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|  | | | | This fag is Xan, an NPC mage. Besides being unbearably annoying, he can never learn Magic Missile. Never. | |
Speaking of NPCs, these guys
suck. I’m sure Black Isle thought they were creating NPCs with “realistic”
stats and maybe they were, for some random fag who you aren’t depending your
life on to be able to fucking hit something occasionally. Get used to the whiff
sound you make when you miss. Fortunately, most monsters suck as bad as you do,
so battles tend to be twice as long, since everyone’s valiantly missing the
hell out of each other. Also, the voice acting is pretty bad. Branwen, a priest, probably has the
most tolerable sound bites (providing lines like “If Tempus wills it” spoken
in some stupid accent doesn’t bother you too much). Imoen’s “You’re a
queer little fella” doesn’t make up for the rest of her annoying
personality. Jaheira is intolerably bitchy and patronizing, Khalid out-Woody
Allens Woody Allen in nebbishness, and Minsc the Retard stops being funny right
about the time he starts speaking. Everyone else is equally bad, it’s like the
developers wanted you to toggle off their voices. Ha ha, but then you have no
way of knowing if they actually acknowledged your little clicks on them for
giving orders. Those clicks don’t register often enough that you may find
yourself toggling the voices back on when half your team just stands there like
autists when you get attacked.
Your Main Character Has Died. Would You Like to Reload?
You will die a lot in this game.
If the unstable crash-happy code doesn’t prompt you to meticulously save after
every single action, the fact that any one-hit-die monster with a fucking bow
can waste you with ease probably will. It’s funny, you’ll clomp along
killing packs of kobolds and gibberlings and the like without too much trouble,
and then some fag fighter with his mage skank will pop out of the bushes and
toast you. Or a basilisk will shuffle up to you and turn you to stone; sorry you
left that Potion of Mirror Eyes back at the inn.
Areas of the map that are
dedicated to generating random encounters work overtime in this game. In an
outdoor area, walking through a spot that had a random encounter that you killed
a little earlier will no doubt have more of the same boring-ass monsters
returned to pester you. Part of the challenge of the game, the Grand OCD Quest
if you will, is to uncover every spot of the game map without backtracking. Some
parts of dungeons have monster generator areas that are as small as just one
square. The kobold-infested dungeon below the Firewine Bridge is a classic
example of this. The only way you can get through that bit is to have a party
member in each room, strung out like some kind of gay Congo line. Otherwise, any
square that grays out will start pumping out kobolds like bunnies. Bunnies with
flaming fucking arrows. Good if you want or need fire arrows, bad if your mage
has poor AC vs. missile weapons.
Taming the Wild Hinterlands, One Boring Screen at a Time
|  | | | | Where do naked mutated demi-humans actually keep their gold and gems? Forget it, I don’t want
to know. | |
For all the areas in the game
world that have some specific plot-related point, there are as many random open
areas. To explore them all, you need to travel to every side of an area map, and
disembark to the World View map to see if an area has opened up. A stupid icon
of mountains with no name tells you it’s a…well, a nameless area that
probably has some mountains. Usually it’s a half-dozen or so random
regenerating encounters with gibberlings and wolves – be still my courageous
adventuring heart – with one “special encounter.” These are typically a
band of human dipshits who insult and attack you for no particular reason. So
the occasional asshole amid a sea of generic repeats – just like our forums!
The human enemies will drop decent 13w+z or whatever you Everquest
faggots call it, so it’s a good way to upgrade, since local stores usually
sell the same old shit. Also, it will put you slightly ahead of the monster
difficulty curve, reducing the number of times you’ll have to reload. The most
fun I had in the game was in the middle, when I was instructed to infiltrate a
bandit camp. FUCK YOU BUDDY I’M FIFTH LEVEL. So we waltzed through the middle
of the stupid camp, killed everything that moved, and broke open some chest and
took the secret document we were supposed to covertly recover.
Surprise! The Final Battle Is Against a Super-Tough Boss
Resistant to Magic With a Ton of Hit Points Etc…
Just like every other RPG on the
planet, paper or computer, the final battle of BG1 is versus your Big Bad
Nemesis (Sarevok in this case), who’s rough ‘n’ tough and resistant to
magic and fire. So what else is new? Well, he is susceptible to arrows
and the like. The first time I played the game all the way through, I got to the
second-to-last battle, where you must defeat all of Sarevok’s henchmen, before
he curses you out and bails out a back door, the wimp. BUT WAIT! Due to some
kind of wacky mix-up, (read: poor scripting), Sarevok ran headfirst into a
corner of the room, and stood there sucking his thumb and begging for Mommy as
he was surrounded by a gaggle of dipshit palace guards. The guards are too lame
to ever hit Sarevok, and he isn’t scripted to fight them back, so he just
stood surrounded by them, unable to get to an exit. I just took a seat and shot
literally several hundred arrows and stones at him, and eventually he died. The
game ended, just like that. It just went to a screen that said the game was
over. That’s it? I WON!! Until I read the strategy guide, and realized I
hadn’t, sort of. If you’re wondering why some characters have a permanent
one hit point script applied to them in Baldur’s Gate 2, now you know.
It’s to avoid a stupid story-killing gaffe like that one.
What’s the Verdict?
If you have played BG2, don’t
bother with this game. It will be far too boring and ponderous, as well as akin
to visiting a bar you once liked, only to find out the booths have been replaced
with plastic patio furniture and the bartender keeps passing out before you can
order from him. If you want to start the grand epic blah blah Baldur’s Gate
saga from Day One, then you might find it worth your time, especially if you
play the TotSC expansion, the best part of the game as a whole. And keeping the
same fruit from the very beginning all the way to the end might be somewhat
satisfying, albeit significantly gay. But really, no one should be subjected to
the Infinity Engine at its clumsy infancy anymore, when even Icewind Dale 1
is a vast improvement. Forget it.
 Bill Dungsroman
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