Review: Siege of Dragonspear

[admin]

Whaelar the Wise: What say ye, traveller? Will you return to the Sword Coast, to Baldur's Gate: The Siege of Dragonspear?

http://www.pockettactics.com/reviews/re ... agonspear/

[Zenish]

An attempt to expand the boundaries of the storytelling permitted in these lands has resulted in an intense political backlash from conservative factions. In truth, there is nothing in these pages that will upset any reasonable person unduly. However, a concerted effort on this minority faction has resulted in lower-than-accurate public consensus regarding the game.

Huh? This is a completely bizarre paragraph. Would you be more specific or provide a link or something?

Actually, now that I think about it, if you were bringing politics into a game review, you should consider deleting this paragraph. It's totally out of place.

[biffpow]

This is a very round-about way of trying not to to say anything about what other people have said so as not to offend any one on either side of the issue.

This game has been on PC for a while now, and a vocal number of long-time BG fans criticized the game for its poor writing--plot and dialogue. As a long-time BG fan, I watched these discussions at the time, and eventually tried the game myself.

The writing isn't as good, there's no question about that. Some of the plot elements could be seen as taking liberties with the original BG and BG2 long-arc. To me, these are valid criticisms. And as the reviewer rightly concludes, this isn't on the same level overall as BG or BG2.

That said, I was and am glad to have more adventures in the BG world with many of the old companions I'd grown to enjoy. And to give the game any meat at all, the plot would have to sort of stretch a little, being that this is chronologically between BG and BG2, so I think that's easy to just sort of go with.

[EICJoe]

Yeah I checked in with Richard and asked him to clarify. Seems there was some semi-political who-hah around the game's writing etc... when it was originally released.

I agree, that paragraph is less than ideal but it was a consequence of how Richard choose to style his review, which I quite like. I don't see any pressing reason to delete it right now, and it's nothing to worry about, anyway.

[Zenish]

Understood. No worries.

[Pietroschek]

I agree with this game best not being your first 'Baldur's Gate', as it is in the middle of the former parts one & the sequel. But then, I already played the originals, when they were first published in their US version, never waited for a German translation, which is usually just a guarantee of lower quality anyway.

I agree, on chromebook, it does have glitches, and not all fan MODS can be run, though Beamdog explained in easy to understand words, how to copy in portraits, open a cheat console easily (needs to copy one line of text, then start game and press CTRL+ENTER keys simultaneously), and more.

I paid below ??? 4,- for this game, and even before I could quick-cheat the chars I enjoyed a lot of it, as it is old but solid, and it has a story-mode (always play through once here, then go harder difficulty) to make players learn all they need to beat the game.

My first non-cheat char to beat the game with was a half-elf bard_blade, my second a thief_assassin (stealthy killer), and third in work was a paladin_inquisitor. Shaman makes no sense due the female master Yoda we meet as NPC to join our group, as M'khin is well roleplayed, and a better healer-summoner hybrid we won't find in this game.

One real drawback is the Number of NPC with their own voiceovers and little quests is too low, it does not even allow 5 per alignment (9 alignments, usually evil is just more fun)... But chaotic neutral can really juggle the loony bin, too.

In this game looking for quests does depend a little bit on chosen character class, and attributes. A dumb non-talker will simply not have an option of avoiding bloodshed due a prudent punchline.

On the main plot: It is really not too genius, and very linear, but given the makers were forced to embed the game between two other games, without violating the story, it wasn't too bad.

Noteworthy: Multiplayer is outdated, you must contact players elsewhere, as password-protected games cannot be joined, and hence we seem NOT to reach them via inbuilt MP chat.

Conclusion: The reviewer is sadly right on a lot of facts, but some got resolved due patches by Beamdog, and the handful of fans who still cared enough to contribute their own stuff.