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Review: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of AmnReviewed By: Bill Stiteler Review Date: January 8, 2002
I was playing Pikman at a friend's house, observing that we've finally reached a point where games look like the picture on the box. Back in the 80s, game boxes came with four-color Boris Vallejo prints of demon princes lounging over the supine bodies of sultry amazons wearing barely more than two pieces of string. Inside, you were a square shooting smaller squares at different colored squares.
BG2 is huge. The main plot from the original is carried over; you are the mortal spawn of the god of murder--but not the only one. Having defeated one of your kin, Sarevok, in the first Baldur's Gate, you try to unravel the secret of your destiny. Now, for most games, this would be enough. But if you spent all your time in BG2 pursing only the main through line, you'd miss half the game. There are more subplots and side quests in BG2 than in a Mervyn Peake novel. You think this is hype? You're talking to a guy who thinks there's not enough management detail in the last two hours of Civilization. Allow me to utterly debase myself by typing it in all caps: BALDUR'S GATE II IS HUGE. The side quests in the first city alone could take you a week to play. If you find them all, that is: A walk through site or book is almost essential to play, if only so you know everything you can do in each of the locations.
The game also makes use of the new third edition rules, which bring in new character classes like the barbarian and monk, and customization options like "kits." I never cared for kits, which are basically ways to add background to your character; something you should do in character generation, and which your main character in BG2 has anyway. The new classes are a boon, however, especially when you see a higher-level monk engage in unarmed combat combinations.
What else do you want? For one thing, the gremlins that afflicted the original with sluggish gameplay and a host of bugs have been successfully put down. Gone are the days when you had to save the game every five minutes because it would crash every six. Multiplayer, a plus for the original but practically an essential for the sequel, is also included in the box. The graphics have also gotten a boost, with the new magical effects being rendered with a beauty that's simply startling. In an era in which hype rules and the marketing of a game can seem more important than its design, Bioware has created a small library of fantastic games. With a love of gaming and the idea that good games create good press (rather than vice versa), they've created the first games that don't just use the Dungeons and Dragons setting, but capture the heart of the game, taking you back to an era of vinyl tabletops, Chee-tos and very geeky, very good friends.
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It gets more frightening. While Dungeons and Dragons has been the basis for, oh, every game ever created that had a sword in it, most involved just stabbing pixels that where "org green" with pixels that were "sword grey" to collect pixels that were "gold gold." It didn't really capture the epic spirit of the game, or the feeling you got from utilizing what Douglas Adams called "AHB technology" (Actual Human Beings). But now the mad geniuses at BioWare and their cohorts at MacPlay have brought us Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, which not only plays like tabletop D&D, but allows you to have a multiplayer experience as richly detailed at the pencil and paper version.
But never mind the subplots for a second (here's the Sex Pistols), the main plot itself is more complicated than Diablo, 
Baldur's Gate was probably the best computer RPG yet created, and BG2 succeeds by not changing the game, but expanding it. In addition to kits and classes, you get a larger array of weaponry, more spells (over three hundred), and character interaction. In the original, a party with a mix of evil and good characters would inevitably head for an internal show down as your reputation became heroic or villainous. In BG2 it goes even further. Party members will periodically question the path the group should be following, based on their ethics. How you answer that question may determine if you can hold on to the characters in which you've invested so much time, experience, and magic. Romantic altercations are also possible for those with high charisma ratings.