Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn Review

BGII contains everything you might wish for in an RPG. The action sequences are as intense as they were in Icewind Dale, whilst the conversation remains as complex and exciting as it was in Planescape Torment. The excellent atmosphere in BGII additionally spiced the perfection of this mixture up, requiring a lot of your time for careful consideration and planning. You won't even notice how much time you spent on the game and one you finish it, your life will be some 200 hours shorter. The hard-core fans will then try to finish the game with another class or race. This gives BGII immense replay value. Your hero will start with a higher level than in BGI making the fights effective and interesting from the very beginning. On the other hand that doesn't mean the fighting will be any easier - most situations will require strategy and serious planning in order to survive them. This will make you frequently load saved games until you figure out your perfect combination of spells and cold steel. Still each type of monsters will require a different approach, so Diablo fans, you either change your style of play or forget about this game. Conversation with NPCs is the most important element that influences the storyline. The game is completely non-linear, meaning that the plot development depends solely on the decisions you make. BGII will also let you create an evil coterie, and even though the plot develops mostly on heroic deeds, there are some quests meant for darker characters. Of course, this doesn't imply you should act like a psychopath, as no type of society looks kindly on mass-murderers (A few words of wisdom -- If a mass-murderer moves into your neighborhood, don't go knocking on his door late at night, and whatever you do, don't ask about those screams coming from his basement. It's probably nothing. - Ed). Only the answers you give during conversation and how you act afterwards will make you good or evil. If you become a villain, you can forget about your coterie, because they are mostly good and are bound to leave you if you change your alignment. Many NPCs will follow you through the game, and all of them will influence the story. The worst thing is that sometimes you won't be too sure if you did the right or the wrong thing. You will often be given many choices and whichever way you choose you will have to face the consequences of your deeds. It's all up to you!

Pre-rendered animations and scripted sequences provide the continuity of the storyline. They will both give you hints about your enemies' forces and explain epilogues of some events. The main hero keeps having nightmares in which he meets the evil wizard, and the ending sequence is one of the best I have ever seen in a CRPG.

Besides the brilliant campaign, BGII also supports multiplayer mode. One GM and five other players can play on all types of networks. I only had the chance to play on LAN, and it did go somewhat choppy, but it was still great fun.

The graphics have been much improved. Just like they promised the game supports 800x600, which didn't matter much to me because I played it on 1024x768. How? Well, the game has unofficial support for resolutions up to 2048x1056, for, as the developers put it, players with extremely powerful hardware. Higher resolutions make the characters pretty small, but if you have a 17" or bigger screen, you are bound to try some of these resolutions. The graphics are crisp and detailed. As I already said, the first part of the game in the dungeons would hardly impress you, it is only when you break free and start questing about that you will feel the true power of the Infinity engine. Each object has been drawn with utmost care and precision, and the surroundings are abundant with details. All the characters have been much better drawn and animated, and seem somehow livelier. All the citizens of Athkatla look great providing an atmosphere of a small town full of its own mysteries and marks. The races have also been properly animated: the dwarves waddle, half-orcs have a slow gate leaving an impression of heavy muscular bodies, the female characters (especially elven female characters ;-) are graceful and slim even under heavy armor. BioWare really went into extreme details when working on this segment of the game.

The game supports 3D acceleration, which basically makes the spells look somewhat better, and provides the lighting and smoke effects on the terrain. All this really improves the overall impression and helps you live through a great adventure in a graphically perfectly designed world.

The sound is another upside of the game. The multimedia is not that important for a good RPG game, but in BGII, this element defiantly influences the entire gameplay. The game supports EAX, which could have been expected. Voice acting is fantastic, and the characters and their sayings are something to remember. The background music is much better than the music in the first part and it is now context sensitive, so you can expect each exciting action to be followed by a symphonic orchestra. It'll sure ring in your ears for some time.

Overall, BGII is an incredible game. It's certainly my favorite runner-up for the title RPG-of the year 2000. It is also sure to become a classic game that will set standards for the games to come. BioWare did it again! They made a revolutionary game and outdid themselves! The question is will anyone else "outdo" them in near future? We can just look forward to seeing more games of such quality.