Trigger warning: offensive hot take to follow.
Ok, I'm done. I'm calling it. ToB is an expansion pack anyway. It's optional by its very nature. I finished the BG saga as far as I'm concerned. ToB is just too terrible to go on. From the Orcs with the human soundsets to the tragically underdeveloped story, it's just plain bad. I consider this to be done. I can't imagine the last sliver of expansion pack is going to redeem it. I can finally shelf it, wait for a steam summer sale for Subnautica Below Zero, and move on with my life.
As such, I can give my final official verdict on this game. This is likely a good place for it. A quiet corner of the web, at the end of an Actual Play that probably only two people are reading. My final assessment of Baldur's Gate, after all these years is...
0/5!!!
OMG, did I just do that!? The golden child of cRPGs and I'm giving it a zero rating. I think the only other games I've played that I would give a zero rating is Postal and Final Fantasy X-2. BUT, I can rationalize this. I really can.
TLDR: Baldur's Gate is like going to a restaurant that serves Rocky Mountain Oysters and ordering them for dinner. You're not getting them because you actually like them, you're getting them for the challenge of testing your gastrointestinal fortitude.
1) Rules Adaptation. Easily the worst D&D rules adaptation I've ever seen. Here's the thing, the rules adaptation wasn't good for Planescape Torment either, but it worked for the game they made. Baldur's Gate was just rubbish. This was like a D&D game that was houseruled by the most powergamey middleschoolers that ever played the game. And then the houserules got houserules when they realized the original houserules broke the game. But, then they added more houserules because they needed to up the cool factor to make up for the nerf. It definitely jumped the shark by the time HLAs come into the picture and probably even jumped the shark by the second game itself. There was no elegence, no finesse here.
2) Adventure design. The second game was revoltingly Monty Haul to beyond epic proportions and the first game was not much better. Not even in middle school D&D was I swimming in so much ultimately worthless loot. You kinda need a loot filter like in Path of Exile just so you can sift through it all. I will say, Durlag's Tower is a good dungeon (and had a solid story to go with it), but that's about it. Firewine Ruins was god awful and really all the dungeons in the second game were forgettable (except for how they recycled the beholders' lair map in two different places, but that wasn't the good kind of memorable). Some maps had the repetition of Icewind Dale, just without the charm. Nothing (except Durlag's) felt organic or had good flow.
3) The writing/story. I could possibly forgive the rest if it wasn't for this. I'm an orphan that discovers my father is some superpowerful being. Didn't see that coming.
Ok, fine, every story doesn't have to be Final Fantasy IX (yes, IX is the best of the Final Fantasys
). I can work with trite as long as its spruced up with something refreshing. But instead, it was just felt winged with a bunch of half-assed retcons. Ok, you're 19 in Candlekeep, quite young for a Dwarf or Gnome, but sure. Bhaal walked the land as a mortal during the Time of Troubles and, having forseen his death, created the Bhaalspawn. Ok. But, that was in 1358, which would make Gorion's Ward already 10 at the time. No wait, he actually walked the land as a mortal before that, too, to create the Bhaalspawn. Riiiiight, but he only foresaw his death in the Time of Troubles. What was happening 10 years before? Spring break? And, what about the 100+ year old dragon Bhaalspawn? How many times did Bhaal pop into Faerun? Maybe he should add deadbead dads to his portfolio. Oh, and Sarevok? So, the Harpers bust up a culty temple, grab a couple kids, and then leave the rest to rot? Sure, that makes sense. If a Bhaalspawn dies, then that's that, yet Imoen has a dialogue with Sarevok about a time she died, but she could come back and is also still a Bhaalspawn. This slipshod writing permeated everything. What about the romances? Khalid and Jaheira have "long been" Gorion's friends, yet are about the same age as Gorion's Ward. Let's let that go. You've barely finished the cutscene of Khalid's death and love talks are already brewing with Jaheira. So you go from Khalid and Jaheira being new mom and dad to dad getting whacked and mom feeling saucy. The other romances aren't any better. And, I could keep going on the writing. But, it would be easier to say that I can't think of a single bit of story where, having experienced it, I thought it was actually decent.
No, I'm sorry, I have to go on. The premise and beats were not good, but then they couldn't even lob it over the plate with a good arc. The first game establishes the poorly thought out Bhaalspawn saga, and then the second game makes the entire Bhaalspawn saga an incidental variable in a totally different storyline, followed by an expansion with an absurdly rushed exposition to cinch it up like they know they're about to get cancelled by Netflix (also, fuck you Netflix for cancelling The Brothers Sun). What the hell were they thinking? They did okay enough, I suppose, with the first game, but the entire story of the second game should have been a side quest at best. And, the plot from the expansion should have been developed into the actual second game. All in all, none of it felt thought out, none of it was satisfying. It was a bunch of stoned D&Ders just riffing, or a bunch of kids just spitting out whatever garbage sounded "cool" without thinking about the implications.
But, I did it. It took a little over 25 years, but I finally ate my Rocky Mountain oysters and can take it off my bucket list. The Nameless One will always have a place in my heart and Icewind Dale will always be somewhere I'd like to visit, but Gorion's Ward? That munchkiny poor excuse for a plot device can finally just fuck off.
*mic drop*
