too much from previous installments using the same underlying game engine. Some improvements were made in terms of available screen resolutions and the overall game just looks better than either of it's predecessors, with vastly improved spell effects and other little improvements.
By today's standards however, the graphics are really out-dated with 2D backdrops and little character sprites moving about.
From my own perspective however, this has never really mattered, since a good story and excellent gameplay in any RPG title have always been more important as far as I am concerned. Too many new RPG titles rely far too much on fancy effects in the eye-candy department to hide a poor underlying storyline and ultimately a poor playing experience.
After all, the game doesn't look bad either.
My Graphics score is 7/10.
Audio:
Audio has been significantly improved from the previous two installments, with a lot more spoken dialog for NPCs and pretty good voice acting all round.
Music is also good as one would expect and serves well to set the mood and abiance from scene to scene.
My Audio score is 8/10.
Value:
Given the sheer length of the main storyline, not counting the vast number of side-quests, this game will keep any RPG lover busy for many hours and possibly lead to sleep deprivation along the way somewhere.
My Value score is 10/10.
Who Should Get It:
Absolutely anyone who enjoys a good RPG with a good story and excellent gameplay dynamics, given of course that you also enjoy the underlying application of D&D rules.
Who Shouldn't Bother:
Anyone who doesn't like the RPG genre or doesn't like the underlying application of D&D rules as in previous Bioware titles, or those players who are more inclined to enjoy shooting and kicking stuff from a first-person perspective.